"Homeland" has gone under fire in the past for being racist and socially incorrect, and this is why "The Arabian Street Artists" Heba Amin, Caram Kapp, and Don Karl "hacked" into the show in response and painted subversive graffiti saying "Homeland is watermelon," among other things.
"'Watermelon,' a vernacular term for 'nonsense' in parts of the Arab world, has caused both curiosity and amusement, proving that laughter as a tactic of resistance brings people together," the trio wrote in an article for CNN.
According to them, a show like "Homeland" should be treated with care and respect since it sets the foundation for stereotyping. But unfortunately, the show has not been able to present a fair depiction of Middle Eastern and South Asian countries for the past few seasons.
"It frames current political issues with egregious mistakes by sloppily mixing fact with fiction in ways that rewrite contemporary narratives," they said. "It doesn't matter if viewers know the show is fiction. While 'Homeland' does not single-handedly alter the perception of the Middle East and South Asia, it fits within a context of an entire entertainment industry that does."
"What makes the show dangerous is that it purports to be critical in questioning the motives of American foreign policy, while at the same time perverting the image of other cultures to one perpetuated by the military-industrial complex," they further said.
Ultimately, the trio wants to stress the fact that fiction is not harmless. When it is repeated enough, it soon becomes accepted as a fact. "Homeland" has already been criticized in the past for being racist, but nothing has changed.
The street artists are amazed by how easily they have executed the "hack," and that none of the show's regional or language consultants spotted the glaring texts on the wall.
Showrunner Alex Gansa said in defense that they are all about "striving to be subversive" in order for the show to be "a stimulus for conversation." But the street artists argue that if there is anything their "hack" did, then that is to prove that the team behind "Homeland" does not do enough research for the show. "Subversion takes research," they stressed.
"If we have succeeded in anything, it is that through a collective humorous moment we managed to give new impetus to a dialogue on imbalances in media representation," they said. "And more importantly, people have started talking about these issues."
