lt seems that the ban on talking about the series “Sm ile, General” in loyal circles has been lifted, and some loyal Syrian artists have begun to express their opinion on the most controversial dramatic experience in this Ramadan season. At least on the Syrian level. The opinions showed the agreement of the speakers, including the actor Bassem Yakhour and the actor Aref Al-Taweel, to describe the experience as an experience that falls “outside the artistic logic” without really understanding what makes an artistic experience fall within or outside the artistic logic, is it referring, for example, that the dramatic events are fully imagined And it has no connection with reality or history, and the absence of the condition of time and place about it, makes it an experience outside the artistic logic? Didn’t this happen in the same “Al-Arbaji” series starring Bassem Yakhour? As the viewer can notice what was written in the wide “screenshot” before the start of each episode, “that the events and characters of the series are imagined and do not simulate any historical stage,” despite the fact that the text of the dramatic series is based entirely on the elements of the Levantine environment, whether in the urban form, in fashion, or in the dialect. Beyond that, the urban context of a society inside the wall, which bore the entirety of the dramatic conflict, represented, of course, by the Damascene merchant class and the features and problems of its market. In the methodologies of dramatic writing for cinema, television and theatre, it is possible to dispense with the condition of place and time in the story and to choose a time and place for the story, provided that the story remains deeply concerned with its imaginary time and place.
So what makes “Al-Arbaji”, for example, enter the artistic logic and “Smile, General” get out of that circle, if both works open their episodes with this guidance that everything that the recipient will see is imagined and there is no link between the imagined event and reality except by coincidence. In the methodologies of dramatic writing for cinema, television and theatre, it is possible to dispense with the condition of place and time in the story and to choose a time and place for the story, provided that the story remains deeply concerned with its imaginary time and place, and that it is objective and closely related to these two important factors, meaning that the story can live, flourish and rage. And it escalates in an indefinite temporal and spatial context, but it logically belongs to its time and place, just as the story of the “Game of Thrones” series lived and interacted, for example, or The Lord of the Rings, and the list goes on, as there is no specific place or time, but it is a story that is tightly tied to its time and place. On the other hand, time can be dispensed with or even not set accurately, and the place can be kept and precisely defined. Indeed, the place can be the actual engine of the wheel of dramatic conflict, and the story will also live and expand, such as the series “The Fall of London and the Fall of the White House” starring Gerard Butler or “Western” movies. Western fantasy. So, in the case of dispensing with time or space, or both together, and sticking to the story and pulling its characters to their imagined time and place, the dramatic work does not come out of the circle of artistic logic. This is what makes the impressions of some loyal artists on the series “Smile, General” shaky, confusing, and even illogical.
Absence of oversight evokes creative responsibility:
Writer Samer Radwan talked about his fear of the absence of censorship and the unlimited amount of freedom in his work on the story of the series “Smile, General”. However, the absence of the censor’s scissors does not mean freedom from creative responsibility and orientation to the audience with intelligence and professionalism. It was very easy for the writer to name things as they are. She and he refers to us in Lebanon, and we are the best aware of the reality of this authoritarian family with its names, its good news, its skills and its officers, but such a choice would involve a lot of laxity and the use of the shortest way to address our emotional rather than interactive field, so I attended the creative responsibility to employ the document without overusing it and building on facts but without diminishing Space for imagination and caution against targeting a specific audience, as it is not the series “The Opposition”. It is a Syrian series that addresses everyone who understands the Syrian dialect.”Radwan” borrowed writing techniques from the scene of the incident and proceeded to give the political document dramatic features and worlds without slipping into the so-called documentary drama. The question here is whether there is a methodology on which “Radwan” relied to construct his story with sincerity of imagination and bias towards drama without neglecting the references to his political story? I think that the answer to this question is by trying to understand the reason behind this temporal and spatial camouflage of a dramatic event whose characters symbolize living, contemporary personalities who still practice their actions in conjunction with the actions of the dramatic characters. The dramatic event here is neither entirely historical nor entirely imagined. It is likely that “Radwan” used special writing techniques to address his dramatic event, which is intertwined with the contemporary political event, not only as a political event, but as a contemporary event and person who must be given a special dramatic dimension in order for the story to live, continue and interact. It emerges from its political and investigative journalistic framework and takes its place as a dramatic story. This was done with great effort and carefully drawn approaches. This technique was originally a theatrical technique called the theater of the incident. The writing of this theatrical school requires synchronization, that is, the synchronization of the contemporary event with the theatrical event and an attempt to answer political problems through the theatre. The advantage and value of this type of writing comes mainly from keeping up with the contemporary, which takes place according to its realistic condition, while the writing penetrates psychologically and dramatically into the incident. Radwan borrowed writing techniques from the scene of the incident and proceeded to give the political document dramatic features and worlds without slipping into what is called documentary drama. . Peter Weiss, the German theorist and founder of the incident theater movement, literary and artistic, attaches special importance to the event. You see the event and the plot taking precedence over building the complex dramatic character, and the observer will notice that the main characters in the series do not live in complex internal conflicts and that they are emotionally disciplined. This indicates that “Radwan” relied on the stylistics of the incident to give the event and the plot the greatest presence and maintain the follow-up and suspense factors. This is in contrast to his well-known style and passion for weaving highly structured characters with sharp turns, such as the character of “Amer” in the series “The Curse of Clay” performed by the actor “Maxim Khalil”, the hero of the series “Smile, General”, as well as the character of Lieutenant Colonel Raouf in the series “Birth from the Loin” performed by the actor Abed. Fahd, the writer “Samer Radwan”, succeeded in using this theatrical technique and adapting it in television drama writing and in keeping the story alive, vital and dramatic enough to maintain the conditions for its continuation and retain its suspense until the end. Therefore, and based on that, the series was not direct, nor was it ambiguous or encoding either. It was sufficiently dramatic and documented to the extent that serves the story. It was not a series directed to an audience with a certain political mood, but it raised the mood of this audience with a specific orientation and transcended it to different segments, tastes and moods. The most important thing is that it was not outside the artistic logic, but rather within the core of the artistic logic that is passionate about research and proposing qualitative solutions to the dramatic story and the artistic logic that avoids easygoing, commodification, regurgitation of the story and the conflicts themselves.
