Arabic graffiti in Homeland says 'Homeland is Racist'

(Image credit: Stephan Rabold/SHOWTIME)

published 15 October 2015

A group of Arabic-speaking artists were hired by the award-winning Showtime series Homeland to decorate the set of a "Syrian refugee camp" while the drama was filming in Berlin. In a statement released on Wednesday, however, the artists came clean: They hadn't written "apolitical" Arabic graffiti as they were originally asked to do, but had actually accused Homeland of racism in the Arabic messages they spray-painted on the set's walls:

[Homeland] has garnered the reputation of being the most bigoted show on television for its inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans, as well as its gross misrepresentations of the cities of Beirut, Islamabad, and the so-called Muslim world in general. For four seasons, and entering its fifth, Homeland has maintained the dichotomy of the photogenic, mainly white, mostly American protector versus the evil and backwards Muslim threat. The Washington Post reacts to the racist horror of their season four promotional poster by describing it as "white Red Riding Hood lost in a forest of faceless Muslim wolves." [hebaamin.com]

"The set designers were too frantic to pay any attention to us; they were busy constructing a hyper-realistic set that addressed everything from the plastic laundry pins to the frayed edges of outdoor plastic curtains," the artists explained in their statement. "The content of what was written on the walls, however, was of no concern. In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanizing an entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover, this season, to refugees. The show has thus created a chain of causality with Arabs at its beginning and as its outcome — their own victims and executioners at the same time."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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