Introduction to the End of an Argument (1990)

Made by the Lebanese-Canadian video artist Jayce Salloum and the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, 'Introduction to the End of an Argument' deals with the distorted picture we have of Arab culture in general and of the Intifada – the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation – in particular. Salloum and Suleiman have combined and confronted fragments of image and text taken from Hollywood, European and Israeli films, documentaries and news items with material Salloum personally recorded in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. What is revealed is far from reassuring: for years we have been bombarded with a vision of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is riddled with racist and ideological prejudice. Instead of listening to the people involed, we have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by the insidious images and news items propagated by our own, prejudiced and superficial media. The videotape mimics the dominant media's forms of representation, subverting its methodology and construction. A process of displacement and deconstruction is enacted attempting to arrest the imagery and ideology, decolonizing and recontextualizing it to provide a space for a marginalized voice consistently denied expression in the media. Salloum and Suleiman have compiled an incisive argument for the need to think and look beyond.