The Moroccan caftan derives its values from our culture, with the protection and dignity it grants to women as much as the beauty it reflects (Al Jazeera)
It is known that Arab culture in general is rich in its authentic heritage, which is considered a strong incentive for tourism in various countries of the Arab world, and it is also an ideal material for inspiration in contemporary creative experiences.. But as they say: “The devil is in the details,” so let’s look for it.
Saad Al-Majarred's song "Ya Laghadi Wahdo"
The famous Moroccan singer, Saad Al-Majarred, stands in the middle of a traditional women’s band called “Al-Hawariyat”. He is wearing a dress that resembles a long coat, a garment that is closer to aluminum foil, with a Moroccan hat, decorated with small, broken mirrors, and strange sunglasses. The scene is dominated by lighting. The weak one, with clever manipulation of the lights, and the drummer wearing a Moroccan robe... and the song “Ya Laghadi Wahdou” (You who go alone) begins. It is a heritage song attributed to the heritage of the “Hawariyat” of Marrakesh, while some correct that it was the creation of the Arab Rais Al-Hamri, who wrote its lyrics. He has sung it since 1975.
Returning to the original song, you will find that it is played at a rhythm that is closer to calm, and its words document many wisdoms and lessons, while its basic refrain is: “May God guide you, O Laghadi alone... Why am I walking with my own desires?” While the new version is played with a loud rhythm, and its clear refrain is, It is: “The deer that wandered into the forest... where did the hunter miss you?” That is, “Oh deer that strayed into the forest, how did the hunter not notice you!”
The role of the female troupe is no more than repeating this refrain, and the director also dressed them in dresses the color of “aluminium foil” and decorated their lips with a dark colour.. The entire directing is closer to the “Zar” parties in the Egyptian heritage, or the “Gnawa” parties in the Moroccan heritage, which are linked to the jinn. And exorcise evil spirits.
Modern Moroccan caftan
In a morning television program broadcast on a famous Arab satellite channel, the two presenters of the program host a young Moroccan designer, who creates contemporary designs for the Moroccan caftan, and brags that in her new collection she was able to mix the Moroccan caftan, which by the way is a wonderful traditional women’s garment, with Western evening dresses.
She began explaining to the two presenters her creations in design and mixing, while two models presented a group of beautiful, modern caftans. The first caftan was open to the chest and shoulders, with short sleeves not exceeding about ten centimeters in length, while the second caftan had large openings below the shoulder.
While the third caftan came with a dress that does not respect the symmetry typical of the design of the Moroccan caftan, as a large decoration is prominent in its left half, but is absent on the right, while the arms were covered with a transparent dress... And so the different “caskets” continued, accompanied by explanations from the designer... It seems to me that “ “Qasatain” is an accurate term, as what was presented cannot be called caftans or dresses, but rather a strange mixture of the two!
Sunset scene in the Merzouga desert
A delegation of foreign tourists arrives in one of the cities of southeastern Morocco, and when they get off the tourist bus, they find that they are greeted by a traditional singing group, playing their tunes enthusiastically. Some of the tourists react to the rhythm and join the musicians in dancing for a few minutes, before entering the hotel to rest and eat lunch, which will be... Mostly the famous Moroccan tagine.
In the evening, the tour guide will lead them to Merzouga, where they will voluntarily abandon all the pleasures of life and the means of modern technology that provide them with a comfortable life, and head to a barren desert, only to experience a natural sunset and enjoy one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world.
Then everyone will camp in the desert, and gather around the fire, to enjoy drinking the famous Moroccan tea, and eating a barbecue or “madfouna” meal to the tunes of the region’s music. Thus, after their return, everyone will tell that they tasted and discovered the beauty of Moroccan culture, through traditional music, food, and tea. And a desert session.
Some may not find a logical connection between these three scenes, and some readers may expect me to talk about tourism... but this time it is about culture.
Aside from all anthropological definitions of the concept of culture, culture has now begun to be defined as a commercial commodity!
The international economy is currently undergoing fundamental transformations, and major players are gradually shifting from the physical economy to the network economy. They rent all means of production, from raw materials that are imported, to cheap labor in developing and remote countries, to means of transportation rented from specialized transportation companies.
In return, they actually only have the creative energy, to reduce the cost of production, and also to reduce the margin of risk in a world of competition, so that the commodity automatically becomes obsolete once it is put on the market.
Industrial and agricultural production, in turn, has become within the scope of the economic capabilities of developing countries.
As for the new economy, it trades in cultural experiences. According to Jeremy Rifkin, the wealthy are no longer interested in owning a luxurious home, because they already own it. They are now interested in the flow of experiences that they can obtain.
They spend as much on “experiences” as they do on purchasing miscellaneous collectibles.
The result: a new economy formed around trade whose primary resources are travel, paid spiritual experiences, and entertainment complexes.
What are the effects of this new trade that takes culture as its commodity?
Wouldn't it have major repercussions for the cultures themselves?
What are the cultural effects of the commodification of culture?
What I am getting at in this article is that culture is now under a threat that is more like an environmental threat;
We have exaggerated the consumption of natural resources, which are now threatened with actual depletion.
Likewise, we are now exaggerating the consumption of cultural resources, and there is no doubt that “canning” cultural contents and selling them as experiences will have a negative impact on human civilization in general, and on Arab civilizations that still maintain a respectable amount of spiritual wealth in particular.
These are the effects that can be anticipated as follows:
Selling experiences
When culture turns into a commodity, the consumer acquires a new concept. He is a consumer with special characteristics, because he consumes a stream of experiences, and these experiences are not material, so they will not respond to “traditional” needs of the consumer.. Here the latest economic literature talks about “lifetime value.” For the customer, that is, about the commercial value of every second and minute of the customer’s life, as it produces commercial value.
In the past, a person was viewed as a consumer when he went to commercial markets, or opened himself to means of communication and was invaded by advertisements.
However, he remains an ordinary person who enjoys a degree of privacy in his private life, especially at home with his family, or while practicing his religious rituals.
But with the commercialization of cultural resources, there is no longer a private life for a person. Rather, every second of his private life becomes part of a commercial process, and thus the person is identified as a consumer in every moment of his life:
Sexual intercourse between spouses is a field for selling cultural experiences: from foods that help build appropriate sexual performance and readiness, to books or paid consulting services that introduce you to your husband’s sexual habits (as if you can’t ask!), through to appropriate equipment of material conditions: how to choose lighting. Romance, calm room design, and what suitable clothes can you order from the Internet?
And other conditions.
Vacation and free time in which a person escapes from the cycle of his productive/consumer life, is an ideal field for selling cultural experiences: you can pay to experience any local culture of the world, but of course in a superficial commercial formula: your tour guide dresses you like the indigenous people of one of the local tribes. You spend your night outdoors, to the tunes of a local dance, in which you participate with all humility, and the smells of barbecue caress your stomach, making you proud in front of your co-workers that you lived the life of such-and-such a tribe, or such-and-such people, as if the entire culture of that tribe was summed up in a fun and barbecue session.
The academic exam or applying for a job has become an area for selling expertise: in order to succeed in the entrance exam for the new job, you must at least acquire a book: “How to Succeed in a Job Interview?” However, it is advisable to register for a training course, so that a specialized expert can teach you how to prepare for the interview. It is preparation that begins with choosing appropriate foods rich in phosphorus and magnesium, which help focus and relax. Then the expert teaches you memorization and memory skills, and also teaches you communication skills and facing exam committees.
Indeed, even moments of sadness and the loss of loved ones have become an opportunity to sell experiences in Western countries, so you express the amount of your grief and the degree of your love for the deceased, through the quality of the coffin you choose for him, the luxury of the car that will transport his body to the cemetery, and of course the person responsible for communicating with customers in the company will teach you everything that is necessary. Doing it, and all that should be avoided, so that your relative can have a fine funeral.
I will deliberately avoid giving examples of canning and selling religious experience, so as not to upset some people.
I will only mention the result: all the details of our lives, psychological, social, spiritual and biological, have become commercially profitable seconds and moments.
Culture canning
Gradually, we will begin to view cultural resources and experiences as functional expertise, which we obtain in exchange for money, to bring us certain benefits.
This automatically results in the delegation of all cultural matters to “experts and specialists” who repackage them into a diverse assortment, according to our needs.
This also results in our superficial perception of cultural experiences, and our dealing with them either folklorically, confining them to an entertainment or entertainment perspective, or utilitarian, restricting them to functional experiences for managing specific crises or dealing with emergency situations.
This is with regard to us as consumers, and as for the new merchants, who trade in cultural experiences, they dismantle all of our cultural history and turn it into expertise and experiences for sale, and they will undoubtedly uproot these resources from their cultural context as a source formed over long centuries of ancestral experience and wisdom, and then they will re-present them. In entertainment and folkloric forms.
The many dangers do not stop only when culture is emptied of its valuable and cultural content, but rather it is uprooted from its social context that shapes and nourishes it, and makes it keep pace with human life, respond to it, and express its needs, so it becomes merely an occasion ritual.
Gradually, simple people, investors, and later peoples begin to view their cultures as economic resources;
To entice foreign tourists and bring economic prosperity, while this culture, in their view, lacks realistic solutions to the problems of their time, so in return, they adopt the “modern” imported culture... Instead of each people living according to their authentic culture, they will live with the globalized Western culture, and as a form of absolution, He will "practice" the rituals of his authentic culture from time to time.
As for manufactured and commercially presented cultures, they will lose their luster over time.
Here investors will intervene with their marketing expertise, to create strange cultural hybrids, some of whose mutants appear from time to time in some fashion shows and video songs:
The song by Saad Al-Majarred, with which I began the article, although it contributed to reviving the song whose luster had faded, it presented a distortion that did not respect the values of the song itself, whether in terms of accelerating its rhythm, or making its central value the deer/girl that the “hunter” covets. Instead of all the wisdom and lessons that came in the original text of the song, or in the dress and makeup with which the traditional women’s band was presented, whose role did not go beyond repeating the refrain of the song, as if the matter was more like blessing and granting legitimacy to the new hybridity, and then linking the song to the field of spirits and jinn.
Destruction and demolition
Thus, it seems to me that we hear some of the lyrics of the authentic song, but we consume something else that has nothing to do with it... What is dangerous about this hybridization is that it does not reproduce the traditional song with a contemporary rhythm, but rather distorts the values of this song, and even produces its complete opposite, and destroys its reference elements. : Whether its identity is based on wisdom in the text, and dignity in the singing;
Or by moving it from the field of mirth to the field of noise and lower worlds, or by changing its central theme, which becomes the girl coveted by men.
As for the Moroccan caftan, which dates back centuries, it was the dress of kings and princes, then it became a beautiful women’s garment, so much so that many famous politicians, princesses and women around the world bragged about wearing it.
This wonderful caftan has become emptied of its most important aesthetic elements. It is based on precise symmetry in its beautiful decorations, and on skilled handcraftsmanship in the embroidery and knot making. It is a comfortable garment that covers the entire body of a woman at weddings and events and does not tempt or reveal the details of the body.
As for these dangerous hybridizations, they provide us with designs for other clothing that cannot be called a caftan, and their danger is that they destroy the most important reference elements in the identity of the Moroccan caftan, as it derives its aesthetic taste from heritage, and is based on the regularity and symmetry of embroidery, and on skilled handcraftsmanship from which it derives its livelihood. From families, it also derives its values from our culture, with the protection and dignity it gives women as much as the beauty it reflects, and if these hybridizations continue, I am confident that the caftan will disappear soon.
Another dangerous hybridization was the Moroccan women’s jilbab, which symbolized two basic things: the first was simplicity and freedom from consumer culture, and the second was modesty and dignity.. Even the Moroccan girl who belonged to a conservative family found what she was looking for in the women’s jilbab, as it was an elegant and beautiful garment. It guarantees modesty and dignity, and does not expose fat women or thin women, as it beautifies and adorns all types of figures... until the hand of hybridization extended to it, and dresses and decorations began to be changed twice a year, pushing girls to more consumption.
The robes also became tight on the waist, exposing the charms of the body. Indeed, some of its designs became two-piece, others with half-sleeves, and thirds with transparent parts.. The result of these hybridizations is that we are faced with a garment that exposes the body, exposes its topography, and prompts one to gasp every time towards the fashion of the year. Is it correct to call it a jilbab?
As for our Arab culture, which we limit to folk songs with which we welcome visitors, traditional clothes that we extract from wardrobes on special and rare occasions, and meals served at exorbitant prices in classified hotels, while our children who are obsessed with Western fast food ignore it;
It is too big to be transformed into celebratory expressions.
Indeed, many programs of the ministries responsible for cultural affairs devote this superficial perspective to culture by restricting it to expressions that do not go beyond fashion, songs, and food, while the most important thing in culture are the values it stores, which reflect the experience of our ancestors in dealing with the problems of reality and their intelligence in combining success. Individuals and social cohesion.
As for what is happening now, we are practically living in hybrid cultures that are strange mutants and combinations, dominated by globalized Western culture, with some local cultural expressions that are still resisting, and we are content with “cultural” blessings from time to time with superficial, occasional rituals.
The danger of these hybridizations is that they distort the identity of the cultural expressions from which they originate, instead of preserving it, and instead of relying on it as a reference point for extraction and creativity. After all of these hybridizations have exhausted all possible forms, we will have completely forgotten the original cultural expressions, and have exhausted them. All our cultural resources.
Then, after the elimination of cultural diversity and the depletion of our cultural resources, can our civilization continue?
And in what way?
Wouldn't it be useful for ministries of culture in the Arab world to consider establishing cultural reference banks, in which all Arab cultural expressions would be preserved in their original reference forms so that they would not be distorted?
At least then, we will have a reference to compare and distinguish between the original and its distorted copies and hybrids!
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.