From left: Ashraf Barhom, Adam Raynor, Jennifer Finnegan, Anne Winters and Noah Silver in Tyrant. Courtesy FX
From left: Ashraf Barhom, Adam Raynor, Jennifer Finnegan, Anne Winters and Noah Silver in Tyrant. Courtesy FX

Fox’s new show Tyrant a series of unfortunate clichés



The Fox network's latest prime-time drama Tyrant offers American audiences a stunningly skewed glimpse of life in the Middle East. Think life in the Middle East as portrayed by the creators of Homeland and 24.

Unsurprisingly, given Homeland's record for negative portrayals of Arabs and considering it filmed its Beirut scenes in Israel, that show wasn't universally well received by American Muslims and Arabs.

Tyrant, too, hasn't been spared criticism. "[In Tyrant,] Arab Muslim culture is devoid of any redeeming qualities and is represented by terrorists, murderous children, rapists, corrupt billionaires and powerless female victims," says Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "In Tyrant, even the 'good' Arab Muslims are bad."

Having watched the three episodes that have been screened for American audiences at the time of writing, I can see where Hooper is coming from.

The show focuses on the Al Fayeed family. Dad Khaled (Nasser Faris of House of Sand and Fog, Ocean's Twelve) is the brutal dictator of the fictitious country of Abuddin. The oldest son, Jamal (Ashraf Barhom of The Kingdom, Clash of the Titans), is a Lamborghini-driving, Aerosmith-listening, psychopathic cliché: we first meet him in the house of an unnamed victim, having his way while the victim's distressed husband and children wait outside the bedroom. Meanwhile the youngest son, Bassam or Barry (played by Adam Rayner of Hawthorne and Waking the Dead), has been in self-imposed exile from his family's vile ways, working as a paediatrician in California.

The wedding of Bassam's nephew, Jamal’s son, finally brings him back to Abuddin after a 20-year break. The show also comes with Islamic terrorists seeking to overthrow the Al Fayeed dictatorship, public executions, largely incidental female characters and a host of other stereotypes.

Although reviews have, by and large, been fairly positive, Entertainment Weekly noted: "The problem is that they're stock characters. Maybe that's an unfortunate side effect of setting the show in Abbudin, a distant desert land that seems to borrow its real-life events from Egypt, Syria and Libya. When you give your country a fake Middle Eastern name, you risk turning it into a stand-in for all Middle Eastern countries."

Time magazine wrote: "Tyrant fails badly … Arab characters sneer, suffer and read ridiculous dialogue."

Jack Shaheen, the author of Reel Bad Arabs, who has been documenting Hollywood portrayals of Arabs for 40 years, says: "The amazing thing is that certain Arab-American groups were invited to act as consultants on the show. I don't want to point fingers, but the time to put things right with shows like this really is in production and if you don't understand the process, it's easy to become enamoured with being close to Hollywood.

"We maybe need just two or three people in Hollywood who are qualified to lobby to ensure that series like Tyrant don't happen, and if they do, they're not so awful."

Tellingly, the show’s producers seem to have had little contact with the real Arab world in the process of making the show: it is shot in Israel, while the lead actor, Rayner as Barry, is, unfathomably, British.

Shaheen has some words of advice for the region’s big players in the movie industry: “Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha – they’re major players in Hollywood production now ... They really need to keep encouraging young filmmakers who want to make a difference ... They’re in a position to do something – they have the money, the intelligence and they have the contacts.”

cnewbould@thenational.ae

The specs

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Power: 579hp

Torque: 859Nm

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On sale: Now

Honeymoonish
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Cryopreservation: A timeline
  1. Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
  2. Ovarian tissue surgically removed
  3. Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
  4. Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
  5. Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months

Tottenham's 10 biggest transfers (according to transfermarkt.com):

1). Moussa Sissokho - Newcastle United - £30 million (Dh143m): Flop

2). Roberto Soldado - Valencia -  £25m: Flop

3). Erik Lamela - Roma -  £25m: Jury still out

4). Son Heung-min - Bayer Leverkusen -  £25m: Success

5). Darren Bent - Charlton Athletic -  £21m: Flop

6). Vincent Janssen - AZ Alkmaar -  £18m: Flop

7). David Bentley - Blackburn Rovers -  £18m: Flop

8). Luka Modric - Dynamo Zagreb -  £17m: Success

9). Paulinho - Corinthians -  £16m: Flop

10). Mousa Dembele - Fulham -  £16m: Success

Director: Laxman Utekar

Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna

Rating: 1/5

FIGHT CARD

Fights start from 6pm Friday, January 31

Catchweight 82kg
Piotr Kuberski (POL) v Ahmed Saeb (IRQ)

Women’s bantamweight
Cornelia Holm (SWE) v Corinne Laframboise (CAN)

Welterweight
Omar Hussein (JOR) v Vitalii Stoian (UKR)

Welterweight
Josh Togo (LEB) v Ali Dyusenov (UZB)

Flyweight
Isaac Pimentel (BRA) v Delfin Nawen (PHI)

Catchweight 80kg​​​​​​​
Seb Eubank (GBR) v Mohamed El Mokadem (EGY)

Lightweight
Mohammad Yahya (UAE) v Ramadan Noaman (EGY)

Lightweight
Alan Omer (GER) v Reydon Romero (PHI)

Welterweight
Ahmed Labban (LEB) v Juho Valamaa (FIN)

Featherweight
Elias Boudegzdame (ALG) v Austin Arnett (USA)

Super heavyweight
Roman Wehbe (LEB) v Maciej Sosnowski (POL)

MATCH INFO

Arsenal 1 (Aubameyang 12’) Liverpool 1 (Minamino 73’)

Arsenal win 5-4 on penalties

Man of the Match: Ainsley Maitland-Niles (Arsenal)

Results

Stage 7:

1. Caleb Ewan (AUS) Lotto Soudal - 3:18:29

2. Sam Bennett (IRL) Deceuninck-QuickStep - same time

3. Phil Bauhaus (GER) Bahrain Victorious

4. Michael Morkov (DEN) Deceuninck-QuickStep

5. Cees Bol (NED) Team DSM

General Classification:

1. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates - 24:00:28

2. Adam Yates (GBR) Ineos Grenadiers - 0:00:35

3. Joao Almeida (POR) Deceuninck-QuickStep - 0:01:02

4. Chris Harper (AUS) Jumbo-Visma - 0:01:42

5. Neilson Powless (USA) EF Education-Nippo - 0:01:45

The%20specs
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How does ToTok work?

The calling app is available to download on Google Play and Apple App Store

To successfully install ToTok, users are asked to enter their phone number and then create a nickname.

The app then gives users the option add their existing phone contacts, allowing them to immediately contact people also using the application by video or voice call or via message.

Users can also invite other contacts to download ToTok to allow them to make contact through the app.

 

Squid Game season two

Director: Hwang Dong-hyuk 

Stars:  Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon and Lee Byung-hun

Rating: 4.5/5

THE LIGHT

Director: Tom Tykwer

Starring: Tala Al Deen, Nicolette Krebitz, Lars Eidinger

Rating: 3/5

RESULT

Copa del Rey, semi-final second leg

Real Madrid 0
Barcelona 3 (Suarez (50', 73' pen), Varane (69' OG)

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

PAKISTAN SQUAD

Abid Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Shan Masood, Azhar Ali (test captain), Babar Azam (T20 captain), Asad Shafiq, Fawad Alam, Haider Ali, Iftikhar Ahmad, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Hafeez, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Sarfaraz Ahmed (wicketkeeper), Faheem Ashraf, Haris Rauf, Imran Khan, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Hasnain, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi, Sohail Khan, Usman Shinwari, Wahab Riaz, Imad Wasim, Kashif Bhatti, Shadab Khan and Yasir Shah. 

Company%20Profile
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Joker: Folie a Deux

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson

Director: Todd Phillips 

Rating: 2/5

Indoor Cricket World Cup Dubai 2017

Venue Insportz, Dubai; Admission Free

Fixtures - Open Men 2pm: India v New Zealand, Malaysia v UAE, Singapore v South Africa, Sri Lanka v England; 8pm: Australia v Singapore, India v Sri Lanka, England v Malaysia, New Zealand v South Africa

Fixtures - Open Women Noon: New Zealand v England, UAE v Australia; 6pm: England v South Africa, New Zealand v Australia