ABSTRACT
In the mid-20th century, post-independence Egypt underwent a series of radical social and spatial transformations, with significant consequences for its coastal edges. By 1955, beaches, in fact, were harnessed as the perfect setting for the State to use as spaces to encourage romantic unions, away from restrictive social norms. In this paper, I contend that the State aimed to mold its subjects by the physical sculpting of the architecture and infrastructure of the coastal edge. In this way, the beach is argued to be a media—both in the sense of media as a mediating, in-between condition, and in the popular understanding of media as a space for creating a new set of social practices. Through an analysis of State-funded beach films, such as the 1967 The Women’s Camp, I demonstrate that the beach has been crafted as a space to promote new, progressive conjugal love matches—but one that inadvertently reveals the underlying repression, desires, and tensions that ultimately subvert the State’s cinematic and social agenda.
