About a month ago, Showtime released a new poster for the fourth season of Homeland, which premieres in October. I didn’t see the poster until a few nights ago displayed as a subway platform advertisement. The poster displays a red-hooded, distressed Carrie (Claire Danes) looking lost in a sea of grey, burqa-clad women. I’m shocked that culture commentary websites haven’t picked up on it.
The poster is eye-catching and visually impressive. There’s a fairytale aspect to it– the dazzled, naive Little Red Riding Hood trying to find her way through murky, dangerous forests. Carrie looks like an innocent and vulnerable player in a dark and shadowy game, and she has bitten off more than she can chew. Even though anyone who watches the show, or even saw the trailer, knows that Carrie is hardly an innocent player in the game of international intelligence, the ad is a thrilling and effective visual, especially for those who care about Carrie and her disrupted future.
Showtime’s marketing has never portrayed the show’s Middle Eastern dealings. Past season posters have focused more on the turbulent relationship between Carrie and Brody, the recovered veteran with shady ties to his captors. I don’t think the posters have ever portrayed a Middle Eastern character, even though the Middle East is central to the show’s plot. With Brody out of the picture at this point in the series, the marketing has clearly chosen to put its locale front and center, both in the poster and in the plot, as the trailer shows.
Given that so much of the show’s greatness (at least in the early seasons) has been in putting a human face on the effects of war, it’s a sad failure of this poster to dehumanize the women Carrie is surrounded with. True, Middle Eastern women wearing a burqa are consequentially faceless and covered in head to toe. But, each one of them looks exactly the same. They are just landscape to Carrie’s illuminating figure. They are not portrayed as distinct human beings but rather an obscure background. This has never been the way that past posters have portrayed their white, American characters. Carrie, Saul, Brody and even minor characters like other CIA agents and family members have always been distinct parts of their respective advertisements. They stand out from their background. The burqa-wearing women in this photo could easily be replaced by something non-human like trees or bazaar stands and have the same effect of making Carrie look lost and vulnerable in her surroundings.
Now, let’s take the implications of this dehumanizing aspect. First of all, burqas are usually the first thing people mention when discussing feminism/women’s rights in the third world. It used to be a divisive issue, but most feminist scholars with an interest in the third world would now say that it is unjust and naive to decry the evils of the burqa, which for Muslim women has great religious significance. Many of them freely wear it with pride, and to attack it as a sign of oppression is to approach it from a narrow Western, privileged frame of mind with no real knowledge of Middle Eastern practices or Middle Eastern women’s cultural notions. To look at a woman wearing a burqa and see her as an oppressed woman without knowing about her background and her choices is to ignorantly judge her based on your own cultural experiences and not hers. And to look at a woman wearing a burqa and see a frightening, mysterious, or threatening individual is racism on a whole ‘nuther level.
Unfortunately, this Homeland poster does both. It places these shadowy women in Carrie’s background perhaps as a sign that Carrie has come to help them. Bright, white, and illuminating Carrie looks like the Western savior, like the young beautiful white teacher about to set all her minority students straight with her compassion and lofty ideas. It’s dangerous when a minority group is presented as a group to be pitied or saved by a more civilized, knowledgeable party (often the very same civilized party that oppressed them in the first place).
That’s one interpretation. The other is that the shadowy women are there to set up a mysterious, threatening background to Carrie’s illuminating, heroic presence. They are like the dark woods to Carrie’s Little Red Riding Hood, the towering waves to George Clooney’s steamship, the blighted Mordor landscape to a determined Frodo and Sam. Isn’t great, though, that in those examples, the threats are things and in the Homeland poster, they’re the very people Carrie is supposed to protect? Can you imagine how it would feel to be a Muslim woman, with or without burqa, passing by this advertisement on a subway platform or a street corner? Can you feel the hostility and the fear rising from the poster? The sudden pit-in-your-stomach self-awareness it induces? The ignorant attack on your culture, your beliefs, your appearance?
lettersfromthemezz.com 
September 12, 2014 at 4:31 pm
I’ve never watched the show (and have very little interest in doing so), but I agree with you that the poster seems racist and culturally insensitive.
October 3, 2014 at 6:03 pm
Extremely racist poster. I saw it and immediately picked up on its biggoted nature. Burqa clad women are humans, individuals, with feelings and personalities just like anyone else. They r no different from any western women other than choice of clothing.
H
October 8, 2014 at 6:56 pm
The burka dehumanized women, if people see this in the poster, why be mad at the poster. Be mad at the oppressive regimes that force the Burka on women. And what race is being attacked exactly? There is a word for assuming only people of one race would wear the burka.
October 9, 2014 at 8:40 am
Thanks for the comment. Have you ever seen those movies where a white, young Hilary Swank or Michele Pfeiffer walk into an urban school district and has to face a classroom of rowdy, black and latino students whose lives are hopelessly on the wrong paths? But then she makes them see the beauty of Alfred Lord Tennyson or Tolstoy or T.S. Eliot, and she teaches them to be better human beings? That’s what this poster reminded me of. It extols the white savior of these hopeless people as she helps them ‘see the light,’ which usually just means that she teaches them the more Western, civilized way of conducting themselves. It makes it seem like the minorities’ culture has to evolve into our white, Western culture; that one is inherently worse than the other. And sure, these white women at the center of these stories DO help the minorities, whether it’s Carrie tackling sex trafficking or Hilary Swank getting kids into college. But oftentimes, it comes at the expense of making these people’s culture seem menacing, primitive, and terrible. Those are exactly the three words I’d use to describe the women on Homeland’s poster: menacing, primitive, terrible. Carrie looks like a little red riding hood trapped in a sea of wolves. It makes these women’s culture, their bodies just a foil to Carrie’s bright, innocent ideology (I wouldn’t say the show itself makes Carrie or these women seem that way, just the poster).
As for the burqa, there’s been a huge shift in the last decade or so away from making burqas into symbols of oppression. Largely it’s because these women don’t see it that way. They see it as a symbol of their piety and happiness. If we actually take time to listen to these women’s stories, (the novel Princess comes to mind, also a play called Burq Off!) then we’d see it from their POVs. When westerners start attacking burqas, we’re coming using our western cultural framework to judge, instead of actually taking the time to understand their culture and beliefs. It’s like if someone from Saudi Arabia started telling us to outlaw high heels. Should wearing a burqa/wearing high heels be a women’s choice? Yes. I’d be 100% for that law. But some women still want to wear high heels because they feel good wearing them. And some women want to continue wearing burqas because they feel good wearing them.
October 10, 2014 at 11:48 am
Unfortunately the burka isn’t a choice for many women. Have you seen the ‘my stealthy freedom’ campaign, where woman take pics of themselves secretly showing more of their body than otherwise allowed by their oppressive family/society/government?
What critics of the burka really want is recognition of universal human rights, which do exist despite many theocratic regimes denial of them to their citizens.
Directly regarding the poster, you cannot see the race of the women so let’s drop the racist nonsense.
The poster doesn’t make the burka look different to its traditional appearance, yet it looks sinister because of Carrie in the middle. Carrie wearing red, with blonde hair and makeup, which is common tradition of the west. Carrie operates amongst the most severe oppressive regimes, where the burka is mandatory for women outside of their home. It says nothing about moderate societies
October 13, 2014 at 10:47 pm
I think the poster definitely cites Little Red Hiding Hood. I think the intention of the image was the following: to portray Carrie in an environment where the source of danger—the wolf—is unknown, is hidden, could be anywhere. That intention doesn’t conflate Islam with evil and danger wholesale. But there’s intention, and then there’s how it might reasonably be read. It might be read as juxtaposing Western (American), good Carrie, with her blond hair, white face, and colorful dress, against a vague, dark evil Islam.
The term ‘racism’ is totally fair here. We know what racism is. We also know that race is a social construction. Yes, there are different skin tones—that’s a biological fact. But that those skin tones carry all the meaning they do carry is a contingent social reality rooted in history. If we find that in the case of Arabs and Muslims those identities and their signs begin to permit those same meanings, mimicking the structure of racism and discrimination, we can see how the word ‘racism’ applies.
Here’s where I think Sara is wrong and commenter oppartunist is right: the burqa is dehumanizing and feminism, insofar as it bends over backwards to accommodate it, has made an incredible joke of itself.
I can’t say that without offering an argument. This is what happens. A child is born. If it has a penis, it can live free of a prescribed face-covering garment. If it has a vagina, it is relegated to a fabric bag for the duration of its life under pain of retribution. I want to note two scientific findings. First, that the human being shows an incredible ability to respond to and relate to faces from a very early age. Second, that verbal communication is a small part of communication—the rest is body language and especially facial expression. An irrational doctrine, namely Islam here (but virtually religions, really), erases the faces of women.
I have to address Sara’s point that some women treasure the burqa or enjoy wearing it. It’s completely irrelevant. If every black male in the US held the views of a Clarence Thomas but nothing changed economically and socially, that would not constitute an argument in favor of racist institutions and social injustice. If we presented our modern, more liberated Western gender roles to the God-fearing, husband-respecting, Christian women of 300 years ago and found those women choosing to hold on to their own realities, that would not constitute an argument for the gender roles of 1700. People can be blind to oppressive forces and typically are. They can be as blind when it is they themselves who are oppressed.
Some women find the burqa oppressive and anti-feminist. Oppatunist mentioned MyStealthyFreedom as an example. If Sara wants to say burqas aren’t symbols of oppression and repression, she has some explaining to do to these women. If she wants to have it both ways, she owes an explanation/defense of how that can be. The only defense I can see is something like, “To each her own.” Of course, with that feminism is sunk, along with the ability to say anything at all.
October 14, 2014 at 8:06 am
Hey James Alexander,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I think the poster certainly does conflate “evil” with Islam and does it very purposefully, even though the show itself has usually taken care to show the people of the region as people and not fairy tale villains.
As for the burqa issue, I mentioned two autobiographical sources in which Muslim women willingly choose the burqa even though they understand the Western POV that it is oppressive. As with anything, choice is elemental, and it definitely is oppressive to take away a woman’s choice to wear the burqa or not. That a woman could choose to wear a burqa does not negate feminism. A true feminist is meant to empower women to make their own choices, not to force a whole other set of expectations or rules on them.
Feminists have been fighting for women to enter the workforce on equal measure with men for decades, and yet I think it would be wrong to criticize a woman who wants to be housewife. Feminists have been fighting for reproduction rights for years, and yet if a woman wants to practice her religion by forgoing all birth control, then it’s her right and feminists should not see that as a setback to their agendas. There are Muslim women who wear hijabs and read Cosmo and go to college and get married as soon as they graduate to spend their lives as wives and mothers. As long as they have a choice in that future, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and we Americans should not take the moral high ground and impose our Western agenda to replace theirs.
October 15, 2014 at 3:07 am
I’m certainly not suggesting that we impose anything by force, eliminating anyone’s right to choose.
That isn’t what’s at issue though. To illustrate: I might disagree with or hate what some group stands for or says, but I will defend its members’ rights to free association and free speech. At the same time, I’ll criticize the group. It’s a similar situation here. I can respect everyone’s freedom to choose. At the same time, I can criticize certain choices, albeit freely made, as misguided and perpetuating oppression. To freely choose to live a life in a fabric bag, face erased, second-class, because a 1,400 year old text, interpreted by men, prescribes that for female bodies is an insult to any sane conception of universal human dignity.
With regard to moral high grounds, I’m not suggesting we, as Americans, have the moral high ground on all fronts as against all other cultures. I am, however, suggesting that feminism is in the business of moral high grounds, like any enterprise that makes even minimal normative claims. Please note that you aren’t making purely rational arguments against my points. I don’t mean that in the sense that you’re being irrational, no. I mean, rather, that rationality and reason are instrumental—they tell you how to get from A to B, or whether X contradicts Y or is coherent with Z. They don’t tell you what B, what end-goal, to prefer, to desire, to fight for. To figure out B you make value judgements, ethical judgments, moral judgments about what’s good, just, and so on. If you lapse into full-scale relativism, you lose the ability to claim any sort of validity for your desired end-goals. “Equality for women”? Why? What argument can you make, that isn’t just your feelings, if you’re never willing to take the moral “high ground”? You need to figure out what your moral commitments are, and then ask if they perhaps imply a criticism of the relegation of women’s bodies to black bags. I think they do and I think virtually every feminist feels and knows it. If you can’t criticize that, you really can’t criticize anything.
The desire to defend the burqa doesn’t arise from a coherent feminism. I think it arises from contingent facts about the intersections of feminism, modern liberalism, leftism, pluralism, and other currents that have failed to thoroughly assess their own grounds, premises, and assumptions and so produce, predictably, contradictions such as this one—namely that you feel compelled to defend not just the liberty to make the choice to wear a burqa but the very choice itself.
October 15, 2014 at 8:34 am
I don’t think a woman who chooses to wear a burqa should feel guilt or shame that she’s perpetuating oppression. When we look at a woman wearing a burqua, we tend to immediately see an oppressed woman but that’s a so-called rational judgment based on our subjective experience and culture (in which wearing a burqua is not traditional). I don’t think we can make rational arguments when people’s lives don’t all conform to the same system of logic or beliefs. I vouch for understanding and empathy instead.
October 10, 2014 at 12:00 pm
I think you’re giving this poster way too much license as a portrayal of what supposedly really happens in the Arab countries. You’re refusing to acknowledge that the way they juxtapose Carrie against a backdrop of third-world women (the actual race represented doesn’t have to refer to a specific country, but I’d say Arab, Muslim women) is actually making an implicit statement about both of them.
The poster CERTAINLY makes the burqa look different. It makes it (and the women in them) look like malicious, mysterious, exotic, almost dreamlike forces. The poster is striking, and for a reason. It’s heavily rendered artistically, and Carrie is being intentional made to appear like a heroic figures in the dark, gloomy forest.
If the show’s marketing wanted to portray Carrie operating in an oppressive regime, there’s obviously more than one way to do that. Carrie at an armybase. Carrie directly working with Arab women. Carrie at a sinister-looking streetmarket. Objectifying these women was a deliberate choice and deliberately represent the racial dichotomy between the two.
I just want to reiterate, if you were a burqa-wearing Muslim woman standing at a train platform in NYC in front of this poster, wouldn’t you feel like it is making a statement about your culture, if not attacking it?
October 10, 2014 at 1:05 pm
So, speaking of racism, objectification, and assumed superiority of western mores and values, upon closer inspection of the photo, I realized Claire Danes is a human American flag….No really, the garment shes wearing below the red hijab is a dark, american blue. Throw in the Aryan look and…yea, ad got a whole lot more messed
December 8, 2014 at 4:35 am
She is not only portrayed as the “white” saviour but she also represents America in this poster. She is white, the hood she has on is red and her under dress is blue. America the saviour. The country that is responsible for so much war and death will save you all from the vile Muslims.
January 2, 2016 at 12:30 pm
So tired of the liberal people it seems racist “cry me a river”