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Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.
We have public opinion finally shifting in The United States in favor of Palestinian rights and sovereignty. And then at the same time, you have many cautions for us.
Umayyah Cable:The erasure of Arab American activism, cinematic activism for Palestine has been ongoing for a long time and that these efforts to kind of communicate the Palestinian struggle through multimedia have also been ongoing for a long time.
Keith Feldman:This is such a remarkable resource. It fills in in such robust ways, histories that even those of us close to this work is full of surprises.
Melani McAlister:You're making a great point about the ways that things become acceptable by becoming the kind of thing that can be monetized and sported as an icon.
Umayyah Cable:Hi, welcome to the University of Minnesota Press podcast. My name is Umayyah Cable. I'm an assistant professor in the departments of American Culture and Film, Television and Media, as well as a core faculty member in the Arab and Muslim American Studies program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We are here today to talk about my new book, Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in The United States, which is out now from the University of Minnesota Press. I have three esteemed colleagues with me here today who I'm just so honored to have in conversation with me about the book, Evelyn Asultani, Keith Feldman, and Melina McAllister, and I will let them each introduce themselves.
Umayyah Cable:So Evelyn.
Evelyn Alsultany:Well, hello. I'm so excited to be here to celebrate your book with you, Umayyah. I'm Evelyn Asultani. I'm a professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and I'm the author of two books, Arabs and Muslims in the Race and Representation After nineeleven and The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion.
Umayyah Cable:Thank you. Wonderful to have you here. Keith Feldman, you're up.
Keith Feldman:Yeah, hi. This is so great to be here to think and talk with you about your book, Umayyah. And I'm really thrilled to be joined by such esteemed colleagues who I've learned so much from over the years. So I'm Keith Feldman. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.
Keith Feldman:I'm kind of a lit and culture studies person by training. And my first book is entitled A Shadow Over Palestine, The Imperial Life of Race in America, which also came out from University of Minnesota Press.
Umayyah Cable:Press buddies. And lastly, Melanie, Melani McAlister.
Melani McAlister:Hi. I'm also really happy to be here. I am a professor of American Studies and International Affairs at George Washington University in DC. I'm currently the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies here, and I'm the author or editor of several books, but the most recent one is called Promises, Then the Notes on Memory, Protest, and the Israel Gaza War. And I'm excited to be here to talk about your book, O'Maya.
Umayyah Cable:Amazing. Thank you. Well, I have been really excited to talk to you three. You all have really influenced my work a lot, and I'm just so thrilled to be in conversation with you. So I'll just give a quick summary of the book, a little rundown of the book, and then we can get into kind of more conversation about it.
Umayyah Cable:For listeners at home, the book historicizes a decades long process of mainstreaming a discourse on Palestinian liberation and solidarity politics within The US culture that is dominated by compulsory Zionism. That mainstreaming, I argue, is the result of fifty years of cinematic activism, which I define as a social movement organizational strategy that takes the texts, practices, and social relations of cinema as a focal point for movement mobilization and communication. The book employs an interdisciplinary methodology to explore how Palestinian cinema and Palestine solidarity cinema and their dissemination through cinematic activism have produced literally, figuratively, cinematically, and discursively Palestinian liberation and solidarity politics in The U. S. Public sphere.
Umayyah Cable:Through these processes, the topic of Palestine has shifted from one of taboo and unspeakability to inclusion within liberal multiculturalism and has ultimately begun a process of normalization within The US mainstream. There are a few key concepts I put forward in the book, and I'm just gonna take a moment to highlight a couple of them for you now. The first is the framework of cinematic activism itself, which is not just about understanding a film as a text, but about understanding how film distribution, spectatorship, and reception are mobilized in the service of political education, counter narrative, community building, as well as something that I refer to in the book as philanthro spectatorship. And this last part, philanthro spectatorship, is basically a way to understand how audiences, film audiences, are mobilized in the service of fundraising to actually put funds and material support towards humanitarian efforts and humanitarian aid for Palestinians. So rather than simply looking at a film as a text, this framework of cinematic activism demands an examination of the people, labor, and institutions that make the distribution of Palestinian cinema and solidarity cinema possible, as well as how spectators make meaning of those films and then take actions as a result of that meaning making.
Umayyah Cable:In the book, I also further developed the concept of compulsory Zionism, which is a way of understanding how Zionism is hegemonic and dominant in US culture. It is a theoretical concept through which to analyze the confluence of racial, ethnic, and sexual politics that haunt and animate Palestinian liberation and solidarity politics in The US. Based on Adrienne Rich's concept of compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory Zionism as a concept helps us understand not only how Zionism is naturalized in US culture, but how the erasure of Palestinian existence is essential to that naturalization. The concept of compulsory Zionism therefore helps us understand not only the censorship of Palestinian speech and solidarity speech, but also more specifically, the specificity of anti Palestinian racism. So it's it's a way of understanding not just anti Arab racism, but the specificity of anti Palestinian racism.
Umayyah Cable:Now it's, very common these days to hear people say that the representation of the genocide on social media and the Student encampments have been the driving force behind the popularization of Palestinian liberation and solidarity politics in The United States. And while I agree that social media and the Student Intifada movements have been important to gaining a wider attention to the movement and the solidarity cause, I actually think it does a great disservice to the field of Arab American studies to make such a generalization. The Student Intifada movement did not emerge from a vacuum. Rather, it is the result of many decades of slowly building a movement in The United States. And the assertion that we can only chalk up the kind of popularization of the Palestinian movement activities of the past two years.
Umayyah Cable:That assertion itself erases decades worth of grassroots activism that has been slowly and often quietly subverting the censorship of compulsory Zionism, and it also erases the history of Palestine studies and Arab American studies and the Palestine Solidarity Movement in The United States, which has been ongoing for the past several decades. And my book starts in the early 1970s, but we can even go further than that. So what this book ultimately shows is that film culture has been a critical yet often unrecognized part of the Palestinian liberation and solidarity movement. For example, if you look closely at the day to day happenings of the student intifada movement and the encampments, you will see that evening film screenings were a consistent aspect of encampment culture across the country. But more than just being an auxiliary part of the movement, film culture has been strategically mobilized not only to circulate Palestinian counter narratives, and challenges to compulsory Zionism and challenges to the racist representations in U.
Umayyah Cable:S. Pop culture, but it has also been really essential in the service of political education and community organizing for Arab American communities and activist communities more broadly. I chronicle this in the book through examinations of Arab American organizations that have worked to distribute Palestine cinema and Palestine solidarity cinema, starting with the Association of Arab American University Graduates in the 1970s and ultimately ending in the fifth chap the last chapter of the book with the establishment of the Palestine Film Festivals, in cities like Boston and Chicago in the early 2000s. But aside from those institutions, I also examine how Palestinian cinema and solidarity cinema were exhibited and broadcast through various other institutions, such as broadcasts on PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, or exhibitions in elite art museums, like the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, as well as the nomination of Palestinian films at elite Hollywood award ceremonies, and then those those ceremonies in turn being broadcast on national television. What I ultimately found so interesting about this history is that where other attempts to censor Palestinian speech or Palestine solidarity speech were successful in their censorship, film culture became a more protected site of Palestinian speech and solidarity speech.
Umayyah Cable:So basically, the book is chronicling a history of how Palestinian cinema became the exception to the Palestine exception to free speech. And with that, I'm going to open it up to give my guests the opportunity to respond to the book and ask questions, and we can just get the conversation rolling. So I guess we will start with Keith.
Keith Feldman:Thanks so much, Umayya. This is such a great book. It is such a remarkable resource for thought. It fills in in such robust ways histories that even those of us close to this work is full of surprises and insights. It's wonderfully written.
Keith Feldman:There's such voice and presence in the book. And so I'm so grateful for it. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to teach it in classes. It strikes me as a really teachable book. I really wanted to hone in on the ways in which you're helping us think about this kind of Gramscian notion of cultural hegemony.
Keith Feldman:Oftentimes, at least in some of the popular conversation and in some kind of broad political organizing contexts, you get these really flat renderings of power. You have domination and resistance. You have exclusion as a problem and inclusion as a solution. This often comes up in the context of thinking through this thing that many scholars and activists have been talking about over the last, I don't know, ten or fifteen years, thinking about the Palestine exception as this exception in free speech. And we might also think in the context of academic freedom as well.
Keith Feldman:And so there certainly are these very hard and intense moments when dominant liberal institutions say no to Palestine in sharp and intense ways. But you're also showing us the ways in which in the cultural field institutions say yes. The circuits of distribution and reception say yes. And the ways in which the cultural field is ripe with possibility as well as constraint. There are kind of broad affordances that you show in the field cinematic activism.
Keith Feldman:And so something I really appreciate about the book is the way in which you're kind of charting several decades of variegated struggle where things go from these film strips that are produced for the Association of Arab American University graduates, kind of a niche small organization just trying to get off the ground in the late 60s and early 70s and just trying to teach Americans. If only Americans knew what was happening in Palestine, if only Americans knew how their tax dollars were getting used, perhaps things might change, right? And the challenges that you show with such fine grained narrative about circulating these filmstrips and getting them in front of audiences and who those audiences are and how they're responding to them. Right, so you take us from there in the mid 70s through some flash points in the 80s and the 90s that we can talk about and up all the way to Hollywood these kind of big award shows in the 2000s where you're showing us how institutions are saying yes in all of these quirky, strange, complicated ways that folks are trying to navigate. You're providing a really robust assessment of.
Keith Feldman:So, I mean, this kind of leads to a question. It's when I think about teaching, I often think about this kind of question, which is about the surprises that can arise when you have a framework for thinking about power. That's not just this binary construct of domination and resistance, inclusion and exclusion, right? So I wonder if you could share with us some of the surprises that really stood out to you that sort of stopped you in your tracks or had you thinking in new ways about the project as you were moving through it.
Umayyah Cable:Yeah. Thank you, Keith. First of all, thank you for recognizing that the book is quirky because I do feel that the book is quirky. There are a lot of kind of oddball moments in the book, and I appreciate that you recognize that. Some of the surprises are, you know, on the more serious end and some of them are on the more on the lighter end.
Umayyah Cable:I guess I'll start with one of the more serious ones, which is that kind of related to your observations about power. When I was watching the Association of Arab American University graduate film strips, it was a huge challenge to even be able to screen those because the technology is so outdated. And I was in a basement watching them being projected on a wall with a projector that was like on its last legs. And thankfully, you know, they took the opportunity to record that projection. And I'm not sure if that projection will ever happen, but they have the digital recording now at that archive.
Umayyah Cable:But while I was watching them and realizing just how closely those film strips were aligned with David Koff's film Occupied Palestine, the more research I did and the more I started to think about these two kind of filmic objects, one is a film strip, which is a kind of more multimedia piece, and one is a film, I started to realize that what if Koff's film is a remake of the AAUG film strips? And then what does that mean for the kind of recognition of the association and its role? Right. Because Koff's film got a lot of attention and got even more attention twenty, thirty years later. But his film was really kind of viewed as this pivotal film in in The United States of disseminating the perspective of Palestine from there's perspective of Israel from the Palestinian perspective.
Umayyah Cable:But when I started to realize that his film might have been a remake of the AEUG film strips, which is that that argument is based in looking at who was in contact with who. This is why this quest these questions about people and labor are really important, is understanding who was involved in these things and whose contributions are recognized and whose contributions are hidden. In thinking through that, I started to realize that so much of Arab American activism around Palestine has just been forgotten and erased and unrecognized. And I think that that is still being reproduced today in the discourse about how people only started to understand Palestine in the aftermath of October 7. Right.
Umayyah Cable:I think that that's a very dangerous kind of assertion to make because it completely forgets decades worth of activism that came before. So one of those surprises was thinking about, oh my gosh, there is the possibility that the erasure of Arab American activism, cinematic activism for Palestine has been ongoing for a long time and that these efforts to kind of communicate the Palestinian struggle through multimedia have also been ongoing for a long time. That was one of those surprises that really made me rethink the project. And that chapter on the AUG was this project emerged from my dissertation, but that chapter was written entirely after graduate school while I was a postdoc at Northwestern University. Was one thing.
Umayyah Cable:The other thing is this is in relation to the chapter four on Hollywood. When I saw Yasser Arafat's telegram to the Hollywood director Fred Zinneman, it just it to this day, it cracks me up. It's so funny to me that Yasser Arafat would go out of his way to send Fred Zinneman a telegram, basically trolling him and saying, thank you so much for, your film being a point of contention at the Academy Awards and helping to promote the Palestinian struggle, which, of course, Fred Zinneman was I can't put words in his mouth. I don't think he was a super avowed Zionist, but I don't think he was quote unquote pro Palestine by any means. And he had a lot of beef, to put it lightly, with Vanessa Redgrape's political views on Palestine, and she was the star of his his film that was up for the Academy Awards that year.
Umayyah Cable:So that little moment, that little piece of archival gold is something that just to this day cracks me up. Because it also shows that while these are very serious issues, there was a kind of self consciousness that there can be kind of humor in this little like political tete a tete between these very powerful figures, One being powerful in the context of Hollywood, another being powerful in the context of Palestine and geopolitics. So I think from there, maybe it would be good to turn to Melanie and Melanie's question.
Melani McAlister:Hi. Okay. That was also I love my telegram. I just showed it to my, to my teaching assistant today and was like, this is the best. Yasser Arafat was not known, I think, for his sense of humor, but that was pretty funny.
Melani McAlister:So I just wanted, you know, one of the things that I was really interested in in reading your book in 1986 and '87, '88 up to '89, I was involved in Palestine solidarity politics in Boston, but I had two I was assigned two different jobs in that peace group. You know, we were doing Central America, nuclear war, all the things, but the my two slots were Middle East that we called it Middle East peace because it wasn't just Palestine.
Keith Feldman:It was
Melani McAlister:also about Iran Iraq war and Saudi Arabia and whatever, but mostly Palestine and Israel, and then also queer politics. So in 1987, the 1987 or December, I was both delivering little cardboard coffins to John Kerry's office draped in Palestinian flags to show like what was happening with the beginning of the first Intifada and going to the first National Lesbian Gay March on Washington in 'eighty seven. These two things were so interconnected in my mind just because of my experience. And then you really did a a way you have a way of interconnecting them that I think is quite powerful, you know, drawing, as you pointed out, on your notion of compulsory Zionism, but also you're talking about the difference between mainstreaming and normalization and some of the kind of concerns you bring to the whole project about, you know, what has happened to Palestinian narration as it has become mainstreamed and ultimately reshaped within its, its increasing normalization. And I guess I was just wanting to ask you about that.
Melani McAlister:It's obviously a question that has animated queer politics too, right? And people have really addressed it in a variety of ways. There's a point in the intro when I think when you talk about the watermelon necklace and how like people can just buy the watermelon necklace or the watermelon t shirt or they can, like one of my former students who I adore, who's now a professor, I was on Instagram and I was so surprised to see him wearing a Gaza sweatshirt, right? Just say Gaza. I would have thought 20 ago that for people to not be that deeply invested in the conflict, but to lean towards Palestine would be heaven on earth.
Melani McAlister:Instead of like, oh, you don't understand it, you automatically think that Israel is always right. Oh, you don't know that much, but you pretty much suspect that the Palestinians have really been mistreated and deserve a lot more and different than they have. And you're going show that in whatever ways. It seems like a great win. Like, I just wanted to ask you, I know it could be a little bit enthusiastic and polyamorous about hope, and I know it's hard to hold onto it, but it seems like this is not solidarity in the full sense of the term.
Melani McAlister:We have people who are doing solidarity in full sense of the term. That's great. But what we want is all the half assed involved meant to be on the right side. So I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about it and how do you see it and what you see got, I mean, really think we lose some things when that happens. And I wanted to talk about that too.
Umayyah Cable:Yeah, thank you. This is such a good question. And it's a thorny one, it's something I'm still kind of wrestling with and probably will continue to wrestle with. But just to kind of go back to your point about how you were working on kind of queer politics and Palestine at the same time in their relationships, not just through this construct of compulsory Zionism and its relationship to compulsory heterosexuality, but thinking also about like queer and Palestinian solidarities that emerged in like the 1980s and 90s. My thinking about how Palestine has become mainstreamed really closely aligns to the way that, like, LGBTQ politics, queer politics, trans politics have also undergone a similar kind of mainstreaming.
Umayyah Cable:And that was also heavily reliant on film culture. Right? People often point to the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco as kind of like the example par excellence of like queer film festival culture and like it had become the model for so many other queer film festivals worldwide and is often credited as being kind of the one of the driving forces behind the kind of increased normalization as it were of an acceptance of queer and trans people and queer and trans cultural politics. I also was looking at Palestine and Palestine film culture and Palestinian film festivals and thinking, my gosh, they're doing the same thing. It's a very parallel movement.
Umayyah Cable:And not unlike how queer and trans politics have been co opted and aestheticized and commodified and turned into what is called rainbow capitalism, Palestine and the Palestinian Liberation and Solidarity movement is also undergoing a very similar process. And I refer to it in the book as watermelon capitalism. And that's because you can buy any kind of watermelon themed anything these days as a way to kind of signify your support for Palestine to kind of perform Palestine solidarity. But this is also where like philanthro spectatorship comes in because some of the people and organizations selling this kind of watermelon themed or Palestine themed highly estheticized commodities like, you know, T shirts, scarves, socks, hats, whatever, lots of different things, mugs, stickers for your laptop. Some of the proceeds of those sales are going to humanitarian projects, but a lot of them aren't.
Umayyah Cable:Right. And so we have to be careful about this kind of, you know, yes, we're seeing the mainstreaming, we're seeing the way that the topic of Palestine is much more intelligible to people. Like people understand it much more because they've been exposed to more information about it. Granted, not in schools. Exposure and this political education is happening outside of formal, mostly outside of formal educational institutions.
Umayyah Cable:And I think film is one of those sites. But now we're also seeing on social media, which is kind of like a nano version of cinematic activism. It's like nanocinema. You're seeing these little reels that you kind of doom scroll through, right? But amidst those reels are also ads selling you something watermelon themed, right?
Umayyah Cable:Being like, do you love Palestine? Buy this sock with a watermelon on it. Right? So that is all to say, like, when I'm talking about mainstreaming, I'm talking about the way that Palestine has become more intelligible to kind of audiences thought of very broadly. But when I talk about normalization, I want to kind of complicate that, right?
Umayyah Cable:Because I want us to ask what is being normalized? Is it the image of Palestinian suffering that's being normalized? Is it the idea of Palestinian resistance that's being normalized? What is being normalized and what effect does that normalization have? Right?
Umayyah Cable:And I think normalization is and mainstreaming, these are double edged swords, right? There's of course benefits, but there's also a lot of drawbacks. Personally, I'm pretty pessimistic about the nature. You know, the nature of U. S.
Umayyah Cable:Capitalism is monetize every last thing. In the book, I say that, you know, Palestine's liberation requires the abolition of capitalism. I do stand by that. And I think that's not just Palestine's liberation. I think all our liberation is tied to the abolition of capitalism.
Umayyah Cable:The other thing I want to caution readers about in the book is not just the aestheticization and commodification of symbolism about Palestine, like the watermelon or the poppy, and the kind of rise of what I talk about in the book as brand Palestine, which is basically the interpolation of Palestine within neoliberal capitalism. And I think that that is it's not a surprise to me that Palestine has been normalized through these kinds of mechanisms of capitalism because that is of course how Palestine becomes considered acceptable as if it's something that is monetized, right? And I think that that is really problematic, but I also think we have to acknowledge that that's one thing that has led people to think of the topic of Palestine as more legitimate is through this kind of monetization process. And I even talk about that in chapter four with regard to Hollywood when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was trying to decide whether to allow Palestinian films to even be considered for nomination, that decision ultimately came down on the fact that John Pavlik, who was the person in charge of this decision at the time, said, look, we're not trying to be the United Nations and say whether Palestine is a nation or not, but we want to recognize that there is a film industry that calls itself Palestinian.
Umayyah Cable:So it's the recognition of this industry, right, which makes it possible for Palestine to enter the Academy Awards. And so I think we have to take seriously the fact that, like, is the mainstreaming and normalization of Palestine only really enabled through this monetization of these relationships to global film culture or global capitalism? That's a question that remains open.
Melani McAlister:You're making a great point about the ways that things become acceptable by becoming the kind of thing that can be monetized and and sported as an icon. You know, working on a project about the third world of Arab and African artists and musicians and how they circulate, their work circulated in The United States and looking at Three Continents Press, which a book publisher and their best selling book throughout the 1980s, they started in the late 70s, Ghassan Kanafani's The One About the Guys in the Trunk, Kim and the Son. It's a metaphor, but it's not a subtle metaphor. And so, you know, the fact that this was the bestselling book as opposed to Nagib Mafous or anybody else really says to me that they were not reaching a mainstream audience. Right?
Melani McAlister:Cause that's not, who's going to put Ghislain Katafari as the leader of their press. I can see how your concern about mainstreaming has to do with concern about who, who or what is mainstream or who or what is normalized, as you said. That makes a lot of sense to me. But I also want to come back to the way that you tried to bring these two together in your kind of overall framing, which was to try to think about Palestine is politically queer. That is the kind of unassimilable part of queerness that remains resistant and inedible in some sense by capitalist culture.
Melani McAlister:So
Umayyah Cable:Yeah. And thank you for that observation. It returns to this kind of paralleling with queer cinematic activism and queer politics. And I do talk about Palestine as politically queer in the book, I really want to think about the kind of power relations and challenges to power, right? If Zionism is hegemonic and is compulsory in the same way that heterosexuality is hegemonic and compulsory, right?
Umayyah Cable:Palestine is then positioned in this kind of same subject position of queerness, right? And I think that there's a lot to be said about the interconnectedness of compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory Zionism, right? Irella Shadmi kind of wrote about this not in an academic context, but in the context of a newsletter. She was the one who made that connection to Adrienne Rich, and her way of understanding compulsory Zionism was through, looking at Israeli culture and Jewish Israeli culture and the kind of gendered sexual and racialized normativity enforced in Israeli society. And I took the concept and started to develop it and thinking about where are Palestinians in that context, right?
Umayyah Cable:So in some ways, Palestine becomes kind of queer than queer. I write about that in chapter three, about the way that when there's a kind of struggle over the representation of queerness in The United States, like, for example, in the 1990s with Robert Mapplethorpe, people stand up for the right to show Robert Mapplethorpe's photography. And then those same people, and when I'm talking about people, I mean curators at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, they stood up for the right of Maplethorpe's work to be shown, but then dialed back when it came to Palestine a year later and said, actually, this can't be shown on its own. Like Robert Maplethorpe can stand on his own and his work can speak for itself. But when it comes to Palestinian video art, no, that can't happen because we need to have context and we need to have a balanced conversation.
Umayyah Cable:And even, you know, someone who was a faculty member in the greater Boston area wrote a letter to the editor saying, this is ridiculous. Would you if you were going to have a an LGBTQ themed film festival, would you ask there to be a panel of esteemed heterosexuals to balance the conversation out? No, you wouldn't. So why are you doing the same thing to Palestinians? So this kind of understanding Palestine in relation to queer politics has been ongoing for the past several decades.
Umayyah Cable:And I think the 90s are when it really starts to kind of pick up.
Melani McAlister:I'll just note that also that's one of the advantages of mainstreaming, right, is that queer stands in for you wouldn't ask for straight people to authenticate queer panels because they've moved farther than Palestinians had at that time, right? So there is that way in which the mainstreaming of queerness does its own cultural work at the same time.
Umayyah Cable:One other thing that I the kind of slippery slope of this kind of mainstreaming normalization thing is the aestheticization aspect of it. And one thing I caution in the book is the way that we're seeing activism itself turned into cinema. So I'm really clear I don't write about this in the book because, you know, my book was already in copy edits and it was done and I couldn't I was like, there's no more tinkering, right? But some examples are in the past year alone, there have been two really great documentaries that have come out, The Palestine Exception and The Encampments. These two documentaries were made during the student Intifada uprisings of the like kind of winter and 2024.
Umayyah Cable:And both of these films are focused largely on the student intifada movement, and both are really important teaching tools and documents of the moment. I'm not like, I love these films. I've shown them in my classes. I think they're incredible. But what we have to recognize is that these films are focusing largely on the activism and not necessarily on Palestine.
Umayyah Cable:Mean, of course, they talk about what's going on in Palestine, but it is largely focused on the activism. So we have to think about there's like this hypermediation of Palestine that's taking place through the kind of aestheticization of the activism and the kind of turning that activism itself into cinema. And that's why I turn to Baudrillard's four stages of representation to think about what's happening with these hyper mediated representations and what's happening in the work of solidarity and to use Baudrillard to think about how solidarity itself is kind of becoming disconnected from the actual material reality in Palestine. And we're seeing what I refer to in the book as a simulacra of solidarity, a kind of simulation of solidarity, because we're seeing solidarity become highly symbolic and less material.
Evelyn Alsultany:I love what you just said about the displacement from focusing on Palestine, the genocide, focusing on the activism and the students struggling to have free speech as part of the mainstreaming process in a similar way to how a lot of universities in doing antisemitism and Islamophobia workshops and trainings focused on Islamophobia instead of anti Palestinian racism. So there's this larger trend of displacing the issue and you're supposed to be happy and proud because there's a mainstreaming happening. I love that example of what happens with mainstreaming. I did want to start by congratulating you. This is such an incredible book, and it is an unprecedented book.
Evelyn Alsultany:There is no book out there that does what your book is doing. There's no book that offers a history of films about Palestine in The US, how they've been used to educate publics about the Palestinian cause, how they constitute cinematic activism and promote Palestine solidarity politics. I love how you pointed out that a lot of people right now point to October 7. It is a watershed moment, sure, but it's not a starting point. And so this book really offers a fifty year history charting the origin and development of the use of films to educate publics about Palestinian liberation, promote Palestine's solidarity politics.
Evelyn Alsultany:I love that first chapter about the AAUG, the Arab American University graduates. It's just stunning to have that piece of Arab American history. I know Keith has written about AAUG also and how they were using film strips in the late 60s and early 70s and how you take us from that moment all the way through Jonathan Glaser's twenty twenty four Oscar speech and to Palestine Film Festival. So the historicizing you're doing, especially at this moment where there is this surge in Palestine solidarity organizing happening, is so valuable to understand it in this historical context. I was thinking before this conversation about some overlaps in our work.
Evelyn Alsultany:I was thinking we're both obsessed with representations and then also with the limits of representations, like the promise, the possibility, and then the failures and limits of representation. So the conversation that you and Melanie just had around those limits, it's so fascinating and it's so hopeful and so disappointing all at the same time, all wrapped up in one. So on the one hand, the mainstreaming, we want this. We want to see Palestine solidarity after decades of compulsory Zionism threatening, squashing, making a genocide possible. That solidarity activism is so exciting.
Evelyn Alsultany:The mainstreaming is so exciting. And then I love how you called it watermelon capitalism. All you have to do is buy a watermelon earring and then you're done. That process of how you look at compulsory Zionism on the one hand, Palestine solidarity activism going mainstream on the other, I think is so important to help us think through this moment we're in. Also, how do we think about those two things together?
Evelyn Alsultany:And then how can we celebrate the mainstreaming in some ways? We have public opinion finally shifting in The United States in favor of Palestinians and Palestinian rights and sovereignty. And then at the same time, you have many cautions for us about commodification, aestheticization, romanticizing symbols like the watermelon, the consumption. I really appreciate all of that that your book offers. And chapter four, you give us a history of Hollywood award shows and these moments that pop up where there is Palestine advocacy happening.
Evelyn Alsultany:You take us from 1978 to 2024, the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, and you track a process from unspeakable taboo to increasingly included. You have a focus on Jonathan Glaser's Oscar Seffen speech for his own of interest, where he condemned the use of the Holocaust to justify the Israeli genocide against Palestinians. And he was also horribly attacked for the statement that he made. So I've been watching, know, as we all have, with my particular interest in Hollywood, what's been happening in Hollywood since October 7. And I remember right after October 7, Melissa Barrera of Scream was fired for her Palestine Solidarity statements.
Evelyn Alsultany:And then Susan Sarandon was dropped by United Talent Agency. And then Maha Dackel, who's a talent agent to Tom Cruise and others, reposted something on social media about the genocide, and then afterwards, she had to apologize for it. I assumed that she was on the verge of being fired. She worked for CAA, and they issued a statement that they stand with Israel, making their position very clear. And then there have been all these letters signed by actors and people in the industry.
Evelyn Alsultany:There is an open letter released by Hollywood figures in solidarity with Israel shortly after October 7, signed by Gal Gadot, Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas, and others. There were over 700 signatures. And then we have evidence of an increase in Palestine solidarity activism. So another letter from artists for Ceasefire, 4,000 people signed, calling on The US to stop sending weapons to Israel. I've never seen that before.
Evelyn Alsultany:I don't know if it has happened before, but I've never seen that before. And the letter included signatures from Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez, Ben Affleck, and many others. And then there was another one calling for boycotting working with Israeli film institutions. And that one was signed by Alyssa Milano and Ayo Adebiri, Diego Luna, etcetera, 5,000 signatures. We have Hannah Einbender, making a statement against the genocide in Gaza in her Emmy Award speech, Billie Eilish wearing a ceasefire pin at the Oscars.
Evelyn Alsultany:You have No Other Land winning the Oscar for best documentary feature. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this that's happening. How can we think about mainstreaming Palestine in the context of Hollywood since October 7? And how do you think about the relationship between compulsory Zionism and mainstreaming Zionism in this context where we see this push and pull back and forth? And then lastly, what makes these acts of Palestine solidarity possible here and now as opposed to ten years ago, twenty years ago?
Umayyah Cable:Yeah. Thank you, Evelyn, for such a dynamic question. I will be honest. I think that chapter four is my favorite chapter because it's partially it's one of the quirkiest ones. I think what's happening in Hollywood right now is really interesting.
Umayyah Cable:We are kind of watching a culture war go down in Hollywood over Palestine. And it's not just about Palestine. Like, I'm gonna get into that in a little bit. But I wanna kinda clarify that there are there are two kinds of solidarity. There's symbolic and there's material.
Umayyah Cable:And I'm gonna kind of go through some of the examples you pointed out. So let's take No Other Land, for example. People were so hype about that film. They were like, oh my gosh, it won this Oscar. It's so incredible.
Umayyah Cable:But if you look closely, the No Other Land film winning an Oscar is largely symbolic. It's a symbolic form of solidarity. And I consider that to be kind of the Academy's cultural insurance policy, right? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars, the Academy Awards have been under so much scrutiny over the past several years because of like the deeply entrenched racism and sexism within the industry. And so they have been trying, the academy has been trying to kind of manage its image around questions of what we used to call DEI, which are now, you know, DEI has sort of been criminalized and, you know, for lack of a better word.
Umayyah Cable:But No Other Land to me seems like a very symbolic form of solidarity, and it seems like a very kind of performative form of solidarity on the on the on the part of the the academy. It feels kind of more public relations. And I say that because, yes, it's a film that is made by a Palestinian, but it's also it's co made by between a Palestinian and Israeli. And to me, that's an example of the Academy Awards kind of doing a highly managed recognition of Palestine. And it's the kind of recognition of Palestine that keeps Palestine and Palestinians entrapped in this Palestinian Israeli dyad.
Umayyah Cable:So that felt like a very strategic, symbolic deployment of solidarity from the institution of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself. I'm kind of cynical about that one right now. That's not to say that the film isn't good. That's not to say that it doesn't serve its purpose. But I think we have to kind of take that one with a grain of salt.
Umayyah Cable:Jonathan Glaser and his speech is also an example of symbolic solidarity. However, he then uses his platform towards material solidarity. So his speech, we might consider an example of symbolic solidarity, but the way that he donated his, certain kinds of cinephilic memorabilia, so posters that he signed and other people involved with the film signed, he donated these materials to be auctioned in what was called Cinema for Gaza. It was an online auction campaign, which is an example of philanthro spectatorship, right? Mobilizing spectators and fans basically to put their money where their mouth is, to put their money towards humanitarian and material support for Palestinians at that time.
Umayyah Cable:So Glaser is an interesting example of a combination of symbolic and material solidarity. If you go on to look at like, you know, Hannah Einbender, again, her speech might be considered symbolic, but then she backs it up by signing the Film Workers for Palestine pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions. 5,000 film workers have signed this pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions. That's huge. That campaign, the Filmworkers for Palestine campaign, is based on the Filmmakers United Against Apartheid campaign, which was one of the boycott campaigns against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Umayyah Cable:And we all know now looking back at history that it was the boycott campaign which helped to bring the apartheid regime down, the South African apartheid regime down. I just want to read from the Film Workers for Palestine website for just a moment. The pledge says, we pledge not to screen films, appear at, or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions, including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters, and production companies that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people. And then they go on to say, Examples of complicity include whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid and or partnering with the government committing them. So this is a very powerful move for these people to be making.
Umayyah Cable:It is a tried and trued nonviolent method of political activism and resistance. Twenty, thirty years ago, we would never have seen that. Like Evelyn, you pointed out that you've never seen letters like this circulating. What we're seeing right now is not just the mainstreaming of Palestine, but the mainstreaming of a very particular kind of Palestine solidarity, and that is the boycott divestment sanctions movement. And that is really important because it's not just about making it so you can talk about Palestine so that, like, you can have Palestinian films.
Umayyah Cable:It's like, no, we are we're very specific here. We have very specific demands and asks. And it's about withholding labor, withholding finances, and really, putting some kind of material, solidarity into effect. So I think we also need to think about this in terms of this is part of larger labor organizing efforts in Hollywood. In 2023, before October 7, there was a writer's strike in Hollywood and it largely revolved around Hollywood elites were really like, oh, we're going to just kind of turn to AI.
Umayyah Cable:We're going to let artificial intelligence run the show now. And writers were like, no. First of all, we're unionized. Second of all, you need us and AI cannot replicate what we do. And now in the wake of October 7, there's been a lot more revelation about the role of artificial intelligence and how you cannot separate the artificial intelligence tech world from the military industrial complex.
Umayyah Cable:The push for the boycott campaign in Hollywood is very much, in my estimation, wrapped up with other labor organizing efforts and other critiques of these kind of violent technologies like the artificial intelligence technologies, which are one, violently taking people's jobs and livelihoods away and two, violently destroying Palestinian life and genociding entire populations. Right? So I think that this is kind of an example of how there's kind of a consciousness now, there's an awakening, for lack of a better word, of the neoliberal capitalist exploitative hellscape and how it operates domestically, but also internationally. I think people are starting to really just connect the dots. To your question about how we can think about mainstreaming in the context of Hollywood since October 7 and what makes these acts of solidarity possible now.
Umayyah Cable:You know, the BDS push in Hollywood and the global film industry at large is a really powerful challenge to compulsory Zionism. So when we're thinking about mainstreaming, I don't want us to just think about the permissibility of talking about Palestine or the intelligibility of people like understanding what Palestine is, but the mainstreaming of the movement itself or the solidarity politics themselves, which is like the call from Palestinian civil society is very clear. If you want to support the Palestinian people, if the international community wants to support the Palestinian people, the preferred modus operandi is through the boycott divestment and sanctions movement. And so that is a really powerful thing for 5,000 film workers to sign this pledge. That's tremendous.
Umayyah Cable:And in the same time as we're seeing kind of this rise of Palestine solidarity politics, we're also seeing the denormalization of Israel. Right? Because Israel has been normalized for so long, and now people are starting to treat it like the rogue state that it actually is. There's kind of like this dialectic of, like, the rise of Palestine solidarity and the kind of sinking of the normalization of Israel. In terms of what makes solidarity possible now, you know, think this goes back to considering how people first became educated about Palestine and how their consciousness was raised.
Umayyah Cable:And again, this was not this is not happening through like normal educational channels, certainly not on the K through 12 level. And I would say even to this day, at the college level. Like, Palestine studies is an established field. Yes, people take classes on Palestine, but they're still very they're in the minority. So people's consciousness about Palestine is raised through many other alternative means.
Umayyah Cable:And, you know, my book argues that cinema is a really foundational method of raising people's consciousness about Palestine. Certainly social media has played a part in accelerating people's consciousness. But again, I want us to remember that cinematic activism for Palestine has been ongoing for decades. And so to chalk up the current shift in public opinion just to the events of the last two years, it's actually an anti Palestinian point of view. Right?
Umayyah Cable:To chalk it up to just the past two years ignores all the work that Palestinian activists and allies have done for decades. For me, the only major difference between October 7 and after is that the commodification of Palestine solidarity activism has just exponentially increased. That seems like the biggest change for me. And I think that that's not coincidental because I think that's also feeding into like if we want to think about what makes this solidarity possible now, the mask is off in The United States. The masks are off about capitalism and fascism.
Umayyah Cable:Every single person in The U. S. Has a financial relationship to Israel, whether they are aware of it or not. And it's the awareness of that relationship that is increasing alongside the commodification of Palestine solidarity activism. Right.
Umayyah Cable:So unfortunately, I think it has taken this kind of slow collapse of U. S. Society for people to realize that their liberation from capitalism and capitalist exploitation is bound up with Palestinian liberation. And so in some ways, and this is kind of a not this is not a great thought or feeling, in some ways, the kind of desperation that people in The United States are feeling right now is fueling the Palestine solidarity movement because people are sick of having their safety nets ripped away from them by the government and other kind of agencies and having billions of dollars sent to Israel. Right?
Umayyah Cable:So in some ways, the solidarity is partially born out of self interest and discussed in The United States about like we are paying, our tax dollars are going towards Israel and we're not able to feed our families here. Right? So there's one, it's like it's partially self interest. But on another level, I think people are just more having a moral crisis. They're realizing, oh my gosh, my tax dollars are going to pay for the genocide of Palestinians.
Umayyah Cable:My tax dollars are used to kill Palestinian babies. It's not just self interest. It's not just that people are like, you know, that tax money should be used to support people in The United States. It's also the people they are starting to feel morally implicated. And so I think people in The United States have started to do a lot of soul searching, and it's starting to weigh on people's consciousnesses.
Umayyah Cable:One thing that had Morton Kline, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Kline had a freak out over the potential of Palestinian films being nominated for Academy Awards. And he used this language about legitimacy and credibility to say that, you know, the Academy should not acknowledge Divine Intervention as a Palestinian film worthy of nomination. And he said to do so would, quote, give legitimacy or at least the perception of legitimacy to this terrorist regime. And he went on to use the word credibility. So these words legitimacy and credibility around just the possibility of a film being nominated for an award, right?
Umayyah Cable:Not even being nominated, just being added to the cube for consideration for nomination. Because these kinds of award shows have like up to 20,000,000 viewers, of course it freaked him out. That's 20,000,000 people who are then seeing, ah, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes Palestinian film as national cinema, okay, so then Palestine must be a nation, right? So I like that example because it shows the way that film has had this really powerful effect on promoting Palestinian liberation and solidarity and how that is still very much wrapped up in in, you know, capitalism and global film economies. Twenty years later, look at where we are now.
Umayyah Cable:That is all to say it has been a slow burn. I'm glad that the book is out, and I think people can take a lot of jumping off points for it. I would love to see more people focus on film festivals. There's just so much to study there. And, yeah, this is just the beginning of of looking at this kind of phenomenon of cinematic activism for Palestine.
Evelyn Alsultany:Thank you, Amaya.
Umayyah Cable:Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
Narrator:This has been a University of Minnesota Press production. The book Mainstreaming Palestine Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in The United States by Umaia Cable is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.