SXSW 2009

Type Panel → interactive panel
Venue: Austin Convention Ctr (Room 16AB)
About: In The Sheikh?s Batmobile, pop-cultural commentator Richard Poplak sets out on an unusual two-year odyssey. His mission is to see what becomes of his, and North America?s, obsessions -- pop songs and sitcoms, Hollywood movies and shoot-em-up video games, muscle cars and punk music -- when they make their way into the Muslim world. Over the course of his journey, Poplak is body slammed by WWE fans in Afghanistan, hangs out with hip-hop artists in Palestine, head bangs to heavy metal in Cairo, investigates an Arabized version of The Simpsons in Dubai, discovers a world of extreme makeovers in Beirut, bowls with the chief of police in small-town Kazakhstan, and encounters a mysterious Texan building rocket-propelled batmobiles for a clientele of sheikhs. With uproarious humour and keen cultural insight, The Sheikh?s Batmobile asks some vital questions: How is American pop culture consumed and reinterpreted in the Muslim world? Does it change the way they see us, and themselves? And can it bridge the vast differences that are tearing our world apart? See www.sheikhsbatmobile.com