When the Lights Go Down in Cairo
When the Lights Go Down in Cairo
Cinema as Global Crossroads and Space of Playful Resistance
Filmgoing in downtown Cairo had long taken place in the gap between official hopes for cinema as a vehicle for socially edifying purposes, and the unpredictable reality of audiences in movie theaters. Certainly by the late 1980s, movie theaters had lost favor in the eyes of cultural gatekeepers. Male youth had taken them over. Elites willfully mischaracterized these young men as a barbarian invasion of lower-class “tradesmen,” thereby obfuscating a phenomenon that was, in reality, connected to a broad downgrading of middle-class fortunes in the post-Nasser era. As open-market economies inexorably became the only policy choice on offer, promises made in an earlier era of social advancement through education began to ring hollow. The life stage of the “student” began to look like a prison sentence as it elongated into eternity, while marriage—traditionally the boundary between childhood and adulthood—receded into the distance.
Keywords: filmgoing, Cairo, cinema, movie theaters, young men, lower-class tradesmen, open-market economies, education, student, social advancement
Cairo Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
