That Militant Mouse: The Irony and Danger of "The Pioneers of Tomorrow"
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published May 15, 2007, 2:36 pm in News, Rhetoric.
Try googling "Tomorrow's Pioneers" or "Farfour," and you will find links to videos about a Palestinian TV show that runs on Al-Aqsa, a Hamas-operated Palestinian television network. I don't just want to rehash everything about this because details on the show can be found anywhere; instead, I want to concentrate on two things: irony and language.
The show is created for children, and it features a small girl named Saraa who wears a scarf over her head, and a large mouse who looks a lot like a cheaper version of Mickey. They have guests on the show, and they take callers, but they generally just stand there and talk and sing. Like any children's show, they try to do things like convince kids to drink milk and study hard. But this is also an Islamic television show, so they try to convince kids to believe in Islam and fight for Islam. It's also a Palestinian show, so it's anti-Jewish and hints at armed revolt.
The show is getting alot of press because it uses Mickey Mouse to try to make kids into terrorists (whether that is actually the case is debatable, as I go into below). Because of all of the negative press, the Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said that the show would be heavily revised, hinting that the violent comments would be taken down. He said that the station would "stop it immediately," and then a full revision will be carried out. Now I'm not exactly sure what he means there. Will they stop the violent messages immediately, or will they stop the show immediately? Supposedly, they would stop the show, but that turned out to be incorrect. The show is still on the air, although we have no idea whether they're still continuing the violent messages. Supposedly, the Interior Minister "misunderstood" what Al-Aqsa is willing to do.
Before I go into the exact language used in the episodes I saw, we need to discuss translation problems. As a CNN article on the show points out, the company who translated the original show may have gotten it wrong. They translate one caller as saying "We will annihilate the Jews," whereas other Arabic speakers have said that it actually says that the Jews are killing them. Yet the original translator says that they're right. Now I'm not a translator, and I don't know much Arabic, but the problem is still strange. How can different translators come up with the exact opposite meanings? I guess the problem would be with figuring out who the subject is or who is doing the annihilating. Anyway, we have to keep this problem in mind. Sometimes translation isn't as clearcut as we think, especially to those of us who aren't fluent enough in another language to be able to do it. As I discuss the "exact words" used by these characters, they may not represent exactly what the character says. Still, we have to do the best we can, and the danger of someone having mistranslated a passage shouldn't negate discussing the passage at all.
So what does this Mickey--I mean Farfour--say to these kids? Well, it doesn't seem that bad on the surface. First, there is the violence. Here are some snippets from Farfour and Saraa, although I can't tell which is saying which. It all sounds like Farfour, almost like he doens't bother to talk in complete sentences:
"What should we do if we want to liberate?"
"We want to fight."
"We got that. What else?"
I think that's all Farfour talking, and it makes it sound like gibberish. Still, the intent is clear: to "liberate," one must "fight." Sure, we can take that as advocating violence, but it could be a metaphorical opposition, too. Gandhi "fought" the British, after all, even if he did it peacefully. It's easy to translate this into violent opposition just because of the producers--Hamas--and the situation in Palestine every day.
In another spot, the mouse sings a song: "Rafah sings 'oh, oh.' / Its response is an AK-47 / We who do not know fear / We are the predators of the forest."
Now I have no idea what that means, but again, people are saying that it's glorifying violent opposition against Israel. Sure, there's the AK-47 in there, but I really don't know who's doing the shooting. As the mouse sings it, he throws grenades and fires the rifle. Let's assume that the response to the grenades is the firing of the AK-47 because that's the way the mouse enacts it. Yes, that's violence, but the rifle comes out as a response to the grenades, not as the instigator. The AK-47 is merely defending against aggression.
This kind of propaganda is dangerous because it suggests that violence is okay under these circumstances. In other parts, the mouse says that "we" will win in Iraq, and then proceeds to tell Bush, Condeleeza, Sharon, and Olmert that "we will win." Yeah, this is armed rebellion, definitely. They're saying that the insurrection is necessary and that they should keep fighting. The weird thing, though, is that they're not really talking about winning in Iraq; they seem to be describing how "Islam" will win over the West.
According to an article on Wikipedia, the show also rants against Jews, Westerners, Whites, Americans, and Christians. So I guess it's a bit racist.
This kind of violent, racist propaganda can't be seen in isolation, though. I'm not talking about the terrible plight of the Palestinians, though I think we have to remember their desolation in many parts. What I'm talking about here is the way Islam is portrayed. Another part of the show says that Muslims are the basis of civilization." Now I don't know what that means or how that can be stated as a fact. I can see it if you're talking about something specific, but just to state that is a complete lie and reminds me of other kinds of racist propaganda.
The mouse says, "We have said more than once that becoming masters of the world requires the following: First, to be happy with our Arabic language which once upon a time ruled this world." Again, what the heck is that talking about? I understand the ethnic or religious pride in the language, but the idea that "We" should become "the masters of the world" is really disturbing. Talk about your hubris. And then there is the statement again that Arabic "once upon a time ruled this world." How is that remotely true?
Propaganda is generally this disturbing, no matter who is spouting it, but this one takes on some new meanings because of the use of Mickey Mouse. The entire show seems to be about how Islam will prevail over the West, but then they use Mickey Mouse, the iconic Western cartoon character. Is this irony lost of these people? That's like using Hugo Chavez to talk about how great George Bush is. Except that that would be funny. Here, the humor isn't in the fact that the mouse is Mickey; it's just a friendly face that kids can respond to, even if they don't know who Mickey Mouse is. Now I have no idea whether Disney is popular in Gaza or whether the kids know who Mickey Mouse is, but if not, they're still using this prominent Western cartoon character. It's definitely ironic, and I wonder whether they mean for it to be. If this were a tongue in cheek show, I would argue that they did know what they were doing, but it seems compeltely sincere. There is no clue here that Mickey/Farfour is being ironic. So we have to laugh at them instead of lauging with them.
So from the West, we can laugh at these silly television producers and their attempt to make a television show using a Western character. The problem is that the effects are still there: raising kids to think that Islam should win through violent struggle. That's my conservative interpretation of this show. Others have argued for much worse interpretations, but I like this one. Still, it's bad, and it is the thinking that had led to a lot of our modern atrocities.
What should we do instead? We should eliminate the causes, not the symptoms. This TV show is nothing but a silly yet dangerous symptom of a much bigger problem...
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