Blackness in Arab transnational television comedy: Fresh pushback against entrenched stereotypes

Abstract

We address a hitherto understudied site of ‘racial’ representation, namely comedy discourses in contemporary Arab transnational TV, especially in the enormously popular Saudi show Tash Ma Tash (a 1992–2011 Ramadan special). Arab TV comedy’s ‘racial’ representation melds the globally familiar generic depreciation of phenotypical Blackness with traits and tropes distinctive to Nubian Egyptians, Sudanese, and Gulf Afro-Arabs. Symptomatic readings derived via core elements of critical discourse analysis, and self-reflexive experience, are deployed to interpret the media texts selected. We also explore the pushback voiced by those racialized, especially since the advent of Web–TV and social media. We conclude that the region’s TV comedy professionals do not pursue a consciously anti-Black agenda, but that they should urgently review conventional professional practices that ‘dehumanize’ (Bastian and Haslam) Afro-Arabs.