Hadj-Moussa 283form of documentaries and game shows—that operate through the French
language. All things considered, satellite television has filled the vacuum
left by the shortcomings and deficiencies of the school system, as Hafid, a
twenty-year-old student in computer programming, expresses:
You were asking me questions about satellite television. Well.
It teaches us French. [Through it] we learn French. I swear, I
sometimes watch a movie with a dictionary beside me. If a
word is used, let us say avare, I immediately look up its mean-
ing and learn that it is a mismār [a nail in Algerian Arabic]
or in classical Arabic, al-bakhῑl. We are learning the language!
There was a show the other day called La route de la fortune,
it was a language-focused show. We learn a lot that way.
And when the show is boring or uninteresting, we still learn
French!Hafid, who was educated in Arabic, would never want his sisters exposed
to satellite television, however. For women, satellite television is not an
opportunity to learn French but a danger to traditional behavior. Good
Muslim women should observe their duty (fard.) by wearing the hijab and
avoiding the immorality of satellite television.
tellite television is thus perceived as essentially men’s television, Sa
especially in regards to Euro-programming. It is conspicuously open to
the Other, the foreign. It is certainly a conduit for images of naked bodies
but also of debate, polemic, critique, or, simply put, “democratic moder-
nity.” Women are mainly confined to the déjà-vu of the Arab networks.
Women maintain the “umbilical cord” to Arabness, to Islam and to
Algerian values. In this first instance of interpretation, the introduction of
satellite television reveals an explicitly dominant configuration in political
discourse in which women are the very incarnation of Arab and Muslim
values in Algeria.
e advent of the satellite dish in the space of the household, like Th
the emergence of the factory into Algerian space in the 1970s, is greeted
with a sense that it should not affect the established order, by which is
meant the prohibition against women occupying public space and having
a voice. In a sense, this prohibition allows male viewers, whether French
or Arabic speakers, to situate themselves near the center of Islamist