When you’re done, if you’re lucky enough to have access to it, watch the Tintin documentary tonight on PBS, or just drool over the trailer.
Since the month of June is about to end in a few hours, and I’ve seen little anywhere about it, I’d like to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Jorge Luis Borges, my favorite writer, who died on 14 June 1986.
Continue reading Borges
Luckily for those of you who would like to finally get your hands on this seminal Moroccan novel, Telegram Books in the UK is re-issuing it this month, so I’ll be sure to pick up a copy when I’m in London in July. You can also get it on Amazon.co.uk. You’d better get a copy and read it, or you are dead to me.
Damn right. Find out more about Choukri here.
So what’s the fuss all about? MaRock is a teen romance, and in most respects it’s a pretty classic coming of age story. But the teens in questions are the moneyed, Westernized children of Morocco’s elite, and the romance is an inter-faith one.
There are some wonderful performances (notably by the young lead actress, Morjana Al Alaoui , who does a wonderful job capturing the innocent recklessness, the sweet bravado, of a good-hearted teenage beauty; but also by many of the supporting actors). There are also some sharp scenes, here and there, that tackle so-called “taboo” subjects head-on. The furor over the film has focused on the sex and religion-related scenes–the ones that show the relationship between a Jewish boy and Rita, the Muslim protagonist, or the ones that show Rita insouciantly refusing to fast during Ramadan.
Personally, I found MaRock’s protrayal of social realities and tensions more interesting than its supposed critique of religiosity. I liked how the film created interesting contrasts between the very rich and the very poor, put them in the same frame and showed the ways in which they occupy the same space but live different lives, or the way in which they interact. I liked how the privilege of the teens (in a country in which many are desperately poor) was contextualized and questioned.
The film opens with a conversation between two young street kids who sell cigarettes, commenting on the well-off children of Morocco’s elite walking past them to a rave-like party. It then shows a shot of an elderly man (probably a parking attendant) praying between the gleaming BMWs of the young party-goers. Later on, there is a scene in which obnoxious drunken teenage boys hit on a pretty helpless housemaid. The driver and maids in Rita’s house on the other hand are more present than the young girl’s parents, and the affectionate relationships she has with them are given some very nice scenes.
Unfortunately, MaRock starts strong but loses steam. The central romance is resolved by an extremely convenient tragedy, and the final scenes come across as a trite valentine to the director’s own teenage years.
Cross-posted at Moorishgirl.
Meanwhile, the abundant pity that Muslim women inspire in the West largely takes the form of impassioned declarations about “our plight”–reserved, it would seem, for us, as Christian and Jewish women living in similarly constricting fundamentalist settings never seem to attract the same concern. The veil, illiteracy, domestic violence, gender apartheid and genital mutilation have become so many hot-button issues that symbolize our status as second-class citizens in our societies. These expressions of compassion are often met with cynical responses in the Muslim world, which further enrages the missionaries of women’s liberation. Why, they wonder, do Muslim women not seek out the West’s help in freeing themselves from their societies’ retrograde thinking? The poor things, they are so oppressed they do not even know they are oppressed.
The sympathy extended to us by Western supporters of empire is nothing new. In 1908 Lord Cromer, the British consul general in Egypt, declared that “the fatal obstacle” to the country’s “attainment of that elevation of thought and character which should accompany the introduction of Western civilization” was Islam’s degradation of women. The fact that Cromer raised school fees and discouraged the training of women doctors in Egypt, and in England founded an organization that opposed the right of British women to suffrage, should give us a hint of what his views on gender roles were really like. Little seems to have changed in the past century, for now we have George W. Bush, leader of the free world, telling us, before invading Afghanistan in 2001, that he was doing it as much to free the country’s women as to hunt down Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Five years later, the Taliban is making a serious comeback, and the country’s new Constitution prohibits any laws that are contrary to an austere interpretation of Sharia. Furthermore, among the twenty-odd reasons that were foisted on the American public to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was, of course, the subjugation of women; this, despite the fact that the majority of Iraqi women were educated and active in nearly all sectors of a secular public life. Three years into the occupation, the only enlightened aspect of Saddam’s despotic rule has been dismantled: Facing threats from a resurgent fundamentalism, both Sunni and Shiite, many women have been forced to quit their jobs and to cover because not to do so puts them in harm’s way. Why Mr. Bush does not advocate for the women of Thailand, the women of Botswana or the women of Nepal is anyone’s guess.
This context–competing yet hypocritical sympathies for Muslim women–helps to explain the strong popularity, particularly in the post-September 11 era, of Muslim women activists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji and the equally strong skepticism with which they are met within the broad Muslim community. These activists are passionate and no doubt sincere in their criticism of Islam. But are their claims unique and innovative, or are they mostly unremarkable? Are their conclusions borne out by empirical evidence, or do they fail to meet basic levels of scholarship? The casual reader would find it hard to answer these questions, because there is very little critical examination of their work. For the most part, the loudest responses have been either hagiographic profiles of these “brave” and “heroic” women, on the one hand, or absurd and completely abhorrent threats to the safety of these “apostates” and “enemies of God,” on the other.
It’s one of these long pieces that present a structured argument over multiple pages, so this excerpt won’t do it justice. Read the whole thing.
And by the way Angry Arab once again proves that he’s a complete curmudgeon by whining in his take on the piece. Was The Nation ever a radical magazine? Did it ever pretend to be one? But it does not mean it’s not a good one, even if it’s gauche caviar. (For that matter there are good right-wing magazines too. The bad magazines are the ones who pretend they’re lefty but are actually rightly, like the New Republic.)
The pipeline movie about Osama bin Laden, head of the Al-Qaeda network and the world’s most wanted man, has also caught the eye of Robert de Niro, one of the world’s most respected actor/directors and co-founder of the Tribeca festival.
De Niro wants to see the script when it is completed next month, Adel Adeeb, Emad’s brother and head of group’s GN4 Film and Music arm, said.
But though De Niro is interested in the project, which will start shooting next year, he is not planning on playing one of the characters, he emphasised.
The movie will revolve around an imaginary meeting between an American journalist and bin Laden in which both men explore their completely opposing views of world politics.
“Our aim is not defend bin Laden” but to help create a dialogue between the Western and Middle Eastern worlds, leading to a better understanding between them, underlined both brothers.
Great — a movie about civilizational dialogue and the Westerner is a journalist while Osama stands in for the Arabs. Very representative.
