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Big Brother meets Survival on Iraqi TV
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Saturday, October 28 2006, 4:06:44 (CEST)
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Big Brother meets Survival on Iraqi TV


Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians under one roof for reality show

Kim Murphy in Sulaymaniya
Saturday October 28, 2006
The Guardian


Possibly only in Iraq could Survivor bring a new sense of reality to reality TV. Here, it's not called Survivor - it's called Playing House. But in a nation skidding toward civil war, putting Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians under a single roof to play house might literally end up as a contest for survival of the fittest.
The creators of "Beit Beut", the name of a game that has been a staple of Iraqi childhood for as long as anyone can remember, had just the opposite in mind, though. The prime-time reality series that aired every evening during the holy month of Ramadan, which ended this week, is a unique local hybrid of Survivor and Big Brother, and its message is: "United we stand; divided we fall."

"When we were selected, they did not consider our identity, our ethnicity or religion. But we do come from different environments, different ethnicities. And despite that, we discovered we are clicking. We are living with each other. We care for each other," said Jareer Abdullah Moulla, a 26-year-old Shia barber and fine arts student from Baghdad who was recently booted off the show.

Samer Jabber Mohammed, a fashionably dressed young female computer engineering student, and a Sunni, said: "The show emphasises this point to the Iraqis: that we are living together; we can live together. We don't care what is going on, what plans others may have for us, we are connected to each other."

Beit Beut rides a wave of reality TV shows that have taken to the Iraqi airwaves, with a burgeoning number of independent channels taking the place of the old state-operated TV.

Al-Sharqiya television, owned by Saad Bazzaz, a former chief of Saddam Hussein's radio and television apparatus, has led the field in reality programming. The station has debuted Construction Contract, in which Iraqis have their homes rebuilt after losing them in the war; the talent contest Youth Project; and a show that offers winners loans to start up businesses.

Beit Beut takes its inspiration from an old neighbourhood game in which a bride and groom are appointed among the neighbourhood children, others take the roles of other family members, and the groom is required to perform several tasks to merit the bride's attention.

In this case, a dozen contestants from regions as disparate as Baghdad, Hillah, Diyala and Kirkuk gather to live for about a month in a small inn-turned-ultramodern living space decorated in magenta and chartreuse.

From there, the show veers from Big Brother into Survivor country, with contestants forming teams that are required to carry out a task - from playing Spin-the-Bottle to building a barn and hauling a load of cargo across a river - designed to "separate the men from the boys".

The losing team, often after a bit of squabbling and an occasional bout of crying, nominates two losers and the audience votes one of them off the show. The winner earns $3,000 (£1,580) - enough to make a bit of mixed cohabitation worth everyone's while.

Naturally, none of these activities is carried out in central Baghdad, where venturing alone into the wrong neighbourhood can land you in the morgue.

Instead, the creators of Beit Beut flew the whole cast up to the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, in the scenic hills above Sulaymaniya.

"First of all, this place is a part of Iraq, and we wanted the programme to represent the whole of Iraq. We wanted a place that had beautiful nature and, definitely, security. Obviously, the situation in Baghdad prevented us from fulfilling our work there," said Riyadh Salman, producer of the show and director of programming for al-Sharqiya.

In case any viewers might be expecting a bit of hanky-panky in the remote mountain idyll, Mr Salman and the director, Alla Saleh Salahi, made clear the need not to offend conservative clerics, who have trashed western-style reality shows in other Middle Eastern nations.

"We are from a conservative society, and we respect and protect our traditions and norms," said Mr Salahi. "No romance!"

He pointed out: "They are not mixed together for 24 hours a day. They are together only in front of the camera. Outside the camera, the girls' group has their own special place to sleep, and the boys have their own place to sleep." Asked to name the ethnicities and religions of the contestants, they refused.

"Be sure, we didn't ask them, 'What is your nationality?'" said Mr Salman. "We looked at their personality, whether they were smart, their features, rather than their religious or ethnic background." Ms Mohammed said the secret of the show's success was that it avoided controversy. "We never discuss politics, because our relations with each other are so human," she said.

In the first episode, one of the male contestants agonised over whether a woman's feelings would be hurt if he voted to eject her from the show.

During a competition to see which team could be first to plant a flag at the top of a steep hill, one heavily built girl nearly collapsed from fatigue.

Her team mates slowed down and helped her along - losing the race in the process.

"Even during the hardest competitions, we have been caring for each other, and worrying about the safety of our colleagues," said Ms Mohammed. "We are from different backgrounds, different environments, so there are tiny things that appear in our lives together that are solved very quickly. And very softly."



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