During the episode “Saudi Arabia” of the Netflix show Patriot Act, the Indian-American hoster, Hasan Minhaj, ironically and comedically narrates a series of events surrounding the current Saudi Arabia diplomatic crisis. He starts his performance by explaining what was the last straw, the main reason for the diplomatic conflict in Saudi Arabia – the brutal murder of the Washington post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. There was a general refusal of the American authorities, including Trump, and the public in general to believe that the killing was premeditated by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman, also popularly known as MBS. Previous from the occurrence, MBS was portrayed and encoded by a lot of the major media as a reformative figure due to some of his actions. MBS was responsible for lifting the ban that prohibited women from driving and the famous project vision 2030, a plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy. However, even though a lot of western people saw him as a reformative, most of the population in Saudi Arabia already knew that it is not true.
In Saudi Arabia one giant family controls majorly everything, moreover, it is a country with the net worth of more than one trillion dollars, according to The New York Times. For that reason, western countries including the United States of America tries to maintain a good relationship with it. This is one of the reasons why so many media outlets constantly tried to protect MBS trying to maintain the connection with Saudi Arabia. However, the murder of the journalist is not something as unexpected or surprising as the media portrays. In 2016, MBS put his own mother in under house arrest so she couldn’t stop him from achieving the power.
The way Minhaj narrates the events it’s in a very funny and tragicomedy style, it makes you laugh, but it also makes you question. What is encoded by the media is not always what is decoded by the public. Minhaj beautifully explains that as a Muslim he access God through Saudi Arabia, so it is devastating to see those kinds of things from the authorities of the country. It does not represent his and other Muslims values, as he stated. He also explains that the main problem with the encoded/decoded messages is that Saudi Arabia is the representation of Muslims, as a result, whenever they do something wrong, it creates a stereotype for all the others. In the end, America will keep having a good relationship with Saudi Arabia due to the money, even though MBS is not a great representative. As Minhaj states in the end, “MBS is not modernizing Saudi Arabia, it is modernizing Saudi dictatorship”.
Citations
“Saudi Vision 2030.” En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2019. Web. 22 Mar. 2019.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-unlearned-lessons-of-jamal-khashoggis-murder/2018/12/23/8584328e-0220-11e9-b6a9-0aa5c2fcc9e4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7a6cc88fe7e6