Sensationalism, media, and the state in a changing Morocco

Winner, 2014 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize, American Institute for Maghrib Studies

Facing rising demands for human rights and the rule of law, the Moroccan state fostered new mass media and cultivated more positive images of the police, once the symbol of state repression, reinventing the relationship between citizen and state for a new era. Jonathan Smolin examines popular culture and mass media to understand the changing nature of authoritarianism in Morocco over the past two decades. Using neglected Arabic sources including crime tabloids, television movies, true-crime journalism, and police advertising, Smolin sheds new light on politics and popular culture in the Middle East and North Africa.

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Moroccan Noir is impressively researched. Collecting the artifacts of popular culture in Morocco is no easy task. . . . Smolin's years of dedicated work spent compiling these materials has resulted in a book that is, without question, an accomplished and valuable resource on a little studied topic.

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Smolin's research is impressive for its scope and attention to detail. Through archival research, interviews with key players, and media analysis, he has produced an invaluable study that will be of interest to anyone working on Morocco's recent history of human rights abuses and moves toward reform, the role of fictional writing, media, and television in these reforms, and the way that the state both controls and reacts to the shifting terrain of security and human rights.

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Moroccan Noir . . . is a cogent analysis of the hegemonic process at work, whereby elite groups are able to reconstitute and reinvent themselves in order to preserve the overarching power structures sustaining their dominant status.