‘Homeland,’ ISIS, and the theater of Islamophobia

The promotional poster for Homeland season 4 shows CIA agent Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, looking back at us nervously, a splash of blonde and red among a sea of black burqas. She looks trapped and afraid. The burqa, which in any other context symbolizes the severe repression in Islamic fundamentalism, here appears as a horror prop, its grim blackness threatening to swallow Claire Danes’ vivid whiteness. Homeland’s promotional team may have had a different desired effect in mind, but advertising traffics in first impressions. The image screams of a specific kind of fear, the kind that has hair-trigger volatility these days, known derisively as “Islamophobia.”

The indescribable barbarism of ISIS has pushed Islamophobia back in vogue in American culture. It has been the subject of various rants, most recently by talk show host Bill Maher who characterized Islam as a violent religion, saying: “Islam is the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing,” which is an assertion already refuted by religion scholar Reza Aslan and Gone Girl star and theistic non-expert Ben Affleck. Here in the Philippines, where Islamic holidays are observed and Muslim autonomy and co-existence has been proven to be possible, Islamophobia is not so much a palpable mood as it is a subliminal impulse — it is more visible as a Fox News talking point, or a Hollywood anti-terrorist action movie trope. America’s perceived reality is our quasi-real entertainment.

Homeland ceased to be compelling around the middle of season 2, but it’s always been entertaining. What started out as a gripping geopolitical thriller slowly devolved into camp, as Carrie Mathison’s relationship with former prisoner of war Nicholas Brody wobbled between empathy, suspicion, sex, romance, and a general sense of weirdness. By last season’s end, the show’s writers seemed as perplexed and frustrated as we were. The season 3 finale played out like a rushed series ender, killing off Brody in a covert CIA operation. But Homeland is back, bent on starting fresh, and moving on from its confusing and ultimately disappointing 3rd season.

BACK INTO THE FRONTLINES

Having disposed of Brody and his burdensome soap opera, Homeland puts Carrie back into the frontlines, this time in Pakistan, at a CIA command center where she is fondly referred to as “The Drone Queen.” Barely a few minutes into her re-introduction, we see her commit her first tragic blunder as station chief: the bombing of a suspected terrorist safe house that turned out to be a wedding venue, killing women, children, and dozens of innocent civilians along the way.

Homeland is at its best when it refocuses its energy on the broader morality play — America’s desire to be safe versus its desire to be just. This time, it attempts to expand its consciousness outside the US through the eyes of a new character: Aayan Ibrahim, a Muslim teenager who lives peacefully in a Muslim nation. He is a non-extremist who studies at a prestigious medical university and seems perfectly normal except for the fact that his uncle is the Pakistani terrorist targeted in the bombing that wiped out his family.

The series now seems more intent on showing the other side of the “war on terror,” where people live normal lives and are consumed by daily concerns unrelated to Jihad. Homeland may be reactionary at heart, but it is still very liberal in mind, if not in conscience. While its pulse comes from Carrie’s insatiable desire to be “where the action is,” it’s always been highly critical of the US drone program and the war on terror, the same war that it romanticizes through the adventures of its heroic anti-heroes. Ex-CIA director Saul Berenson, who serves as Carrie’s mentor as well as the show’s oft-conflicted soul, decries America’s mismanagement of the “war,” saying: “It hasn’t been a 14-year war we’ve been waging, but a one-year war, waged 14 times.”

WAR ON TERROR

The war on terror isn’t really a war — it’s a sentence. It is served year after year, obscuring the passage of time, as the incarcerated deteriorate in increments that are barely noticeable, which is how a proud religion can slowly become synonymous with murder. It is why a show known to question Islamophobia cannot help but use it for promotional purposes and why the irrational fear attributed to skull caps and full beards cannot be swiftly erased, even in a country that just signed a historic peace agreement granting autonomy to a Muslim region. The Abu Sayaff, Al Qaeda, and ISIS are largely responsible for cultivating this fear, but American terror dramas, such as Homeland, those brave mouthpieces of liberal America, are also complicit.

But like America’s war on terror, watching Homeland is something you do not plan for. It’s something that happens to you. It pulls you in deeper and deeper, until you find yourself staying in the quagmire while questioning that very decision. Now in its 4th season, Homeland is threatening to be good again. We do not know yet if it is about to spiral once again into another unnecessary personal melodrama, but for now, it is compelling us to engage. Homeland has won.

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