Keynote Speaker: Professor James Chapman Tuesday 23rd May 2018 The University of West London.

CSTonline

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Keynote Speaker: Professor James Chapman

Tuesday 23^rd^ May 2018

The University of West London.

From the Elizabethan courtier and spy Sir Philip Sidney to the graphic
novel *Kingsman* and its film adaptations, may be traced a rich
tradition of individuals, texts and narratives that have spanned
creative works informed by experience of actual espionage to tales and
characters shaped by the ever-evolving genre conventions of what has
become an immensely popular story form. British spy stories have
featured both gentleman adventurers -- in the Erskine Childers, John
Buchan, Leslie Charteris tradition -- and career professionals -- such
as the characters conceived by Ian Fleming and Len Deighton. Their tone
has ranged across gritty verisimilitude and procedural detail, through
the melancholy of betrayals and vocational doubts to implausible
plotlines, kinetic action, and tongue-in-cheek parody. Somerset
Maugham's Ashenden, John le Carré's Smiley, Graham Greene's Wormold and
Mike Myer's Austin Powers indicate some of the variety of ways in which
the British spy has been represented. Real-life spies such as Guy
Burgess, Anthony Blunt and Sidney Reilly, *inter alia,* have figured in
narratives such as *Another Country, A Question of Attribution,* and
*Reilly, Ace of Spies* that combine -- to varying degrees -- documented
fact with speculation and invention.

This one day conference at the University of West London in Ealing aims
to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines including, but
not limited to, Literature, History, Film, Cultural Studies,
Cyber-security, Politics and International Relations.

##### Deadline for proposals:

Proposals for papers (250 words) plus a short biographical statement,
should be received by Thursday 1^st^ March 2018. Please email
[spyconference@uwl.ac.uk](mailto:spyconference@uwl.ac.uk){target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"}

##### Conference fees:

(including morning coffee, lunch, and an evening drinks reception) --
£45, Students/unwaged £25.


Keynote Speaker: Professor James Chapman Tuesday 23

 rd

May 2018 The University of West London.

CfP: Conference &#8220;Representing the British Spy: Fictions, Histories and Futures&#8221;. May 23, 2018 @ The University of West London, UK. Deadline: March 1, 2018.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster (Nietzsche) For docudrama lovers like me, a new Peter Kosminsky production is always eagerly anticipated and the unfolding of The State over four consecutive evenings on Channel 4 last week made for a particularly intense viewing experience.

Stephen Harper

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> *He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does
> not become a monster* (Nietzsche)

::: {#attachment_4604 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 460px"}
[![Watching a public beheading, Jalal (Sam Otto) begins to question
Islamic State.
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sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Jalal-Sam-Otto.jpg)

Watching a public beheading, Jalal (Sam Otto) begins to question Islamic
State.
:::

For docudrama lovers like me, a new Peter Kosminsky production is always
eagerly anticipated and the unfolding of *The State* over four
consecutive evenings on Channel 4 last week made for a particularly
intense viewing experience. Like most of Kosminsky's television
work, *The State *is an exhaustively researched drama with a bold
premise: four Britons travel to Raqqa to join the Islamic State, but
soon discover that daily life in the caliphate is not all it's cracked
up to be by its online advocates. Although some of the new recruits
remain true believers until the end, others are repulsed by the
slaughter, slavery and torture that they witness.

Two characters, in particular, refuse to become the monsters IS wants
them to be. A medical doctor, Shakira (Ony Uhiara), travels to Syria
with her young son, determined to help build the caliphate; yet she
struggles to accept IS's barbaric treatment of women and finally decides
to flee from Syria when she finds her child and other junior recruits
playing football with a severed head. The drama's other central
protagonist, the sensitive, doe-eyed Jalal (Sam Otto), also comes to
question the actions of his new comrades: why, he asks, do they
slaughter their Shia enemies when they are retreating -- an action
proscribed by the Quran? He is told in reply that the caliphate must
brutally 'establish' itself and that 'there will be time for mercy
later'.

*The State* shows the essential hypocrisy of the IS demagogues, who
rationalize their own viciousness and denounce all others as infidels.
Indeed, as Hegel famously observed, 'evil resides in the very gaze which
perceives evil all around itself' and in a drama that is very much about
witnessing and looking, the recruits who resist IS must literally refuse
this 'evil gaze': when Jalal attends a public beheading, for example, he
averts his eyes at the crucial moment (see image above). Such refusals
reveal the ambivalence and fundamental decency of some of the militants.
After all, whatever the tabloid newspapers may say, not all of the young
zealots who join IS are monsters. Many of them are less evil than
misguided, duped by Internet propaganda, disaffected by capitalist
modernity, and ignorant of any genuinely emancipatory perspective.

Betrayal -- especially betrayal by organizations and institutions -- is
a recurring theme in Kosminsky's oeuvre. In *No Child of Mine *(1997),
twelve-year-old Kerry is sexually abused by a succession of family
members and care workers. In *The Project *(2002), a group of
enthusiastic young politicos enter the Labour Party of the 1990s with
high ideals, but are forced to compromise their principles at every
turn. *The Government Inspector* (2005) indicts New Labour even more
strongly, going so far as to portray the suicide of the government
weapons inspector David Kelly in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
And 2011's *The Promise* depicts the abandonment of Arabs in Palestine
by the departing soldiers of the British Mandate, showing its violent
consequences in 1947 and the present day. In *The State*, too, betrayal
is a key theme: not only have these young men and women been lied to by
the propagandists of IS; in signing up for jihad, they have betrayed
their own better natures. The point is emphasized in the final episode
when Jalal, whose faith in Daesh is already wavering, is visited by his
father Munir (Nitin Ganatra). Munir scolds his son for destroying his
family and for betraying the enlightened values of toleration and
multiculturalism that, in his view, characterize British society.

The question remains: why are some Westerners susceptible to jihadist
ideology? More specifically, why would a headstrong and savvy medical
doctor like Shakira have any interest in joining a misogynistic death
cult? This question has been addressed in several recent films. In Mijke
de Jong's *Layla M.* (2016), for example, a young Muslim woman living in
Amsterdam is increasingly angered by social discrimination against
Muslims and by video images coming out of Syria and Gaza; she eventually
leaves for a new life in Jordan, but soon regrets her decision. The
process of 'radicalization' was also explored a decade ago in
Kosminsky's own two-parter *Britz* (2007), in which another educated and
politically conscious medic, Nasima (Manjinder Virk), is driven into the
embrace of Al Qaeda in a narrative that moves between the UK and
Pakistan.

*Britz* offered a powerful indictment of the British state, linking the
political disaffection of young British Muslims to their experiences of
Islamophobic prejudice and anti-terror legislation in the wake of
9/11. *The State *is more limited in its locational range and political
scope: after an initial three-minute montage showing the recruits
leaving the UK, the rest of the drama concentrates on their new lives in
Syria. This surprised and slightly disappointed me, as I had been
expecting the kind of interwoven 'home and abroad' narrative structure
offered in *Britz *and some of Kosminsky's other geopolitical dramas,
such as *Warriors* (1999) and *The Promise* (2011). While Kosminsky's
depiction of the recruits' new life in Syria is enlightening, I would
have appreciated some exploration of the domestic experiences and
political grievances that pushed these intelligent young folk towards
the ideological abyss. The absence of such backstory makes *The State*,
for all its contemporary relevance, a less satisfying treatment of
terrorism than *Britz*. While Kosminsky does sometimes hint at the
motivations of his central characters, there are rather a lot of
unanswered questions at the end of episode 4. Shakira, for example,
remains something of an enigma to the end. And while we might guess that
he is attempting to atone for past misdeeds, we never discover exactly
why a former British soldier, Abu Ibrahim Al-Brittani (Jack Greenlees),
has joined the jihadists.

As Alain Badiou points out in his little book *The True Life*, today's
Western terrorist rejects the main subject positions offered by liberal
capitalism, namely, individualistic careerism and hedonistic, perpetual
adolescence. However nihilistic it may ultimately be, jihadism promises
young people an alternative set of values and the sense of social
belonging and political purpose that so many of them find lacking in
mainstream Western culture. Many recruits are driven by righteous fury
at the barbarism of Western imperialism, but unable to see that IS
offers only a mirror image of that violence. Some, like Shakira, seem to
be motivated by humanitarian impulses. Still others are drawn to IS by
the promise of romance: perhaps the drama's most pitiful character is
the naive teenager Ushna (Shavani Cameron), who dreams of marrying a
heroic warrior and becoming 'a lioness amongst the lions'. In an
alienating society, some people, it seems, will go anywhere and do
anything to achieve a sense of love and belonging. And *The State* shows
just how warm and welcoming IS can be -- initially, at least -- towards
its new recruits.

Kosminsky's style is, as ever, understated and effective here. The
preponderance of following shots and over-the-shoulder shots allows the
viewer to move with the protagonists, gradually discovering the horrors
of IS from their perspective. And while the tone of the drama becomes
progressively more sombre, there are some darkly droll touches
throughout. The wall of the schoolroom in which the female recruits have
their induction session, for example, displays a cheerful rainbow
composed of brightly coloured strips of paper -- a bitterly ironic
symbol of hope for the future. The bright pink suitcase with which Ushna
travels to Syria (the other, more practical recruits carry rucksacks) is
similarly absurd, but serves as a touching reminder of the teenager's
childish innocence.

Given Kosminsky's record as a maker of 'controversial' television, it
was inevitable that he would be accused by right-wing pundits of
glamorizing terrorism. Such criticisms are, however, quite wrong-headed:
Kosminsky's sympathies lie with the betrayed recruits of IS, not with
the organization itself, which he thoroughly condemns. If anything, *The
State* should be seen as a counter-narrative to IS propaganda. These
days, of course, politicians and filmmakers are eager to promote an
anti-terror agenda via the cultural industries: in February 2016 US
Secretary of State John Kerry even met with the heads of major studios
to discuss ways of incorporating anti-IS messages into Hollywood films.
Kosminsky, however, avoids the racial stereotyping that so often
characterizes Hollywood portrayals of terrorists -- especially when they
are Muslim. *The State* may not be Kosminsky's most penetrating or
critical drama, but it provides a rare insight into the workings of a
terrifying organization and the strange attraction it holds for its
deluded acolytes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Stephen Harper** is Senior Lecturer in Media and Film Studies at the
University of Portsmouth. He has published many articles and book
chapters on film and television images of war, British television drama,
and cultural representations of mental distress. His single-authored
books include *Madness, Power and the Media* (Palgrave, 2009), *Beyond
the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media* (Zero, 2012) and
*Screening Bosnia: Geopolitics, Gender and Nationalism in Film and
Television Images of the 1992-95 War* (Bloomsbury, 2017).

 
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Watching a public beheading, Jalal (Sam Otto) begins to question Islamic State. For docudrama lovers like me, a new Peter Kosminsky production is always eagerly anticipated and the unfolding of

 The State

over four consecutive evenings on Channel 4 last week made for a particularly intense viewing experience.

Postagens de Rogue Scholar

CfP: Conference “Representing the British Spy: Fictions, Histories and Futures”. May 23, 2018 @ The University of West London, UK. Deadline: March 1, 2018.

INSIDE THE STATE OF HATE