Blending Popular Entertainment and Political Advocacy: Fighting War Crimes or Chasing Dollar Signs?

Across the Western media landscape, reports of mass shootings by Islamist militants and of migrants flooding borders have contributed to a wave of angry, right-leaning rhetoric that denies responsibility for overt racism and encourages anti-refugee attitudes. In the United States, for example, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has vowed to prevent immigration of refugees from “areas of the world when there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States.”

One response to the influx of anti-refugee messages is the rise of refugee pop-music, a movement led by entertainment stars like Helly Luv (nee Helan Abdullah). In February 2014, Luv released a music video for her single, “Risk it All,” an anti-war, pro-Kurdish anthem. The video, which shows Luv dancing over lions and waving an AK47 with female Iraqi Kurdish soldiers, became a media sensation, having since received over five million views on YouTube. Luv’s political activism is central to the narrative of Bahman Ghobadi’s A Flag without a Country (2015), which made its European premier at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

In tandem with the work of Helly Luv, A Flag Without a Country can be read as a reaction to anti-refugee rhetoric, its central concern being the plight of Kurdish refugee children in wartime. The film follows the story of a Kurdish political activist, Nariman Anwar, a pilot and aerial enthusiast, known as “Nariman the Pilot,” as it intersects with Luv’s rise as a pop star. Blurring the lines of documentary and narrative film, A Flag Without a Country draws on a variety of archival footage and dramatic reenactments to illustrate the two characters’ memories of earlier conflicts and their efforts to counter the bloody, present-day atrocities of ISIS in Iraqi Kurdistan and the surrounding area.

The film’s construction is not without its problems. Like all documentary-style films that chose to employ dramatic reenactment as a narrative device, A Flag Without a Country raises questions about the authenticity of representation. Ghobadi does not explicitly label the film as documentary, and the non-linear story arc jumps between dream-like flashbacks, obvious reenactments, hand-held follow-camera montages, and archival newsreel footage. The result is an exciting but ambiguous storyline, leaving the audience uncertain about what parts of the narrative to trust as objectively true, and which parts to interpret as fiction.

Helly Luv is introduced in a series of strange scenes. She wears heavy make-up as she meets with military officials to shop for AK-47s. She tosses her long, dark hair in the wind as she rides a moped through Iraqi markets, and she wears fashionable high-heeled shoes as she feeds a family of caged lions. She shows off her musical abilities when she sings to children at a refugee camp near the Syrian border. We soon learn that Luv is collecting props and cast for her “Risk it All” music video. The song is included in the film’s soundtrack and at one point clips from the music video are intercut to show the same rifles, lions and children in action.

Inclusion of these details complicates interpretation of the film’s intentions. On one hand, it explores the inspiration behind Luv’s music. Audiences are offered a ‘behind the scenes’ look at how she has made of a career of writing and performing songs that call for Kurdish independence, while encouraging young refugees to celebrate their heritage with music. She shows solidarity with refugees at a moment when they are controversial and increasingly marginalized in the West. On the other hand, Luv appears concerned with refugee children as a mass, rather than individuals. One gets the troubling impression that, in the same way she feeds her lions meat and polishes her automatic rifles, she grooms refugee children as mere props for her music videos.

Skepticism about the authenticity of Luv’s representation is compounded by the fact that at times, she appears out of place as she strolls through battlegrounds and refugee camps in high heels and glamorous outfits. This coverage emphasizes Luv’s image as a pop diva. The cynic might ask at what point the film becomes a marketing device for Luv and her record label, built on the backs of a suffering Kurdish people?

In fairness to Luv, she has put herself in danger by choosing to address the refugee crisis; Because of the popularity of her music, she has landed her a spot on ISIS’ most wanted list. Furthermore, as a refugee herself, she has witnessed first-hand how near constant violence and political unrest in Iraqi Kurdistan has torn families apart and threatened cultural and national identities. Luv was born in Iran during the Persian Gulf War. Her family escaped death during Saddam Hussein’s regime by fleeing to Finland. It would be unwise to suggest Luv’s activism is motivated solely by a desire to attract media attention.

Thus, perhaps questions of the authenticity of representation subvert a larger problem at hand–a problem that has to do not just with the structures of the entertainment industry, but also the values that define our society, art, and media. As the industry pushes glamorous, sensationalized entertainment, it pushes cultural norms with it, creating a dangerous feedback loop. The public takes cues from producers about which narratives to pay attention to, and, using ticket sales as a metric, the industry gets feedback from the public about what narratives are considered most desirable.

This is a problem representative not only of structures of the entertainment industry, but also of the very morals that define our society. Though the West preaches acceptance, empowerment, and humanism, “A Flag Without a Country” reveals an uncanny superficiality to these values. It shouldn’t take a glamorous pop diva performance for Western audiences to take notice of the plight of marginalized peoples; Helly Luv suggests it might.

At a time when we seem to value entertainment over news, and, increasingly, demand more for less, we must take a moment to reflect–a moment to break the feedback loop. As long as the likes of Western demagogues like Donald Trump are making headlines with anti-refugee rhetoric, the plight of the Kurdish people is a story that needs to be told; we must ensure that artists are afforded opportunities to tell the stories that need to be told, without compromising their good intentions to sell tickets or pick up views on YouTube.