Satire,social media and revolutionary cultural production in the Bahrain uprising: From utopian fiction to political satire

The revolutionary potential of satire: disruptive, divisive or marginal?

Sometimes conceived of as ‘radically disruptive’, ‘genuinely subversive’ or even a ‘revolutionary force’ (Griffin, 1994, p. 158), political satire is the use of humour to criticise, ridicule and expose the shortcomings of politicians, government policy or regimes themselves. Traditionally a theatrical or literary form, the advent of television and radio prompted experimentations in delivery, aesthetic and form (LeBouef, 2007). Similarly, new technologies have allowed for a shift in the presentation of satire. In the participatory culture of Web 2.0 technologies, old consumers or audiences are becoming ‘producers and distributors’ of new creative content and cultural products (Shifman, 2012). This is particularly important in Bahrain, as the public performance of satire directed at the government has been limited by rigid authoritarianism and thus has tended to exist in day-to-day discursive practices, as opposed to in state-controlled media.

As a means of social critique, satire comes in many guises, yet the focus of academic study has been predominantly on that occurring in Western democracies (Hill, 2013). Those studies that do examine authoritarian regimes have their limits. Leonard Freedman’s (2012) important work, for example, focuses on satire in authoritarian regimes, specifically Germany and Russia. Indeed, despite the rich history of satire in the Arab World (Allday, 2015), scholarly work on political humour and satire in the Middle East is very much undernourished (Shehata, 1992). Khalid Kishtainy’s 1985 work on Arab political humour in the Middle East is still one of the few seminal texts on the Arab World, and work on political satire in the Gulf States is still relatively non-existent. It is important to acknowledge that even within authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, laws, attitudes, cultural practices and humour vary substantially. Nikahang Kowsar’s (2012) illuminating work on Iran begins with the assertion that many clerics see satire as a form of ‘sin’. In Jordan, Quintan Wiktorowicz (1999) noted how the press law of 1993 enabled the stifling of the nascent satirical scene; ‘… the prospect of such a fine caused the weekly political satire paper ’Abd Rabbuh to close in June of 1997’. However, the relatively recent rise of people such as Bassem Youssef ¹ in Egypt highlights that political satire is arguably more tolerated in some Middle East countries than others (Aptaker, 2016), although perhaps this too reflects the historic role of Cairo as a cultural nerve centre in the region. Lisa Wedeen (2000), who has written extensively on Syria, states, ‘comedies, cartoons, and films are among the forms taken by everyday political contests …, no doubt in part because direct political engagement is generally discouraged by the fear of punishment or material deprivation’ (p. 87). However, while Wedeen’s argument may hold true for Syria, satire in Bahrain is not as tolerated as it [was] in Syria, highlighting the need for more fine-grained case studies. For example, Twitter parody accounts of high-ranking Bahraini officials, including that of the country’s prime minister, were targeted by the government security services – who used IP spying techniques in an attempt to uncover the identity of those operating the account (Bahrain Watch, 2013). The nature of the government’s response highlights the potential threat posed by humour, and while Amber Day (2011) argues that humour is not inherently subversive, it depends on the context. Indeed, the level of subversiveness is contingent on the nature of the regime and its tolerance, or lack thereof, to criticism. Thus, subversiveness is notably dependent on cultural, political and legal norms of what is acceptable.

While political satire may be subversive in Bahrain, it has also been privileged by the revolution on account of the divergent narratives that resulted from the government’s attempts to whitewash an image tainted by numerous human rights violations. As the government protested its innocence and attempted to discount revolutionary narratives with public relations (PR), doublespeak, ‘alternative facts’ and propaganda, the gap between brutal reality and the whitewashed PR image increased, paving the way for a chasm of absurdity that was best resolved with satire and parody. In a sense, the Bahrain regime’s resistance to change encouraged the emergence of satire, making satirical production an almost inevitable outcome of the articulation of authoritarian practice. The government’s attempts to shape discourses were often so absurd that they became ripe for parody, and the increased material for aspiring satirists has been complemented by the rise of social media and new technologies, which have also allowed budding producers greater opportunities for making and disseminating their satire. In addition, harsh government responses to public protests juxtaposed with their poor attempts to cover up or legitimise their actions, exposed the disingenuous nature of their exposed narrative. As Amber Day (2011, p. 4) argues, the lack of transparency that so often accompanies more authoritarian leadership leads to an ‘uninterrogated discourse’ that becomes ripe for deconstruction by satirists. Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef inadvertently agrees with Day when he thanks President Mohammed Morsi for providing so much material that is easy to satirise (BestofBassem, 2013). Bob Cesca (2017) said the same of the rise of Donald Trump, which he argues, has prompted a new ‘satirical urgency’ – perhaps because satire has the ability to ‘unmask and to de construct, pointing us toward the flaws and posturing of official policy’ (Day, 2011, p. 12). Thus, satire, as a genre, attempts to ‘discredit views that cannot withstand critical scrutiny’ – a vital aspect of the public sphere (Fraser, 2007, p. 7). Indeed, authoritarian regimes perhaps have always provided more material for satire than other types of regime, although its articulation has always been controlled by state censorship.

As a genre through, is satire more than just poking fun at the authorities, or is it an antidote to post truth politics? In her research on Syria, Wedeen (2000, p. 89) argues that ‘political parodies, features films, and jokes’ are forms of cultural production in which ‘political vitality’ reside and where ‘critique and oppositional consciousness thrive’. While it could be argued that these everyday mundane or banal transgressions against the government do not really threaten the regime’s dominance, Wedeen (2000) and Scott point out that these daily struggles are forms of resistance that may grow into large-scale ‘challenges to the political order’ (p. 87). Yet Wedeen is also talking about state-sanctioned criticism, which itself may be criticised as being a form of state-sponsored dissent and thus limited in its transgressive nature. The Bahrain regime, however, has yet to really tolerate criticism, especially when directed at specific individuals. While the same is true of Syria, in that individuals cannot be singled out for criticism, the Bahrain media is far less tolerant of any form of satire or parody, state-sanctioned or otherwise. State laws in Bahrain forbid criticism of the King, public institutions (such as the police), public figures and even allied countries. So, while being an important part of political vitality in itself, regime paranoia highlights the perceived revolutionary purpose of satire, and this perception of a threat lends the genre a certain revolutionary credibility. As Linda Hutcheon (1994, p. 30) states, ‘satire has the potential to offer a challenge to the hierarchy of the very “sites” of discourse, a hierarchy based in social relations of dominance’. Such forms of transgression and cultural production can also offer a collective sense of ritualistic bonding. Satire can reinforce political opinions, offering a form of ‘affirmation and reinforcement’ that has an important ‘community-building function’ (Day, 2011, p. 13). On a similar note, ‘hearing the laughter of fellow spectators in a theatre, sharing the experience of watching a television program satirizing official discourse, or discussing the program among friends afterwards, counteracts the atomizing conditions of the cult’ (Wedeen, 2000, p. 90). The emergence of satire also demonstrates attempts by marginalised groups to challenge the authoritarian public sphere, momentarily reducing disparities in what Nancy Fraser (2007) calls (p. 12) ‘political voice’ while promoting the ability to participate in public debate. This ability of social media to subvert regime control of traditional media, coupled with satire’s reconciling of reality with absurdity, points to a functioning aspect of public sphere, which is to challenge and expose views that cannot hold up to critical scrutiny.

Yet satire’s impact should not be overstated or generalised. One must qualify that just because government reactions during revolutions may produce material that is ripe for satire, it does not necessarily make satire a revolutionary genre – that is, a genre that can encourage revolution by uniting disparate elements in opposition to a common foe. Indeed, its disruptiveness or ability to function as a counter-narrative is tempered by the various events that necessitate its creation. Indeed, if cultural production ‘refers to the processes by which new texts, new cultural artefacts, and commodities, such as art, music and video, are created’ (Levinson & Ward, 1996, p. 13), then what is revolutionary cultural production? Is it, as Bourdieu (1993) might argue, that which has freed itself from ‘aristocratic and ecclesiastical tutelage as well as from its aesthetic and ethical demands’ (p. 112). Indeed, revolutionary cultural production must be that which, axiomatically, is rejected or deemed threatening to the regime it seeks to challenge. If it falls under the tutelage of state institutions, it cannot really be deemed threatening by the state and thus ceases to be revolutionary. Similarly, revolutionary cultural production should be that which frees itself from ‘the moral censure and aesthetic programmes of a proselytizing church or the academic controls and directives of political power, inclined to regard art as an instrument of propaganda’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 113).

While authentic revolutionary cultural production must be free from state tutelage, and actively rejected by the state, that does not mean the state does not have an important role in shaping cultural production. On the contrary, by examining the evolution of cultural production on social media during the Bahrain uprising, we can see how genres changed to reflect political dynamics, and how government intervention in the public sphere shifted cultural production on social media from a potentially revolutionary utopian genre, to more disparate genres including satire with different narratives and purposes. Thus, state intervention directly shapes non-authorised cultural production and content, as state strategies to co-opt or appropriate cultural production determine what may or may not be considered authentic and vice versa. Given that the state has a monopoly over the official media, social media has become an important location for the formation and distribution of revolutionary narratives. But even these are not immune, and the government has managed to appropriate or influence potentially revolutionary forms of cultural production on social media. It is this symbiosis and interplay that form the foundation of how the production of genres is a form of social action routed in the antagonism between the government and opposition. One genre can create the ‘sociorhetorical condition for the other in what Anne Freadman has called an “uptake,” a concept adapted from speech act theory to refer to the situated and dialogical relationship between texts’ (Bawarshi, 2000, p. 341). Similarly, as Efharis Mascha (2008, p. 70) notes about satire, ‘it is a discourse counter-posed to the dominant one but not one that can constitute a revolutionary project that is able to sustain itself without the existence of the dominant discourse’. Hill (2013, p. 333) argues that satire should be a ‘counter-narrative’ that subverts master narratives and the dominant master framework of the hegemonic in order to shine a light on its inequalities, hypocrisies and follies. However, she adds that the satirist is in a precarious position, ‘speaking from the margins while aiming for the mainstream’. With this in mind, how does the cultural content of Bahrain’s revolution affect the debate around the disruptive nature of satire? Once satire becomes ‘mainstream’, does it cease to be truly satirical, or a counter-narrative? How revolutionary is it? Is it right to argue, as Griffin (1994, p. 185) does, ‘raise doubts’ about its power in global politics? Or is it more, as Mascha notes, a counter-hegemonic project that fulfils the Gramscian notion of ‘passive revolution’, something more insidious, lengthy and sustained? It is important to consider whether satire’s potential for subversion or impact is contingent on specific cultural factors and whether general assertions about its disruptiveness are too essentialising given the contested nature of it.

Social media, creative resistance and cultural production in the Bahrain uprising

Given new technologies and the lack of a mediated satirical project before 2011, it is useful to begin with an exploration of the nature of social media and cultural production during the uprising. Indeed, satire did not spontaneously emerge but emerged within the context of the production and destruction of certain genres and other content. In order to conduct this case study and gain an insight into this revolutionary cultural content, a virtual, Twitter-centred ethnography was undertaken:

The process involved the daily monitoring [of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (the subjects of the study). Integral to this virtual ethnography was Twitter, which served as both a locus of interactions and conduit of vital information that led to relevant news, videos and images. Conducting this virtual ethnography moved beyond just ‘lurking’, and very much involved becoming part of Bahrain’s online community. In some ways this was for the sake of establishing trust and credibility, but it was also an inevitable part of online activism, of which I have become a part. (Jones, 2013)

As an active member of a community writing and blogging on Bahrain, ² I too became part of this new cultural ‘industry’, engaging in the construction of satirical art, sharing videos and endorsing what I thought was entertaining, powerful, poignant or moving. Only through this constant immersion over a long period ³ was I able to keep tabs on the constant stream of tweets, videos and references. The ethnography exposed me to an incredibly rich world of revolutionary cultural content, in both English and Arabic. This richness was in part due to the rise of smart phones, the Internet and social media. New technologies preserved many of the sites and sounds of the revolution, which was not simply ‘image-heavy’ but also heavily aural (Buali, 2012). Slogans, chants and sounds became ubiquitous and as much as part of the revolution as banners. YouTube videos in particular allowed the refrains of the revolution to come ingrained in people’s minds. Chants such as ‘silmiyya, silmiyya’ (peaceful peaceful), ‘yasqut Hamad’ (down with Hamad) ‘ash-sha‘b yurīd islāh/isqāt an-niẓām’ (the people want the reform/fall of the regime) and ‘bi-rūh, bi-dem, nafīdak ya-l-Bahrain’ (with our blood, our soul, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Bahrain) grew to be iconic of the uprising. This is especially true of the refrain of yasqut Hamad, which was soon translated into a series of beeps or pips that were frequently honked on car or air horns. The sounds of these pips were often written in an onomatopoeic fashion as ‘1010 1010’ or ‘tin tin tityn’ and appeared on Urban Dictionary in late 2011. ⁴ Some protesters were even jailed for honking ‘Down with Hamad’ on their car horn (manamacoc.blogspot.co.uk, 2011). Other, more ambitious activists even made and distributed on YouTube a film featuring an air horn as the protagonist. According to John Horne (2015), the film dramatises the arrest, torture and death of a Bahraini citizen, with the air horn and its indefatigable ejaculation of the tn tn ttn refrain representing the notion of ‘Sumood’ (steadfastness). ⁵ The lack of dialogue or language lends a transnational element to the production, suggesting that the video was geared to international and non-Arabic audiences.

Although the protesters were repressed, often brutally, the resulting uprising prompted a proliferation of creative and stylistically innovative cultural content, from more traditional forms, such as graffiti and banners (in both English and Arabic), to more modern forms that blended emerging technologies such as social media with stylistic innovation. Social media was useful in disseminating information and images and preserving transient protests into more permanent digital recordings. This was particularly true with regard to graffiti, which the authorities are usually quick to paint over. A blog called ‘RebelliousWalls’ was set up to chronicle graffiti in Bahrain, especially that which criticised Bahrain’s hosting of the contentious Formula One Grand Prix. Blogs also allowed people to document and preserve otherwise transient moments of cultural production. For example, Fahad Desmukh (@chanadbh), a journalist and blogger on Bahrain, documented a number of instances of revolutionary arts, crafts and détournement. Examples included revolutionaries who had used spent tear gas canisters to make things like jewellery, pencil holders (dairawy4ever, 2011) and even a throne (@veritaz, 2011).

In addition to this, other acts of peaceful, creative defiance included balloon releases, in which V for victory signs, pictures of martyrs or slogans such as ‘Down with Hamad’ were attached to balloons and then released into the Bahraini sky. While the balloon releases in Bahrain were peaceful and largely symbolic, they were often taken seriously by the authorities. Indeed, the proliferation of social media technologies allowed people unconnected with the original balloon release to capture the resulting denouement. In one instance, a balloon displaying the phrase ‘Down with Hamad’ was filmed being released. Later, another video emerged that showed policemen attempting to capture the balloon (AHRARMURQOBAN, 2011). Eventually, the police succeeded and put the fully inflated balloon in the back of a police jeep. Satirically, those who filmed the video titled it ‘Itiqal Nafaakha Yasqut Hamad’ (Arrest of Yasqut Hamad Balloon).

Similarly, a wooden mannequin of a woman with a sign reading ‘free our prisoners’ was arrested and put in the car, while other activists filmed a mock hanging of some members of the Al Khalifa ruling family (Jones, 2012). Statues of the Pearl Roundabout, which itself had become symbolic and metonymic of the uprising itself, were often made by activists following its vindictive destruction by the Bahrain authorities. These statues were often placed in public places by activists, confounding the country’s police who would often go to considerable lengths to remove and/or destroy them. As Amal Khalaf (2013) argues, ‘The monument [Pearl Roundabout], once used as part of the state’s image-economy, has been turned into a memorial for an uprising against the very state that created it’. These creative forms of resistance, coupled with the power of social media, allowed these acts of defiance to be shared with those who may have not witnessed the original act. As forms of protest and civil disobedience, they were a genre in their own right. That is to say, quieted creative acts that served to irritate and antagonise the authorities in a peaceful fashion. Furthermore, by allowing activists and citizens to publicise the subversive, social media assisted in de-institutionalising political discourse and disrupting the agenda-setting nature of the state media.

While social media was used to disseminate and document forms of resistance, sometimes social media itself provided new forms of resistance and cultural production. This often came in the form of memes, a modern phenomenon of cultural production (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007) defined by Shifman (2012, p. 2) ‘as units of culture that spread from person to person by means of copying or imitation’. Indeed, given the more dramatic events of the past few years and the zeitgeist of social media, one may be forgiven for thinking that the genre of the Arab uprisings may be characterised by what Sheyma Buali describes as ‘the aesthetic of hand-held, grainy, on-the-run footage, with shirtless men on the ground, usually accompanied by the sounds of people shouting slogans calling for the fall of the regime, gunshots and takbeers’ (Buali, 2012). However, as has been argued before, ‘the collective effervescence spawned in meatspace during the early days of the uprising, coupled with the relative goodwill between different factions of protesters, led to a Twitter campaign that utilised the hashtag #UniteBH (Short for Unite Bahrain)’ (Jones, 2016, p. 77). The premise was simple; tweet something that you loved about Bahrain that people could unite about. The credit for its inception went to Manaf al Muhandis (@Redbelt), a young middle-class Bahraini professional. Soon, the country’s creative industry latched onto the campaign. Saleh Nass, a local film-maker, asked people to submit short videos of themselves saying what they loved about Bahrain (Jones, 2016). The ubiquity of personal cameras, phones or webcams made such an appeal relatively straightforward. People submitted their videos, and Saleh Nass edited them so as to form a montage that was then distributed on YouTube. Soon afterwards, a rap song was made, and t-shirts, ⁶ badges, lanyards and mugs were being produced, each bearing the slogan #UniteBH. In many ways, despite the government killings of protesters in mid-February, the #UniteBH campaign was indicative of a certain sense of hope and unity in the country. The endeavour illustrated what Howard Becker (1974, p. 767) described as ‘art as collective action’. That is to say, art or cultural production that is the ‘product of the cooperative activity of many people’ (Becker, 1974, p. 767). The aesthetic impact of the #UniteBH slogan, which included the hashtag, portrayed the campaign’s social media origins (Jones, 2016). Just as other protesters across the Arab World raised slogans around the world bearing the names of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, one of the Bahrain uprising’s earliest cultural products acknowledged social media. Indeed, general consensus about the need for political reform translated into a collective genre of unity, and the head nod to social media in the campaign lent the aesthetic a certain harmless appeal as if Bahrain was surfing on the edge of a trend as opposed to a deep political crisis.

However, any society so self-conscious of sectarianism and difference is a fragile society vulnerable to division. The authorities reacted harshly to these displays of cross-sect and cross-group co-operation. The creator of the #UniteBH movement was arrested and interrogated overnight in connection with his involvement (Jones, 2016). Stories surfaced of those wearing ‘No Sunni, No Shi‘a, Just Bahraini’ t-shirts being ridiculed at checkpoints (Al Yusif, 2011). In addition to this intimidation, the government sought to appropriate, co-opt and monitor the #UniteBH campaign to ensure that the government appeared to be the sponsors of a unity-based event. After the Ministry of Social Development endorsed the campaign, it lost any ‘revolutionary’ credentials, instead becoming a vehicle to promote and market Bahrain’s neoliberal economy (Jones, 2016, p. 78). After this appropriation, #UniteBH events started to be held at locations that showcased Bahrain’s business-friendly attitude and ‘façade of neoliberal modernity’ (Jones, 2016, p. 78), further highlighting its tutelage under counter-revolutionary actors.

#UniteBH’s potency lay in how it challenged the Bahrain’s regime divide and rule tactics. As such, its destruction or co-optation became an important part of attacking revolutionary cultural production. As alluded to earlier, this cultural production espousing unity was problematic for the regime as it threatened the government’s traditional monopoly on their role as a bulwark against violent religious sectarianism. As Abdulhadi Khalaf (1988) argues, the Al Khalifas have always been able to ‘monopolise use of force in the territory, mediate among tribal and confessional hierarchies, and impose their segmented co-existence’. By doing so, they legitimise their continued position as rulers of the country (Khuri, 1980). Slogans such as ‘no Sunni no Shi‘a, just Bahraini’, when not done on government terms, threaten their primacy as mediators in inter communal relations. Before its co-optation, a number of activists expressed their reservation that despite its well-meaning intent, the initial #UniteBH campaign was an attempt to whitewash human rights abuses in Bahrain by projecting an illusion of harmonious normalcy in Bahrain. Rather than addressing inequalities, injustices and lack of real democracy, the campaign simply focused on the positive aspects of Bahraini society and thus chose to ignore problems of sectarianism and discrimination. Instead of encouraging revolution, it was a plea to accept the status quo. It did not address, for example, institutional discrimination against the country’s Baharna and Shi‘a ⁷ population and thus conformed to government discourses that sought to posit sectarianism as a societal problem rather than a result of deliberate state policy. This was compounded by the fact that it was promoted mainly by middle-class Bahrainis or expatriates and tended to exclude many of Bahrain’s more marginalised and disenfranchised groups.

Despite the flaws of #UniteBH, it was a memetic device that initially spawned a raft of cultural production that ostensibly promoted unity and peace. What was perhaps a genre of utopian fiction gave way to a semi-dystopian sense of reality. As government repression increased, and as divisions began to appear in Bahraini society, between the opposition itself, and between pro-democracy and pro-status quo groups, genres shifted. As protesters were further radicalised by government repression, videos of activist, violence became more common. Interactions on Twitter became more heated, and people who bought into the narrative that the Bahrain uprising was an exogenous event designed to spread Iranian hegemony in the region began to distribute ‘conspiratorial’ videos attempting to discredit the pro-democracy movement. Many of these narratives carried themes that alluded to the Shi‘a as sexually deviant fanatics, or apostate, who only carried Bahraini flags to pretend they were patriotic (Khalaf, 2013). Conspiratorial exposes became common, with activists and counter-revolutionary actors attempting to undermine each others’ narratives by creating images and videos debunking their claims.

From a genre of utopian unity to emergence of satire

In addition to these conspiratorial forms of genre, political satire emerged as the reality of the situation in Bahrain changed. There was a marked shift from a potentially revolutionary genre of utopian unity to ones that best addressed the nature of government repression, political manoeuvring and deception. ⁸ Indeed, the rise of satire demonstrated a move away from idealistic discourses such as #UniteBH to ones that were less ambiguous, perhaps more cynical, and less vulnerable to co-optation or appropriation. In the midst of challenges to the political order, satire is increasingly important. Social media are, in many ways, an ideal medium for satire. Generally speaking, they are more decentralised and thus less exposed to state censorship. As an object of curiosity of the Arab uprisings too, content distributed via social media is imbued with a certain contemporary relevance, especially when there is no association with governmental media. Any programme broadcast on state television would risk losing its revolutionary credentials by being associated with the authorities. This was demonstrated amply by the UniteBH campaign, which was co-opted under the Ministry of Social Development. Unlike the #UniteBH meme though, which was not primarily humorous, the first authentic ⁹ meme to emerge following Bahrain’s uprising was satirical. Early on in the uprising, as the government began to increase the repression of pro-democracy activists, and sought to defame and discredit the movement by propagating mufabrakāt (fabrications), satire began to become more commonplace. These mufabrakāt seemed to have a particular allure for satirists, most notably due to their sheer absurdity and unlikeliness. The first of such mufabrakāt was the story of Houzman, which soon became memetic. Houzman is described as follows:

Houzman, a.k.a Hoseman (Arabic: هوزمان), is the name of a satirical, fictional superhero intended to poke fun at a Bahraini policeman who was featured in a propaganda documentary film produced and aired by Bahrain’s state-run TV station in March 2011. According to the program, the policeman was allegedly captured by pro-reform protesters, but managed to escape by climbing down the wall from the roof using only a plastic hose. Due to the Bahraini population’s overwhelming scepticism towards state-run media, the official’s testimony and dramatic re-enactment of escape quickly became a subject of mockeries online, earning the nickname ‘Houzman’. ¹⁰

Soon after Bahrain Television (BTV) aired the news clip, Twitter lit up with users mocking Houzman. A Facebook page was quickly set up and soon had over 10,000 likes. Many of the memes consisted of tweets, videos and pictures. One image showed Batman, Spiderman and Tarzan all watching the Houzman video and expressing their awe and envy at his hose-scaling prowess. Another showed martial art expert Jackie Chan incredulous and jealous at Houzman’s skill. Videos ridiculing Houzman appeared on YouTube, one of which included the original BTV video of Houzman except that it had been overdubbed with the Spiderman theme song. Even a song about Houzman was made (هوز مان, 2011). Clips from the German film Downfall, a story about Hitler which is often used for the production of memes, were also used. In this derivative, Hitler is seen expressing his anger about how his machinations for creating the best comedy channel in the world would fail due to the stiff competition in the name of Bahrain State Television (BTV), whose comic fabrications were impossible to surpass (SES4455, 2011).

While Houzman began as a simple hashtag, it spawned its own memetic form of cultural production, including videos, songs, drawings and jokes. While these jokes provided a form of affirmation, or the ‘sublimation of aggression’, ¹¹ they also offered another important function. By rejecting the mufabrakāt issued by State Television, they offered a rebuttal to the implication that activists had kidnapped a policeman. In this sense, they were a form of resistance, reaffirming the values of the revolution at the time, which were, for the most part, peaceful. In this sense, the Houzman meme was a collective denunciation of state-sponsored attempts to defame the principles of the revolution. This collective resistance demonstrated an early example of citizens publicly rejecting government attempts to shape public opinion and monopolise the public sphere. ¹² The virality of the memes also reflected an element of ‘sumood’ (steadfastness) and solidarity in the face of a totalising government narrative.

Satire: privileged by revolution and authoritarianism

While satire has a rich history in the Arab World, 2011 certainly marked a new turn in Bahrain’s satirical tradition, not least due to the confluence between a sense of crisis-induced ‘satirical urgency’ and technological change. Social media has proven itself to be an important place for the emergence of satire and counter-hegemonic content, whether in its simple memetic form or in parody accounts and the more labour-intensive efforts of Baharna Drama. Each of these different productions show a level of depth to the satirical project in Bahrain, demonstrating that satire is not simply a sporadic incident or anomaly. ¹⁷ On the contrary, the proliferation of satire shows a diverse engagement with the genre that is both indicative of Bahrain’s cosmopolitanism and of the different target audiences. For example, satirical memes are the easiest to produce and the most accessible to those with basic technological literacy in Bahrain. Serials such as Baharna Drama offer nuanced and sophisticated satire geared towards Bahraini audiences who are familiar with the finer points of Bahrain’s uprising. Baharna Drama’s appeal also lies in its rustic charm, which itself satirises the highly produced, yet disingenuous spectacles shown on Bahrain’s technically modern media, yet ethically bankrupt media. Different again are parody accounts like that of @SheikhKhalifaPM, which offer political punditry, information and satire and are geared more towards Westernised audiences, highlighting a global connectedness. With perhaps rare exceptions, such as when bahārna drama portray government supporters as sheep, they all seem to offer a Horatian offering, a humorous critique, gently mocking rather than acerbic (Hill, 2013). The satire to have emerged in Bahrain has rarely been Juvenalian or nihilistic, preferring a ‘wry smile’ directed at the hegemonic order to a dystopian shaming of all humanity.

This diversity highlights critical engagement with both local and global publics, displaying how activists and critics of the government are engaging with multiple spheres. While there is still some contention as to whether satire serves as a basis for effective political change, satirical cultural production is a rich site of political discourse that gives an insight into Bahraini politics and commonly held grievances among Bahrain’s pro-democracy activists. The extent to which these marginal satirical discourses marshal public opinion and influence policy is questionable, yet they still form part of the effervescence that bubbles inside in the public sphere, generating publicity and debate before fizzing out and being absorbed into the fluid landscape of the public reservoir. The subversiveness of satire is also particularly fitting for a revolution, as it highlights a distinctive shift away from local institutionally dominated processes of cultural production. Indeed, in an age where consumers become producers in the memetic shifting of messages, social media such as Twitter and YouTube facilitate the means by which citizens can contribute to the public sphere, whether it be local, transnational or revolutionary. However, given that government action plays a key role in generating the material and scope for satire, it may, as a genre, not be directly removed from government tutelage, as it is a sociorhetorical response to the authoritarian public sphere. As a genre, satire thrives on the absurdity it seeks to critique and thus owes its very existence to the authoritarian policies of the Bahraini government. Without this scope for criticism, satire would cease to exist in the same way. With regard to medium, the presence of social media is also partly a result of the inability for oppositional voices to be heard on mainstream media. In this sense, the authoritarian public sphere allows for a plurality of discourses, so long as they are on its own terms and so long as they remain on the periphery of mainstream discourse or institutions.

In Bahrain, when it was clear that the relative unity that characterised the beginning of the uprising was fading, and the government’s policy was to repress, two competing discourses of the revolution began to emerge. Within this dichotomy emerged different narratives, each with its own genres and aesthetic. Indeed, on social media in Bahrain, there was a palpable shift from a utopian genre that espoused unity, to the emergence of cultural production more particularistic to different sides of the conflict. A more measured and progressive government response may have not resulted in an environment in which opportunities for satire and parody became abundant. Genres that may have actually been revolutionary in a manner more dangerous to the government’s repressive strategy, such as #UniteBH, were confronted, co-opted and appropriated by the regime, rendering them ineffective. So, ultimately, we must make a distinction between revolutionary genres and genres that are privileged by revolution. Indeed, there is a distinction between the two. The former may be genres that best promote a revolutionary ideal and that are contingent on cultural specific factors likely to engender a set of collective common goals in opposition to an oppressive regime. In some regards, this goes against Hill’s normative idea of political satire, for to be truly disruptive or revolutionary, perhaps a genre must actually revel, rather than reject, the idea of departing the margins for the mainstream. After all, a revolution implies some degree of populism, as opposed to obscurity. By becoming mainstream, does something cease to be satirical as it is no longer on the margins criticising the dominant master narrative? Furthermore, satire may serve to be divisive, and entrench meanings, while validating the identity of in-groups and excluding out-groups. This is not to say it is nihilistic but merely a particular expression of counter-hegemonic criticism that, paradoxically, plays into the polarising ruling strategy of the Bahraini government. Indeed, it would seem, as Ralph Rosen (2012, p. 2) notes, that ‘satire thrives on a number of paradoxes’.

It would seem that cultural production within the Bahrain revolution privileged satire, but that does not mean that genres remained constant and unchanging. On the contrary, genres evolved and changed, often as a result of government action and intervention. While satire may not be the disruptive force some scholars claim, the emergence of it in Bahrain at least problematises essentialising narratives of the ‘Arab street’. It certainly complicates Marc Lynch’s idea that the Arab Public Sphere is a ‘single voice driving out all dissent and critical reason’ (Āyish, 2008, p. 153). Instead, by attempting to drive out dissent, the regime creates active and critical counter-publics with their own platforms and forms of cultural production. Therefore, authoritarian regimes shape the public sphere, rather than entirely monopolising it. Furthermore, by driving out dissent, the authoritarian public sphere facilitates the creation of a transnational sphere, for citizens and activists confounded by attempts to influence public opinion on a sovereign-national level must sometimes turn to international actors in order to affect meaningful change or raise the profile of their revolutionary struggle.