#andeel

"Then, every time I threaten a guy and tell him that I'm from the Helwan Armed Brigades—he just starts laughing and walks away, doc."

"Which brigade, again?" chuckles the shrink.

Anwar drew this gag cartoon for the Al-Masry Al-Youm, the popular independent daily. It's a local joke.

On the couch, the terrorist character feels self-conscious and insignificant. He is just another guy from Helwan—the last stop on Cairo's Metro. The Helwan Armed Brigades would intimidate a Cairene as much as the Staten Island Liberation Organization or the Coney Island Defense Front would startle a New Yorker. If you said you were from the Yonkers Militia, everyone would just laugh—right?

Cartoonists love to put their characters on the psychiatric couch. In booking a session for a terrorist—a goon, a masked thug, the other and enemy—the cartoonist engages in a kind of symbolic violence against the character. Isn't that why Tony Soprano was such a breakthrough character? We could finally see the don at a vulnerable moment. 

Anwar sends a powerful message by finding a joke in the armed assailant, laughing at his psychological complexes. The government has centered its policy on counter-terrorism, pure and simple. Anwar, however, problematizes the notion of a terrorist. The gunman is just a regular, troubled dude from Helwan. Maybe all he needs is counseling. It reminded me of Saudi terrorist rehabilitation centers, though Egypt doesn't boast any, as far as I'm aware.

In gags about psychiatrists, Egyptians are using the form to convey subversive punchlines. Last summer, Andeel used the same technique and offered a psychoanalysis of the Muslim Brotherhood's head honcho. Like the cartoon above, it was a way to shine a light on the shady and shadowy organization.

Something to watch for: does any cartoonist have the gall to draw President Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi working through his issues beside a box of kleenex?

“Sometimes, I suspect that I’m a state security agent, implanted inside the Brotherhood to screw it up,” the Muslim Brotherhood's leader tells his shrink despondently. 

Andeel, Supreme Guide Seeks Guidance, July 2013

**

"The TV isn't Working"

To what extent do the media's tendencies and biases, omissions and additions, shape our view of Egypt? Quite a bit, I would argue. Cartoonists of all stripes—despite being professionals in the news industry themselves—mock the media for not doing its job. It's an Egyptian tradition.

Today's post features a classic by Hegazi (1936-2011), one of Egypt's cartoon legends. The man in his pajamas says, "The TV isn't working properly. Remind me to call a plumber to fix it tomorrow!"

Is the media still in the sewer? On the Committee to Protect Journalists, Adel Iskander flushes out how Egyptian media has reacted to the latest developments. "In this polarized environment, journalistic professionalism went out of the window as each camp drummed up support for its side and demonized the other," he writes.

Along these lines, Andeel, a cartoonist and friend of Oum Cartoon, reflects on the media's role in advancing new narratives. His meditation on watching Egypt's top military leader speak on July 3, comes straight from the heart. A clip:

[General Abdel-Fattah] al-Sisi is behind a wooden podium that shines with an ugly polish under a screaming glare of light, in the center of a marble hall blocking the way to ascending stairs. On his right and left, people in suits and galabiyas sit reverently listening to what he has to say.

Sisi’s voice echoes in the marble hall. He’s distracted between the paper, shooting his feelingless stares at the camera, his rusty pronunciation, and his fantastic linguistic errors.

...was I actually watching a postmodern experiment, and an implicit message to the American and European art worlds that Egyptian artistic identity is coming at them against their will and the will of their suspicious cultural agendas?