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Netflix's First Arabic Original Sparks Backlash on Home Turf

Associated Press

   AMMAN, JORDAN - On a high school trip to Jordan's ancient city of
   Petra, a group of teenagers sneak out at night to drink beer, smoke
   weed and gossip around a bonfire. A girl asks her frisky boyfriend to
   take things slow.

   By global Netflix standards, its first original Arabic series "Jinn"
   hardly pushes the envelope. But when the show debuted last week, many
   Jordanians were shocked and appalled by a program that had been billed
   as a point of national pride.

   Some Twitter users blasted the series as pornographic. Government
   ministers vowed to censor it. Jordan's grand mufti denounced it as "a
   moral degradation." Lawmakers called an emergency session. The attorney
   general demanded the cyber-crimes unit "take immediate, necessary
   action" to pull it from Netflix.

   While the government has not made good on its threats, the outrage
   nonetheless has shaken Jordan's self-image as a bastion of tolerance in
   a turbulent region. It reflects a cultural gap between the reputation
   of the country's Western-allied ruling elite and conservative Muslim
   public, many of whom consider it "haram" -- forbidden -- to drink
   alcohol, smoke marijuana or even kiss before marriage, and look to
   television to deliver morality.
   "Jordan likes to think of itself as miles ahead of other Arab
   countries," said Jordanian media analyst Saed Hattar. "But the reality
   is, although social media is flooding millennials with more modern
   content, our traditional values and morals have not changed."

   The five-episode thriller centers on a private school in the capital of
   Amman, a bubble of liberalism and privilege in the country. School
   buses cart the teenagers off to a wide-open desert haunted by ancient
   demons that make strange and terrifying things happen.

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