31 January 2019
“Enjoy Saudi”
The General Entertainment Authority
By Neil Tidmarsh
Good news for conjurers, wax dummies, fighting bulls, rap artists and pop singers this week; you’re all welcome in Saudi Arabia.
Bad news for human rights activists this week, particularly if you’re female; you’re not welcome in Saudi Arabia (well, on reflection, that isn’t really news, is it?).
Saudi Arabia has a new Minister For Fun. Turki al-Sheikh has just been appointed head of the country’s General Entertainment Authority, and a few days ago he announced a year-long program of state-backed entertainment: public venues such as restaurants and cafes will be licensed to play live music; a Saudi version of the television pop singing competition The Voice will be produced and broadcast; pop and rap concerts will be staged (including a performance by Jay-Z); a Spanish-style corrida (running of the bulls) will take place; magic shows will be permitted; waxworks from Madame Tussauds will be exhibited.
Until quite recently, none of this would have been allowed. Music, singing, dancing, cinemas, theatres and concert halls were all banned by the country’s ultra-conservative Wahhabist religious authorities. Conjurors were condemned as sorcerers and magic shows were damned as the works of the devil. Just recently, however, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has begun to relax these prohibitions as part of his Vision 2030, the raft of proposed social and economic reforms which he hopes will equip his country for the fossil-fuel averse twenty-first century. A ministry for fun – The General Entertainment Authority – was set up, and last year cinemas opened in Riyadh and pop concerts were staged (although men and women – yes, women were allowed in, amazingly – were segregated and dancing was discouraged).
Turki al-Sheikh has dubbed the new programme “Enjoy Saudi”. He sees it as not just a social reform, but also an economic one; the creation of an entertainment industry for Saudi. “This is a big door for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs and for tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of riyals” he said. The programme “seeks to position the kingdom among the top four entertainment destinations in the Asian region and the top ten globally.”
The mysterious disappearance of Jammal Kashoggi, however, has of course recently cast a sinister shadow over Saudi as a purveyor of fun and a destination for carefree fun-seekers. And this week, more or less coinciding with the fanfare announcing Turki al-Sheikh’s “Enjoy Saudi”, Amnesty International published a report alleging that ten women – human rights activists – arrested last year have been “tortured, sexually abused and subjected to other forms of ill-treatment”. Beatings, electric shocks, solitary confinement, waterboarding, rape threats, murder threats, false reports of family deaths. Interestingly, other allegations include a claim that some of this was overseen by Saud al-Qahtani, the man who is also alleged to have overseen Khashoggi’s murder.
It’s a long way from the Ministry For Fun. But the General Entertainment Authority can’t escape the long and sinister shadows of such allegations; indeed, they increase one’s almost subliminal, subconsciously disturbing doubts about its vaguely Orwellian title (remember the ‘Ministry For Information Retrieval’ in the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil?).
It’s difficult to see how a country where the authorities can arrest, imprison and abuse anyone who disagrees with them can also build a world-leading entertainment industry. Ok, a supply of ‘bread and circuses’ is an old and reliable trick for authoritarian regimes to defuse an oppressed populace, but such ‘circuses’ are just crude tools for domestic crowd control, not a viable foundation for an international business.
Many commentators have pointed out that such oppression is counterproductive to the efforts of the Ministry For Fun, in that it undermines the “demand” side of their embryonic entertainment industry; after all, who would want to go to a country to spectate or to perform in an event if they felt threatened or endangered or morally revolted by the way the authorities there did business?
Few, however, have commentated on a more serious and important way in which oppression can damage an entertainment culture – and that concerns the “supply” side of the industry. “One of the many visions we have is that our local talent performs not only in Saudi Arabia but also abroad” says Mr al-Sheikh. If Saudi wants to build an entertainment industry which can sell itself and its works to the world, then it will indeed have to create artistic product; but a populace which isn’t free to ask questions, to debate and explore will never be creative; the culture of such a country will always be sterile, dependent on cultural imports for its entertainment. And those cultural imports will inevitably be subject to censorship. It’s perhaps significant that Mr al-Sheikh seems to see his job as generating income and riyals, rather than promoting art’s intrinsic value, its inherent benefits to the individual and to society.
What chance of growing art without social and political and therefore artistic freedom? Where are the novelists, poets, film-makers, rock stars, rap stars, pop stars, ballet dancers, opera singers, composers, fine artists, graffiti artists and playwrights of Saudi Arabia? You may well be out there, struggling to grow, in which case I salute your courage and determination and commiserate with you for the lack of oxygen in your home environment or, if in exile, for your dislocation. For the air must be very thin for you, and the soil very shallow, there where the ancient desert of sand meets the modern desert of steel, concrete and glass. And I hope for a future for you where the human spirit’s inquisitive, questioning, challenging nature – vital food for your creativity – will no longer be thwarted and denied.
