Author Archives: eliefares

MTV’s Side of the Firing of Joe Maalouf

A friend of mine just sent the following screenshots my way of Jihad el Murr’s explanation of why MTV decided to fire Enta Horr’s Joe Maalouf (link), following the controversial episode during which he criticized Dekawne’s mayor Shakhtoura. I have decided to publish the screenshots because they offer a viable, albeit possibly incomplete alternative, of what happened. And, for the sake of at least trying to sound professional, here they are:

Joe Maalouf MTV - 5

 

Joe Maalouf MTV - 4

 

Joe Maalouf MTV - 3

 

Joe Maalouf MTV - 2

Joe Maalouf MTV - 1

Much of the above makes sense to me for many reasons, most of which revolve around the notion that it was pretty difficult to believe MTV was always okay with what Maalouf was doing on his TV show. Perhaps they didn’t mind him going on a crusade against the politicians ruining Lebanon’s mountains with their quarries but, regardless of what I or anyone might think of the TV station, I believe they had a problem with many of what of the things Maalouf did on the show, such as naming the victims of the Ayntoura school molestation last year, among many other. 

I don’t like Joe Maalouf nor his brand of reporting that borders on the sensationalism. But given newly surfacing information that MTV had given him many heads up about the direction they want his show to go through, who can we blame?

I believe the answer goes both ways.

Joe Maalouf, as an employee at MTV, should have stuck with what they were asking of him. After all, this is what employees do. They weren’t asking him not to say his opinion but to present the other side of his opinion as well, which is quite fair.

MTV, on the other hand, should have at least waited until the end of the show’s current season in order for them to do what they want. The timing of firing Maalouf is the key element that led to the outrage at hand. For all of us, the way this appears to be is the following: major Lebanese TV station silencing a comparably irrelevant person because of his opinion regarding a person who’s politically affiliated with their board of directors. And given information that surfaced around the time of the news that Joe Maalouf was fired, Shakhtoura being a Murr-affiliate definitely played a role.

Perhaps the true reason why MTV fired Joe Maalouf is an accumulation of little kinks here and there that broke the chain with him going on a rampage against someone they like being the straw that broke the camel’s back, which is an unacceptable reason for the camel’s back to break in my opinion. However, if they wanted this not to turn into a Lebanese mini-scandal, they could have at least waited and canceled the show very silently in a few months. They can trust me on this: few people would have minded because many  remember all the horrific mistakes Maalouf did on his show.

Joe Maalouf or no Joe Maalouf, I hope MTV at leasts decides to hire someone else to fill in Mr. Maalouf’s place in a show that is similar thematically. There are plenty of more professional journalists out there who are waiting on their major break and plenty of facets in our life as Lebanese that need highlighting. It’s a shame an opportunity to light on some injustices in society goes to waste because of a possibly incompetent employee and a politically charged board of directors.

Rest in Peace Achrafieh?

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(Picture source)
We have all been wondering for years what that hanging bridge was doing next to Sagesse school, as we headed towards or out of Achrafieh.

I didn’t even know it was a bridge until very recently. The only function I thought that construction had was to tell people the time and serve as a platform for political slogans and Christmas trees. Another entity into which our money was wasted.

How wrong was I?

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That meaningless bridge is but one piece in a big puzzle, one of which I was made aware a while back but thought was simply fiction. The complete picture didn’t make sense. It was too obscene, too disgusting, too horrible, too criminal to be conceivable.

But as things go in Lebanon, the monstrous project might just be underway.

The Fouad Boutros Highway this way comes, ripping Achrafieh in half, running straight into Mar Mikhael destroying countless old buildings in the process. All to alleviate the traffic problem.

I am not one to weep over Lebanon’s old buildings as if nothing better can be made. This isn’t about sentimentalities towards stone, towards a neighborhood in which I spent years of my life and witnessed first hand as it lost it charm bit by bit. This isn’t about the people who will lose their homes but get paid millions in compensation.

Achrafieh is dying. And nobody cares.

Do we have a traffic problem in Achrafieh and Greater Beirut? Definitely. Is a highway ripping a region in half the best way to deal with this traffic? Definitely not.

A highway which was planned before the civil war has no place in the Achrafieh of today, a place that has evolved beyond the project’s plans. The highway has no place in being the best current solution for the traffic problem.

What this highway does is only show some serious lack of foresight, which is normal around this country: fix a problem now, ignore the underlying cause. A few years after the highway’s potential completion, traffic will come and bite the same region again. The inherent flaw won’t be fixed.

The traffic problem in Lebanon, in my opinion, can be categorized in the following way:
1) Our common transport sector is nonexistent.
2) Our plans for developing the common transport sector are nonexistent.
3) People do not carpool. Nor is the notion of carpooling instilled in their minds.
4) Importing cars is a lucrative business. There are no limitations on how many cars can be imported and sold.
5) Our current roads are not equipped to contain the load of cars driving on their asphalt.
6) There are no plans to tackle the issue of Lebanon’s automobile sector overload.
7) There are no plans to improve the current state of roads across the country.
8) Driving laws are not applied nor are they enforced.
9) Driving education is archaic at best.
10) Lebanon is a deeply inefficient country.

And yet here we are, possibly spending millions on a highway that will disfigure an entire region and destroy its heritage because it’s the easy way out of a mess we don’t want to handle. After all, aren’t all major car importers in the country figuratively in bed with governmental figures?

Have we tackled every single possible resort to handle the traffic in the area that the highway will destroy before deciding to go ahead with it? No.

Instead of spending millions on a highway that will serve only one particular segment of Beirut mainly, why doesn’t our government have the foresight into planning for something more sustainable, friendlier and much more efficient?
Why not invest in tramways, in railway in Beirut and, yes, even metros?

Perhaps our current infrastructure is not equipped for such projects. But if the plans are made for such projects, I believe it is conceivable that we have the capacity to operate them by the time they’re done. Let’s not even begin to kid ourselves that the highway will be done in a short time. It’ll be years till that project ends as well.

The key to solve Lebanon and Beirut’s traffic problem isn’t horrible projects that manage to infuriate people only by having rendered pictures of them made. It is by investing in a common transportation system decent and sophisticated enough for the people to begin thinking about ditching their cars to go to work or to class.

Rest in peace Achrafieh if this highway truly goes underway. It was nice living the unbroken version of you.

MTV: Lebanon’s Prime Censoring TV Station – Why They Fired Joe Maalouf

Enta Horr Joe Maalouf MTV

Update: the plot thickens. It might be ALL electoral according to this (link).

News that MTV canceled Enta Horr spread like wildfire over the weekend (link). Speculations about the reason why MTV would resort to such drastic measures regarding one of their most debated TV shows were quick to start. The common denominator turned out to be just one: the never-ending story of the closing of the Dekwane gay club. (link).

Joe Maalouf, in his last episode of Enta Horr, came in against what the mayor of Dekwane did at that night club. Of course, this comes in stark disassociation with the Maalouf who, through his show, caused a Lebanon-gay-scandal of his own a while back with a cinema raid which even led him to sue Gino Raidy, a well-known Lebanese blogger, for the latter’s scathing post against Maalouf. Criticism doesn’t go around well in this country. But who remembers?

A few days after the news of Enta Horr’s cancellation surfaced, Maalouf decided to speak on the matter. And it turned out to be caused by exactly what we thought had happened: MTV’s Gabriel el Murr was displeased with Joe Maalouf’s stance in Enta Horr’s last episode which happened to be against the mayor Dekwane mainly. As a result, he sent out a demeaning letter to Maalouf in which he forbade him from working at the TV station. He then sent security personnel to fire the crew of Enta Horr and forbid them from entering the TV station’s premises again. All of this because Joe Maalouf stood against Dekawne’s mayor Mr. Shakhtoura and his practices. (Source)

I was told the mayor belongs to the Murr’s political line, which makes this even worse: silencing a man because it infringed upon one of the Murr lackeys. So it could be that they were upset Maalouf tarnished his image. He probably didn’t need much help in that. Or it could be that they needed his help in Lebanon’s upcoming elections and didn’t want Maalouf alienating him from them.

At a time when TV networks like LBC label the anal tests as tests of shame in the republic of shame, you have a network like MTV, which flaunts itself to be Lebanon’s most liberal and most sophisticated, banning and stopping TV shows because of a simple opinion that doesn’t even reflect on the TV station negatively. A TV station of shame, indeed.

It doesn’t matter where you stand regarding the rights of homosexual people in Lebanon. It doesn’t even matter where you stand regarding Joe Maalouf and Enta Horr, both of which I’m not a fan. What matters here is that Joe Maalouf’s freedom of speech – his freedom to have an opinion that is entirely his – has been maimed and tarnished by a TV station that had its own voice squashed by Lebanon’s de-facto Syrian presence for years and years.

For a person like Gabriel el Murr who knows how it is to go through years of tarnishing the voices of people, how is him silencing Joe Maalouf on TV any different from those same de-facto officers silencing all the votes that elected him to office? And since when is the mayor of a town so important as to have an entire TV show shut down just because it dared criticize his practices?

As I said before (link), Lebanon is a no-criticism zone. Don’t you dare criticize. There will be consequences.

It’s a sad day when the media of a country, supposedly there to lessen hate and ignorance, continue not only in perpetuating that hate and ignorance but in increasing it. What’s next from MTV or any other narrow-minded TV station in this country? Canceling TV shows just because… No reasons requested whatsoever? Banning journalists because they are not fans of your TV station’s policies? Forbidding reporters from getting airtime because their reporting isn’t always in sync with what you want to get across?

How does this make Lebanon’s journalism and press and media any different from those in countries that we look down on? The mere fact that I get to write this article and cross my fingers that someone out there won’t sue me doesn’t cut it anymore.

I may not like Joe Maalouf. I may not watch his show. But I sure as hell cannot be happy his show got canceled because it made the Murr clan unhappy. Good job MTV. Perhaps they should relabel themselves. That tape they had unzipped from over their mouth back when they relaunched after years of forced closure needs to be glued back. It’s only fitting of their practices and stature.

This is a general state of disgust.

Lebanon: A No-Criticism Allowed Zone?

I used to get invited to some exclusive events often. Emails would come in asking me to attend something here or another thing there. Being in the North most of the time, I often declined. But I went sometimes. They call this your blogging golden years – when you start getting noticed. I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it.

The other side of the invitation coin is an inherent request to blog about the event, the product, the location, etc. We, as bloggers, tend to do it out of courtesy. While attending the events at hand, I personally hear a lot of criticism that somehow never makes it to the blogposts circulating online. But I wouldn’t take that. I never felt I owed anyone because of an invitation but I owed it to myself first and foremost and to my readers, whoever they may be, second to be absolutely honest. I re-draft for the sake of diplomacy and to make the criticism more subtle sometimes. But my criticism is always there. People always call me the opposition front. It may be annoying sometimes, I give you that. But it is what it is. The invites have since reached a standstill.

I am not a blog for scoops. If you want your “it” news of the day, this is probably not the place you look. Many of you probably read “A Separate State of Mind” because you had a nice day and wanted someone to piss you off with his constant nagging. It’s not Lebanon until you go to bed infuriated. Others probably go by here because they like my opinions. Either way, thank you for reading.

I don’t see how bloggers getting invited to such events can really make it or break it so I don’t mind at all not getting invited to exclusive events if it means I’m free-er to say whatever I want. But I do mind some companies and firms expressing annoyance that I did not gush over them like a preteen fangirling over Justin Bieber especially when some events are obviously subpar or the product being given has obvious shortcomings.

It’s not only about companies and events. It goes beyond it to many other aspects as well.

I criticized the SMA award both before the show and after. I believe both of my posts were not scathing. They were balanced and could fall in under constructive criticism. That didn’t stop people from calling me a sore loser because I didn’t win or dramatic because I was making a big deal out of things or a disgrace for the Lebanese online community. Subtweets about yours truly nagging about the SMAs were retweeted by non-other than members of the award ceremony’s jury. Social media professionalism, much? What do I know, I guess.

No one really cares, as another example, when I harshly criticize an American movie. However, when movies such as My Last Valentine in Beirut get a scathing review (link) because of how horrible they are, I get flooded with questions that revolve around: Why don’t you support Lebanese cinema? Why are you this harsh? Why are you this nerdy? Why don’t you understand the cinematic masterpiece that this work is?

Or it could be when some blogger criticizes a well known designer (link) and instead of addressing the points being raised, regardless of whether you agree or not, those bloggers are automatically considered posers, sore losers with zero credibility who haven’t worked a day in their lives, etc.

It could even be about politics and common life aspects. If you criticize party A, partisans of party B suddenly adore you while those of party A bash your brains out. When the wheels turn and you criticize party B, those same partisans that were adoring you for a while suddenly hate you. You’re either with us or against us. It’s either always right or always wrong. No one can stray from the path drawn for them. I am political. I don’t hide my political leanings. But my criticism goes both ways. Except for those who only read one-way.

The stakes can also be higher and transcend blogging, social media, movie reviews and some takes on local politics. When some of our politicians criticize certain aspects of society or some companies, they suddenly find themselves dragged to court for defamation. An example that comes to mind is Charbel Nahas who led a campaign against Spinneys’ CEO who was oppressing his working force. If this had happened in more developed countries, a scandal would have ensued. Not here, obviously.

On the other hand, you have entities such as Warner Bros. and Roadster Diner which take criticism, however scathing it might be, and turn it into an opportunity to improve. For instance, Warner Bros got hammered for a delay in the screening of Argo. They apologized and turned it around in other screenings. Roadster Diner get inundated with displeased customers daily and still they handle it extremely professionally.

Lebanon, it turns out, is a no-criticism allowed zone. Because giving an opinion that may not be favorable about absolutely anything always renders you a hater who lacks professionalism and who simply cannot understand. Dream on if you believe your opinion might help to improve things. There are certainly ways to be critical and get your message across. But even the lightest of methods ruffle some feathers here. So until a time when constructive criticism does the job it’s supposed to do, here’s to all the unprofessional losers like us.

Trance [2013] – Movie Review

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Trance is a movie fitting to take me back to movie reviews. I don’t hide being a fan of the movie’s director Danny Boyle. His previous offering: 127 Hours (review) was, in my opinion, the best movie of its year – one that included Inception. The movie that made him a household name, Slumdog Millionaire, was excellent as well. Who could forget Latika?

Trance continues in that vein, albeit it being potentially much less award-friendly than the other two. After all, this movie wants to be a blockbuster. It’s the story of Simon (James McAvoy), a worker at a London auction house who gets caught up in a heist of a Goya painting, suffering a blow to the head in the process making him forget where he placed the painting in question. To help him remember, the group of thieves, headed by Frank (Vincent Cassel) enlist the help of a hypnotist called Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) whose skills will be utilized to form a true mind twister of a movie.

For some, the plot that makes up Trance will be considered too complicated. Others might consider it a shallow attempt at a true thriller in the vein of Inception. I found Trance to be transfixing and couldn’t help not be taken into its world. It had been a while that a movie managed to captivate me the way Trance did. Be it Danny Boyle’s excellent camera work on the movie’s intricate scenes, to the twisted build-up that gives you bits and pieces of the story without them being necessarily in the order you prefer, to the pounding music score that goes well with how well Boyle edited his scenes.

In fact, you cannot not appreciate the intricate work that Danny Boyle does on Trance, regardless of what your opinion of the story might be. Those who think the story is too complicated will be thoroughly entertained by how fast-paced the movie is. Those annoyed by the plot will find the directing style lavish. Those, like yours truly, who were enthralled will find it to be the cherry on top of the cake – or it could be the cake itself.

James McAvoy is haunting as the man trying to pay off gambling debts by agreeing to the robbery, perfectly accommodating the changes that the revelations regarding his character demand. He is electrifying with Rosario Dawson who excels as the hypnotist trying to find a place for herself amidst all the men making up the squad of thieves. The duo generates enough heat – both literally and figuratively – to help drive the movie forward.

The more attention you give Trance, the more focused you are on what the characters are doing on the screen in front of you, the more you’ll get to enjoy it. The final climax may be over-reaching and the movie may feel too stuffed and complicated at times. The psychiatric aspect has been, in typical Hollywood fashion, dramatized for the sake of shock. But this remains one of the best offerings 2013 has to give us so far. Trance is a movie you should watch. Nay, Trance is a movie you want to watch. Trust me on this.

4/5