Abstract Syria serves as a leading producer of the musalsal [dramatic miniseries], a key Arabic-language mass cultural form. With its dark realism and biting humor, Syrian drama has become a primary mode of sociopolitical commentary for both producers and audiences, given the restrictions on journalistic and academic expression and the absence of participatory politics in most Arab polities. Drama creators deploy a range of temporal strategies to comment on social and political conditions. A reflexive, intertextual chronopolitics runs through serials produced before and during the Syrian conflict that began in 2011. The question ‘what went wrong?’ preoccupies musalsal makers, and their works frequently foreground their belief that Syrian society is ‘going backwards.’ For example, in historical genres of television serials, idealized images harken back to perceived golden ages of cosmopolitanism, throwing the contemporary condition into bitter relief. Makers of dramas set in the present invert this technique, locating the sources of contemporary ills in past mistakes and historical injustices, revealed in flashback, dialogue, and voiceover. Through a technique of narrative allochrony, drama creators also highlight their understanding of modernity’s lapses, depicting select practices, mores, and attitudes as out of sync with what they see as contemporary values. These dramatic depictions of the past and present all point to a failed national project and a derailed modernity. Their creators seek to counter what they deem as a flawed political and social evolution, one that they believe has led to deterioration in the region and a devastating war in Syria.

中文翻译：

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过去的过去：叙利亚电视剧中代表人物的时间政治

摘要叙利亚是主要阿拉伯语大众文化形式musalal（戏剧性迷你剧）的主要生产者。考虑到新闻和学术表达受到限制以及大多数阿拉伯政党缺乏参与性政治，叙利亚戏剧凭借其黑暗的现实主义和尖刻的幽默，已成为制片人和观众的主要社会政治评论模式。戏剧创作者运用一系列时间策略来评论社会和政治状况。自反的，互文性的时间政治贯穿于2011年开始的叙利亚冲突之前和期间的系列报道。问题“出了什么问题？” 乐团的制作者十分忙碌，他们的作品经常表明他们相信叙利亚社会正在“倒退”。例如，在电视连续剧的历史流派中，理想化的图像可以追溯到世界主义的黄金时代，这使当代环境陷入了痛苦。目前的戏剧制作者将这种技术颠倒过来，将过去的错误和历史不公的现代弊病源定位在倒叙，对话和画外音中。通过叙事同时的技术，戏剧创作者还强调了他们对现代性失误的理解，描绘了精选的做法，习俗和态度与他们认为的当代价值不同步。这些过去和现在的戏剧性描绘都表明一个失败的国家项目和现代化的脱轨。他们的创造者力图对抗他们认为是有缺陷的政治和社会发展的事物，他们认为这导致了该地区的恶化和叙利亚的毁灭性战争。