INT: What was it like as a young person who loved film to see that dehumanisation being so normalised on screens? And, how do you believe Watermelon Pictures is now countering that dehumanisation?
BA: So there’s some dehumanisation that’s blatant. In many movies, it’s typically the dark brown guy, Muslim guy, that plays the terrorist, right? There’s very few cases where our humanity is shown, even when we actually have a platform. We are starting to see some change; Mo season one and two on Netflix, that was a good example of countering the narrative.
Sometimes it’s even less subtle. I think what people don’t realise is that Hollywood is propaganda. In fact, I think the Pentagon or CIA has a fund, a budget that goes to films [you can read more about the Military-Entertainment Complex here]. Like the most recent Top Gun film, for instance, the main story is of Maverick (Tom Cruise). But if you look at the backstory, it’s literally about how the Iranians are mining uranium and trying to put together nuclear weapons, so they have to bomb certain sites before they get to it. And you know what? Three years ago this film came out, and this is exactly what ended up happening. So when this happens, people are like, ‘Oh, this happened already, I’ve seen this before, that makes sense’. This kind of propaganda that we’re seeing leads to major incidents.
Going back to Palestine and Gaza, it’s really at the forefront of us what’s happening. The fact that people can look at numbers, and even today you hear Randy Fine saying every single one of them can die until they release the hostages – and they’re talking about kids and women. And other people call them human rats. Is this really how you look at us? When you don’t see someone as human, it’s okay to kill them, right? Because they’re not human. The issue is a historic lack of representation. It’s our job to represent ourselves, authentic storytelling comes from ourselves, and I think that’s what’s been missing. I think we’ve been waiting, and we’ve complained for a long time that no one represents us, and they dehumanise us – now we need to take this back for ourselves. That’s really what Watermelon Pictures is about – how do we reclaim our own narrative? The work is not even close to the beginning of what needs to be done. It’s immense.
Hamza Ali (HA): We really think it’s about manufactured consent, and we realise we’re not going to change the world overnight, but at least we’re going to lay the groundwork. For me, it was a lot of thinking about my children and wanting them to grow up in a place where they’re valued equally, and not looked down upon because of their ethnicity. So it’s representation, but also narrative change and demystifying who we are and combating the villainisation and misrepresentation of our people.
BA: And sometimes it’s not just all about the conflict. It’s about us having our own comedy, it’s about us having a superhero film where the lead happens to be a Muslim or an Arab. That’s the kind of nuanced normalisation and humanisation of our people.