Hit Show 'Homeland' Punked With Hidden Messages

— -- The most recent episode of Showtime’s hit show “Homeland” is making headlines for hidden messages that sharp viewers detected in the background.

The hidden messages appeared in a scene where Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, walks through a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon. She passes by a wall with some graffiti written in Arabic, but the producers didn’t know what the messages translated to in English.

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One of them read, “’Homeland’ is a joke, and it didn’t make us laugh.”

The group responsible, the Arabian Street Artists, who were hired to design the Syrian refugee camp set, said they did it to protest what they believe is the show’s negative portrayal of Muslims.

“The series has garnered the reputation of being the most bigoted show on television for its inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans, as well as its gross misrepresentations of the cities of Beirut, Islamabad and the so-called Muslim world in general,” the artists wrote on one of their websites. “For four seasons, and entering its fifth, Homeland has maintained the dichotomy of the photogenic, mainly white, mostly American protector versus the evil and backwards Muslim threat."

The show’s producers seemed calm about the situation.

“We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air,” Alex Gansa, the executive producer of “Homeland,” wrote in a statement. “However, as ‘Homeland’ always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.”