Reimagined Communities

Melani Mc Alister’s “Epic Encounters” is an incredible, almost factually overwhelming, source of information about cultural, sociological and political phenomena that have shaped the American Interests in the Middle East. The Introduction is structured in such a way to provide an overview of the major happenings in roughly, the past 50 years, taking into consideration the interaction of a multitude of factors that helped shape the history of that period. While reading, one slowly sets into a thinking mode, the author is maybe purposefully underlying, which main premise is that the events and happenings in the the Middle East in relation to US Politics, did not only function in a cause-consequence type of way.
Rather, the author induces, factors such as film, literature, civil organizations and movements, government decisions, all types of ideologies such as nationalism (Egypt 1950s and 1960s), complement each other by creating a certain intercrossed causal relationship, where all of these factors influence and reinforce each others. McAlister gives an example of such phenomenon when describing in “Benevolent Supremacy” how the NSC-68 help inspire and create the idea of DeMille’s “Ten Commandments” and how the latter served as a reinforcement of the NSC-68.
Another interesting idea the author is putting across is the explanatory nature of film. It seems to be that among all arts, film has for the past 50 years portrayed and fictionalized events simultaneously or around the time they were happening; “Quo Vadis”, “Ben Hur”, “Ten Commandments” reinforced and portrayed the themes of Israel’s struggle, Egyptian anti-colonialism and African-American struggle in a broader sense.
I found fascinating the writing style, as McAlister uses a unique, though systematic, creative way of walking the reader through historical events and cultural features showing their interconnection. Analyzing some historical events with particular depth, such as the relation between Islam and the African-American civil movement, the author does great work of explaining well and comprehensively important phenomena.
I look forward to read more Chapters.

In another class I have learned that Arab-nationalism was brought about by Christian missionaries who sought to teach Arab history but could find no texts to assign to their students. The subsequent drafting of histories of the Middle East by Christian missionaries stirred Middle Easterners to become interested in their history and culture and to unify in order to define themselves against other cultures. This idea was challenged by Arab elites who refuted that there had existed resources which included rich, detailed accounts of Arab history and that had been studied for generations. This refutation, which rejected the Western argument that missionaries spurred Arab nationalism, is similar to the ways in which Melani McAlister rejects American approaches to define Orientalism, Arab, Middle Eastern, Near East, etc.
Reading about the representations of the Middle East by Americans, I was reminded of the preceding naïve argument that outsiders defined the history and culture of the Middle East. The idea that Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments could capture the cultural reality of the Middle East is about as plausible as Christian missionaries being the leaders of Arab nationalism. McAlister’s detailed analysis of the ways in which pop culture, literature, and politics contributed to the American conception of the Middle East sheds light on the ignorant methods by which Americans felt themselves connected to these lands.
As McAlister establishes, Americans felt a connection to the Middle East through a variety of ways, with religion at the forefront. This connection led to the fascination with all things “Oriental” which became a form of cultural tourism that motivated Americans to visit and feel a certain claim on the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the American treatment of the Middle East was also paternalistic as with their racial and gender representations. This treatment stood at odds with the American historical theme of self-determination which had been fueled by the Exodus story. By failing to divorce their paternalist attitudes from their so-called preference for self-determination, Americans continued to cripple the Middle East politically and failed to recognize key cultural differences that needed to be considered and respected, the consequences of which we are still seeing today.

McAlister seems to have stumbled upon a gold mine of interconnections between the media (movies, plays, books, music, etc) and the concept of imagining communities as nations, which up until now seems to be an underdeveloped arena of my education, aside from my own casual observations and occasional outrages. Just as entertainment plays a role in designating certain cultural elements as “cool,” such as smoking in films and violence in music, the same can be said for how America is conceived of at home and abroad, as well as how Americans perceive our world community. Just as one might develop stereotypes about other cultural groups without having the benefit of authentic interaction, so that dynamic is further developed on a national scale as communities relate to one another.

Many of my peers have acknowledged the examples of emasculating various cultures in order to place America on a pedestal as the model of virility, authority, and blind righteousness. The concept of implanting socially constructed gender roles into foreign relations, politically, culturally and religiously, seem to be both illuminating and troubling. As much as the power dynamic in a relationship may depend on gender roles in relationships, I imagine manipulating them and implanting them may wreak havoc between communities without firmly established relations between the citizens of each nation. This representation in US –Middle East politics seems to me like some kind of modern colonialism, yet whereas the European powers seemed to merely rape their colonies for all of their resources at the expenses of all of the indigenous peoples and their leaders, the modern arrangements of colonial-esque relationships seems to indicate a level of compliance between American decision makers and Middle Eastern rulers seeking to maintain power. Even the anti-American forces behave more intently on growing their own prestige as opposed to fighting American hegemony and modern colonial tactics. To me, that is all very interesting.

Also I wanted to touch on McAlister’s comments on the Civil Rights Movement, as this is Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The relationship between our foreign policy in the last 150 years since slavery ended and our domestic policy, racism and discrimination, is fascinating, while also depressing. Yet somehow, America maintains its image as a bastion of freedom, of equity, and of equality that is in no way espoused by its laws or its history, yet scarcely by its rhetoric. This rhetoric therefore is strangely powerful, and we can look to the media and entertainment as sources of that odd relationship.

I found McAlister’s chapter one title selection interesting – “Benevolent Supremacy” –because, as the author himself admits, the term was never really employed that often after its first appearance. This reluctance to use the term is understandable, since nobody likes boasting explicitly that they are supreme. It is, however, a viable summation of the national climate in the ‘50s and ‘60s given the context of McAlister’s argument, which highlights the crossover between post-WWII cultural and political agendas.
I very much liked the author’s depictions of the ‘50s biblical epics (The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and Quo Vadis) – of the visual descriptions of the films themselves, but also the parallels between the predominant cinematic themes and the precarious Soviet environment in which the American public lived at the time. For example, the opening narrative of Quo Vadis reads: “Imperial Rome is the center of the empire…But with this power inevitably comes corruption: No man is sure of his life, the individual is a the mercy of the state, murder replaces justice…There is no escape from the whip and the sword”. All one needs to do is replace “Rome” with “Russia”, and such a message could have been issued to the public by one of Truman’s aids just as easily as by Hollywood. This is not to say that the media was in some manner manipulating public opinion of the Cold War, but rather that the gross popularity of such biblical epics as The Ten Commandments and Quo Vadis most likely reflected a further underlying opinion of the Soviet situation.
There is a basic contradiction in McAlister’s chapter 1, however, that the author addresses indirectly but never rehashes to my satisfaction: that between public support for the Truman Doctrine and emerging isolationist tendencies in the traumatized post-war era. McAlister does a fine job of conveying the Truman Doctrine as America’s post-war international position, but fails to reconcile this case of “Benevolent Supremacy” with our reluctance to engage in further military conflicts abroad. If we were so timid in the wake of the Depression and the Second World War, how as a nation were we rallied to counter the Russians at every turn? In other words, how were the public’s respective fears of another war and the Soviet threat reconciled? Perhaps there never really was a reconciliation, and our clashing timidity and fear of the Soviets was the precise recipe for a cold war that was never to be fought.

When I was reading this, I just was figuratively slapped in the face so many times by the connections I was making between McAlister’s historical analysis and events that are going on right now that I knew I had to write my post about it.

First of all, the feminization of the Middle East that McAlister refers to is alive and well. She states that “‘the feminine’ has been mobilized to represent nationality, citizenship, and the public” and that women represent the family (12). Possibly it’s just me, but the image that stands out most clearly in my mind from the first Iraqi elections is the picture of the old woman wearing a head covering proudly holding up her two ink-stained fingers. According to the rhetoric of some, because I would not dare to generalize about Americans’ views of the Middle East, our troops have come to liberate the women and children from their cruel masters. Further, many seem to imply that, for example, Iraqis simply don’t know how to manage their own affairs, that they need Americans there to help provide governments and security, etc., as if our version of democracy is the only legitimate form of government. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but this seems too close to DeMille’s views that there are only two “visions of social organization.” It seems that we believe that they are incapable of selecting their own form of government, like a weak, feminized people.

McAlister further makes this point in chapter 1 when she discusses old films that show exotic young Arab women being oppressed by cruel Arab men and saved by white men, Jewish men, etc. Now, one hears about the liberation of women from burqas (which I’m not arguing are good) and even niqabs (such as the law in France banning them, which seems to be more patriarchally “we know what’s best for you” than true liberation, as it’s not exactly an oppressive item of clothing in my opinion). There’s also a lot of emphasis on the whole suicide bombers being rewarded with 24 (or 42 or 120 or… I don’t know, the number changes every time the trope is brought out) virgins in heaven idea, which seems to me to be yet another example of those barbaric Arab men being violent and oversexed, at least in the minds of some Westerners.

One of the other striking connections that stood out to me was the great religious importance that Americans had (and have) placed on the “Holy Land.” Now, don’t misunderstand me. Even though I don’t currently hold any religious affiliation, I am interested in the Holy Land as the root of so much of world culture, not only in the West, but to everywhere Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have spread. Many early civilizations rose and fell there, and that is great and fascinating stuff. However, that is different than the phenomenon McAlister describes, that of both the “premillennialist dispensationalists” and those who used the stories of the Bible and Holy Land history to justify modern-day actions.

Neither of those things have gone away in the present-day; Tim LaHaye, for example, the co-author of the wildly popular Left Behind series, is a premillenialist dispensationalist, and his ideas have sparked an interest in the Holy Land because of these “end times” scenarios in millions of modern-day Americans. Further, it could be argued that much of U.S. foreign policy with regard to Israel is based around this similar extreme importance placed around the Holy Land. (I’m not commenting either way on the merits of that.)

This got slightly long-winded and over the word count, and I could have gone on longer about a number of other connections. I hope to see McAlister tease these connections out further over the course of the book.

In Epic Encounters, McAlister uses movies, plays, and other cultural texts in order to assert that they enabled many Americans to see the Middle East as a legitimate arena for U.S. hegemony, and also as a place where they (from the white status quo to the Nation of Islam) could reconfigure national identities. Her analysis was helpful for me, because I have always thought of U.S.-Middle East politics as something that took place mostly through peace talks, but she broadened its scope to include American popular culture. However, one aspect of her argument that I thought could have been clarified more is the gendered representations of the Middle East in the U.S., and what they say about American notions of masculinity and femininity.

Overall, I noticed that both the white status quo who supported the U.S.’ foreign policy of “benevolent supremacy,” as well as the leaders of the Nation of Islam, did not differ much at all in their patriarchal views of U.S. national identity and its role in the Middle East. In the U.S.’ relations with the Middle East after World War II, men solely dominated the public stage (obviously, since only they could hold those positions), and Hollywood’s biblical epics reinforced such a patriarchal system through its portrayal of “legitimate” marriages. Although initially the ideal female protagonist (such as Lygia in Quo Vadis) vehemently protests against her enslavement and sexual servitude, nevertheless by the end of the film she still consents to marry, and to take on the subordinate role as a wife (75). According to McAlister, Hollywood biblical films like Quo Vadis and The Ten Commandments conveyed the U.S.’ “benevolent” form of imperialism precisely through its definition of marriage. As she concludes: “Marriage is staged as an analogy for a refigured imperialism, a new kind of benevolent supremacy in world affairs that links the new, nonimperial rulers with the peoples of the Middle East via a relationship of consensual and unequal union” (79).

In McAlister’s chapter on the leaders of the Nation of Islam, they too constructed a nationalist, African-American-centered identity that also simultaneously seemed to silence African American women in their own community. For Elijah Muhammad in particular, the control of black women’s bodies became central to his definition of the Nation of Islam, and how the movement would grow. In his view, the movement could only be strengthened if black women were “protected,” because they had the crucial role of rearing the next generation and thus, preserving “the black man’s heritage” (96). Although later on, if I recall correctly, Malcolm X’s autobiography exposed Muhammad’s sexual abuse of his female secretaries, nonetheless such a patriarchal message still took hold within the Nation of Islam.

McAlister thus touches on the uses of gender in representations of U.S.-Middle East politics, but a part of me still wants to learn more about how both white and African-American women reacted to such portrayals of nationalist identities which largely seemed to exclude them. Maybe I am jumping ahead, but McAlister seems to leave their voices and reactions outside of the picture (for now). In the years leading up to the feminist movement, how did women see their roles in U.S.-Middle East politics? Were they merely consumers of Charlton Heston movies, or did they have a “religious” connection to the Middle East too? How did African-American women see their role within the Nation of Islam?

To me, the focus of McAlister’s first chapter seemed to be the early Hebrew history and the perception Americans had of it. What I found to be rather contradictory were the parallels drawn between the Hebrew Exodus and the black Civil Rights Movement. While the American public was in the midst of culturally celebrating the Hebrew Exodus as a moment of independence (as a metaphor for the movement towards Middle Eastern independence), they were simultaneously ignoring the Civil Rights Movement.
Chapter One continuously emphasized how the United States wanted to become a world superpower after World War II. The idea was to build alliances and continue to dominate the world markets. Much of their support for the Middle East came from the desire to create new allies. By promoting the idea of a free Middle East, the United States served to benefit hugely in the post-war world, both from a power stance and in terms of oil production. I feel that the interests of the U.S. were way too conflicted at the time to honestly say the U.S. wanted the Middle East to be independent just for independence’s sake.
And beyond the U.S’s motivations for a free Middle East being impure, their actions in that region mocked the efforts going on in the U.S. with the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. had a less than stellar reputation on the issue of civil rights. Eisenhower focused mostly on foreign policy and mainly Cold War policies. While this was a necessary fact for the time period, he did neglect domestic policy. Most of Eisenhower’s domestic plans were based on the economy and a desire to get the U.S. ahead of the Soviet Union. Eisenhower severely neglected the Civil Rights Movement. While the 1950s were not the high point of the movement, there was still more than enough interest in civil rights (Brown v. Board, Little Rock Nine) that Eisenhower could have acted. His domestic policies were extremely focused on helping people- through new Social Security policies, public education changes, and mass immunizations. However, he did not create any laws in favor of integration or even against segregation.
The United States should not be given so much credit for their actions in the Middle East, unless people are willing to look at the entire picture. McAlister spent her time glorifying the Hebrew Exodus and the U.S. support of that mentality. While giving an overview of U.S. attempts to become a superpower, McAlister looked solely at the international changes the U.S. made, while ignoring the domestic ones (or lack thereof). I don’t really understand how a person could call a country a superpower when that country is neglecting a sizeable portion of its own population.

It seems to me that America’s association and interaction with the Middle East is riddled with hypocrisies and very real moral, political and humanitarian conflictions.
To begin with, American men once again employ gender as a tool to belittle those they wish to dominate – in this case the people of Middle Eastern nations. One of the powerful results of the idea orientalism, as described by McAlister, was that it created a binary perspective between “us”, the Americans of a masculine and modern civilization, and “them”, the more feminine and irrational peoples of the “East”. But this method, for the first time I can recall, actually seems to backfire. America’s heartthrob is no longer the rustic man but the darker-skinned Rudolph Valentino, a “woman-made man” (25).
This must certainly parallel the change in what Americans consider spectacle, for it also becomes more feminine with the dawn of cinema. Once spectacle is so visible and replicable, it then becomes linked to women, both now reflecting the “lure and danger of decadence,” (27). It is almost as if the Middle East, like the possible conception of women in American society, is a treasure chest that protects the most valuable possessions and virtues in the world – unknown and utterly mysterious to the befuddled male population. This seems to resemble how cinema approached Egyptian culture, with the visual promise of “preservation and advancement of knowledge fused with the exotic reveries of a dream,” (28).
But with drastic advancements in technology, Americans become overwhelming self-confident and desperately strike out to unveil and consequently belittle those secrets held most dear – both to women and supposedly to the Middle East. With the dawn of the twentieth century, there does not appear to be much appreciation left for mystique. McAlister writes, “…as with the case of the Holy Land views of the previous century, spectacle was staged for the purpose of ‘truth’,” (29).
However, this truth does not seem to go down well. The deeper Americans dig into the interests of nations abroad, the more they have to justify their nosiness to country men and women back home. As McAlister explains, “…the United States intervened numerous times in the Middle East to support pro-Western governments, prevent the rise of ‘radical’ nationalist regimes, or ‘guarantee the oil supply’,” (34). Unlike the purpose of Americans religious interests in the Middle East during the nineteenth century, these new motivations certainly could have used a good dosage of Christ. Because with more industrialization, Americans apparently began to consider their people with less respect, for they too became dispensable like the mass-produced goods from American factories.

There is no doubt that McAlister is adamant that for Americans the Middle East matters for a multitude of reasons that have been shaped and designed both purposefully and accidentally by individuals and policy, alike, in a cultural construction. As others have already written in their comments to this reading, much of actual American policy in regard to the benevolent partnerships and Good Samaritan statuses was actually shaped on a redefined form of calculated interest that was meant to create a capitalistic empire centered in the United States; a new form of imperialism. McAlister notes the changing notions and policies based on international trade (both American goods and the new found reliance on oil) and on the changing political spectrum that created a perceived bi-polar world pitting American-ly perceived capitalist-democracy against totalitarian-communism with a dying out imperialist presence.
There is great evidence to support these facts but it is important to note, as McAlister did throughout her introduction and first chapter, that American culture played a major role in the constructed notions of the Middle East and most of them had to do with an actual religious fervor and connection to the holy land that was created not by foreign policy or calculating businessmen but by American culture on its own. With the rise of the image, the newly founded notion of seeing is believing, and the accessibility to travel, fascination in the Middle East began to take place in the mid-19th century, before the time of oil-reliance, the promotion of international trade, and the very idea that it would be possible for the sun to set on the British Empire. Said’s Orientalism explains a portion of the mindset involved with the cultural attachment to the Middle East, not the most rosy of pictures, but it does argue that it was less that American policy drove outlooks of the Middle East and their orientalist perspectives and more the orientalist perspectives from religion, notions of gender, and other cultural mindsets that inspired and initiated American policy at the end of the second World War.
As McAlister says, religious epics most always involve a freeing from tyranny and a route to righteousness. The American mindset is the epitome of this idea. One must consider the idea that America, in the minds of Americans and others throughout the world, was the country calling out to the world to hand over “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … Send these … to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” In Americans’ minds, the American dream is a tale of liberation and a real-life epic. It is no wonder that upon the taming of the West and the perceived ending of the liberating process within borders that the American mindset would go elsewhere. With deep ties to religion and a rejection of Old Europe that was quite pandemic in America, Jerusalem seems to be a logical outpost of interest for the average American. Economic and political realities aside, interest in the Middle East and the perceptions created from it existed long before any calculating American policy. As McAlister puts it, “There are no ‘empty humans’ who can face each other outside of history or cultural values.” People are people and prejudice will follow basically any human interaction.
There is no doubt that American foreign policy was not solely about benevolent liberation in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. There was always an ulterior motive behind America’s support. But we should be wary in too quickly attacking the ways in which the United States has conducted its business because the official actions of the country are very much rooted in ideas and constructions from average citizens. Whether one loves the interests, despises them, or is indifferent to them, finger pointing is a difficult thing to do to a policy that is by the people, for the people.

First, in response to Pat’s post, I find it very interesting how McAlister disects aspects of the United States’ interest in the Middle East. Throughout the introduction and chapter one, she brings up a “benevolent” image of U.S. supremacy and then openly questions it. I agree in her analysis of this issue because it is clear that the U.S. is involved in the Middle East for mere personal gain. The nation wants to look like the “good guy” when it helps Middle Eastern countries and refuses aide to previously colonialist countries like Britain and France. Yet, even Eisenhower made his point very clear when he asked, “How can we possibly support Britian and France if in doing so we were to lose the whole Arab world?” (81). We can see where his intentions are. The U.S. strayed from fellow world powers and wanted to gain personal interests, like oil and power, which is fine if the country was not so deceptive in its motives. Unfortunately, this Eastern “orient” area is described as “feminine and primitive,” which makes it easy for a nation like America to dominate. The Middle East became involved in this American quest for power many years ago, and yet this is still an ongoing problem in the modern world.

Next, I think McAlister’s analysis of the media in American culture hits the nail on the head. She gives various examples of how the media constructs ideas and images in our society, and this has been going for over a hundred years. Visual media is often our only way of attaining information about the world we live in, yet this media’s goal is “to be made ‘interesting’” (2). It is ironic that the media claims to have the facts and true images of situations, yet there is an underlying goal of economic gain that arises from viewer interest. Even before modern media like the television, humans were still fascinated by visual mediums like art or photography. Even America’s fashion was influenced by Egyptian art discovered in the 1920s. As McAlister identifies all of these impacts of the media, I start to consider the news in the modern world. Unfortunately, this media is one of my main sources of knowledge. We are a country that values instant gratification, so the television or online videos are easy and fast sources of worldwide news, yet many of these programs are spiced up for entertainment purposes. Rather than scanning a newspaper, I personally choose the TV, which in itself proves American dependency on already made images rather than just words. We rarely get the entire story, yet most of us probably base our opinions on these brief captured moments from areas across the world and often the Middle East. While of course the media is usually beneficial, it may present parts of the story while leaving out key aspects. Either way, McAlister does a good job pinpointing how often the media has affected our country throughout its history and has created this image of the Middle East that is probably not 100% accurate. McAlister’s depiction makes us rethink the “good guy” image the U.S. wants to represent in foreign affairs.