RIYADH: On a recent Friday night, thousands of television viewers across the Kingdom were shocked to see an explicit portrayal of a violent rape of two Saudi women.
Unprecedented for a Saudi TV, the three-minute scene showed two sisters being kidnapped by two men they met online, taken to a weekend home outside Jeddah, beaten and then violently raped.
While one girl is shown tearfully pleading for help, the other is seen having her abaya stripped away. The scene ends when one rapist threatens to circulate picture of the rapes via Bluetooth if they dare go to police.
The scene was a part of “Asakinat fe Qolubena,” (Dwellers in our Hearts) a new television series drama being aired on MBC1. It illustrates how Saudi drama has become more bold and sophisticated in exposing social problems.
“Yes, we expected the program to be controversial,” said Hassan Assiri, executive director of the producing company Al-Sadaf for Audio and Visual Production. “Until recently, Saudi drama tended to tackle taboos only implicitly.”
This program aims to move these taboos into the public eye in order to make people realize on their own that such violence is unacceptable.
“There have been some women who had similar shocking incidents inside the Kingdom recently... so we are not making up stories!” he said.
Indeed, technology was the tool that revealed scandals that shocked society, such as the Panda girl incident where a black man rapes a teenage Saudi girl, followed by Al-Nahdah pedestrian bridge incident, in which four Saudi boys filmed themselves sexually harassing girls.
The rape episode, entitled “Eqab,” was one of many other bold ones shown at that ongoing weekly series, which discussed many topics that have never been openly talked about, such as, rape, AIDS and marital abuse. The overall series topics revolve around forms of problems facing women in Saudi Arabia.
The program has been revealed as the top-rated program on all of television since January, according to a ratings survey carried out by Ipsos-Stat.
Assiri justified choosing women to be the core of his drama.
“Some men still think that decent women should never leave their homes and if they do, then they deserve any danger that might happen,” he said.
Assiri, who is an actor as well, refused to describe his series as “provoking.” “I think the Turkish soap operas, which are popular among Saudis, are bolder,” he said, adding that many people blame him for discussing social problems in his series.
“Violence against women persists in every country; why we are ashamed to admit it in our country?”
The series has its share of attacks and criticisms from critics and the public as well. Drama critic Mamdooh Al-Mehainy, encourages programs that bring social problems into the open, but he thinks the way such topics are addressed to viewers particularly in “Asakinat fe Qolubena” is onedimensional.
Talking specifically about “Eqab” episode, he said it conveyed the wrong message to me as viewer.
“Instead of putting emphasis on the new e-crimes law that specifies a range of offenses and penalties, including fines and imprisonment for computer hacking or harassment, the episode shows that men could kidnap and rape girls they meet online without any control,” he said, adding it also gives the impression that women who use the Internet invite scandal, which implies women should not use the Internet.
“I believe the episode has frightened people instead of educating them,” he said.
He added that Saudis are emotional and such topics probably would make them to reject technology or prevent their women from using Internet.
However, viewers received the drama message differently. “It freaked me out,” said Maha Sa’ad, a mother of four teenage girls.
“Honestly, I couldn’t sleep that night because I was thinking if these girls were my daughters.”
She hopes this could be a wake up call for the girls who believe in relationships before marriage.
Likewise, Abdullah Al-Hamrani, a father in his late 40s, thinks that such dramas distort the image of Saudi society especially that million of viewers around the Middle East have watched the program.
“Regardless whether this incident has ever occurred in our society or not, don’t we have other bright stories to tell our Islamic society? These incidents are not happening every day,” he said.
Asakinat fe Qolubena was filmed in Riyadh, Jeddah, Manama and Damascus. The program featured Gulf stars such as Lamia’a Tareq, Badriyah Ahmed, Turky Al-Yousif and Jasim Al-Nabhan.
