After a late night, we at the blog came home and did what anyone else would do….put on some Arabic satellite TV and relax. What channel did we put on? Well, after checking out Dream 1, Dream 2, and OTV (the three channels with those best coverage of the most interesting topic currently, the Egyptian elections) we realized that they were playing either soap operas or boring morning religious programing.
With Arabic satellite, when all else fails, put on the music channels. We checked out Mazzika Zoom, an Egyptian music channel. After a few popular music videos (best of which was طال السهر by Dina Hayek and Tony Hena) the channel showed a rather interesting video by Sandy, an Egyptian singer.
In Sandy's video عايز اقولك A3iz A2olek "I Want to Tell You," there were a number of things that caught our eye. The overall theme of the music video is not unusual: it's a high school type of scene, with Sandy playing a nerdy-type of student and a blonde/American-looking type of guy playing her love interest. The look of the male character was the first unusual element…most Arabic videos don't include main characters that are obviously non-Arab, especially as a love interest (3aib!).
Another thing was that Sandy's love interest wears a letterman jacket, an almost exclusively American style of jacket worn during the high school years. When Sandy goes home to her bedroom, we notice she has a Taylor Swift poster on her wall and an Angry Birds doll on her bed. Her blonde crush (who happens to live next door) has a Cincinatti Bengals poster hanging on his wall.
What's with all of the American paraphernalia in this video? After some quick Arabic social media research, we learned that her director is American…and that her videos with him have received criticism for imitating the styles of American artists.
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