(Essouira, Morroco)
Had a wee touch of travellers’ gut (there’s a low point to every trip), so spent half a day recovering, accompanied by what passes for satellite TV in Morocco.
I surfed the 220 satellite channels in the riad, many of which “ne marche pas” and some of which “marce” sometimes. English language news from the West does not “marche” at all. It’s a bizarre vision of the outside world which beams in.
Remember, outside is a conservative Islamic society with many women wearing partial or full-face cover. Most buildings seem to sport satellite dishes, so what is being accessed?
On Maroc satellite TV one can watch a selection of serious local stations (with the regular image of the much respected and somewhat liberal king), but also salacious Italian and French soft-porn “phone us now!” channels, some of which leave only the identity of the caller to the imagination.(!).
Then there’s the Greek parliament live, big titted Italian TV, Bulgarian cooking and chat shows (you can just tell when the chef is saying: “and here’s something I prepared earlier’) Spanish panel shows and “Friends” dubbed into French or German. Then there are channel after channel of American holy rollers – many of whom we know from early morning TV or community channel 31, proseletyzing in broad Southern drawl to the Middle East (which is doing what to Arab perceptions of a war against Islam?).
Then there are the French and German news and docos, a selection of identikit “Mornings with Kerry Anne” styles of shows across Euro and Arab TV networks: chat shows between women in varieties of Islamic head dress and without advertorials are a bit interesting. I wanted to see how they promoted shampoo.
The English language channels *(apart from the God Botherers) are: Korea TV, CCTV China cchannel 9, Italian Gay TV and a range of “news’ programs from Jordan and Iran. Especially riveting/scary is SAHA TV from Iran: Israel is never refered to except as “the occupied lands of 1948” or as the “Zionist Regime”, while the running news banner makes repeated unsubtle references to the USA as an “enemy of the freedom of Iran which WILL have a balanced nuclear program”. All of this was presented in expressionless cold war style by a rather frightening womanes and black robes. This was followed by a “News Digest” where a rather less sever spectacled woman – brown robes – stumbled in English to read a range of press extracts attacking the USA, including an editorial from the UK “Guardian”. The texts, scanned in original languages, appeared on the right hand side of the screen, presumably to create credibility.
At one stage, Aljazeera came on air, which was genuinely interesting, then it disappeared to be replaced by a range of Spanish channels, including live broadcasts of the Spanish parliament: tedious as…
By the last day in Essouira, most of our (straight, middle aged, married) grouphad admitted to staying tuned into GAY TV because it had quite good video clips in English like Michael Buble, an ageing Take That, a somewhat more ageing Simply Red, Robbie Williams in drag, a very ageing Lionel Ritchie, various American black funk videos and occasionally Macey Gray for the ladies… I have no idea what our group made of the Italian dubbed version of “The Fluffer” which was shown on our final night It wasn’t raised at breakfast.
Surfing 220 channels of babble in various nefarious languages at least drowned out the relentless sounds of Calls to Prayers and of the perpetually fighting cats in the lane outside.
So, Moroccans are accessing this stuff: what do they make of the world?
If Moroccan men are disappearing down the back of internet cafes to the black-curtained off areas (and they are)… what is that saying about potential cultural hypocrisy?
So much for Islamic values in the global village?
I’m not sure that any of this assisted my recovery from Moroccan Belly, though…
