“The Innocence of Muslims” may not have actually inspired the killings of four Americans in Benghazi, but news of the video has sparked protests in many Muslim countries. The video is crude, both aesthetically and ideologically. It was, presumably, intended to offend, and it is having that effect. But, like the Beijing Evening News editor who reprinted an Onion story verbatim, the people taking umbrage at “The Innocence of Muslims” are giving it more respect than it deserves.
Some have compared its director (whoever he or she really is) to Theo van Gogh, the Dutch provocateur who was murdered in retaliation for a short film he made. Van Gogh’s film was bad in many ways, but at least it strove for political and artistic merit. “The Innocence of Muslims” looks like a mere stunt. Watch any ten seconds of the “trailer” for it posted on YouTube (you can choose them at random; it won’t make much difference) and if you are a certain type of media consumer—one who frequents Buzzfeed, say, or Everything is Terrible—you will identify it as part of a genre. It’s a bad viral video, one of the innumerable pieces of flotsam that wash up daily on the Internet’s endless shore. Sadly, when translated into Arabic and stripped from its cultural context, “The Innocence of Muslims” seems like more than the sophomoric trifle it is.
In June, the video was posted to YouTube by a man calling himself Sam Bacile, who later claimed to be an Israeli Jew. It turns out that Bacile is probably Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian, a convicted fraudster, and an alleged meth cooker. (When an Associated Press reporter found Nakoula and asked for his driver’s license, Nakoula placed his thumb over his middle name, perhaps hoping to distract from its resemblance to Bacile.) He claims to have raised five million dollars to make the movie, but from the fourteen minutes available online, it’s hard to see where that money went, beyond the construction of a green screen and a trip to Party City. If the movie’s makers were aiming for a “Ten Commandments” vibe, they ended up with something that looks more like “History of the World: Part I” or a Busta Rhymes music video.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there is, or was, a feature-length version. For now, the fourteen-minute assemblage on YouTube is being called a trailer, but it has none of the attributes of one: no credits, no narration, no hint of a plot arc, certainly nothing that would make anyone want to see more. There is one actor playing Muhammad the whole time, and we are meant to understand that he is aging because his beard gets grayer. Other than that, the video is mostly non-narrative. Muhammad is portrayed as a drunk, a child molester, and a homosexual. (“Is the Master dominant or submissive?” asks an onlooker in a moment of helpful exposition. “Both,” Muhammad replies.) At one point, an unidentified man who looks like Merlin and talks like Rick Perry says of the Koran, “It will be a mix between subversions of—from the Torah, and subversions from the New Testament, and mix them into false verses.” The sound editing looks like it belongs on the Bad Lip Reading blog; this is because the actors were originally given an inoffensive script called “Desert Warriors,” and the audio was later overdubbed with references to Islam.
If Theo van Gogh is the wrong analogue, a better one might be the 2003 cult classic “The Room.” Often called the worst movie ever made, “The Room” is one of the few films that is truly so bad it’s good. Its director, Tommy Wiseau, is also an enigmatic man with a shadowy past. As Tom Bissell recounted in his fantastic non-profile of the director for Harper’s, Wiseau dodges all straightforward questions, especially the one he is asked most often: “Are you trying to be funny?” A magician does not reveal his tricks. “The Innocence of Muslims” shares the Art Brut novelty of “The Room,” but none of its magic. While the central question about “The Room”—Does it succeed at being comedy or fail at being melodrama?—is interesting enough to sustain a giddy two hours, the central question about “The Innocence of Muslims”—Does it succeed or fail at being reprehensible?—only leaves the viewer feeling sullied.
In June, the video was posted to YouTube by a man calling himself Sam Bacile, who later claimed to be an Israeli Jew. It turns out that Bacile is probably Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian, a convicted fraudster, and an alleged meth cooker. (When an Associated Press reporter found Nakoula and asked for his driver’s license, Nakoula placed his thumb over his middle name, perhaps hoping to distract from its resemblance to Bacile.) He claims to have raised five million dollars to make the movie, but from the fourteen minutes available online, it’s hard to see where that money went, beyond the construction of a green screen and a trip to Party City. If the movie’s makers were aiming for a “Ten Commandments” vibe, they ended up with something that looks more like “History of the World: Part I” or a Busta Rhymes music video.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there is, or was, a feature-length version. For now, the fourteen-minute assemblage on YouTube is being called a trailer, but it has none of the attributes of one: no credits, no narration, no hint of a plot arc, certainly nothing that would make anyone want to see more. There is one actor playing Muhammad the whole time, and we are meant to understand that he is aging because his beard gets grayer. Other than that, the video is mostly non-narrative. Muhammad is portrayed as a drunk, a child molester, and a homosexual. (“Is the Master dominant or submissive?” asks an onlooker in a moment of helpful exposition. “Both,” Muhammad replies.) At one point, an unidentified man who looks like Merlin and talks like Rick Perry says of the Koran, “It will be a mix between subversions of—from the Torah, and subversions from the New Testament, and mix them into false verses.” The sound editing looks like it belongs on the Bad Lip Reading blog; this is because the actors were originally given an inoffensive script called “Desert Warriors,” and the audio was later overdubbed with references to Islam.
If Theo van Gogh is the wrong analogue, a better one might be the 2003 cult classic “The Room.” Often called the worst movie ever made, “The Room” is one of the few films that is truly so bad it’s good. Its director, Tommy Wiseau, is also an enigmatic man with a shadowy past. As Tom Bissell recounted in his fantastic non-profile of the director for Harper’s, Wiseau dodges all straightforward questions, especially the one he is asked most often: “Are you trying to be funny?” A magician does not reveal his tricks. “The Innocence of Muslims” shares the Art Brut novelty of “The Room,” but none of its magic. While the central question about “The Room”—Does it succeed at being comedy or fail at being melodrama?—is interesting enough to sustain a giddy two hours, the central question about “The Innocence of Muslims”—Does it succeed or fail at being reprehensible?—only leaves the viewer feeling sullied.
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