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By Maggie
Morgan
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A scene
from Sahar El-Layali, Sleepless Nights, Directed
by Hani Khalifa, 2002. The utmost dream of
a commercial production is to be a film qonbela
- a bombshell; in other words, “a must
see” both in terms of entertainment
quality and being seen as “inoffensive”. |
Introduction
Egypt is the only Arab country that can boast of a
commercial film industry. When people speak of “Arabic
films,” they are referring to Egyptian cinema.
Films reach all homes. They have influence over people’s
thought patterns and behaviours. It is, thus, interesting
to view the relationship and dialectic between cinema
and society in general, especially in relation to
the topic of women and sexuality.
A renowned Egyptian film director, Dawood
Abdelsayed, once recounted to me that an intellectual
once asked him, “Why are all the women in your
films whores?” Abdelsayed was shocked at the
question—coming from a serious thinker—since
none of his characters were prostitutes in the literal
sense. Nonetheless, the question shows the widespread
perception of female sexuality—if it exists,
then it is evil. Pornography and female sexuality
are often seen as interchangeable.
One of the women directors in Egypt,
Inas el-Degheidy, makes films that are in fact, commercial
and quasi-pornographic. In spite of this, or perhaps
because of this, she is often referred to as a “feminist
director.” Whereas other films that are truly
expressive of the rights of women and provide realistic
portrayals of women and sexuality are often disregarded
by mass audiences.
Very few directors make films with any
pre-conscious considerations of their portrayal of
women. Their films express what may be considered
subconscious views about women inherent in the majority
of Arab minds. Therefore, it makes an interesting
study to observe the statements made about women and
sexuality in films - for they generally reflect public
opinion.
The Labelling Game
Morality is a crucial factor when it comes to critiquing
and evaluating Arabic films and the mass media. Filmmakers
and television directors are very careful to make
distinctions between good and bad women in their dramatic
works. There are no grey areas and the degree of ‘goodness’
or ‘badness’ of any given person is closely
linked to their sexual conduct.
The utmost dream of a commercial production
is to be a film qonbela (bombshell) - a film
that is definitely a “must-see,” because
it is both highly entertaining and inoffensive like
the El-Lemby film series. Then there is the film
fi risala, (a film with a message,); and such
a label means that the film is morally acceptable
and hence “forgiven” for not including
sensationalist entertainment. With this classification,
there are no misgivings that the message may be a
tad too didactic.
Occasionally at a cinema entrance, people
inquire of one another, “qissa walla manazir?”
(story or scenes?) The question makes reference
to whether the film just has a message or story or
if it includes love scenes. The sex scenes are a point
of attraction for inquisitive teenage boys but a put-off
for the wider, more conservative audiences.
There is also the fairly new phrase,
cinema nadhifa, (clean cinema) that describes
an entertaining film that does not offend conservative,
religious sensibilities by portraying what may be
considered promiscuity, obscenity, or a critique of
religion.
Since the moral epitaphs attached to
films are a relatively new phenomenon, some argue
that society is regressing into a more narrow-minded
state-of-being. Previously, the subject matter of
a film was presented with less caution. But then again,
one must ask the question: “who was allowed
to go the cinema?” Most women and children in
the 1920s 1930s, and 40s would have probably never
set foot in a cinema. Actresses were considered “loose”
women. At the time, the French word “artiste”
was appropriated by Egyptians and used synonymously
for prostitute!
‘Good Girl’ Image
In order to attract broader audiences - including
women and family viewers - a more positive view of
women and their sexuality became part of the cinema
world. Faten Hamama, known as the “Lady of the
Arab Screen,” helped change the public’s
negative perception of actresses. Instead of taking
on the negativities associated with being an “artiste,”
her insistence on being a ‘good girl’
in most of her roles, endeared her to her audiences.
She gained respect under the scrutiny of almost every
Arab set of frowning eyes.
By the end of the sixties, the off-screen
personality of actors and actresses merged with their
on-screen personas. This blurring of lines between
the real and the fictional served to make cinema less
of an immoral menace in the public view.
Arab spectators, like any others, are
predominantly drawn by the promise of entertainment
and escapism. Cinema in the eighties and early nineties
was mainly sensationalist: showing beautiful men and
women and their relationships. The films were not
pro-women; rather they featured women characters that
were considered promiscuous. Many actresses decided
to forego acting and take up the religious veil in
the eighties. Therefore, women in cinema became shrouded
with a cloud of guilt that reached even their audiences.
Most viewers have an unconscious sense of guilt when
they realize that all they want to see is beauty,
action, affluence, heroism and luxury. Thus, when
people watch a truly enjoyable drama that carries
a “message,” they leave the theatre with
a smug satisfaction. They walk out with a dose of
preaching sugar-coated in the entertainment.
Box-Office Milestones
The first striking box-office success in the last
decade was, Sae’eedi Fi El-Gam’a El-Amrikiya
(A Man From the South of Egypt1 Goes to
the American University 1998.) The lead actor was
Mohamed Heneidy, a short little man whose appeal comes
from his naiveté in the midst of a cunning
world. In addition to his appeal on screen, his off-screen
personality scored him many points. He appears in
television programmes to invoke blessings upon his
mother. (To do good to one’s parents, especially
one’s mother, is considered the height of moral
goodness in Islam.) Whenever he is interviewed during
Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, Heneidi is proud
to say that he is fasting, praying, and going on a
pilgrimage to Mecca. He emphasises that art has to
be “good and clean.” That audiences not
only enjoy Heneidy’s humour, but also wholeheartedly
approve of him as a person, is a fact that cannot
be overlooked in analysing the commercial success
of his films.
Sa’eedi cast
Heneidy in the role of Khalaf, a naïve villager—traditional
and old-fashioned—who is a student at the American
University in Cairo. Although he admires its social
advancement, he disapproves of the “corruptive”
values of American society. He encounters modernity’s
many guises: boyfriends and girlfriends, certain dress
codes and music of the people at the American university,
with a comic yet morality-laden response. In the film,
Heneidy sings a song called, “Chocolata”
(Chocolate.) The chocolate to which he refers is a
Sudanese prostitute. He teases her saying, “When
I turn off the lights, I can’t see you!”
The “good girls” are Khalaf’s conservative
yet modern classmates and veiled girls. They are set
in stark comparison to the promiscuous girls of the
American University. Viewers were not critical of
the film. The game of binaries: good versus bad and
self versus other that is deployed passes by largely
unnoticed.
According to Egyptian director Dawood
Abdelsayed, “mall audiences are a new breed
of people. They are the ones reared in the eighties
and nineties under the influence of the petro-dollar
culture exported from the Gulf countries. They were
conditioned to look for morality in cinema, especially
where it concerns women.” [1]
Succes de Scandale
People’s predetermined opinions about women
and sexuality are rarely challenged by the Egyptian
mass media. However, opinions and sympathies were
stirred when a film came out that raised key questions
about the life of an adulterous womanizer, family
relations, and sex out of wedlock. Sahar El-Layali
(Sleepless Nights), a controversial social drama,
released in 2002, caused a huge stir. The plot of
Sahar El-Layali revolves around four couples
whose lives intertwine. The problems encountered by
the couples are adultery, commitment-phobia, and sexual
dissatisfaction with regard to the women characters.
Not sure that it would attract an audience, the producers
delayed releasing the film for a year waiting for
a “good moment.” Contrary to their expectations,
the film proved popular and remained in the theatres
for six months.
Although there was no truth to the claims,
rumours circulated all over Egypt that Sahar El-Layali
would be banned. The debate was probably directed
more at the subject matter than to any explicit sex
scenes. Wives who are not sexually satisfied, couples
that live together out of wedlock are not the run-of-the-mill
subject matter of mainstream Arab cinema. In a society
where you are bombarded with values of puritanical
morality and with stereotypes of wives and mothers
who are selflessly devoted to their families, it is
heresy to even suggest that women think about sexual
pleasure! To make things worse, all the characters
in the film were cast in a sympathetic light as “good”
people who make mistakes. The two who live together
out of wedlock are portrayed as attractive and likeable.
Even a prostitute who makes an appearance is portrayed
as comic and ridiculous, but not evil.
When the film was shown in London as
part of an event called, “Forbidden Films in
the Arab World,” discussion flared at home.
As a result, Sahar El-Layali was in the media
spotlight. The general consensus was that it was indeed
daring but at least it was truthful about “what
we all know but do not say.” Audiences felt
the director was heroic and admirable for venturing
into new terrain. In this aspect, Sahar El-Layali,
is unique among many other films that have explored
controversial subjects likely to vex both the Censors
and public sensibilities.
The ending of Sahar El-Layali is not disturbing.
Perry (Mona Zaki), a devoted mother, forgives her
husband when she gives birth to their second child
and in turn, he promises never to have an affair again.
The commitment-phobic marries his girlfriend. This
is contrary to popular wisdom in Egypt which says
that “a man never marries a woman he has slept
with.” In this film, not only do we see a couple
living together, we also sympathize with the characters.
Yet the film is conformist in the end. The finale
of the film shows the characters, repentant and forgiven.
Hani Khalife, the film director observes,
“I know the ending is not realistic but I left
hidden hints that the characters are not totally reformed.
I managed to give the audience what they want. A happy
ending…Why not cater to the consumer? I definitely
set out to make a box-office hit. It is melodramatic,
unrealistic, but entertaining. I don’t mind…because
in the middle is something people are not used to,
and that is that I make no moral judgments about the
characters. In my own opinion,” he smiles,
“That is an achievement!” [2]
Double-Faced Society
Other films are not that lucky when it comes to confrontations
with either public opinion or with the censoring authorities.
Baheb El-Seema, (I Love Cinema) was shot
in 2001 and screened in 2004. Like Sahar El-Layali,
it was controversial from the very first days of its
release. The events take place in the late 1960s and
are told from the point-of-view of Na’eem, the
son of a middle class Egyptian Christian family. Na’eem’s
father is a religious fanatic who forbids him from
going to the cinema. Forbidden by her husband to paint
nude figures, Na’eem’s mother produces
double-faced paintings that she hangs on her walls—with
nature scenes on one side and nudes on the other.
Her paintings mirror the double-faced society, where
much is done and hidden and where appearances differ
gravely from reality. She is shown to be tormented
by her husband’s vow to fast and abstain from
sex. (An admission that is unthinkable in contemporary
Egyptian society.)
Baheb El-Seema showed no villains
and it was not difficult to sympathize with any of
the characters, even the “fundamentalist”
father figure. Unlike, Sahar El-Layali, however,
this film did not gain the audiences’ unrestrained
stamp of approval. In a poignant line, the narrator
reminisces about a visit to the doctor and says, “I
hate all those people who tell us what to do under
the pretext that they know better what is for our
own good.” The authority of a father, the rules
of a headmistress, and the decrees of religious leaders
are all implicated in this statement. Moreover, in
Baheb El-Seema, the characters do not ultimately
repent and play by the rules. Naeem’s aunt,
gets married, gives birth to twins, and then gets
a divorce. She is described as “the only woman
in our family who dared to do what made her happy.”
The case made by Baheb El-Seema
was last summer’s hottest scandal. Whereas the
pattern has been for Muslim fundamentalists to challenge
certain modes of artistic production, Baheb El-Seema
showed the start of a similar trend among Christian
viewers. Because the family around which the story
revolves is Christian, the Christian minority in Egypt
reacted very negatively. Hardly ever portrayed on
screen, the film showed a mother who suffocated by
her husband’s vow of chastity, has an affair.
The enraged Coptic audience wondered, “Are they
implying that Christian women are whores?” Several
Copts gathered to file a collective lawsuit against
the scriptwriter and director, both of whom are Christians;
against the Censor for releasing the film, Minister
of Culture for allowing it, and the Minister of Interior
for not perceiving it as a threat to national security
and an impetus to sectarian strife and violence.
The scandal was so broad and the anger
so tangible that the Coptic community held demonstrations.
Ikram Lam’ei, the Protestant pastor in charge
of the church in which some of the scenes were shot,
was asked for an explanation by the leadership of
the Evangelical Church in Egypt. Other than the fighting
and swearing in the church, there was a scene where
two young people are caught kissing on the church
rooftop. In an effort to placate people’s anger,
Lame’i was forced to publish an explanation
in Rose el-Youssef, Egypt’s most widely-read
current affairs magazine. In it, he said that he was
not informed of the film’s content, and that
anyway, the kissing scene was not on the rooftop of
his church! The banality of the accusations was matched
by the ridiculousness of his response!
The film remained in the cinema for
eight weeks. The lawsuit did not succeed in banning
it. Not yet, anyway. Many speculate that without the
controversy, Baheb El-Seema would not have
stayed in the cinema for half that time. When no controversies
are raised the majority of artistic productions, like
Baheb El-Seema screen at international festivals,
and get no attention outside critical circles at home.
For better or worse, these notorious “festival
films,” appeal to agencies of foreign funding.
Invariably, such topics revolve around current affairs:
politics, women’s status in the Arab world,
and sexuality. Yousri Nasrallah’s latest release,
Bab El-Chams (The Door of the Sun, 2004)
is a film about the Palestinian dispossession. In
the last scene of the film, the lead actress stands
before an Israeli soldier and proclaims with pride,
“I am a bitch. I do not know the father of my
children!” She does this to hide her husband’s
whereabouts. Her words fall hard on the ears of audiences
who are used to women defending their puritanical
sexuality. The film, like the others mentioned, problematize
the popular views on female sexuality.
A lone ranger among directors, Dawood
Abdelsayed, renowned for his artistic integrity, makes
films that fit none of the stereotypes. He cannot
call himself a director, he says, because by definition
a director is someone who can be hired to direct someone
else’s script. Nor can he call himself a writer/director
because he refuses to be commissioned to write and
direct a film. According to his own, well thought-out
definition, he is “a filmmaker who makes films
when I feel compelled to do so.” [1] Abdelsayed
who was born in 1946, has only made seven films so
far and is currently working on his eighth.
Dawood Abdelsayed’s films do not
succumb to the temptation of catering to the morality
of audiences. Issues are never black or white for
him. “When you try to answer the unanswerable
questions…that is what art is all about…such
questions include the big existential questions like
why was I born, why am I here…but also other
less grand unanswerable questions. Why and how do
we fall in love? His work in progress, Retha’
Ala El-Bahr, (Seaside Eulogy,) is a romance.
His portrayal of women insists on being
individualized and specific—colourful and resistant
to the black and white categorizations that are so
common in the genre; especially where sexuality is
concerned. In his first film, Sa’alik,
(Vagabonds,) we encounter a woman who is content to
have a relationship with a man without wanting to
marry him. She has other plans for her life and career.
Love and marriage are not necessarily related to each
other in her mind—as is customary in other films.
But what is okay for men is not okay for women, even
on the screen. People, ever since, have called his
lead female characters, “whores.”
Diogene is the name of Dawood Abdelsayed’s
production house; people like him often have to produce
their own films. Diogene was a Greek philosopher who
carried a lantern, even in the daylight, searching
for one honest man. As stubborn as Diogene is in his
search for honest art, Abdelsayed still refuses to
make films for reasons other than the mystical notion
of being “called” to do so. “A good
film is not because of high technique or even the
expenses pooled into it. Rather it is because of the
charge it carries. Many films can touch you but few
can pierce your heart. A successful film is one that
can make you feel the difference. It needs to pierce
your heart.” [1]
With the work of artistes like Abdelsayed,
who dare to be different and will not succumb to the
pressures to conform, there is hope that we will begin
to see more realistic portrayals of women and sexuality
in Egyptian cinema.
References
1. Maggie Morgan: interview with Dawood Abdelsayed,
Cairo, July 12, 2005
2. Maggie Morgan: interview with Hani Khalifa, Cairo,
July 18, 2005
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