Mood swings: Money madness By Tarek Atia There have been telling moments already on this year's Ramadan TV. One was broadcast a few nights ago on Hala Sarhan's new talk show, Gana Al-Hawa. Sarhan has moved over from the helm of Dream to the top job at Rotana, and she's taken her Oprah-like talk show concept with her. This seems to be a gentler, kinder Hala Sarhan -- more thoughtful, less abrasive. She hosted Riyad El-Hamshari, the veteran composer, and gently prodded him into singing his song "Amrikani". "This is not an Indian film, nor is it European," El-Hamshari crooned, "It's Amrikani ..." The main guest, singer Samira Said, asked El-Hamshari if he had written the song before or after the Iraq War. El- Hamshari laughed and said he had actually written it 14 years earlier. El-Hamshari may have been before his time, but today, America's socio-cultural influence is obvious to all. And just in case some poor soul somewhere remains oblivious, here comes this year's crop of Ramadan TV specials to ram it down all our throats. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE EGYPTIAN-AMERICAN? This year's headline drama, Nabila Ebeid's Al-Amma Nour (Aunti Nour) is all about an Egyptian-American. Ebeid's character has returned to Sayeda Zeinab after living in America for several decades. She's come back with modern, moderate ideas, and an annoying smattering of "Okay", "Of course", "What happened?" and "No" in her diction. She also does things like urge her brother, played by Abdel-Rahman Abu Zahra, to modify his treatment of his kids and to allow, for instance, his daughter to date openly. Ebeid is supposed to represent reason and pragmatism -- giving Egyptian values a modern American gloss. Through the eyes of her character everyone else in the drama is revealed to be absurd, clinging to superstition or silly ideas, or unprogressive ways of thinking and talking. This is not the only show peddling a fantasy world this month. On another drama, Al-Banat (The Girls), one of the characters is a hard-working lab assistant whose colleague is always chiding her for being so conscientious. "Order is the key to success," the diligent girl says. "That's why Egyptians living abroad do so well." Surprisingly, her colleague makes fun of her. "Yeah, we've heard all that before," she says. "We're bored stiff with that song." Which seems to indicate that the producers of all this fare are trying to please everybody -- the Westernised set as well as the traditionalists. They probably think that the easiest way to keep everybody glued to the screen is to make sure everybody has their say. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY: Of course this is the real bottom line -- for cash is king on Ramadan TV. It's the ultimate staging ground for consumerism, where everything is for sale -- and even curious items like cement and steel get a huge share of ad time. And in the TV dramas themselves, money -- whether the characters have too much or too little of it -- is the primary theme. It's what everybody is talking about, and what everyone is obsessed with. It defines the relationships between characters, and guides every story to its predictable conclusion. In Abyad fi Abyad (All White) a forlorn Mamdouh Abdel- Aleem has too much money and too much time on his hands. But all is not well in the land of the rich, for Abdel-Aleem's character is continually anguished over having been deprived of love by his rich parents. Messages like that are so obvious as to be painful, and every night, on every show, similar lessons are there to be devoured by the bucketful after a hearty iftar. Because the acting is generally so mediocre, and not much is happening plot-wise on any show in particular, one doubts that any clear message is being absorbed. Will die-hard viewers really emerge from these dramas with a firm belief in the old "money can't buy you love" cliché? Or will they take home the unsubtle hint that having lived abroad puts you at an advantage over your fellow citizens? Then again, there's the most important message of all -- again delivered by Nabila Ebeid's Aunti Nour -- that as Egyptians, we're really doing fine deep down, it's just that some of us can't see this clearly through all the poverty and the grime. At one point Aunti Nour says to her brother, "In America, love isn't real, because it has lost all of its beautiful meanings. Here, it still retains everything that's good and natural." As the month progresses, quasi-nationalistic messages like that are certainly going to become more frequent. Yet although we will hear them on every show, what they really reveal is a confusing world where identity itself has become just another commodity to be bought and sold like butter.
