United States of Al: Hollywood’s brown saviour project

Chuck Lorre and Reza Aslan’s new CBS sitcom is another iteration of Hollywood’s classic ‘white saviour’ story.

The United States of Al (USoA), a new CBS situation comedy produced by Chuck Lorre and Reza Aslan, received an immediate backlash after the release of its official trailer last month. The plot of the show, which aired for the first time on April 1, is set around the friendship between Afghan interpreter Awalmir or “Al”, and an American marine veteran, Riley. The ongoing controversy is centred on the choice of Adhir Kalyan (South African of Indian descent) to play an Afghan, and the comedic approach taken to war. But there are stakes at hand that extend beyond the representation of an Afghan immigrant in a sitcom. Americans are consuming the war in Afghanistan curated through media – drone operators treat asymmetrical warfare as a video game, Lorre and Aslan turn war into entertainment. Forgotten seems Baudrillard’s warning that technologies of image consumption put distance between war and the audience, making it seem like atrocities did not happen and are not happening. The war is being sold to the public as something moral and necessary, through the figures of the white saviour soldier and the deserving Afghan/Muslim. Despite executive producer Aslan’s proclamations of commitments to a “Muslim protagonist”, and his defensive claims that the USoA is centred on Awalmir, it becomes obvious even in the trailer what the show is really about: a white solider who returned home scarred by war, Riley, and his white American family.