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 Monika Moeen, 22 year-old Copt, shared her thoughts on the lack of representation of these rich Coptic intangible cultural heritages. She maintains that the recipes, folktales, names, and traditions that are passed on in her family are completely strange to the majority of the Egyptian population. She goes on to explain that she never sees characters in movies or television programs that look like her, sound like her Coptic parents, use the same phrases or language she grew up hearing, or listen to their traditional music and tunes. These aspects of intangible cultural heritage are completely absent from Egyptian media, which makes them absent from Egyptian social life; as we discussed, there is massive interlink between Egyptian film and television and day-to-day culture and social interactions. By doing so, Coptic culture becomes vulnerable to extinction, which not only denies all Egyptians and future generations of Egyptians from a rich and extremely valuable part of a culture that is rightfully theirs, but it also slowly but surely will result in the decay of the Coptic identity as a whole and their distinctive features and traditions will dwindle until they eventually cease to exist.

"Familiarity makes all the difference" 

- Monika Moeen 

Monika talked about how saddened she is that she sees the Coptic culture start to die already, she maintains that people are so unaware of their practices and intangible cultural heritage which makes Copts less inclined to perform these practices regularly, and that the new generations of Copts are less likely to know the Coptic language, folklore, and other pillars or the Coptic culture which is a concerning indication of the culture’s intangible elements fading. If I were in a room with Egyptians, practically anywhere in the world, and I happen to say the word “meta’weda”, the conversation is guaranteed to be interrupted by all the Egyptians as they will definitely interject with “daymaan”. This is a phrase from a play that was popular in 1976 called the witness who says nothing. One character says the first word which translates to ‘she is used to this’ and the other character says ‘always’. The exact wording and tone that the characters use is mimicked to this day by Egyptians of all ages. What’s interesting is that my friends and I have used this exact phrase time and time over, and for the sake of the project I asked them all where they learned this. It was fascinating to see that not one of us knew where this saying came from and were all equally shocked to find out that it was from a play that aired 47 years ago. This was never something our parents taught us, or that we learned in school, frankly no one actually knows how we picked up many sayings and words. However, it is an essential part of our culture and identity, it fosters a sense of unity and belonging. This is an example of the extent to which Egyptian film and television creates culture, most prominently intangible cultural heritage, and penetrates society to an incredible level. If Egyptians start seeing and using more sayings, words, jokes, anecdotes, stories, etc. that are derived from the Coptic culture, the Egyptian identity and cultural narrative will be transformed.  

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