East/West, an Ambiguous State of Being: The Construction and Representation of Egyptian Cultural Identity in Egyptian Film

ISBN-13: 9780820426396 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 226 str.

Hind Rassam Culhane

Opis

This analysis of an Egyptian film produced in Cairo in the mid-1980s shows how Egyptian cultural identity is represented. The film "Khalil Ba'ad Al-Ta'dil (Khalil After Straightening Out)" is a mainstream comedy-drama representing Cairo's urban life and some of its concerns and problems: family life, gender roles, jobs, friendship, sex, marriage, parenthood, divorce and love. The imagery of this film is examined including the content of the dialogue in relation to the characters expressing it; the symbolism of the music, songs and sound effects on its soundtrack; and the colors, clothes, offices, houses, buildings and streets of its settings. This film constructs these images and symbols and what they say about who and what is Egyptian and who and what is Western. These elements are used by the filmmaker to illustrate and highlight the differences.

Recenzje

"The author, Hind Rassam Culhane, is alive to the very personal dimension of the film experience; she integrates her childhood passion in Iraq for Egyptian and American cinema with a unique understanding of the role the Egyptian film industry plays in forming the concept of 'me and the other', and events and values in the Middle East in general." (Susan Slyomovics, Brown University)
"An original and perceptive investigation into the symbolic and social meaning of Egyptian film; not a survey, but a scene by scene study in depth of a mainstream Egyptian film skillfully analyzing how images of East and West are represented in the films being produced by a modern Arab society.
I strongly recommend øthis book! to serious students of cinema of the non-Western world." (Richard Bulliet, Director of the Middle East Institute, Columbia University)

O autorze

The Author: Hind Rassam Culhane, a native of Baghdad, Iraq, is an associate professor of Psychology and Associate Chairperson of Psychology, Sociology and Behavioral Science at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. She is also a lecturer at the Westchester Graduate Campus of Long Island University. Dr. Culhane has been a guest lecturer at Baghdad University and has lectured widely in the United States on identity and its representations in the media. She hold a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, in the City of New York, and also has three masters degrees in Psychology and Education, from Rockford College in Illinois and Columbia University.