University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Center for Advanced Research in Global CARGC Papers Communication (CARGC) Spring 2018 Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media Rayya El Zein University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation El Zein, Rayya, "Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media" (2018). CARGC Papers. 8. https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/8 CARGC Paper 8 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/8 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media Description CARGC Paper 8, “Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media,” by CARGC Postdoctoral Fellow, Rayya El Zein, is based on El Zein’s CARGC Colloquium and draws its inspiration from Metro al- Madina's Hishik Bishik Show in Beirut. CARGC Paper 8 weaves assessments of local and regional contexts, aesthetic and performance theory, thick description, participant observation, and interview to develop an approach to aesthetics in cultural production from the vantage of global media studies that she calls “vamping the archive.” Disciplines Communication Comments CARGC Paper 8 Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This report is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/8 CARGC PAPER 8 Vamping the Archive: Approaching 2018 Aesthetics in Global Media Yasmina Fayyed sings “Sona, oh Sonson,” in the Hishik Bishik Show. Photo by @foodartconcept, August 16, 2016. Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media CARGC PAPER 8 2018 I am very proud to share CARGC been fully explored and that we feel Paper 8, “Vamping the Archive: are important for the development of Approaching Aesthetics in Glob- global media studies. Aesthetics and al Media,” by Rayya El Zein, a affect are two such areas. In the sec- Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center ond research group, Geopolitics and for Advanced Research in Global the Popular, we focus on the myriad Communication. Rayya wrote a first ways in which popular culture and version of this paper, presented it politics mesh and amplify each other. to the Annenberg community, and revised it for publication, all while in I can think of no one better suited residence at CARGC. to making CARGC’s first foray into research on aesthetics than Dr. Rayya As we conclude our fifth year, we at El Zein, whose training is in theatre CARGC are happy to announce that and performance studies, and whose we have recruited four outstanding focus at CARGC is Arab music new postdoctoral fellows, bring- performance at the intersection of ing the total number of postdocs aesthetics, politics, and identity. in AY 2018-2019 to six. They will be working with CARGC Doctoral, By focusing on key Arab perfor- Undergraduate, and Faculty Fellows mances, “Vamping the Archive: on individual and collaborative Approaching Aesthetics in Glob- research projects. Of particular note al Media,” tackles important, is the inaugural edition of South by long-standing issues: the tension Southeast: the CARGC Fellows Bien- between art and revolution, the nial Conference, which will be held porous boundary between political in March 2019. You can read more visibility and the fetishization of pro- about our established and new initia- test, and the constantly lurking forces tives in CARGC@5, a detailed report of appropriation and cooptation that about our first five years, published in threaten politically imbued cultural summer 2018. production. In doing so, Dr. El Zein explores the conditions under which CARGC Paper 8 constitutes an aesthetic innovation in cultural pro- important step into an area that has duction succeeds, or fails, as political unfortunately not received adequate provocation. attention in global media and com- munication studies to date: aesthetics. Tracing the transnational and tran- This contribution places this paper at shistorical circulation of a cultural the intersection of two CARGC Re- form like Hishik Bishik Show, El Zein search Groups. The first, History and develops “vamping the archive” as Theory in Global Media Studies, is a theoretically-inflected method- dedicated to articulating our subfield ological approach to investigating with areas of inquiry that have not connections between aesthetics Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania 1 Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media CARGC PAPER 8 2018 and politics in global media studies. studies. While you are at it, please Though developed to understand check out our other CARGC Papers, Arab popular culture, this approach CARGC Briefs, and special issues fueled by a rejection of “objective” of journal articles co-published by representation, is applicable broadly. CARGC Press. If you like what you read, please spread the word about I urge you to read CARGC Paper 8, us, and help us fulfill our mission in to engage with Dr. El Zein, and to nurturing emerging scholars world- join the fray of debate about theoret- wide. ical developments in global media Marwan M. Kraidy Professor of Communication The Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics & Culture Director, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow @MKraidy Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania 2 Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media CARGC PAPER 8 2018 Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media1 Heritage, tradition, the old frames of mind, these are dead and RAYYA EL ZEIN, PHD gone. It’s time to say good-bye. We have to discover our own CARGC Postdoctoral path towards the future. Fellow, Annenberg School for Communication, -So you intend your own musical revolution, following the Arab University of Pennsylvania uprisings? Yes, we hope so. Citation: Thus began a television interview with the Lebanese band a-Rahel al-Kabeer [The Great El Zein, Rayya. Vamping Departed] in late 2014.2 The indie band’s work primarily consists of contemporary the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global arrangements of classics from the so-called tarab repertoire, the classical archive of twentieth- Media. CARGC Paper century Arabic song. For some time, the band had attracted the attention of the local media, 8. Philadelphia, USA: who celebrated the artists as model youth, revamping and revitalizing Arab musical heritage CARGC Press. for young and old audiences alike.3 But in 2014, the indie band also attracted international media attention for its musical satires of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed leader of the misnamed “Islamic State.” In 2014 and 2015, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Economist all celebrated the band’s young musicians for fighting back against the barbarism of IS with musical satire.4 As part of the new attention the group was receiving around the satires, journalist Deema Wannous opened a TV interview with the band on the Dubai-based, Arabic-language online news network OrientNews with a question directed at the band’s chief lyricist, Khaled Sobeih. She asked him about the band’s name - what or who is “the great departed” to which the band’s name refers? Sobeih answered with the passage quoted above: “culture, tradition, heritage: these are dead and gone, ‘departed.’” In this statement, Sobeih positioned the band as heralding a new age of cultural invention and revolution. But Wannous doesn’t seem convinced. In 2014, unable to conceal skepticism after nearly four years of regular declarations of revolution across the Arab world, the journalist almost rolls her eyes at the young artist’s confident declaration that the band intends a musical revolution. She repeats back his final answer, inshallah [we hope so, god willing], with a tone that implies “really?” Then, without allowing him to respond, she mm-hmms and changes the subject, addressing personal questions to the band’s lead vocalist, Sandy Chamoun. An initial reading of the beginning of this interview might focus on Sobeih’s declaration of revolution and cultural eclipse. Indeed, narrations of break, rupture, resistance, and revolt largely dominate discussions of the politics of cultural production coming from the Arab- Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania 3 Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media CARGC PAPER 8 2018 majority Middle East. The resounding soundbite-ness of Sobeih’s declaration of revolution, and indeed the eagerness with which the artist articulates it himself (are his band mates itching in their chairs as they listen to his answer?) demonstrates the dominance of this framework. It is a good example of the wide permeation of the tendency US anthropologist Jessica Winegar has identified around the work of Egyptian artists: namely, that they are “judged through hierarchies of value that emphasize the ‘shock of the new’ and a break with ‘tradition.’”5 This political expectation codes both contemporary art and cultural heritage in political ways: the former is aestheticized and valued as modern, progressive, independent, and legible; the latter as traditional and needing translation, expertise, or revival. This expectation for an aesthetic of rupture in artistic production is, of course, quite different from both debates in and criticism of Marxist aesthetics about the