Most Americans would think an Egyptian TV film portraying an illiterate village girl refusing an arranged marriage while striving for an education conveys a progressive, perhaps feminist message.
Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, however, believes it is a paternalistic film serving the regime's political agenda.
Yesterday, Abu-Lughod, who works at Columbia University and carried a field study in Northern Egypt, discussed the role of women on Egyptian television, pointing out that the country's attitude towards women on television fulfills the developmentalist ideology of the government and falsely portrays progress, education and economic improvement.
Abu-Lughod used as an example "And the Nile Flows On," an educational series about family planning. According to the scholar, the show's author would have said, "I wrote about family planning because I think overpopulation is a serious problem and writing about it is a national duty," making the show about a national issue rather than women's rights.
Abu-Lughod also discussed the TV film "Nuna-Sha'nuna," which is about a girl that leaves her village to become a housemaid in Cairo. From the kitchen of her window, the girl can see a school and she learns a great deal of subjects from hearing the classes from across the street. The sister of her employer helps the girl to pursue her dream of getting an education.
The fact that the maid is guided in her path by a benevolent bourgeoise woman, Abu-Lughod explained, denotes paternalism, for "it does not oppose in any way the structure of inequality."
"This paternalism is endemic to the discourse of National development," said Abu-Lughod, who is concerned with the attitude that prevails in the film and fears that lower-class Egyptians may "believe that a helping hand should be forthcoming from the government," which she feels is not an empowering message.
The anthropologist also expressed her concern about the "silence of Islam" in Egyptian TV series. She pointed out that one rarely sees religious people on TV, and the few religious characters tend to be "uneducated, violent people doing horrible things."
Abu-Lughod said she believes this practice of "discrediting Islam as all extremism" is counterproductive and wishes that religious values to which people are more acquainted should be used to promote women's condition.
"Muslim equality offers something beyond developmental rhetoric," she said.
College junior Andrea Morton said she came to the lecture because she red Abu-Lughod's Veiled Sentiments.
"I found very interesting the education discussion," she said.
But she added, "I wish I knew more about the background of Egyptian politics."
