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Choosing to dramatise his research into the execution of a Saudi princess,
documentary filmmaker Anthony Thomas became caught up in one of the most serious
drama-documentary controversies, resulting in a diplomatic confrontation between
Britain and Saudi Arabia.
For Christopher Ryder, the rebellion of the late princess against her family
demonstrates divergent social pressures on Arab peoples, including Islamic
tradition, radical politics, feminism and Western influences. Her troubled sense
of self is reflected in a dramatic structure that makes her identity unstable:
as in Citizen Kane (US, 1941) or Rashomon (Japan, 1951), Thomas returns to
incidents from differing, subjective viewpoints, and the princess becomes the
subject of conflicting descriptions and sometimes untrustworthy information.
While travelling to meet an eyewitness, Ryder emerges into the light from a dark
tunnel, but if this implies arriving at an understanding, his interviews lead
him away from it.
Like the Englishman who missed the gunshots because he was struggling to find
a decent vantage point, Ryder struggles for other ways of seeing. Ultimately, he
can only describe her rebellion as meaningless. This emphasis on unknowability
is comparable with the failure of imagination in Western understanding of the
East which Edward Said described in his book Orientalism. Ryder's restricted
interpretive position is acknowledged by his friend Marwan and, although his
voice-over seeks to explain and filter his interviewees' disparate viewpoints,
he could perhaps be described as another unreliable witness.
Thomas protects his interviewees by changing their names and identities, but
critics predictably seized upon the consequent blurring of fact and fiction to
question its truthfulness. This was heightened by former writer Penelope
Mortimer's description of its 'fabrication' (she later clarified that she meant
dramatic construction, not invention). This was used to support criticisms of
the content which offended the Muslim community, particularly the sexual
activities of Saudi princesses and the promotion of a radical Islam through one
character's argument that Islam was being perverted by autocratic regimes.
Holding the British Government responsible, King Khalid cancelled a trip to
London and expelled the British ambassador. The Thatcher Government condemned
the programme and the Foreign Secretary apologised. When it was shown on PBS in
America, advertisements (funded by an oil company) called it a 'fairy tale'.
Drama-documentary methods were condemned during Parliamentary debates, despite a
failure by critics to identify any untruths, thereby demonstrating that attacks
on content had again been displaced onto form.
Dave Rolinson
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