Abstract
Innocence of Muslims is a trailer in search of its film, featuring actors in search of their roles, directed by a propagandist sought by the FBI. It did eventually find its audiences, active audiences that could, in many instances, act on it without having seen it. If this kind of reaction is usually held up as evidence of censorious ignorance, in this instance it was merely adequate to the form, as the globally circulated trailer was conceived with relatively firm expectations of its viewers and witnesses. Posted on YouTube during July 2012 by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian who used the pseudonym ‘Sam Bacile’ — what has become known as the Innocence of Muslims exists for the vast majority of its audience as a 14-minute pastiche, The Real Life of Muhammad, a ‘trailer’ for an unverified full-length movie called The Innocence of Bin Laden allegedly screened in Hollywood during June 2012.
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© 2014 Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley
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Lentin, A., Titley, G. (2014). More Proof, If Proof Were Needed: Spectacles of Secular Insistence, Multicultural Failure, and the Contemporary Laundering of Racism. In: Braidotti, R., Blaagaard, B., de Graauw, T., Midden, E. (eds) Transformations of Religion and the Public Sphere. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401144_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401144_8
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