Well, that's one Carrie Mathison didn't see coming.
The latest season of Showtime's Emmy-winning Homeland sees Claire Danes' Carrie traveling from Berlin to a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon. The refugee camp, of course, was only a film set designed by Homeland's production company -- who thought it would be a good idea to add some extra authenticity by asking "Arabian street artists" to draw some Arabic graffiti on its dilapidated walls.
The artists -- Heba Amin, Caram Kapp and Stone -- were specifically asked to write messages that were apolitical. They... didn't exactly listen to that request.
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"Set designers were too frantic to pay any attention to us; they were busy constructing a hyper-realistic set that addressed everything from the plastic laundry pins to the frayed edges of outdoor plastic curtains," Amin explains in a blog post. "The content of what was written on the walls, however, was of no concern. In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East."
Which is why she and her cohort decided to decorate those walls with messages like "This show does not represent the views of the artists," "#blacklivesmatter," and, most notably, "Homeland is racist."
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Screen-Shot-2015-10-15-at-8.25.25-AM.png" caption="Left: "There is no Homeland." Right: "#blacklivesmatter."" credit="Photos courtesy of the artists" alt="Homeland racist"]
Why'd they do it? Because, according to Amin, Homeland is "thinly veiled propaganda" that promotes fear and mistrust of Muslims of all backgrounds, without bothering to differentiate between people as diverse as Arabs, Pakistanis and Afghans.
As she writes: "For four seasons, and entering its fifth, Homeland has maintained the dichotomy of the photogenic, mainly white, mostly American protector versus the evil and backwards Muslim threat."
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2_Homeland_SE05E02_04.jpg" caption="An image from 'Homeland' Season 5, episode 2. The graffiti says "Homeland is racist."" credit="" alt="Homeland"]
This is hardly the first time Homeland's been accused of promoting a skewed view of the Muslim world. An article printed in The Washington Post last October called Showtime's celebrated drama "the most bigoted show on television;" The Guardian had a similar examination of the series in 2012, noting that in Homeland's universe, "high-profile Muslims living in the US share a secret: both willingly or otherwise they are covert helpers of Abu Nasir, the al-Qaida terrorist leader.
"In other words," the article continued, "it does not matter whether they are rich, smart, discreetly enjoying a western lifestyle or attractive: all are to be suspected."
When asked for comment, Showtime gave Mashable the following statement:
"We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air," says Homeland showrunner Alex Gansa. "However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage."