Page 234 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

motivation in advertising. Possibly the same motivation plays a role in European and
American advertising. But vanity does seem to be very close to the surface in Egyptian
advertising. During the Ramadan of 2003 (1424 a.h.) one of the most lavishly produced
advertisements run during prime Ramadan time was for a company that produced struc-
tural steel for buildings. There are few consumers for such a product. I asked those I was
watching television with about the ad. It struck everyone as an act of vanity rather than
as an attempt to sell a product.
15. Television advertising—or, indeed, any form of advertising—is not a popular sub-
ject for academics. There is, however, a good analysis of the effect on domestic relations
between a husband and wife of the marketing of cooking oil as opposed to the more
traditional sanma (ghee) (see Seymour 1999). Diase (1996) does not address advertising
directly but does provide an excellent analysis of the politics behind the production of a
US AID–funded dramatic serial designed to disseminate social policy to rural audiences
(see also Abu-Lughod 2004, for an analysis of Egyptian television— for the most part
not including advertising—from the perspective of both producers and audiences).
16. His comments, and his withdrawal from the advertising business, points to the
likelihood that further research on advertising in the Arab world might well have to
account for an interesting disjuncture between forcefully expressed assumptions about
the undesirable ubiquity of advertising (often described in the idiom of complaints
about the overbearing in®uence of “money”) in contemporary Arab societies and the
possibility that advertising in Arab, or at least Egyptian, media may well be less prevalent
than in many other societies. For example, music video stations, the most apparently
commercialized satellite television programs, run advertising mainly for their own prod-
ucts, that is, singers, as well as mobile phones, which the programs’ youthful audiences
use to send each other SMS (“short message service”) text messages which ®ow across
the screen as the music videos play. The stations do not appear to be “sponsored” in the
same way as, for instance, dramatic serials on American television.
17. By contrast, in the sensational Ramadan hit musalsal “Umm Kulthum” of 1999,
the greatest Arab singer of the twentieth century is depicted singing religious songs in
maqam style, without harmony, and with no instrumental accompaniment.
18. In Ramadan of 2003/1424 a.h. the song was still broadcast on television, but the
visuals had changed. The Su¤ imagery was gone, as were the images of the singer herself
(Fayza Ahmad). Only men, nature scenes, and much more austere and less Su¤-oriented
images were included. Fayza Ahmad died in 1983, so even my ¤rst (1990) recording of
her must have already been old. But the visuals clearly can be adapted to new (and in
this case more austere and Islamist) tastes.
19. Starrett (1995) contends that utilitarian objects are mostly incompatible with re-
ligious discourse. Note that the call to prayer comes between a program sponsored by a
chemical company selling everything from bug spray to dish detergent, and a segment
of advertising which, as we will see shortly, focuses strongly on utilitarian objects, but
only after another set of buffering messages of a less utilitarian nature.
20. Sahih al-Bukhari 24, vol. 3, book 31, no. 127: [Narrated by Abu Huraira] “The
Prophet said: ‘Whoever does not give up forged speech and evil actions, Allah is not in
need of his leaving his food and drink’” (i.e., God will not accept his fast).
21. All the advertisements featured women not wearing the neo-Islamic headscarf
(hijab). However, it should also be noted that with the exception of the perfume ad, every
woman in the sequence was depicted in domestic space where women (in real life, if not
in advertising) would not have to wear hijab.

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