This was written by Cycads and originally published at her blog.
Come into my parlour: A scene from Nadine Labaki’s ‘Caramel’ (2007)
The depiction of liberal Muslim women in film is a moment made of groundbreaking stuff. In a time where the veil is a symbol of subjugation, films about Muslim women like ‘Caramel‘ (2007) by Nadine Labaki*, with a narrative composed of universal themes like love and sex can stunningly shatter stereotypes. It is an anomaly amongst the more mainstream media imagery of women from Islamic countries; it revolves around a beauty salon in which its characters tackle issues of virginity before marriage (by way of hymen reconstruction), disappointed love, and even lesbianism. More commonly, the sexuality of Muslim women is a mystery. Often she is portrayed as sexless and submissive, covered from head to toe, even though in reality only a small proportion of Muslim women actually do so.
‘Caramel’ offers a rare glimpse in the private lives of Muslim women and that their lives can be no different from women living in more liberal societies. However, one can argue that Lebanon has a reputation of being more progressive than its regional neighbours, but their differences are often cosmetic. In ultra conservative post-revolution Iran, the subject of romantic love and even sex is carefully depicted; often symbolically and abstract– imbued with Persian philosophy, and flying white doves. Even the adoring gaze between lovers was deemed too hot for mullahs: the first love story to come after the revolution was about a pair of blind lovers! While the Muslim world constructs sex and womanhood around some well-defined limits, Western popular culture re-hashes over and over again the image of the belly dancer.
Celluloid habibis
Belly dancing heroine: ‘Khalli balak min Zouzou!’ poster
The image of the belly dancer pulsates with hypersensuality; her only raison d’être is meant for the male heterosexual senses. Originating from a land where there is pressure against expressing sexuality, she is a paradoxical icon so popular in the West. Her omnipresence in Western films and music videos is a sign of popular culture obsessed with the mystique of the Arabian woman. Religion aside, her culture represents the libidinally and emotionally unrestrained – a culture in need of moral reform – a classic Orientalist view of the East. To be fair, the term may sound a little outdated now, but Orientalism is still alive and well. It also takes shape of the gaining appeal in belly dancing lessons among white women. No other foreign subculture is employed by European women to empower themselves through the power of dance. The question then arises – is belly dancing sexually empowering, and do Muslim women reclaim their sensuality this way? Every year at the Cairo belly dancing festival in Egypt – the birthplace place of belly dancing, European and American participants go bare midriff whilst Egyptian women cover theirs with a see-through gauze. Granted, the belly dancer is not always the one-dimensional hypersexual creature film and popular culture constructs her to be. She can be a pastische of an Orientalist’s fantasy (remember ‘I dream of Jeannie‘?), and she can use her dancing prowess to assuage the hunger and feelings of frustration towards immigrants in the recent French film, ‘Couscous‘.
Teen Flick as Social Critic
It is pretty obvious by now that popular culture is preoccupied with only two representations of the Muslim woman: the one in unsexy burka and the sexy belly dancer. What about an insider’s view of the belly dancer? Is she still sexy by Muslim standards? A fair idea of what Egyptians generally think about belly dancing can be examined in “Khalli balak min Zouzou!” (or Watch out for Zouzou!), released in 1972 starring 70’s screen princess Soad Husni. It tells the story of Zeinab, or Zouzou, a young woman who financially support her mother, a former belly dancer, by moonlighting as a dancer herself. She gains popularity in her campus with her wilfullness and short skirts. Eventually her popularity wins her the title ‘Ideal Student’, much to the disdain of religious zealots, who make up half of the student body. Rather strangely, Zouzou’s strident liberal image is further challenged when images of her belly dancing is found circulating the campus. All is resolved when she rails against her detractors with a fiery speech about committing no sin in being a belly dancer’s daughter.
“Khalli balak min Zouzou” was a by-product of the swinging and free-loving sixties. University students in Cairo were the leaders of the liberal social scene, and many had an open attitude towards sex and drug-taking. Egyptians rushed to the cinema to catch campus-inspired love stories – student-student and student-teacher relationships were de rigeur then. However under the surface of these new attitudes still lie a sense of shame; often young Egyptians hid their other (more liberal) lives from families out of both fear and respect. As in “Zouzou”, the need to express oneself has to be justified in a battleground between conservatism and liberalism.
Transgressions
A Malay man’s wet dream: Sofea Jane as Zaleha in ‘Perempuan, Isteri, dan …’
In general, film-making in Muslim nations steered clear of overt portrayals of sexuality. Unlike the abstract imagery of love and sex in Iranian cinema, a few memorable Malaysian films preferred the raw (and quite crude) depictions of sexuality and its nasty consequences. Completely unknown outside the country, U-Wei Shaari’s “Perempuan, Isteri, dan Jalang” (Woman, Wife, and Whore, 1993) was a local commercial success, in spite of its art-house inclinations and widespread moral conservatism.
The title’s woman, wife, and whore is called Zaleha. In the beginning of the film, she is dragged into marriage to Amir who does not desire her. After taking her back to his village, he allows her to prostitute herself, and she soon becomes the object of sexual favours for men of the village. Far from feelings of guilt and shame, Zaleha relishes in her own sexuality while remaining in control of their gaze; in one scene she knowingly showers in the eyes of a voyeuristic neighbour. In this respect, Zaleha turns the table on the male gaze/female sex object model, and even challenges masculinity by choosing to have sex with the village idiot – which proved to be the last straw for Amir. Such sexual trangressions can only spell death for Zaleha; in the end of the film her husband murders her with a machete used by the village idiot earlier in the film to kill a bull – such symbolisms are aplenty in U-Wei’s films.
Intriguingly, “Perempuan, Isteri, dan Jalang” was not the only film in Malaysia to engage so explicitly in sex; a good comparison is the pre-independence (and pre-Islamic revival) Malaysian film, “Semerah Padi” (Red As Paddy), in which a woman’s sexuality brings chaos to her village; her forced subjugation to the village’s power elite being the only way to restore order in the world (and film). In a harrowing opening sequence, an adulterous couple is executed by ’sula’ i.e. the insertion of a spear through the anus to the heart. In the grisly punishments for such offenses, though not particularly Islamic, underlies the Malay society’s bloodthirsty need to publicly humiliate and ‘finish’ sexually wayward behaviour. The grisly punishments for sexually wayward behaviour are not in themselves Islamic; instead, they are punishments fit for the crime taken to literal extremes.
Taking into consideration a feminist film theorist perspective – Conclusion
While Zaleha has the power to express her sexuality, she does not have the power to challenge the patriarchy that ultimately kills her. The victimisation of the desiring female shares a similarity with a vast majority of American horror films where female, as well as male characters who sneak off to have sex are often killed off in the early measure of the plot. American culture in general still hold puritanical values in its engagement with sexuality, and it’s translated into film-theorist language as the audience and director’s sadistic viewing pleasure. Similarly in the case of the belly dancer, she becomes an object of viewing pleasure under the male gaze. Interestingly, for women, the belly dancer becomes an object that women can identify with narcissistically; because for many, the belly dancer represents an archetype of the feminine experience. In film and even in photography (e.g. Mata Hari) heavily suggest an ideal woman whose erotic power is both celebrated and feared.
Cinematic conventions regularly use items of clothing that contribute to the fetishisation of the female body while deflecting attention from the threatening female sexuality itself – this is where the striking belly dancer costume takes the fetishisation to full effect. Conversely, a more covered-up woman can prove just as seductive. In ‘The Piano‘, period clothing serves to tantalise both the male characters in the film and the viewer. Corsets, heavy petticoats and stiff skirts enclose the leading female protagonist’s (Ada’s) body, ostensibly making it available only to her husband. However, the bargain that Ada strikes with a neighbour, Baines, includes the removal of some of her clothing. The clothing becomes a fetishistic object as Baines lifts and smells her removed jacket. The veil, like Ada’s dress, is also projected as a fetishised object by both the male and feminist gaze. Due to the lack of access to the face (and hair), the veil can encourage an irrational notion of exotic sensuality and mystery. The veil is not popular in Britain, particularly the niqab. What frustrates many is the loss of ‘reciprocity’ from the wearer. Furthermore, the veiled woman’s ability to ’see without being seen’ upsets those who exist on the favourable end of society’s power dynamics e.g. men. The desire to unveil, on the other hand, has been for a while a duty of feminism – to free women from the veil is to reveal her identity and beauty – sometimes, quite literally: one of the most newsworthy stories following the decline of the Taliban in Afghanistan was the opening of a formerly underground-run beauty parlour.
In all of this, what remains misunderstood is the complex relationship between women and the headscarf that exists within an intersection of politics, religion, and personal choice that hasn’t been represented enough in the cinematic world. Furthermore, the sexual expression of women, particularly outside the Western world, does not necessarily conform to mainstream feminism which is why films like ‘Caramel’ and even ‘Perempuan, Isteri, dan Jalang’ are important as they push the limits of sexual acceptability in their respective societies.
Still, Muslim women have a long way to go. In the staging of ‘Hakeh niswan‘ or ‘Women’s talk‘ in Beirut – akin to an Arab version of the Vagina Monologues – characters complain about insults that refer to women’s body parts and address such issues as sexual harrassment on the streets and buses, lack of individual privacy, and the pre-menstrual syndrome. Though profoundly progressive by the Arab world’s standards, the Arabic word for vagina was not allowed during performance, instead a politically correct euphemism was used. The discomfort with female sexuality still persists, and like with patriarchal perceptions of women generally, the emphasis on the sexual detracts from the complexity, talent and humanity of any individual.
Editor’s Note: Though the majority of Caramel’s characters are Christian, this movie is germane because they live in a predominantly Muslim society and face many of the same issues that Muslim women in Lebanon (and other predominately Muslim countries) face.
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Tags: Cinema, film, Muslim women
“In the grisly punishments for such offenses, though not particularly Islamic, underlies the Malay society’s bloodthirsty need to publicly humiliate and ‘finish’ sexually wayward behaviour.”
Is this an uncorrected line which has been changed by the author on her own blog but missed here or an addition on the part of MMW editors? Some Malay legends may center on public humiliation of zina or the like but I wouldn’t be too quick to paint the whole society (that differs even between two neighbouring countries; Malaysia and Singapore) as ‘bloodthirsty’ in its dealings with sexual deviancy.
U-Wei Shaari has another film that deals with sexuality though it was not commercially successful and, honestly, not that very good. “Buai laju-laju” (swing me high) is about a young woman, Zaiton, married to an old rich man. She has an affair with a drifter and the movie ends with the rich man dead, the drifter in prison for murder, and her escaping with a lot of money after successfully tricking both men by use of her sexuality. Are her actions immoral? Sure. Did she, in a way, ‘defeat’ the ‘patriarchy’? In a way, she ‘beat the system’ by pulling herself out of poverty by marrying up and then managing to free herself of both men. I guess her femme fatale methods are technically cinematically conventional though, which explains the flop, nothing new and interesting.
I’d like to bring up another Malaysian director as this is the region I’m more familiar with. Yasmin Ahmad’s movies are quirky and I like that they are about the ‘every man’ unlike the flashier copycat-Hollywood types favoured by other directors. In the film “Sepet” (Malay word for slant eyes) the Malay Muslim girl walks freely in the traditional modest ‘baju kurung’ with her hair uncovered, going on dates with her Chinese non-Muslim boyfriend. Her mother, maid and herself appear onscreen wearing only a batik cloth wrapped around while lounging about at home or occassionally slow-dancing (mom and dad to American oldies). The family is ‘progressive’ and Western-educated yet they still hold on to Malay values, culture and are practicing Muslims. This is repeated again in the sequels and though the films are not centred on sexuality, I think these are good movies that represent ‘normalcy’ when it comes to Muslimahs and sexuality.
All that said, I think it’s time we moved away from this obsession with “Muslim women’s sexuality”. I’m not saying we should Puritannically censor. I just wished that each time a movie or story involving Muslim women come up, people would stop bringing up the issue of “Muslim women’s sexuality”. It highlights differences, zeroes in on the assumption that we are ‘different’ from other women. Certainly, we should make more movies, stories that destroys all the mouldy stereotypes of Muslim women (should I say Middle Eastern Muslim women?) but let’s try not to dwell on ‘differences’ and especially not exoticise it in the process.
“the emphasis on the sexual detracts from the complexity, talent and humanity of any individual.” That is so true.
Lestari, thanks for your comments. Yasmin Ahmad’s movies sound incredibly interesting; I’d like to get my hands on a few copies.
That line has been changed in Cycads’ original post, and I missed it. My apologies for the error. I’ll correct it here.
Interesting how you mention the ever widening appeal of bellydancing in the West. I suspected the popularity was there when I noticed that Bellydancing workouts were one of the more popular dance routines kept around by my Exercise On Demand cable channel. Bellydancing has also experienced a resurgence in popularity today due to Western pop culture appropriating it ala Shakira, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc. It certainly is a paradox to think of the Muslim woman as being both sexually repressed and a sensual dancing vixen at the same time.
Lestari,
I think it’s important that we get ‘obsessed’ with Muslim women’s sexuality, because any kind of representation in film, TV, literature, however subtle or graphic is reflective of the way women are treated in the societies they live in. The ‘differences’ highlighted here are merely cosmetic i.e. cultural, and that Muslim and (for lack of a better word) western women alike can be sexually empowered AND objectified.
Films in Malaysia do not flop because people are tired of conventions, it’s because U-Wei Shaari made arthouse films and therefore doomed to do badly commercially. ‘Perempuan, Isteri, dan Jalang’ became notorious for its sex, and Malaysian audiences were not interested in anything deeper than that. A sweeping statement, but it’s true: sex sells. There are loads of tired cinematic stereotypes in blockbuster Malaysian films and popular tv dramas: the horny married man, the effeminate male comic relief, and the two-dimensional leading couple in Yusuf Haslam’s film; these are characters Malays can’t get enough of – it’s practically ingrained in our culture!
Yasmin Ahmad’s ‘Sepet’ depiction of sexuality is quite conservative, but it is not representative of Malay culture in general. Malays are much more conservative than the characters in ‘Sepet’, who are upper middle-class, tolerant, progressive Malays – only a smaller proportion of Malays are like this. The only one in ‘Sepet’ who has sex outside the boundaries of ‘normalcy’ is Jason, the girl’s Chinese non-Muslim boyfriend, who has sex with his ex-gf. He is working-class; which is perhaps why he can’t be portrayed with more morals ;p But he does better than Orked in school, which reinforces some old stereotypes that ethnic Chinese Malaysians are ‘smarter’. But I digress.
Fatemeh,
Sorry about the few changes here and there. I did write the essay in a flurry of ideas!
Rchoudh,
“It certainly is a paradox to think of the Muslim woman as being both sexually repressed and a sensual dancing vixen at the same time”.
Actually, they can. By being an object of patriarchal control, male fantasies and insecurities, a woman is expected be demure and unsexy as possible in public, but a total whore in the bedroom.
wait – Lebanon is a “predominantly Muslim society”? Since when? There are no recent censuses, but the entire concept behind Lebanon is that it should be a majority Christian country.
The only film of these I have seen is Khalee Balak Min Zoozoo. She does not “moonlight” as a belly dancer. She only dances once, at a party, to protect her mother who was invited to dance there only to be ridiculed, and that’s when she delivers the line. The concept of social mobility is an important one there: she herself is NOT a belly dancer, she’s a successful university student now, and marries the professor hero. that part is important. Belly dancing was then in Egypt derided more on social grounds: being a belly dancer was being low class as well as disrespectable. this is far different that the notions popular today, as the author noted. Bu re the filmy gauze: that is a matter of law, which decrees that Egyptian dancers must cover their stomachs.
Cycads,
I read your article again and I see it more fully now. Jumped the gun there, sorry about that, because when I saw the words “bellydancer”, “burqa” and “sexuality” and immediately labeled it as ‘just another one of those articles’. I’m tired of seeing ‘bellydancer’ pitted against ‘burqa’, you see, but now that I realise the article is holistically looking into depictions of sexuality in film involving Muslim women, I think it’s brill.
However, I wouldn’t paint Malays as entirely conservative. At the very superficial level, fashions depicted in movies and TV shows aren’t wildly different from that of the average Malay.
@ forsoothsayer: Though I know it’s not the best source, I’m going off of the CIA factbook’s site, which was updated in Sept. 2008. They say that Lebanon’s Muslim population makes up 59.7% of the total religious population, while the Christian sects make up only 39%.
forsoothsayer,
You may have a point there. I saw ‘Zouzou’ a long time ago on Malaysian tv, and thought it was brilliant. Perhaps ‘moonlighting’ wasn’t the most suitable word and my memory might’ve failed me. But I did read a synopsis somewhere to refresh my memory which said that Zouzou helped her mother financially by working as a dancer. Ah well. Even though the film centered on social mobility, my article was about how her belly dancing was received – and as you said, it was derided even then, before the Islamic revival. The reason why she can be accepted as a progressive young woman, and not as a belly dancer (not necessarily her job), is largely a class issue here, which adds a whole new dimension to sexuality that I did not include in my article because it will be way too long.
I think a discussion of class issues is a feminist issue. I would have liked to see it in the review.
Hi!
I wanted to comment on this post because I’m a white American belly dancer. I’ve been taking classes for about seven years now — that’s probably why I’m reading this blog in the first place, because my admiration for dancers from Egypt (tough businesswomen and passionate artists) made me question my culture’s standard portrayal of Muslim women.
First of all, I don’t think it’s fair to say that belly dancing is the only foreign dance that European women consider liberating and exciting — many women of European descent also study dances like Flamenco, Tango, African dances, Balkan folk dances, etc.
In mainstream white culture in the US, social dancing isn’t really considered a valuable tradition or art form. Most people associate it with nightclubs and people looking for “hookups” rather than with any artistic or cultural value of its own. I think that’s a big part of why social dances from other cultures have so much appeal; it seems like fun to just get together and dance without it being about sex. In particular, belly dancing is an activity that can be done in a group of women as a low-pressure social activity, with friends or family members.
Unfortunately, when the mass media in the US does a story about belly dancing, they ALWAYS bring up this idea that the dance is supposed to be sexy and exotic or something. Most belly dancers I know of all races are annoyed by that stereotype — to us, it’s something we’re doing for fun, exercise and artistic value, not to somehow transform us into oh-so-sexy Middle Eastern women. But of course, whatever you put in front of a TV camera instantly turns into sex.
First, I forgot to link up to a post I did when I first started MMW that touches on this topic. It looks at the “Islamic” Madonna/whore complex in Western movies.
@ Sarah: you might be interested in my critique of western belly dancing here.
Sarah,
It was not my intention to dismiss other dances as disempowering! Unlike other forms of dance, belly dancing has become almost synonymous with sex. By being in control (through genuine enjoyment) of those who watch and desire the dancer simultaneously empowers the dancer and liberates the dancer from being just another passive sex object.
Sorry, too much feminist and film theory!
[...] week on MMW, we look at Muslim women’s sexuality through film, wondered about ethnic/cultural representation in the Guardian’s “This Muslim [...]
OMG I love this blog! You women are amazing! I’m going to force my students to read your blog!
Hi,
I just want to make a correction with regard to Perempuan, Isteri dan Jalang.
Quote: In the beginning of the film, she is dragged into marriage to Amir who does not desire her. After taking her back to his village, he allows her to prostitute herself, and she soon becomes the object of sexual favours for men of the village.
Actually, she isn’t dragged into marriage. She tricked him into marrying her but only after he has turned her into a prostitute by leaving her at a brothel and then coming back for her. Also, he is away a lot doing business so he had no idea that she was sleeping with the village idiot or using her feminine charms on the other men (i.e. the cloth merchant, the truck driver she flirts with).
cheers,
Gaik