The problem with the Emmy attention for ‘Ramy’

The problem with the Emmy attention for ‘Ramy’

09/21/2020

  • "Ramy," a show that deals with the lives of Muslim-Americans, has been nominated for multiple Emmys.
  • It's been celebrated for doing work to increase representation of Muslim-Americans, but it too often falls short of doing so responsibly.
  • Asmaa Elgamal is a PhD candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. 
  • This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
  • Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Last night, Ramy Youssef, creator of the Hulu hit "Ramy," gave the Twitter community a front-row seat to the letdown of losing an Emmy nomination during a pandemic: not only do they not call out your name, but a person in a hazmat tuxedo will wave goodbye through your window and literally walk away with your would-be award. While the image may trigger a collective "aww," especially for a show that has been singled out as the first Muslim-American comedy to snag three Emmy award nominations, I, for one, can't pretend to be disappointed.

As diversity took the limelight at the virtual awards ceremony, the Muslim-American Youssef, who jokes that he "feels most like the hyphen between these two words," was recognized as one among a record number of artists of color to be nominated at this year's Emmys.

Yet that's exactly what's wrong with "Ramy." To borrow from its creator, it also feels like a hyphen—a flat punctuation mark that stands as an awkward connector between a series of over-played tropes and half-baked storylines, reflecting the narrow confines of American entertainment's willingness to humanize Muslims. A victory for "Ramy" at last night's awards would not have been a win for inclusion and representation, but a celebration of the media industry's stale expectations of American Muslims. 

The 'acceptable' Muslim

As an Egyptian-raised Muslim-American, I'll admit to being intrigued by the possibilities of a show about an Arab-American millennial struggling with faith, love, and delayed adulthood. I grinned at the sound of its eighties-era Egyptian theme music and the sight of Ramy's family huddled in front of the TV snacking on sunflower seeds. But once the novelty of the nostalgia wore off, what remained was the embodiment of American TV's assumptions about what it means to be an acceptable kind of Muslim. 

Socially, this Muslim must be struggling with their Muslimness, preferably in a way that makes for good television. For Ramy, this boils down to a 20-episode-long tug-of-war between his American self, which wants to have sex, and his Muslim self, which makes him feel guilty about it. Politically, this Muslim must be timid, apologetic, and work hard to prove their Americanness. 

For instance, in a flashback episode to 9/11, we meet 12-year-old Ramy, an awkward pre-teen whose struggles to fit in revolve around proving to his pack of adolescent friends that he is a master-masturbator and a non-terrorist. A large bulk of the episode involves a dream sequence in which Ramy tells an imaginary Osama Bin Laden that "no, I'm not like you." He is immediately rewarded by the appearance of an older white woman who pulls down her shirt and reassures him that "you do fit in, Ramy." 

The message couldn't be more painfully familiar: white (and let's not forget sexy) America welcomes you if —and only if— you consistently prove you're not a terrorist. Not even pubescent boys can be free of that burden. 

The show's engagement with politics maintains this tone throughout the two seasons. "Ramy" deliberately squeezes in references to political issues of significance to Arab and Muslim communities, yet refuses to engage with them in any meaningful way. Effectively, Ramy's flippant humor acts as the hyphen that strings together all-those-wars-in-the-Middle-East-Muslims-care-about, while his punch lines intervene to dismiss them in an instant.

Take, for example, Ramy's chance encounter with a guilt-stricken Iraq war veteran: "Everyone talks about some big conspiracy," he tells him. "They're like, we were all there because of the oil. Well, yeah, because we needed it. Everything runs on oil."

Besides his facetious dismissal of the hundreds of thousands of human lives lost during this war, Ramy's misplaced humor is also painfully reminiscent of media representations of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the famous "gold star" parents of a slain Muslim-American soldier. Just as their goodness needed to be "proven" through their young son's sacrifice of his life, Ramy's empathetic character could only be demonstrated through what amounts to an embrace of American imperialism.

It seems that on TV, just as in life, the proof of Muslim patriotism can only come at a heavy price.

Peddling in stereotypes

When he's not busy dolling out timid political commentary, Ramy himself acts as the hyphen that binds a collection of characters and storylines representing all-those-Muslim-tropes-we-love-to-see.

Chief among these is the stereotype of the sexually repressed Muslim woman. To its credit, "Ramy" attempts to expose the fetishization of Muslim women, yet in doing so, also manages to be guilty of the same act.  

In the first season, we meet Ramy's sister, Dena, whose story arc is almost entirely focused on her quest to have sex. In a scene in which she's in bed with a man who wants to play the role of the "white infidel" saving the oppressed Muslim woman from the shackles of her faith, an offended but somehow still interested Dena responds with, "Um, can we just role play that I'm like, a white girl?' 

Eventually, the fetishized fantasies become too much even for Dena to handle, but not before another familiar and monotone message has been delivered: Muslim women really, really want to break free of their identity. 

In the second season, we become privy to Dena's decision to wear a headscarf only so she can hide a balding spot buried very deep within her head. This highly improbable scenario appears to be an effort to illustrate the aggression Muslim women face when they choose to cover their hair. However, the purpose is defeated by the fact that we are only allowed to empathize with Dena because her decision is based on neither faith nor culture. 

And, by the end of two seasons, we, like most American viewers, are left with no interest in Dena—or any other young Muslim woman—beyond her repressed sexuality and what she does with her hair. 

Meanwhile, Ramy's other family and friends pack every trope and stereotype of Arab- and Muslim-Americans into a series of hyper-caricatured individuals: the racist uncle, the culturally insensitive immigrant mother, and a lineup of sexist and misogynistic buddies. 

It's not that these characters don't exist. They are certainly very real. The problem with "Ramy," however, is that it strips almost every character down to a single stereotype, which has the effect of presenting dysfunctional parenting and rampant hypocrisy as solely or primarily a function of cultural and religious identity. 

The most nuanced portrayal is that of Ramy's mother, yet even she cannot break free of the trope of the clueless immigrant unable to grasp the basic social etiquette of the country she's been a part of for over 20 years. The show even goes as far as to set some of her biggest social faux-pas to the type of music Hollywood typically reserves for scenes of harem girls and snake charming.

There's an entire critical theory dedicated to describing these  representations of Arab, Middle Eastern and Asian peoples as backward, exotic, or uncivilized: it's called Orientalism.  

Unfortunately, it seems "Ramy" owes at least part of its success to its peddling of stereotypes. The episode for which the show was nominated for a directing award revolves entirely around Ramy's adventures with a Mr. Bin Khaled, a character who epitomizes the filthy rich, hypocritical, and morally repugnant Arab benefactor. The fact that this episode in particular received a nomination speaks volumes about the type of Muslims the Television Academy likes to see on screen.

Two notable exceptions to the lineup of caricatures are Ramy's spiritual guide, Sheikh Ali Malik — brilliantly portrayed by Mahershala Ali — and  his spunky daughter Zainab. They are perhaps the only two characters on the show who behave with a modicum of intelligence, integrity, and a secure sense of identity. While their introduction in season two is a refreshing acknowledgment of the Black Muslim-American community, it should not be overlooked that Ramy could only find these models of goodness at a Sufi mosque, because: "Sufis are mad chill."

This portrayal of Sufism as the model of "good Islam" is perfectly aligned with political narratives that promote Sufism as a tolerant counter to religious fundamentalism.  Such narratives delimit how Muslims choose to practice their faith, amounting to another form of what Omid Safi calls "spiritual colonialism." While millions of Muslims certainly find fulfillment in the practice of Sufi as well as non-Sufi Islam, it is telling that "Ramy" is once again unable to step outside politically-defined stereotypes of the "good Muslim." 

Time to raise the bar?

Let's be clear: none of these narratives are new (not incidentally, 1985's "The Jewel of the Nile" also features a Sufi savior). What's new is a Muslim-American packaging of quirky (and at times, gimmicky) cultural references that lends them a stamp of authenticity. But to celebrate the show's success as a positive step for minority representation is to internalize the idea that simply being portrayed as anything other than terrorists should be considered progress. This is a disappointingly low bar, and one which continues to place the burden on American Muslims to actively prove both their humanity and their Americanness. 

In short, just like its titular character, "Ramy" is at best well-intentioned, and at worst careless, damaging, and desperately in need of growing up. That it is being celebrated as a record-setting Muslim-American entry among a more diverse pool of nominees demonstrates the emptiness of reducing minority representation to a numbers game in which we simply yearn to see people on TV and on stage "who look like us." This attitude overlooks the racial and political narratives that are often perpetuated in the process.

So no, it wasn't disappointing to see that Emmy award walk away in its hazmat tuxedo. The real disappointment is that we are still expected to celebrate its fleeting presence as a sign of progress.

It's time to raise that bar.

Asmaa Elgamal is an Egyptian-raised Muslim-American writer. She is currently pursuing a PhD at MIT, where her research straddles the fields of international development, security studies, and planning, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to moving to Cambridge, MA, she spent a number of years in Cairo working for several local and international development organizations.   

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