Three graffiti artists were hired to add gritty authenticity to the sets for Showtime's Homeland series based in the Middle East, but instead of doing the job they were hired to do, they used the opportunity to criticize the show.
And because the set designers were so busy making sure every last detail of the set was perfect, no one noticed that the Arabic scrawled on the walls said, "Homeland is racist," "This show does not represent the views of the artists," and even "#BlackLivesMatter." The graffiti made it to air untouched for Sunday's second episode of season five.
Head-artist Heba Amin explained the reasons behind her team's activism in a blog post:
The series has garnered the reputation of being the most bigoted show on television for its inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans, as well as its gross misrepresentations of the cities of Beirut, Islamabad- and the so-called Muslim world in general. For four seasons, and entering its fifth, “Homeland” has maintained the dichotomy of the photogenic, mainly white, mostly American protector versus the evil and backwards Muslim threat.
Amin said when the team first got the call to work on the show, they were hesitant to accept until they realized this could be "a moment of intervention [to relay] our own and many others’ political discontent with the series." And so a plan was hatched.
The blog goes on to detail the instructions given in their initial meetings with the set department before they began their work. Rule number one was broken immediately: "the graffiti has to be apolitical," however writing "Mohamed is the greatest, is okay of course." Ignoring the dictates they were hired under, the team made their decision:
We would arm ourselves with slogans, with proverbs allowing for critical interpretation, and, if the chance presented itself, blatant criticism directed at the show. And so, it came to be.
The content of what was written on the walls… was of no concern. In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanizing an entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover, this season, to refugees. The show has thus created a chain of causality with Arabs at its beginning and as its outcome- their own victims and executioners at the same time.
Once the producers of the show clued in to what had happened under their noses, their response was not expected.
"We wish we'd caught these images before they made it to air," Alex Gansa told Deadline. "However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can't help but admire this act of artistic sabotage."
Even before this new season, producers of the show have been considering a move away from its Muslim-centric storylines, contemplating moving the setting to Europe or the United States. Maybe this act of graffiti-defiance is all the push they needed.
