Escape to Germany in Syrian Television Drama: From Cross-Cultural Gender Constructions to Transnational Tropes of Masculinity and Homeland

Abstract

Looking at programs from the 1960s onward, this article shows the persistence and evolution of the gender imbalance in Syrian television characters' relationships with Germany. Before the 2011 uprising, screenwriters linked women charac ters to Germany as a way to challenge patriarchal standards of sexuality and gendered conceptions of national belonging. As the war has ensued, this trope has vanished. Meanwhile, long-standing narratives about men emigrating to Germany continue to represent abandonment of the homeland and have become intensified through nationalist nostalgia.