Graffiti which appeared in hit television show Homeland accused the drama of racism, the artists commissioned to produce it have revealed.
Three artists claimed they were hired for the project to lend authenticity to the second episode of the fifth series show, which has aired in the US and Australia and will be shown in the UK on Sunday.
In a scene at a fictional Syrian refugee camp, Claire Danes, who plays CIA officer Carrie Mathison, is seen passing a wall on which “Homeland is racist” is written in Arabic.
A statement published by Arabian street artists Heba Amin, Caram Kapp, and Stone, reveals other slogans daubed on walls in the show include: “#blacklivesmatter” - a reference to protests against police shootings in the US – and “Homeland is a joke, and it didn’t make us laugh”.
The scenes, shot on the outskirts of Berlin, appear in the show as a refugee camp on the Syrian-Lebanese border.
The three artists claimed they had been asked to write “pro-Assad graffiti” of the sort they were told was authentic in refugee camp.
They wrote: “Given the series’ reputation we were not easily convinced, until we considered what a moment of intervention could relay about our own and many others’ political discontent with the series. It was our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself.”
The trio added that the content had not been checked by producers, writing: “In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanising an entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover, this season, to refugees.”
Homeland has previously been criticised for its portrayal of the Middle East and the references to the threat of Islam as a religion.
The Evening Standard has approached the show’s producers, Showtime, for comment.
