 In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World'>
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| “I would read Poplak if he wrote about watching paint dry. He is a gifted addition to the exploding and increasingly sloppy literary non-fiction genre. Dark, funny, self-deprecating and poetic, Poplak is a punk Graham Greene . . . [He has] complete authority as an outsider absorbing American culture.” ——The Globe and Mail |
| “What happens when an American phenomenon like The Simpsons makes its way across the ocean and to the Muslim world? That’s the question Poplak tries to answer in this, the follow-up to his acclaimed memoir, Ja, No, Man. His quest takes him from Iran to Lebanon to Israel to Afghanistan. I’m still surprised at how little attention this book received since its release last spring; Poplak’s expertly researched and beautifully written book is one of the most important documents of the post-9/11 world. When I first read The Sheik’s Batmobile, before it hit stores, I was convinced I’d be reading essays about this book in The New Yorker and The New York Times, but, so far, that level of attention has failed to materialize. But just because awards committees and other newspapers have failed to recognize this book doesn’t mean you should let it slide. It’s also still timely, considering the events of Christmas Day.” ——The National Post (Canada), “Best Books of 2009”
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| “Poplak avoids making easy connections . . . his de-embedded journalism is always open-minded and captures the uncanny perfectly.” — —Eye Weekly |
| “A heroic feat of research, analysis, and on-the-ground reportage . . . It’s a weird, wonderful world where . . . pop is revered and high and low culture freely mingle . . . The Sheikh’s Batmobile should shatter the Western stereotype of the Muslim world as repressive and stagnant.” ——Quill & Quire |
| If . . . you’re willing to join the author on his irreverent excursions to dictators’ palaces, blaring Egyptian heavy metal sessions, concerts preempted by Kalashnikov fire, and secret Batmobile laboratories (yes, the book does live up to its name), then you will doubtlessly ease right into Poplak’s narrative . . . The book is not a magnifying glass searching for Western brushstrokes on an Islamic canvas, but rather a kaleidoscope that bounces the reader’s assumptions and expectations off the colorful mirrors of zestful narrative and impressive legwork —-Wiretap Magazine | |
The Sheikh's Batmobile
In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World
Richard Poplak
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| Paper | 6 x 9 | 384 pgs. | ISBN: 1-59376-292-5 | List: $15.95 |
Coming September 2010 |
About the book: What happens to our pop culture when it meets another culture head-on—especially one that, according to some, is completely at odds with our own?
In The Sheikh’s Batmobile, pop culture commentator Richard Poplak sets out on an unusual two-year odyssey. His mission is to see what becomes of his and America’s obsessions—pop songs and sitcoms, Hollywood movies and shoot-'em-up video games, muscle cars and punk music—when they make their way into the Muslim world.
Over the course of his journey, Poplak gets body-slammed by WWE fans in Afghanistan, hangs out with hip-hop artists in Palestine, headbangs to heavy metal in Cairo, discovers a world of extreme makeovers in Beirut, bowls with the chief of police in small-town Kazakhstan, and encounters a mysterious Texan who builds rocket-propelled Batmobiles for a clientele of sheikhs.
With uproarious humor and keen cultural insight, Poplak asks some vital questions: How is American pop culture consumed and reinterpreted in the Islamic world? What does that say about how we are viewed by young Muslims? And can Homer Simpson bridge the divisions that are tearing our world apart?
About the author: Richard Poplak is the author of the acclaimed Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa. He has written for, among others, The Walrus, This Magazine, Toronto Life, and The Globe and Mail and has directed numerous short films, music videos, and commercials. He lives in Toronto.
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From the book:
Her English was as perfect as it could be . . . but what surprised me was her popular culture lexicon, which was missing only one or two elements.
“No,” she said. “I have never heard of this Borat.”
She gave a lengthy encomium on the Porsche Cayenne, spoke passionately about the work of action film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Vin Diesel, and ran through some Eminem lyrics. Child of an isolated ex-gulag, resident of a town populated mostly by kids in third-hand Nike tracksuits, old Manchester United swag and Michael Jordan–era Chicago Bulls T-shirts—refugees from Planet Nineties all—Misha was surprisingly erudite when it came to Western junk-culture.
Which is perhaps, why she seemed so at home in the bowling alley. I, on the other hand, was struggling with a particular condition of the twenty-first century. With “Smells Like Teen Spirit” blaring, I was hit with a profound disorientation, the feeling that I’d slipped through time and space and landed in the middle of a nowhere/everywhere land . . .
[Misha] was playing a dancing arcade game—a version of what I remembered as Bust-a-Groove . . . What struck me was the expression on her face—one of fierce concentration and unmitigated joy. I knew precisely where Misha was: She existed within the song, inside that moment—and I knew the feeling well. I understood that her liberation—however momentary—burst forth from the range of popular culture she had borrowed from a land that was, at least ideologically, the enemy. |
