Summary
Dina Rezk from the University of Reading looks at politics and the role of humour as she profiles Bassem Youssef “the Jon Stewart of Egyptian satire”. As protests reverberate around the world she looks back at the Arab Spring and asks what we can learn from the popular culture that took off during that uprising and asks whether those freedoms remain. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about filming the Arab Spring https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw and in a discussion about Mocking Power past and present https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dzww
You can find of Dina's research https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk/
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.9 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello, I'm Shahed Abari, and welcome to this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:42.1 | in which we'll hear an essay from one of the 2019 New Generation thinkers. |
| 0:47.2 | They are early career academics who work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research |
| 0:52.5 | Council on a scheme that turns their research into radio. |
| 0:56.6 | I was one of the first ten people chosen for the scheme nearly ten years ago. |
| 1:01.7 | In this year's essays, you'll hear topics ranging from cleaning, clean energy, crime and punishment, |
| 1:08.0 | and archaeological views of the earth to moving large tracks of it to build dams in Pakistan. |
| 1:13.6 | In her essay, Egyptian satire, Dina Rezik from the University of Reading, looks at power, protest and laughter. |
| 1:21.6 | In 2017, 41 Egyptian shop owners were arrested for selling a simple children's toy. |
| 1:28.3 | The criminal plaything, two plastic spheres, attached to a string that street children had nicknamed Cece's balls. |
| 1:35.3 | Cece's clackers are driving authorities nuts, as one tweet put it. |
| 1:40.3 | This drive at Egypt's current president and the regime's flagrant overreaction reminded me of one of my first vivid memories of laughing at authority. |
| 1:48.8 | As a fuzzy-haired 10-year-old, I had a horrible habit of breaking down into hysterical laughter whenever I was told off. |
| 1:55.3 | It was like a weird nervous tick, but it set off a contagious ripple of disruption in class that often had me trudging down the cold, stone-tiled corridors to the heads office. |
| 2:06.3 | I learn early on that authority doesn't like to be laughed at. |
| 2:10.1 | To most Western observers, the overthrow of President Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship in 2011 quickly gave way to a whirlwind of violent images. |
| 2:18.8 | Tanks, tear gas, terror. |
| 2:21.8 | But Egyptians like me saw more than just the violence. |
... |
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