Two American newspapers report on the cultural life of Saudi Arabia today. The first, from The New York Times, notes that with little social activity ‘authorized’ by restrictive society, young Saudi males (the only ones with permission to drive) take up dangerous activities with their automobiles. Recent Saudi court cases dealing with fatal accidents that result from things like ‘drifting’ indicate that the government is well aware of the danger and is trying to quash it.

Saudis Race All Night, Fueled by Boredom
ROBERT F. WORTH

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — The young men start gathering around midnight, on a broad strip of highway between the desert and the sea. By 1 a.m. there are hundreds of them, standing in clusters alongside their cars, glancing around uneasily for the police.

Then, with a scream of revving engines, it begins: a yellow Corvette and a red Mitsubishi go head to head, racing down the road at terrifying speeds, just inches apart. Shouts go up from the sidelines, and another pair of racers shoot down the road, and another.

This may be the most popular sport of Saudi youth, an obsessive, semilegal competition that dominates weekend nights here. It ranges from garden variety drag racing to “drifting,” an extremely dangerous practice in which drivers deliberately spin out and skid sideways at high speeds, sometimes killing themselves and spectators.

For Saudi Arabia’s vast and underemployed generation of young people, these reckless night battles are a kind of collective scream of frustration, a rare outlet for exuberance in an ultraconservative country where the sexes are rigorously segregated and most public entertainment is illegal. They are, almost literally, bored out of their minds.
…

The Washington Post carries an Associate Press report by Donna Abu-Nasr on how the government is trying to expand the space for cultural activities. These, if they were not terminally boring, would provide at least some alternative to racing down the streets. But this approach requires a touch of realism, too. How many all-male, folkloric dancing groups can a teenager sit through, after all? If the folkloric dancing happens to be something like the Samba, there’s no chance that any young Saudi will see it outside the borders of his TV screen.

Cultural events on the rise in Saudi Arabia
Donna Abu-Nasr

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — When word spread that Brazil was going to be the guest of honor at the Riyadh International Book Fair, a Saudi official had to reassure the public that the Brazilians wouldn’t be dancing the Samba at the 11-day event that opened recently.

The question to Abdul Aziz Al-Subeil, a senior Information Ministry official, at a news conference last week reflected the wariness with which cultural events are viewed by many here. For conservatives, book fairs, plays and movie screenings are a cause for concern because they allow for the mixing of the sexes, the playing of music and the introduction of books that they believe violate religious and moral values.

Still, despite the regular interruption of cultural activities by men who sometimes claim to belong to the religious police, there has been a marked increase in such events in the past few years.

One of the most groundbreaking was a concert held by the German Embassy last year at a government-run cultural center that broke many taboos in a country where public music is banned, public concerts are almost never heard of and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast food outlets.
…

It’s going to be some time before Saudi Arabia offers a cultural climate that provides true entertainment and distraction from testosterone-charged alternatives.