Homeland set sabotaged by German artists

During Sunday night’s episode of the Showtime series Homeland, star Claire Danes walked through a narrow Lebanese alley sprayed with graffiti. Viewers who know Arabic saw more than just background street art.

Producers hired a trio of German artists to paint the graffiti this summer in Berlin. They were supposed to paint generic messages like “Muhammad is the greatest” to give the feel of a Hezbollah-run Syrian refugee camp. The artists decided instead to send a different message: “Homeland is racist.”

Dubbing themselves “The Arabian Street Artists” (ASA), they revealed their secret Wednesday in a video that has since gone viral. Instead of being angry, Homeland producer Alex Gansa said he admired ASA’s act of “artistic sabotage,” hoping it would spur conversation.

The Emmy award-winning show enjoys high ratings, but Muslims criticize its portrayal of Islamic faithful. Lebanon and Pakistan have also censured Homeland for its unflattering depiction of their countries.

At first, ASA considered using slightly revised Arabic proverbs with coded messages, but chose bluntness over subtlety. Other messages sprayed on the wall included, “Homeland is a joke and it didn’t make us laugh,” ‘'Homeland is not a (TV) series,” “There is no Homeland,” “Black lives matter,” and “Homeland is watermelon” (an Arabic expression meaning something is superficial or a joke).

Brian Godawa, author of Hollywood Worldview and screenwriter for more than 15 years, rejects ASA’s claim that Homeland features “undifferentiated representation” of Arabs, Muslims, and Middle Easterners. He said the show depicts good and bad Arabs, Muslims, and CIA agents: “It accurately portrays the world the way it is.”

Godawa said Showtime producers may be afraid of offending Muslims. Network executives and producers fear treatment of Islamic extremism in U.S. media might result in terroristic revenge, according to many industry emails Godawa has read.

Godawa just completed viewing this year’s debut season of USA Network’s Dig, a series about an FBI Agent in Jerusalem who stumbles across a Judeo-Christian conspiracy to rebuild the Temple and its sacrificial system. Godawa said the show has anti-Christian and anti-Semitic overtones but no Muslims, a bizarre omission since it takes place in Israel.

Tim Kring and Gideon Raff are the executive producers for both Dig and Homeland.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.