One of the original Star Wars filming locations in Tataouine, Tunisia. (Jean-Claude Gallard/Getty images)[/caption]Tatooine, the fictional planet where most of Star Wars is set, and where main character Luke Skywalker’s home village Mos Espa is located, is actually director George Lucas' adaptation of the name Tataouine, a city in southern Tunisia. In other words, if you were to try to locate Star Wars on a real-life map, it would be in Tunisia. Despite this, Walt Disney, the company behind the film franchise, has decided to move its filming location elsewhere: the UAE.
Ditching Tunisia for Abu Dhabi came at the worst possible moment for the North African country. Engulfed in a deep economic crisis, the Tunisian government hoped to boost its tourism industry this summer in order to generate more foreign currency. So the announcement that Tunisia was not a safe place to film, coming a few weeks before the start of the tourism season, came as a crushing blow.
Since the start of the uprisings in the Arab world, the UAE has become a shelter for most escaping or avoiding the politically unstable countries undergoing transition. Many investors in the movie, tourism and business industries have migrated from countries such as Tunisia or Egypt to the more stable UAE. In early 2013, it was announced that the UAE’s economy had been boosted by more than 8 billion US dollars thanks tohe so-called “Arab Springers.”
Tunisian officials avoided expressing any disappointment. The policy of the current government is to appease the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries as much as possible—especially the UAE, which withdrew its ambassador from Tunisia in 2013 over political quarrels with the previous government.
Disney's move was a wake-up call to the Tunisian ministries of culture and tourism, as well as civil society. After the revolution in 2011, many heritage sites in Tunisia became endangered through lack of security, looting and vandalism—an issue that has been largely neglected. Secondary sites such as the film set of Mos Espa were threatened by sand erosion, but there were no sustainable projects to take care of the site since it was not even considered part of the country's heritage. Despite a recent ‘Save Mos Espa’ campaign in response to Walt Disney’s looming decision to quit Tunisia, the company’s resolution remained unchanged, and shooting for Star Wars episode VII recently began in Abu Dhabi.
What is interesting is the silence of Tunisia's media and civil society after Disney’s announcement. Tunisia's media industry is largely controlled by anti-Ennahda tycoons, who are accordingly highly suspicious of Qatar (the UAE is the de facto ally, hardly ever criticized.) The same media are also favorable to the government and it seems there was a directive not to cause it any embarrassment by attacking the UAE.
Mos Espa may be in safe hands thanks to the ‘Save Mos Espa’ campaign, but Star Wars itself has been lost to another, and perhaps forever.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
