Media Generated Democracy at Work in the Middle East - the case of Tash Ma Tash

Broadcast media liberated from state control has an inherently democratizing influence on any society it reaches and this has been strikingly evident in the Middle East. One of the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon occurred in, of all places, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. During the early 1990s two young Saudis from Riyadh who had acquired a little ‘acting’ experience on local domestic television comedies, put together a series of sketches satirizing - sometimes savagely - aspects of Saudi life, taking special aim at two of Saudi Arabia’s most sacred cows: the government bureaucracy and the religious establishment. The comedy series created by Abdullah Sadhan and Nasser Al Qasabi was commissioned by Saudi Television to be broadcast every evening during the first 20 days of the month of Ramadan after fast-breaking. Traditionally this was the one time-slot where entertainment was permitted before the long broadcast of the Isha and Tarawih prayers. For years this slot was filled by a religious knowledge competition and an Egyptian produced children’s song-and-dance olio called ‘Fawazir’ performed by former child star Nelly.

The new program created by Sadhan and Al Qasabi was called ‘Tash Ma Tash’, which was the name of a game young Saudi boys played on the streets during the 1950s and early ‘60s shaking sealed Coca-Cola bottles until they would blow their caps in the seething summer heat. The one whose cap blew first was ‘Tash’ and the winner, while the one whose cap didn’t blow was ‘Ma Tash’ and the loser. This evocation of and nostalgia for a Saudi Arabia of yesteryear before all the oil wealth changed the desert Kingdom lies at the heart of the series and explains why it appealed to the Saudi authorities and, in part, why Saudi audiences responded so positively from the outset.

Indeed it is the clash of tradition and modernity that is the source of much of the most scathing satire in the series, particularly as it relates to Sadhan and Al Qasabi’s two main objects of mirth – mutawa’een or arch-conservative Islamists and government bureaucrats. The first series was really a showcase for the genuinely impressive comic talents of the two young stars and their eccentric band of players as they brilliantly caricatured a wide assortment of Saudi types from old Bedouin sheikhs to timorous clerks and Pakistani servants to hapless home-owners and petty bureaucrats and their victims. But the seeds of something much more subversive were embedded in their first outing. The popularity of Tash Ma Tash assured a second year at Saudi Television.

In 1994, a year after they launched their series, Sadhan and Al-Qasabi were scrounging around for sponsors that would allow them to move to the regional satellites. They approached both Pepsi Cola and Coca-Cola, hoping that the history behind name of the series would attract the interest in one or the other. They had no takers and had to content themselves with the same STV arrangement. It was only much later that they were able to attract advertising revenue and make a deal with regional satellite channels. Their home remained STV until 2005, when they were picked up by the MBC, the leading Pan-Arab satellite channel.

In subsequent years as they became more comfortable with their own popularity and more experienced with social satire, they began to take on hard targets, ridiculing some of the most absurd manifestations of religious conservatism and the fecklessness of segments of the Saudi bureaucracy, subjects that up to then had never been treated with humor.

The religious establishment began to object to any Tash Ma Tash episode that portrayed religious conservatives irreverently. In 2002 a segment of the series was broadcast that brought down the wrath of the religious authorities who responded, post-Ramadan, by publicly declaring that Tash Ma Tash was haram, or forbidden by Islamic Shariah and that it would no longer be broadcast. In almost any other business sector in Saudi Arabia this would have been the death knell for an enterprise and Abdullah Sadhan and Nasser Al Qasabi would have been in deep trouble. As is well known, the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia is a powerful lobby. But Tash Ma Tash had by then built up a more powerful following, not only within Saudi Arabia but across the GCC.

It should also be said that the Saudi government has been very protective of the development of broadcast media. When King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud first introduced radio in to the Kingdom, he silenced the inevitable outcry of the religious authorities of the day by bringing them all together to listen to a broadcast of the Holy Qur’an. In the 1980s when the religious authorities declared video to be haram and that they would close down video shops across the Kingdom, the Saudi government protected these businesses. When the religious authorities declared that satellite television was haram, the government prevented them from interfering with homeowners using satellite dishes and with the development of the sales and marketing of satellite channels. (Satellite dishes were, at one point, officially prohibited in Saudi Arabia and yet openly sold through legitimate licensed businesses throughout the country.) Indeed, members of the Saudi royal family are shareholders in some of the most successful and innovative satellite enterprises in the region.

So, although the religious condemnation and threat against Tash Ma Tash was serious, there were established precedents in the Kingdom for protecting broadcast programming. Tash Ma Tash remains a staple of Ramadan broadcast entertainment, not only in Saudi Arabia but across the GCC and is now part of several regional airline in-flight entertainment packages.

So then how did Tash Ma Tash survive and thrive while MBC’s ‘Big Brother’ franchise experiment crashed and burned so spectacularly in 2004 for some of the same reasons? To begin with, Tash Ma Tash was an original and quintessentially Saudi program made by Saudi nationals for Saudi audiences. Millions of Saudi citizens enjoyed the program, including many members of the Saudi royal family. Tash Ma Tash was original, socially relevant and had generated a ground-swell of popular support. The satire struck at legitimate targets without in any way being politically subversive and, more importantly, the series has never been morally subversive. It did not introduce an alien sensibility that violated the public’s sense of decency. Big Brother, on the other hand, was morally subversive, even for the more liberal Bahraini society where it was produced. It was a foreign implant in sheep’s clothing introducing a lifestyle that was not acceptable to the public at large. And make no mistake about it: Big Brother wasn’t ahead of its time; it was inappropriate, irrelevant and offensive to the majority of the region’s population. It is relevance and social acceptability that will determine broadcast program development across the region. This is media-generated democracy at work.

(After 15 years and 260 episodes the makers of Tash Ma Tash announced that they would not be airing their popular Ramadan broadcast in 2008)