Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

After the 1952 coup overthrowing the monarchy, Gamal Abdel Nasser knew that Egypt needed to be reimagined and remade to suit his pan-Arab agenda through ideas of both progress and anti-colonialism. How did President Nasser simultaneously advance modern changes, associated with Western advancements and consumerism, and at the same time practices that resonated with a traditional notion of “Egyptianness”? One fundamental site of this tension, I argue, is popular press’ gendered representation of Egyptians vis-à-vis that of foreigners during the early years of Nasser’s presidency. In my paper I look at mediated representations in three of the most popular periodicals published from 1954 to 1960: the weekly magazines Rose Al-Yousef and Al-Kawakeb, and the daily newspaper Al-Ahram. Specifically, I discuss news items, feature articles, dating advice columns, advertisements, and caricatures related to popular culture (i.e. stars), notions of wealth and wellbeing, and consumerism. These never-before sources of information, supported by the analysis of the most popular Egyptian films of that period, reveal how Egypt, maneuvered postcolonial ideologies and cultural chasms pertaining to gender roles in order to define and portray its own modernity through film and media.