Between clichés, traditions and desires for emancipation, the Netflix dating show paints an eclectic portrait of love stories, MENA style.
After the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Japan, the “Love is blind” franchise is available in the United Arab Emirates in its “Habibi” version. The concept? For ten days, fifteen single men and fifteen single women engage in speed dating in “pods”, where they get to know each other without ever seeing each other before, “inchallah” to propose to each other, always blindly, to meet each other. finally meet. What follows is a luxurious stay, drama galore, and, for the lucky ones, a white dress ceremony.
Like us, Donia Ismail, a journalist specializing in the Arab world and its diaspora, binge-watched the show with her friends, delighting in the complex love stories of Karma and Amar, Asma and Khatab or Dounia and Chafic. “What I especially remember about “Love is blind Habibi”, being a consumer of “Love is blind” in general, is that we have here a very different version which adapts to the customs of the region. They don’t sleep together, they don’t move into an apartment. Religious rites are also respected, particularly within the framework of the Mohammed and Safa relationship. They don’t say “I love you” to each other in the same way…”she lists.
A new version, yes, but stereotypical
Coming from the Maghreb, Lebanon, Dubai or Egypt, the singles nevertheless play the game of reality TV, known to be itself codified, and embody, probably in spite of themselves, tough-skinned stereotypes. “When we discover this whole gallery of characters, we realize that they are very caricatured, that they represent all the clichés that we have about this or that country. The very conservative Syrian, the Egyptian who makes jokes, the feminist Tunisian… They look like the cards of a game”notes Donia Ismail. And yes, despite a more modest staging than the other versions, “Love is blind Habibi” ultimately remains a “Love is blind” like the others, where caricatured candidates crudely replay the reality of contemporary man/woman relationships. “What exists in the Arab world exists everywhere”recalls the journalist, who has not recovered from the relentlessness suffered by Nour in the long-awaited episode of the meeting, symptomatic of an ultimately international patriarchy.
Quickly mocked on social media for saying that “feminists [avaient] ruined everything”, the Lebanese very quickly went beyond the role of the bimbo imposed by the program to become, ironically, a feminist symbol in her turn. “This relentlessness on the part of all the men and some of the women was very violent, and we had a complete summary of a patriarchal and misogynistic attack. In addition to that, this scene also brings together all the clichés that we have about Lebanese women, who are very beautiful, venal and with redone lips – which Chafic does not fail to point out.. However, far from letting this happen, Nour maintains Olympian calm to put these men in their place, reminding them that she simply has standards, just like her male colleagues who expect very specific things from their wives, as they do. remind us throughout the show.
A lack of male diversity
The strong point of this version most likely lies in its female casting, which strongly opposes a boy club that lacks nuance (which is often the case in “Love is blind”). Star of the season, the dancer Karma slams the door on her companion, Amar, who wants his wife to stop dancing if he marries her. Faced with a man who is not very open to dialogue, the young woman breaks up, preferring to choose her art over a romantic relationship that she already perceives as oppressive. “They all say they are super open because they do this kind of show, they have tattoos, they are educated… However, all the guys have conservative reflexes and over-perform their toxic masculinity”. Between Simo the gaslighter, Mido the very incarnation of fragile masculinity, Amar the control freak, Chafic the flirt… It’s difficult to find a healthy man in this sad panel.
If the program immerses us in an overview of what romantic relationships can be like in the Arab world, it nevertheless lacks realism and nuance allowing, once and for all, to deconstruct an entire exoticizing and essentializing imaginary of male/female relationships. in the MENA region. So what to expect from a next season?
“In this season, all the profiles came from extremely wealthy social classes and have a very different reality from many of us. I would like greater diversity for the next one. But above all, we need a multiplicity of men’s profiles”raises Donia Ismail, “The toxicity was particularly scary this season. And that doesn’t concern the more conservative positions of some, because they exist in any variation of the franchise. But certain comments or behaviors were particularly toxic here… And that’s what shocked me as a person from this region.”
Let’s hope for a more realistic upgrade next year.
November 7, 2024
