Ett komplext hemland
En kvalitativ studie av televisionsprogrammet Homeland
After 9/11 and the following War on Terror, Muslims are often understood as global enemies. However, the idea of an international, Islamic enemy is in some circumstances criticized, not least after the actions of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in 2011.This study analyses the North American, Emmy Award-winning television series Homeland. It centres on the War on Terror and the following social and political climate, and there are opposing understandings regarding how religion and ethnicity are portrayed in the series. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to analyse how such aspects are constructed in the series. A text analysis is used methodologically and the theoretical perspective contents of Semiotics, Eurocentrism and Orientalism in general, and Islamophobic themes in particular.This study shows that in Homeland, the portrayal of heroes and enemies plus good and evil is complex. Islamophobic ideas are present, however, instead of agreeing with them, these often times show how such ideas are part of today's society and how they are affecting Western ideas of Muslims as public enemies. Concurrently, Christianity is exclusively portrayed in civilized circumstances, whereas Islam occasionally is portrayed asa sort of being that controls its adherents. With that said, Homeland is above all a construction of complexity.