American Dreams?

In a chapter of The Sheikh’s Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World called “The Genie Leaves the Bottle,” author Richard Poplak goes to Cairo to talk to the charismatic Amro Hosny, a poet who translates Disney, Sesame Street and other American programs for an Arabic-speaking TV audience. With memorable passion and lucidity, Hosny articulates the struggle to create a locally meaningful approach to his interpretation that allows the humour and emotional nuance of the original show to sing through to its audience. He also expresses the profound frustrations of creating Al Shamshoon—The Simpsons in Arabic—in 2005, under the watchful control of the Saudi sheikhs who own the brand licence and maintain a level of puritanical control over the final product that ensured the rich satirical humour was watered down to nothing. Ultimately, even in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, Al Shamshoon failed. But the really...