TAYAH LEE

Art Studies: Media and Self-Representation

SUBJECT

Traditional news media can often times construct skewed or incomplete images of reality, such as the injustices of women in the Iraq war. I will argue that online journalism, such as Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq surpasses traditional media in accurately representing the experiences of Iraqi women during the war. In the discipline of literary criticism, the field of citizen journalism, and with the theoretical perspective of feminism, I will show how Riverbend uses irony and oppositional narratives (Jarmakani 41) in three of her blog posts to critique the accuracy of traditional reporting techniques such as western news articles and Iraqi media broadcasts. I will also incorporate gender scholar Amira Jarmakani’s literary term of “oppositional narratives” as described in her article, “Narrating Baghdad: Representing the Truth of War in Popular Non-Fiction,” as well as Perri Campbell’s research on the effects of the U.S. occupation in Iraq on women in “Gender and Fundamentalism in the New Iraq: Women’s Rights and Social Change in Cyberspace.”

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Anthropology and literature scholar Perri Campbell, who specializes in women’s online communication (Campbell 9), argues that Baghdad Burning offers many insights to the treatment of women (Campbell 1). She argues that the American occupation in Iraq sparked an uproar in fundamentalism— “an orientation to the world that is anti-intellectual, bigoted, and intolerant... it is reserved for those who have the temerity to attempt to project their world-view onto others” (qtd. in Campbell 3)—which increased the risk of not only women’s safety but their freedom and human rights as well (Campbell 5). Campbell argues for the insight that Riverbend’s blog provides into the lives and experiences of Iraqi women during the war (Campbell 1). Amira Jarmakani, a gender scholar specializing in Arab American studies and literatures of representation (Jarmakani 32), agrees with Campbell’s view, and she explains that because the blogger’s narrative often debunks many mainstream American categories of understanding Iraq, its oppositional narrative presents the “real truth about the Iraq war” in a way that is targeted towards the American market. (Jarmakani 39).

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An example of the misrepresentation of Iraqi women’s experiences in traditional news reporting is described in Riverbend’s post, “Girl Power and Post-War Iraq” (Riverbend 64). The Arabic news and television network Al-Jazeera aired an episode of the weekly program, “For Females Only” (Riverbend 65; “Al-Jazeera”), in which Iraqi women’s rights activist Dr. Shatha Jaffar claimed that Iraqi women were illiterate and uneducated due to the fact that only Ba’athists were allowed in education. In response to this, Riverbend utilizes a direct reversal by contrasting this idea with her personal experience. She explains how she and all of her friends received an education for a variety of well-respected careers, despite being non-Ba’athist (Riverbend 66). She uses irony to further comment on the misrepresentation: “I must have been living somewhere else […] or I must be wrong. Either way, excuse me please, I am after all, illiterate and unlearned” (Riverbend 66-67).

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Further in this blog post, the episode is described to show a mortician in Baghdad who claims to hardly ever see rape victims (Riverbend 68). This would evoke any viewer outside of Iraq to believe that rape was not a common occurrence during the war. However, Campbell’s research states that the increase in fundamentalist activity and the lack of security and proper policing at the time led to a variety of sexual crimes against women—often by American military personnel and Iraqi security forces—all of which were left unreported (Campbell 6). Riverbend provides her personal commentary to the misrepresentation:

What rape victim is going to go, in our current situation, file a complaint? […] Besides that, women are too ashamed to make rape public, and why bother when you just *know* the person will never be caught—when no one is going to bother looking for the aggressor? (Riverbend 68)

 

The last example can be found in Riverbend’s post, “Shari’a and Family Law,” in which she describes the political shift from the secular Iraqi law to Islamic Shari’a law (Riverbend 187). Riverbend explains that under the secular Iraqi law, which had been implemented since the 1950’s, women were considered equal with unalterable rights (Riverbend 188). But Islamic Shari’a law implies multiple possible interpretations, thus recanting these guaranteed rights (Riverbend 189). Despite the substantial implications of this event, Riverbend reports the lack of news coverage by any western, Arab, and Iraqi media. She once again uses irony to reprimand the priorities of the broadcasters, stating “It is too much to ask of Al-Iraqiya to debate or cover a topic like this one—it would obviously conflict with the Egyptian soap operas and songs” (Riverbend 187).

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All throughout Baghdad Burning, Riverbend uses oppositional narratives and irony to critique the accuracy and effectiveness of traditional reporting techniques—such as news articles and media broadcasts—in depicting a holistic and accurate representation of the experience of Iraqi women during the war. Issues regarding women’s rights and safety are often misrepresented or not reported at all, as researched by Perri Campbell. However, through new media avenues such as blogging, the mainstream depictions of Iraqi women can be countered with what Amira Jarmakani calls an “oppositional narrative” to describe the true experiences of their lives. With new media avenues, oppositional narratives, and research, wartime realities can be depicted as more honest, accurate, and all-encompassing.

 

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Works Cited

• "Al Jazeera." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

• Campbell, Perri. "Gender And Fundamentalism In The New Iraq: Women's Rights And Social Change In Cyberspace." Outskirts: Feminisms Along The Edge 16.(2007): 2. LGBT Life with Full Text. Web. 30 Nov. 2016.

• Jarmakani, Amira. "Narrating Baghdad: Representing The Truth Of War In Popular Non-Fiction." Critical Arts: A South-North Journal Of Cultural & Media Studies 21.1 (2007): 32-46. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 Nov. 2016.

• Riverbend. Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq. New York: The Feminist Press, 2005. Print.