Penn’s Marwan M. Kraidy Receives Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to Study the Spectacle of the Islamic State

The video shows a Jordanian pilot in an orange jumpsuit standing in a cage, his head bowed. A match hits unseen gasoline, and what follows is unspeakable. The pilot burns to death at the hands of the Islamic State, multiple cameras recording it in detail. The event itself was perhaps a minute, but the official edited video drags on for 22 minutes. Maximizing fear and horror on phones and computers worldwide - that's the whole point. Of all the geopolitical crises convulsing the Middle East today, most alarming is the rise of Islamic State (IS). Its propaganda thrives on spectacle -a self-obsessed, sensationalistic, and inciteful swarm of words, sounds and images that obliterates reality, rejects the Other, and basks in its own glory - and increasingly its opponents within the Arab world are fighting back with their own engrossing counter-spectacle.