The Representation of Terrorists in Egyptian Cinema: A Conversation Analysis of Al-Irhaby (The Terrorist)

Abstract

The soft power of media and film making has always had a great contribution to the shaping of the ideology of communities. The way certain groups or even concepts and ideas are represented in cinema affects how these groups or ideas are evaluated. This influential platform influences public opinion and shapes the stance of viewers to a great extent. The way terrorism and terrorists are characterized in films has shaped the minds and corrected or created misconceptions in many communities depending on the ideology adopted by the film makers. This study analyzes key scenes from an Egyptian movie entitled Al-Irhaby (The Terrorist) using Conversation Analysis, Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory (1987) and Grice’s Cooperative Principle (1975). This analysis aims to compare the main character’s behavior before mingling with an ordinary middle class family to his behavior after staying with them for a certain period of time. The conversations between the characters throughout the movie unfold the stark differences in the main character’s (the terrorist) personality and how he started rebelling against his old beliefs, a development brought about after his stay. Kress and van Leeuwan’s (1996) theory of Visual Grammar is also employed but only in terms of the representational metafunction to analyze the visual techniques employed to trace such change.