Yes, it exists. (Charles Paul Freund used to write about it for Reason. I miss reading him.) Not only that, but it’s really popular in the Middle East. And tonight there was a very emotional win on the show Star Academy (an American Idol knockoff, formerly called SuperStar).
For some in battered Baghdad, it’s a reason to celebrate. Local favorite Shadha Hassoun has taken first prize in the Arab version of “American Idol.”
Dubbed the “Daughter of Mesopotamia” by fans, the young woman wrapped herself with the white, red and black flag of Iraq and broke into tears as fans swarmed the stage. The show is broadcast live throughout the Middle East from Beirut.
Iraqis have been glued to their TVs each Friday since December, eagerly monitoring her progress in the “Star Academy” contest.
Here’s what one observer wrote a year ago:
We’ll know the region is a truly different place when we see an Iraqi Idol being crowned, but in the meantime the success of SuperStar, the Arab world’s answer to American Idol on Lebanese satellite channel Future TV, is a pulsating arrow pointing in the right direction.
For where a silly, shallow, modern singing contest can thrive, with aspirants seeking so temporal and decadent a thing as stardom and an audience of over 30 million going nuts over the process, there is hope against the deadening strictures of political and dogmatic religious oppression. It is also extremely significant that the results on the show are in the voting hands of the viewers, and the influence of this normative expression of unfettered democracy on the greater culture should not be underestimated.
All that is true, but unfortunately the region isn’t a different place even though an Iraqi Idol was crowned tonight. But CNN has been covering the story:
Iraqis are uniting to vote for Shada Hassoon, pictured here on the Web site of “Star Academy.”
There are two amazing things about this: 1) Hassoun is secular, and is being celebrated as a pop star: note her uncovered head; and 2) despite (or because of?) this, Iraqis have lost (momentarily at least) their sectarian and confessional fervor:
“You deserve it, you are the star,” one fan wrote to Hassoon in a comment on the Al-Arabiya network’s Web site.
“I wish upon all Iraqis abroad and inside Iraq to vote for Shada, and I wish that all of them unite, and I would like to say one word to the Arabs and the entire world that Iraqis are brethren no matter what sect or confession they belong to,” the writer added.
Hassoon has mixed national heritage. She was born in Morocco to an Iraqi father and a Moroccan mother.
But she is regarded as an Iraqi because nationality is based on her father’s country.
She identifies herself as an Iraqi national and says her dream since childhood has been “to represent my country, Iraq, in arts.”
“We voted for Shada without asking if she were a Shiite or a Sunni,” Hicham Mahmoud Alaazami said on the Al-Arabiya Web site. “We voted for her just because she is an Iraqi.”
One small step for mankind.
