Interesting to be on the outside looking back into Egypt at the moment. BBC is still airing that great Egypt tourism ad—the one with the scantily clad babes emerging from the pristine sea and the romantic (I suspect CGI) shots of Cairo, while at the same time the news is of another rigged referendum and more of the usual quasi-anonymous violence. A bit depressing to hear that the demonstrations of discontent have been relatively minor. Looks like the vast majority are going to lay back and take it. Supine, apathetic, depoliticized and broke, they still deserve better than the steadily darkening political horizon promises to bring them. Gamal Mubarak’s smug little press conferences and earnest evocations of “reform” and “progress” may have the same reality value as ever (about as much as that tourism ad) but are somehow harder to laugh off when you’re in a country where the words have coinage. Yesterday I went for a haircut and the hairdresser asked me if Egypt is dangerous. I gave her my standard answer: the only people you have to be afraid of in Egypt are the police. I thought for a moment of trying a new answer. Something about that shifty grasping little shit with his wheedling lickspittle sycophancy to Big Dick Cheney, his bully’s sense of when to put the boot in, his receding hairline and blonde beard, his pilot’s license and his polyester clad demo-breakers. But that would have take taken longer than the haircut.
That’s not the Red Sea Riviera ad you’re talking about, is it? With the teeny bikinis and high heels and siren calls of “sun all year round” to lure the poor soggy Brits? Gives people the wrong idea about Masr. Perhaps that’s why I saw a couple of tourists wearing shorts and teeny tank tops downtown today.
Advertising on the BBC???
BBC International.
Actually it’s not the Red Sea Riviera ad series, but its successor, the “Egypt Gift of the Sun” series (thought it was the gift of the Nile?), which was brought in after it was realized the grassy fields and bikini-clad beauties of the earlier ad campaign were a bit misleading. Biz Monthly did a good piece on it back in December:
http://www.amcham.org.eg/Publications/BusinessMonthly/December%2006/indepth(sunshinesonnewtourismcampaign).asp
What’s funny is, despite focusing more on things like feluccas and shopping in (weirdly clean) souqs, they had to put in something with bikinis — in this case, nubile sun worshippers having a rave in a very CGI-like Sinai desert. Pretty unrealistic, but at least it’s better than the Riviera series and I don’t think it uses that annoying Aida music either.
Brits want the beach if they’re going anywhere to the south or east – gotta show them some bikinis to code Egypt as Sun and Sand and Exoticism destination.