Carla DiBello On Why Arabia’s Myths And Legends Deserve An Update – By The Modern, Authentic Voices Who Call It Home
“These authentic, personal stories of this incredible region are a large part of why I fell in love with it. They’ve become the stories I have been the most passionate to learn – and they’re the ones I am most passionate to share…”
As people, we tend to be confident in what we know – until we are confronted with further knowledge. The unfortunate truth is that most of us do not put ourselves in this position, and so we cling ever-more steadfastly to that which we already believe we know.
Changing my location has always been a way for me to expand my knowledge. Before I began travelling to the Middle East and well before I moved to Dubai, my knowledge of the region was limited to what most of the United States knows about the Middle East, reliant heavily on tropes and generalisations via news headlines, film, and TV depictions.
While I’ve always admired the greats, from the Queen of Sheba to Cleopatra, a true, authentic understanding of the culture, people, and everyday way of life was lost on me before actually coming to the region and making it my home. It wasn’t until I was fully immersed that I truly grasped and appreciated the nuances of Middle Eastern life.
What I discovered was twofold – first, that it was not so different as lives lived in the United States. Secondly, that the Middle Eastern way of life from the Western perspective was greatly skewed, primarily due to Western limitations and access to storytelling. While the easy thing to do would be to put the blame on intentional distortion, one has to acknowledge that misrepresentation will always happen when a story is being told by someone else. Even with the best of intentions, when the voices that chime in to shape a narrative do not contain the source itself, some things will always get missed.
The more I’ve travelled back and forth between the West and the East, the more I’ve learned to identify the gaps between its myths and legends and the true, genuine voices of the people who call it home. These authentic, personal stories of this incredible region are a large part of why I fell in love with it. They’ve become the stories I have been the most passionate to learn – and they’re the ones I am most passionate to share.
Before I founded my consulting firm, I spent a good deal of my career in TV and film production. My background was primarily focused on big-budget, commercial feature films and reality television. I had no intention of continuing this line of work when I moved to Dubai. However, the more I became immersed in the rich layers of the Middle East, the more I felt compelled to return to film and television in a completely new way. There are so many stories around me that need to be told – and not just contained within the Middle East.
The West is craving to know more about the Middle East – and not through watered down, clichéd tropes that fill in the blanks for what is not understood, but through the eyes and minds of the actual people. As Marshall McLuhan so famously wrote, “The medium is the message.” In other words, the way communication happens – and through what vehicle – is how the true message is relayed.
This last year, as the world shut down around us and we were all left with possibly too much time to reflect and muse over things like the complexities of meaning, I began to ponder this gap in Middle Eastern stories, and how to help them be told in a more actionable way. And this is how Arabia + has come to fruition.
While we are just beginning, the goal for Arabia + is to become a streaming platform where Middle Eastern stories, told by its people, will have the ears and eyes of a global audience. It will be a place where myths of the Middle East can give way to candid, honest, and inspiring stories of the true Arab experience.
While we are working towards an official launch – and still accepting submissions from Arab films and filmmakers – we’ve reached a place where I can see it coming together. I’m greatly looking forward to the day that the everyday Arab experience will be as familiar to the world as its legends of the past.
Photography: Efraim Evidor. Styling: Jody Hassan. Carla Wears: Dress, Dhs3,085, Marine Serre at Matches Fashion. Hair and Make-up: La Loge. With thanks to SLS Dubai Hotel & Residences.
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s September 2021 issue