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

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!

@ Sarah: you might be interested in my critique of western belly dancing here.

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.

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 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.