Tash Ma Tash achieved success with honor during the past 15 years by developing local artistic works and writing superb scripts that are well executed and directed. The cast of the comic social satire managed to cross some red lines in the local media. The proof of the program’s popularity is the raising voices of critics that rail against Tash Ma Tash every year.
However, it’s worrying that the scriptwriters of the program insist on repeating the typical characteristics of some members of the local community. One of them is Adnan — an Arab with Saudi citizenship — played by Nasser Al-Qasabi. This character is a fraud-oriented man whose main concern is to collect money from locals by any means.
The character is not a real one at all. The majority of Arabs who have lived in the Kingdom since its establishment contributed positively to the country’s progress and development. One of these great characters was Sheikh Ali Al-Tantawi who helped many of us understand the essence of Islam with his beautiful Syrian accent.
That doesn’t mean there are no negative people in this group that possess the same characteristics as Adnan. But every society has good and bad people with different personalities and attitudes. That’s why it is really wrong to portray such a character repeatedly in the same negative way. It resembles racism and discrimination against Arabs who live in the country. I believe it isn’t healthy to promote such an image, especially in the minds of our children. Local awareness of the foreign community in Saudi Arabia is still non-existent. So we can’t present negative images of them on TV, implying that their main concern is how to make money easily.
Tash Ma Tash portrays central local awareness and criticizes society through comedy. It indirectly contributes to spreading this awareness locally and sketching certain identities through the seasonal episodes. These explain its popularity and large audience over the past 15 years. It resembles in some of its characters what people unconsciously feel in opposition to expatriates who are sharing the country’s fortunes with citizens.
Typical ideas are not a psychological production of one’s self. They are the result of an information and knowledge exchange that happen between those who belong to the same identity. That’s the known vision of typicality. There are those who see that typical ideas have a social duty, such as justifying their failure in the job market for instance.
William Shakespeare was one of the makers of the European consciousness in the 16th century. His literary works contributed to the beginning of shaping a central awareness of the European self. The Jewish moneylender Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has raised questions of anti-Semitism. The play is frequently staged today, but is potentially troubling to modern audiences due to its central themes, which can easily appear anti-Semitic. Critics still argue over whether the play is itself anti-Semitic, or that it is merely a play about anti-Semitism, or whether the foreign setting, including the protagonists’ ethnicity, is a literary device used to couch uncomfortable truths.
No one can doubt the artistic credibility and quality of Tash Ma Tash and the competence of its actors and their ability to produce ideas that have great potential in a very short period of time. But I fear that they adopt the repetition of some negative stereotyping of some groups or individuals that will increase social discrimination in the minds of many.
