Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt

The author in this and a later work analyzes Egyptian social mores through cinema and other popular culture. Here, he traces the development, and eventual deterioration of the ideal of the modern Egyptian, one who accepts the benefits of the Western world while retaining the traditional foundation. In recent times, however, the chasm between "the ideology of the establishment-approved culture and the lives of many Egyptians have become glaringly obvious."

Particularly, "social mobility seems to have declined.... [Being] a college graduate [has] brought little in the way of security or income. Economically, education was an empty triumph." Yet the young are expected to pursue higher education and the modernist dream, despite its ruinous show more expenses and few practical rewards. Where earlier films were about the transformation of the simple man into the "modern man," new films are antimodernist: In a comparison of two versions of a story at opposite ends of this transition, "In the original film the movement was from the milieu of "sons of the country" to the middle class; in [the later version] the characters start out middle class and retreat to folkloric milieu." show less