Lebanon’s tourism chief is talking about suing “Homeland” for portraying Beirut as narrow, dirty and dangerous in the show’s new season.
The scenes in the show’s first few episodes were not filmed in Beirut, but in Israel. The story, however, places the action in the Lebanese capital.
“We are following the case legally,” Fadi Abboud, Lebanon’s minister of tourism, told a British newspaper.
“Yesterday, I raised this at the cabinet meeting, and the president asked the minister for justice and the minister of communications to see what can be done,” Abboud said.
Lebanon has spent heavily to rebuild and promote Beirut as a tourist center since a crippling civil war 25 years ago.
And the episodes of “Homeland” — which show American cars being attacked, streets controlled by Hezbollah thugs and gun battles — has been a big setback, officials said.
“I am calling on all young Lebanese adults to do what they need to do; to write blogs, to call the BBC and CNN to try to raise awareness that Beirut is not a city of Kalashnikovs and war,” Abboud said.
In the show, Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, is shown wearing a hair-covering hijab.
But in the neighborhood of Beirut where the scene is reportedly set, hijabs are rare, and women are more likely to be wearing jeans than religious garb, he said.
It is unclear where or how a country can take legal action against a TV show — though some sort of diplomatic complaint would be the most likely course for the unhappy government minister.