‘Wonder Woman’ ban won’t faze the Lebanese

Banning Wonder Woman is not a reflection of Lebanon’s entrepreneurial, outward looking spirit.

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There has been quite a lot of coverage about the Lebanese interior ministry's decision to ban Wonder Woman, the action adventure feature film starring the Israeli actress Gal Gadot, which according to Forbes is expected to have already grossed at least US$200 million globally by the time you read this.

The whole fuss stems partly from the fact that Lebanon is still technically at war with Israel, a state of affairs that has stood since 1948, when the newly independent country, for the first and last time, joined an Arab League coalition to thwart the establishment of the fledgling Zionist state.

Armistice agreements were signed between Lebanon and Israel in March 1949, but these were, and are still, not considered peace treaties.

So every now and then, Lebanon needs to flash its moral credentials by standing up to the Zionist entity, in this case by banning a film about an Amazon warrior princess who gets involved in the First World War to stop Ares, the renegade god of war whom she believes has taken the shape of a German general and is making a new and improved deadly mustard gas.

This could be viewed as a robust gesture that shows the world that we will have no truck with Israeli policies or a meaningless act of virtue signalling from a corrupt and hypocritical state.

However, with Wonder Woman expected to eventually gross around $600m, the film's producers will hardly miss the Lebanese revenue. Israel won't feel anything, while Lebanon will once again be cast as muddled and comically conservative, with the only meaningful financial loss felt by the film's local distributor. So I'm going with the latter.

Lebanon is a country that normally prides itself on being open-minded and fun-loving, but the global media was quick to seize on the story and paint us as faintly ridiculous, which we can be, and out of step with the rest of the world, which is probably not the case.

Yes, many Lebanese will be irritated by what they will have seen as a swift reaction to what is essentially an insignificance when there is a backlog of more pressing issues such as electricity, water, rubbish collection, job creation and so on.

Meanwhile, the economy is in free fall with one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world. But the issue that really galvanises the nation’s civil servants is an Israeli actress wearing a gold tiara and thigh- high boots wreaking mayhem across the nation’s cinema screens.

It is a lesson that Lebanon, despite its phenomenal reputation for doing business, would be wise to learn. Lebanon is half the size of Israel with half the population, but Israel’s GDP is three times bigger.

It needn’t be this way. Lebanon is blessed with more natural resources, an equally educated workforce and resourceful, presentable and multilingual businessmen who are respected the world over.

The Lebanese government just needs to finally understand that there is a new generation of Lebanese, one that is outward-looking and which can, by and large, make up their own minds about what is appropriate and what isn’t.

In the meantime, the Lebanese will no doubt find a way to watch Wonder Woman. They always do.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton

business@thenational.ae

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