Abstract
Terrorism and Kebab (Sherif Arafa, Egypt, 1992) is a film rich in cultural and political meaning, both as it applies to the specificity of Egyptian politics and culture but also as it conveys the commonality of the plight of the Everyman, across borders and regions, in the face the Kafka-esque administrative machine housed in the famous Mogamma in Tahrir Square. This film presents the universal tale of the little man, the Chaplin or, here, Adel Imam—buffeted by forces beyond his control, yet able to resist with anarchic spontaneity and humor. The film’s comedic portrayal of a massive and violently incompetent state apparatus which frames its legitimacy in the “state of emergency” exposes the “grotesque mechanism of power” as not an exception but rather as a fundamental and necessary component of arbitrary power, resulting in the destruction of the imagination—here reduced to the dream of a kebab, a perfect example of the destruction of memory which is essential to the biopolitical administration of human beings.
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Freda, I. (2020). Terrorism and Kebab: The Administrative Grotesque and the Egyptian Chaplin––Notes on Humor, Resistance, and Biopolitics. In: Ginsberg, T., Lippard, C. (eds) Cinema of the Arab World. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30081-4_10
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