Arab World's First 'Webdrama'
Producers seek to seduce young Arab audiences with web-based drama.
An upbeat, happy-go-lucky 15-year-old delivery boy swerves through the streets of Beirut on his moped. He brings people juice, does their groceries, delivers packages, gets into serious trouble, falls in love, and so on. The plot is inventive, animated and definitively urban.
But what’s unique about Shankaboot is not its ingenuity, cinematography or content, but that its viewership is not Arab families sitting on leather couches all over the Arab world: the Arab world’s newest drama series can only be seen online.
The world’s first Arabic webdrama, Shankaboot (meaning moped) targets urban Arab youth in five-minute episodes broadcast on the drama series’ website, YouTube, Facebook and other online outlets. There are online games for each episode, comedy clips, discussion forums and competitions.
“We are trying to tell a story young people can identify through a medium they can identify with,” Amin Dora, the director of Shankaboot told The Media Line. “You can’t reach these people through TV. The young generation are much more web-based, with only 20% of their lives on TV.”
“We saw the trend towards web-based series in the West,” he said. “So our goal was to make the first Arabic web series. Of course if a TV station wants to buy it, there will be no problem and maybe another category of people will watch it, you know 45-year-olds and above, but 16 to 35-year-olds are the people who are watching this on the web.”
Launched earlier this month, Shankaboot’s 30-episode first season features an intrepid young street boy, Suleiman, the aspiring film star Ruwaida and their secretive friend Chadi who gets Suleiman into quite a bit of trouble. Four episodes have been aired to date.
“This is the story of a 15-year old delivery boy,” Dora said. “He’s a freelancer of sorts, promoting himself. Then he meets a girl, gets some more serious jobs, gets into trouble and his life changes dramatically, but I can’t tell you anymore.”
“Suleiman gives a very dynamic, positive image of young, urban Beirut,” the director continued. “We have many soap operas in Lebanon, most of them with fake stories that don’t relate to society. We are trying to show the kinds of problems faced by the young generation and to be more authentic with the subject, the characters, the acting, the visuals and the style.”
“We are trying to capture the atmosphere of Beirut,” he added. “So the locations that we shot in are rarely used on television.”
“Young Arabs are hungry for high quality, independent, creative content, that matches their expectations that have been built up by watching Western content,” Hady Amr, Director of the Brookings Doha Center and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told The Media Line. “They want the quality of the West, in terms of cinematography, scripts, the financial investments, the sets, the speeds, but they want it in their own cultural milieu.”
“Whenever content is produced that is genuinely Arab but of high quality, that lives up to expectations Western media has built up for Arab youth, it just gets gobbled up,” he said. “So while I can’t speak to the business model and whether it will make money or not, it could be that vehicles like this will be very effective.”
“There are plenty of exceptions but people are people and in general things that work in the West will probably work in the Arab world,” Amr continued. “The difference in the Arab world is that there is less content and the content delivery mechanisms in Arabic are weaker than they are in the West. Yes, if you’re middle class and have a satellite TV you can watch hundreds and hundreds of channels, but while you have Arab TV stations, you can’t watch hundreds of channels producing creative Arabic material.”
Amr said successful Arab producers were those able to both produce high quality material while addressing issues of relevance to Arab audiences.
“The family dynamics in the Arab world are very different than Western dynamics,” he said. “So there is extensive intrigue but we don’t have everyone sleeping with each other and things like this.”
“Some of the most popular shows in the Arab world are Turkish soap operas,” Amr continued. “Why? Because they are approaching Western quality but the sensibilities, the background, the issues and the look of the people are all closer to the Arab world. That’s what people want.”
Benjamin Joffe-Walt
The Media Line