'Homeland is racist' graffiti tags shown on set

Graffiti artists hired to work on the set of Showtime's Homelandhave duped the popular series, painting Arabic slogans criticizing the show on walls seen in the background.

In the episode aired in the U.S. Sunday set in a Hezbollah-run refugee camp in Lebanon but filmed in Berlin star Claire Danes can be seen walking by slogans including "Homeland is racist" and "Homeland is a joke and it didn't make us laugh."

The group, calling itself The Arabian Street Artists thename itself a tongue-in-cheek jab at the initial solicitation from
Homeland producers for the set work kept the action quiet untilthe episode was shown, even though it was filmed in the summer.

On Wednesday, the three Berlin graffiti artist Stone, Heba Aminand Caram Kapp published the details on Cairo-based Amin'swebsite, and the images quickly went viral.

'We obviously struck a chord'

"I think this really had an impact, and we obviously struck achord," Stone, who goes by one name, told The Associated Press onThursday.

"From the reactions we have seen, a lot of people had not sohappy feelings about this show so there is a lot of happiness comingour way right now."

The Emmy award-winning show now in its fifth season is extremelypopular, but has also been widely criticized for its depiction ofMuslims, and also by the governments of Lebanon and Pakistan for itsportrayals of their countries.
Still, Stone said most positive responses he has seen haveactually been from the U.S., though also from the Middle East.

The three came up with the idea early this summer, when Stone wascontacted by the production company looking for graffiti artists whocould add authentic-looking graffiti to the film set depicting aSyrian refugee camp.

Stone said the group was initially unsure if they wanted to workon Homelandat all "until we got the idea we could insert ourmessage into the show."

"It was our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself,"Amin, an Egyptianvisual artist who also took part, wrote on her personalwebsite.

Producers 'too frantic to pay attention'

Amin claims the producers were "too frantic to pay attention" to the artwork.

"In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completesthe horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanizingan entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover this season to refugees."

On ThursdayHomelandco-creator and showrunner Alex Gansatold Deadline Hollywood: "We wish we'd caught these images before they made it to air. However, asHomelandalways strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can't help but admire this act of artistic sabotage."