Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria by Donatella Della Ratta

Author:Donatella Della Ratta [Ratta, Donatella Della]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: social science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9780745337159
Google: 0-9_AQAACAAJ
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2018-07-15T20:24:49.312731+00:00

Figure 6.2 Advertising campaign ‘No to sectarian division’, Damascus, Spring 2011.

The idea of ‘Syrianness’ emerging from the protest videos is that of a mature population wanting to live together despite the cultural and religious differences, and to do so not under an authoritarian rule, but governed by the rule of law – a vision in stark contrast with the tanwir ideology supported by the political and cultural elites. It is not by chance that tanwir-inspired TV drama has tried, after the outbreak of the uprising, to lampoon the idea of unity in diversity emerging from the protests. In the 2012 episode of the multi-season musalsal Buq‘at al-daw with the telling title Id Wahda (‘One hand’) the protagonist seeks to convince his fellow citizens to act together and stay united, only to discover, on ‘the day of his death, that he has been totally left alone by society’ (Della Ratta 2012a). Several other episodes of the same TV series – widely deemed progressive and cutting-edge – also try to debunk the idea that the Syrian people are ready to live in a multicultural, multi-religious society regulated by the rule of law, as the protesters demand (Della Ratta 2012a). This does not necessarily indicate the drama makers’ full support for the regime, but it does signal the patronizing attitude vis-à-vis Syria’s population that is widespread among the country’s elites.

This scepticism towards the protest movement and, more generally, towards the capacity of Syrian society to embrace a political path leading to the establishment of a civic state, is not, however, shared by the entire drama-maker community. The videos Fadwa Suleiman recorded from her hiding place during the peak of demonstrations in the city of Homs, defiantly talking to the camera about the civil rights brutally stolen from Syrian citizens,26 stand as a striking counter-narrative to that of the political and cultural elites; even more so as the actress belongs to the Alawite community, the same religious minority as the al-Asad family. In stark opposition to the idea of a society deemed backward and not ready for political reform, such protest videos finally conquer a physical and immaterial space of dissent. For the first time in Syria’s history, they manage to inject into the public space a portrayal of society that is radically different from regime-sanctioned elite communications. Through these videos’ pixelated frames, Syrian society finally (re)gains visibility, as much as a public, markedly political, space.

Filming and killing, dying and filming in contemporary Syria

Since those very first grassroots videos, spontaneously surfacing from the February 2011 protest in a Damascus’ market, a smartphone protest culture has taken over in Syria. Protesting and filming, filming and protesting, have become dramatically intertwined activities, mutually influencing each other. A ‘new protest culture has developed … through images and sounds’ (Boëx 2013),27 as image-making in Syria has finally found an opportunity to flourish in the realm of politics in the guise of a collective life activity accessible on a mass scale.

Once the project to keep technology in the ‘safe

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