Women in Middle Eastern Film - Part One

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Critical debates around women and gender politics in the Middle East are increasing and increasingly stimulating. This is particularly due to the expanding interaction between scholars’, critics’ and filmmakers’ writings and works from Western perspectives and from within Middle Eastern countries. This dialogue between the East and the West is also the centre of attention as far as writings on World Cinema and gender politics are concerned. There is growing interest in the cinema of countries far beyond Hollywood and away from Europe, both in geographical and metaphorical terms.

It is clear that in producing works about their own cultures, narratives and societies or their views on the West, filmmakers from the Middle East have never been so successful. Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s success with Three Monkeys in 2009 and Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s achievement with Copie Conforme at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival are good cases in point. Hollywood, then, may have been the carrier of ideologies and images of the East, but with the increased number of films produced from within Middle Eastern countries and/or filmmakers of that origin, previously absent images are now present. It is for this reason that focusing on Middle Eastern film in general, and women in it in particular, is significant. As far as ideas about transnational cinema and effects of globalisation on cinema are concerned, filmic representation is affected too. With more films from the East, and with more women directing them, change is inevitable: the existing and stereotypical images are shaken up as images of women of the Middle East originating from the East travel around the world.

Contemporary films from Middle Eastern countries build and reflect upon the plurality of thought and the potential offered by cultural exchange with and by women, films and cultures brought together within this spatial configuration. There seems to be three recurring themes central to the discussion of women in Middle Eastern film: the relationship between women and Islam; the concept of violence that resonates across multiple layers of reference (physical, emotional, political, economic, clandestine, sexual, military); and finally the idea of presence and absence both at the representational level on the screen and in regard to the existing and emerging women filmmakers.

Honour killings, women’s chastity, adultery, virginity and sex are topics which have a considerable impact upon women’s lives and experiences in countries where Islamic patriarchal regimes exist. There are certain expectations in the West about approaches to women in the Middle East informed by religion. Islam and tradition, in this sense, are depicted in film as the reasons for women’s oppression, as well as being presented as topics of criticism – particularly in films that have a feminist standpoint. A good example of this is Shirin Neshat’s 2009 film Women without Men, which offers a view of Iran in 1953, when a British- and American-backed coup removed the democratically elected government. Adapted from the novel by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur, the film weaves together the stories of four women, whose experiences are shaped by their faith and the social structures of a patriarchal regime. Neshat explores: “the social, political, and psychological dimensions of her characters as they meet in a metaphorical garden, where they can exist and reflect while the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping their world linger in the air around them.”3 Alternatively, take Eran Riklis’ Lemon Tree of 2008, the story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemon tree field when a new Israeli Defence Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down. The vulnerability of a widow, and the land as embodied within the woman’s body, is the focus of the film. Another film that is worth considering here is Syrian filmmaker Diana El-Jeiroudi’s Dolls (2007), produced by Proaction Films, the only independent film production company in Syria that is in operation today. This documentary film explores the significance of the ‘Fulla Doll’, the veiled version of the American Barbie doll, whilst at the same time asking questions about women’s identity and their place in a society where Islam is the dominant religion. As Shohreh Jandaghian’s interview with the director states: “With her first feature documentary, Dolls, El-Jeiroudi attempts to reveal a trend towards the commercial appropriation of a female model that limits the mind, soul and body of a young generation, into one approved set of social and religious frame of choice.” [...]




[*] Parts of this blog entry has been published in Near East Quarterly, Issue 1, 2010. http://www.neareastquarterly.com/index.php/2010/08/04/representations-and-or-interpretations-women-in-middle-eastern-film/

“Honour is everything for Muslims”? A note on Vendetta Song, Cinematic Representation, Religious Identity and Gender Politics in Turkey

In Eylem Kaftan’s 2005 bio-documentary Vendetta Song a group of men are asked what honour means and one answers: “Honour is everything for Muslims. It is everything in Islam.” Vendetta Song is a significant film that calls for an analysis for its exploration of honour killings, gender inequalities, the traditional practice of arranged marriages and the semi-feudal social structure in Eastern Turkey within the context of Islamic tradition. The film problematizes the relations of the West to the East (both within and outside Turkey) as the narrative is structured as a travelogue of a woman travelling from Canada to Istanbul and then from Western to Eastern Turkey.

Religious values are significant determinants in cultural practices and customs in Turkey: honour crimes may not be religious but they are certainly religiously practiced. Indeed, violence shapes gender relations in various ways: both in reality and at the level of representation it resonates at different levels: verbal, physical, emotional. I raise three main questions here about the relationship between cinema and religion. The first question is: what can be said about the nature of the relationship between religion and tradition at the level of filmic representation? The second question is: why and how are honour crimes regarded as a customary practice of ‘the East’? And finally: how does Vendetta Song as a film which takes the previous two questions as its focus represent these complex links between the concepts of honour crimes, religion, patriarchal tradition, and ‘the East’? Honour crimes are generally associated with Islam and the East. However, there is in fact no intrinsic or necessary link between them.

Vendetta Song problematises the concepts of Islam and tradition whilst at the same time positioning honour crimes within an Eastern context. The film, on one hand, critiques gender politics through its feminist discourse and, on the other, attempts to deconstruct this misperceived connection between Islam and violence against women. Whilst doing so it also places emphasis on tradition rather than religion. The two are distinguished, and whilst it is accepted that they might intertwine, or that one might be overlaid on the other in practice, by thus distinguishing them, space is opened up for the possibility of critique. The tradition is a patriarchal tradition – and this is what the film focuses on. However, there is a serious issue whether the film, although it appears to want to draw this distinction between tradition and religion, succeeds in doing so clearly or consistently. Whether this is because of the aesthetic choices made in the film or whether it is a consequence of the self understanding of those filmed is another issue which needs to be carefully considered. Members of a society can subjectively (but falsely) believe that things which are not intrinsically linked are thus linked. The point, then, is that religion and culture or tradition are different categories and should be distinguished as such. The fact that a certain tradition or culture is largely based on religious practice in fact does not obscure this point. To conclude, I argue that tradition should not be thought of as justification to practices including honour crimes. To invoke tradition to justify a (violent) practice is not sufficient. Instead, institutional practices must be targeted to think about the reasons behind patriarchal discourses and violent practices.