Use that platform when you’ve got it, right? In the spotlight arguably more than he’s ever been in the past, “Moon Knight” director and executive producer Mohamed Diab has been very vocal about using Middle Eastern culture and, specifically, Egypt in modern superhero projects. The country plays a significant role in the new Marvel Studios streaming series as Egyptian mythology is directly tied to Marc Spector/Steven Grant’s alter-ego, Moon Knight. However, Diab is now pointing out that DC films are not doing their best to properly represent the country and Egyptians.
“You never see Cairo,” Diab tells SFX Magazine in a new interview criticizing the depiction of Egypt in “Wonder Woman 1984.”
“You always see Jordan shot for Cairo, Morocco shot for Cairo, sometimes Spain shot for Cairo. This really angers us [Egyptians]. I remember seeing ‘Wonder Woman 1984,’ and there was a big sequence in Egypt, and it was a disgrace for us. You had a sheik — that doesn’t make any sense to us. Egypt looked like a country from the Middle Ages. It looked like the desert.”
“In my [‘Moon Knight’] pitch, there was a big part about Egypt and how inauthentically it has been portrayed throughout Hollywood’s history. It’s always exotic — we call it orientalism. It dehumanizes us. We are always naked; we are always sexy, we are always bad, we are always over the top.”
That’s not the only DC Comics project the director takes issue with, as he called out Warner Bros./DC Films for setting “Black Adam” in the fictional Middle Eastern country, Kahndaq, which is from the comics but an obvious stand-in for Egypt while speaking with Filfan (via The Direct).
“I was really annoyed with DC when they set ‘Black Adam’ in a fictional Middle Eastern country as an excuse to cast non-Egyptians when it was obviously meant to be in Egypt. Representation opportunities shouldn’t be wasted… But it’s not a full mistake since it’s based on an iteration of the comics that doesn’t mention Egypt,” Diab explained.
He added, “I wanted to showcase Egyptian talents as much as I could. Every culture should be represented by its people, so I hired actors, an editor, a costume designer, an art director & a composer who are all Egyptian.”
He raises some interesting points, and many will be looking for a rebuttal for those involved with the films he’s criticizing. “Moon Knight,” starring Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, begins airing on Disney+ starting on March 30.