https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4007-7200
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ABSTRACT
This article explores the representation of garbage in Lebanese literature and film, focusing on the children’s book, Picture Perfect (2021), by Najla El Khatib (b. 1987) and two films by director Mounia Akl (b. 1989): Submarine (al-Ghawwāṣa, 2016) and Costa Brava, Lebanon (Kūstā brāfā, 2021). Each reframes socio-political crisis, including the 2015 garbage crisis, the 2020 Beirut port explosion, and mass migration as ecological disaster. Rather than war, conflict, or sectarian belonging, the texts assert that it is ecological degradation that is a threat to Lebanon. Drawing on environmentalism, eco-materialism, and waste studies, I analyze how waste in the texts flouts the trope of mountain romanticism that makes up the myth of Lebanese identity, putting into question the safety and sanctity of the home and thereby of the nation. I thus argue that, by foregrounding garbage and environmental degradation, they contest dominant discourses on Lebanese identity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For instance, the environmental degradation brought about by the sand quarries flattening the mountaintops of Mayrouba are depicted as a problem specific to the residents there, as reported by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International in the 2012 segment, "Sand Quarries in Mayrouba," accessed through YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-ssFTRpdw.
2 Makdisi, “The Rise and Decline of Environmentalism in Lebanon,” 209.
3 This and the citation in the previous sentence are from Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 8.
4 Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 13.
5 In his analysis of the impact of the Rahbani brothers on Lebanese cultural identity, Stone similarly highlights the centrality of the Christian Mountain village. He argues that the brothers turn this pastoral image into the romance of a pure Lebanon, calling it the Rahbani nation, to which even the rebellious Ziad, son of Asi Rahbani and Fairouz, was not immune. See Stone, Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon, 2.
6 Aghacy, Writing Beirut, 32.
7 Makdisi, Beirut Fragments, 250.
8 Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 81–82.
9 Aghacy, Writing Beirut, 66.
10 Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 6.
11 Thill, Waste, 44, 8.
12 Chakrabarty, “Of Garbage, Modernity and the Citizen’s Gaze,” 541.
13 The symbolism associated with Beirut is complex because of the precarious dichotomy between tradition and modernity mentioned above; nevertheless, Beirut is often linked to modernity understood as progress (Aghacy, Writing Beirut, 7). For more on the complexity of symbolism, see also Aghacy, “Contemporary Lebanese Fiction: Modernization without Modernity” and Hayek.
14 Moughalian, “Naameh Landfill, Lebanon,” para 3. For more on the EJAtlas, see Temper, Bene, and Martinez-Alier, “Mapping the Frontiers and Front Lines of Global Environmental Justice.”
15 There was one short, almost comic effort to shut down the Costa Brava landfill in 2017, but the effort came not because of the leachate seeping into the sea, the leakage of gas, the stench, pollution, or health risks associated with a landfill so close to urban and residential areas. Rather, it was because the innumerable seagulls circling the landfill became a threat to airplanes landing in and taking off from the airport. These seagulls continue to threaten aviation today.
16 Khalil et al., “Municipal Leachates Health Risks,” 2.
17 Citton et al., “Multisource Groundwater Contamination under Data Scarcity,” 2.
18 Moughalian, “Naameh Landfill, Lebanon.”
19 Khalil et al., “Municipal Leachates Health Risks.”
20 Moughalian, “Bourj Hammoud Landfill.”
21 Thill, Waste, 4.
22 “Lebanese Ministry of Tourism.” Accessed January 3, 2023. http://www.mot.gov.lb/Home.
23 As cited in Makdisi, “The Rise and Decline of Environmentalism in Lebanon,” 207.
24 Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 4.
25 Robin, Wright, “After Twin Explosions, an ‘Apocalypse’ in Lebanon,” The New Yorker, August 5, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/after-twin-blasts-an-apocalypse-in-lebanon.
26 Hajjar et al., “The 2020 Beirut Explosion,” 296.
27 See, for instance, Caraway and Caraway, “Representing Ecological Crises in Children’s Media” and Boggs et al., “Beyond The Lorax.”
28 German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, as cited by Caracciolo, Narrating the Mesh, 14.
29 See Caracciolo, Narrating the Mesh.
30 Akl is a graduate of architecture from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA) in Lebanon and of film direction from Columbia University. She had worked on television and web series in Lebanon before making fiction films. She also works on advertisements for numerous local and international fashion designers.
31 Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 21.
32 Iovino and Oppermann, “Theorizing Material Ecocriticism,” 458.
33 Douglas, Purity and Danger, 36.
34 Emigration, for instance, is the central theme in Georges Nasser’s Ila Ayn (Where To?), which debuted in 1957 and became the first Lebanese film to represent Lebanon in the Cannes Festival official competition.
35 The successive crises experienced by Lebanese today have resulted in what is being referred to as Lebanon’s third wave of mass migration. According to the Beirut-based research and consultancy firm, Information International, in a country of approximately four million, of those with passports and able to emigrate, approximately 17,720 left in 2020, 79,134 in 2021, and another 42,200 before mid-October 2022 (“Lebanese Emigrants 815,000 in Three Decades,” The Monthly. November 11, 2022. https://monthlymagazine.com/article-desc_5214_).
36 Thill, Waste, 21.
37 Chakrabarty, "Of Garbage, Modernity and the Citizen’s Gaze," 542.
38 Douglas, Purity and Danger, 36.
39 “Trash becomes nature, and nature becomes trash” (Yaeger, "The Death of Nature," 332).
40 Al-Daif, Taqaniyyāt al-buʾs, 71. فلو استطاع الانسان النظر اليها من دون ان يشم الروائح المنبعثة منها، لكان منظرها جميلاً. Translation mine.
41 Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 21.
42 Morrison, The Literature of Waste, 9.
43 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 28.
44 The award-winning filmmaker and actress who ran for office during the 2015 garbage crisis.
45 She uses the French "speciale."
46 Lise Clavi, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” Culture aux trousses (weblog), July 30, 2022, https://cultureauxtrousses.com/2022/07/30/costa-brava-lebanon/.
47 This is especially true as one of the officials standing behind the president during the inauguration scene, the one with the ponytail, looks very much like former prime minister Saad Al-Hariri.
48 Jessica, Kiang, “‘Costa Brava, Lebanon’ Review: Slight but Charming Parable About Personal Freedom and the Compromises of Off-Grid Living,” Variety (weblog), September 14, 2021, https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/costa-brava-lebanon-review-1235057167/.
49 Thill, Waste, 8.
50 Morrison, The Literature of Waste, 2.
51 These are the words of Elise Salem, as cited in Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 68.
52 Aghacy, Writing Beirut, 7.
53 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 6.
54 Aghacy, “Lebanese Women's Fiction,” 458.
55 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 32–33.
56 Hayek, Beirut, Imagining the City, 7.
57 Beyond the content of the film, Akl claims to have made the shoot as environmentally sustainable as she could. According to the film’s production house, Abbout Productions, they used biodegradable napkins and stainless-steel plates and porcelain coffee cups instead of single-use disposable ones. They also had a water dispenser with reusable water bottles for each person on set, rather than disposable plastic bottles. The landfill was created using visual effects, trash bags were “borrowed from a recycling facility and returned after wrapping” the shoot, and all organic waste was composted. See Abbout Productions, @abboutproductions, “Slides Outlining Film Shoot’s Environmental and Sustainable Practices.” Instagram, August 6, 2022.
58 Ghosh, The Great Derangement, 11.
59 Laing, “Literature and Politics,” 16.
60 Maguire, “Literature, Politics, and History,” 96.