These signifiers are products of the last ten years, smartphones and virtual social networking, and cultural icons like Bob Marley and Kim Kardashian. But in Saudi Arabia, an isolated Wahhabist paradise β and the largest and wealthiest country in the Middle East β these abbreviative signs are handy rhetorical devices for tapping into an unrestrained subculture while under the seemingly inescapable gaze of government censors.
Dating in Saudi Arabia, aside from being logistically impossible public spaces are divided into bachelors and family-only zones , is illegal. But then again, most products of modern life, particularly American culture, are.
This does not mean that Saudi Arabians do not drink, do drugs, watch porn, and have sex. In the modern nation-state β be it liberal or Wahhabist β law-making is myth-making, and legal jargon, enforced by lashes and the death penalty, is fodder for the Saudi government, whose interests lie in maintaining the integrity and validity of the national imaginary. The instantiation of a national legal code supposedly creates and conscripts a legally sanctioned citizen, one that fits nicely within the Wahhabist doctrine of the Kingdom.
Saudi individual does not exist outside of the bounds of the law. After all, there is no greater myth created by the law than the fact that it is completely constitutive of culture, that it sets the parameters within which culture exists. Bacchanalian events feature Saudi princes wielding Kalashnikovs at men who eye their women, cheetahs on top of Lamborghinis, and falcons perched on the shoulders of scantily-clad Eastern European women. The scene is populated by char- acters like Elisa from Brazil, who moved to Jeddah to teach Salsa dancing, and Sam, an actor who moved from France to learn Arabic so he could play a part of a kid in the banlieues and make some extra cash.
This sybaritism is not entirely expat-produced; though expats do play a large role in the formation of the Saudi subculture, there a re also many Saudi nationals in the scene. Usually the locals hail exclusively from the upper echelons of society. If your name bears the mark of one of them, you are likely hosting the craziest parties in the Kingdom.
