Tyrant Premiere Cliched, Rape Heavy
Tyrant, the newest hour-long drama on the FX Network, premiered Tuesday night, and with it brought tired middle-eastern cliches and more rape/non-consesual sex scenes in 80 minutes than might have been necessary. The FX Network has always had great success with pushing the boundaries of the hour-long drama. This is the network of The Shield, Fargo, Sons of Anarchy, and American Horror Story. That streak continues with Tyrant, for better or worse.
Tyrant’s plot takes a cue from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather in that a successful Southern California pediatrician, Barry al-Fayeed (Adam Rayner), and his family, wife Molly (Jennifer Finnegan) and two teen kids, Sammy and Emma (Noah Silver and Anne Winters), reluctantly return to Barry’s homeland, the fictional Middle Eastern city of Abbudin where his father, Khaled al-Fayeed (Nasser Faris), rules as a dictator, albeit one in poor health, hence the reason why a pediatrician–of all things–goes home in the first place. Barry reunites with his brother, Jamal (Ashraf Barhom), who is a sadistic, misogynistic tyrant in waiting (hence the show’s title).
Tyrant is the brainchild of Howard Gordon, who masterminded 24 and Homeland, and at one time had Academy Award-Winning director Ang Lee (Life of Pi, The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) on board to direct the pilot. But as originally highlighted in an article by The Hollywood Reporter, as the troubled production rolled on, Lee left the project after Gordon couldn’t commit to a solid vision with changes being made almost on a daily basis.
In true 24 fashion, Gordon relies heavily on Middle-Eastern cliches, and the women on Tyrant are presented more as props and less as characters. In the pilot episode alone, there are three instances of either rape or non-consensual sex, each time used solely to show how much of a monster Jamal is.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has already spoken out against Tyrant for its depiction of Muslim/Arabic stereotypes. Critics have begun to share their thoughts on the show, such as Entertainment Weekly, who gave it a B-, and The Washington Post, who called it “flaccid and “a dud.”
How will audiences respond? Deadline is reporting that Tyrant grabbed a 2.1 million viewers, which is 20 percent less than what the tv show based on the hit film Fargo pulled back in April. The true testament to a show’s popularity comes not with the premiere, but with the subsequent episodes, and time will tell if viewers stay with Tyrant to watch uninspired cliches, the abject brutality of women, and other Middle-Eastern tropes, or if Tyrant falls in a bloodless coup and is cancelled.
Image courtesy of Zap2it
