Western Representations of the Muslim Woman (part one)

Western Representations of the Muslim Woman
 

Hafidh Shamseddine
Anisa Saeed


Introduction: 

Documentary film is often viewed to be grounded on and containing “facts.” What makes documentary seem to be distinguished from fiction is the impression of authenticity which results, notes Bill Nichols, in its kinship with “the discourses of sobriety” such as science, economics, politics, foreign policy and education.[1] Hence, like scientific discourses, documentary claims direct and firsthand connection to “reality” and gains its influential power in society. However, as Bill Nichols stresses, documentary is “but another part of cinema,” which “presents us with images of things which are mimetic distractions and counterfeiting; they cannot engage our reason nor nourish our hunger for truth.”[2] Nichols further argues that in documentary “reference to the real no longer has the ring of sobriety that separates it from fiction. Such reference now is a fiction.”[3]

Furthermore, film theorists and critics aptly argue that documentary film is a construction and a representation of certain selected aspects of reality that is mediated by film language.[4] Film language, as defined by Constantine Santas, is “a combination of visual imagery, written or oral discourse, and natural or artificial sound.”[5] Jill Nelmes develops this point when explaining that a documentarist selects certain aspects of reality that appeal to his/her interests or purposes, then s/he through editing mediates reality rather than simply reveals it. Nelmes stresses that reality is a means, or as she puts it “a material,” used to construct the documentary film but it is not necessarily recorded in it. In other words, reality is a means but not the end in documentary. It is useful to quote Nelmes as she writes,

It is often the case that documentary is believed to be to the recording of ‘actuality’- raw footage of real events as they happen, real people as they speak, real life as it occurs, spontaneous and unmediated. While this is often the case in producing the material for a documentary, it rarely constitutes a documentary in itself, because such material has to be ordered, reshaped and placed in sequential form. Even in the shooting of the material, choices have to be made in regard to shot selection, point of view, lighting etc., which anticipate a certain presentation of the material in the final film.[6]

This leads to the point that in documentary subjectivity is unavoidable even if the filmmaker claims to be objective seeking balanced or neutral representation. Some documentarists claim to be objective, meaning that their films are based on “facts” and  reflect “reality” rather than on their ideas and beliefs. Therefore, they argue that what their films present is not their ways of seeing reality. Rather, the “real” events or situations. However, as Renov  stresses, “Reality  can  never  be  reproduced  objectively  in  documentary;”  but  it  is  “filtered through  the  flux  of  subjectivity.”[7] Indeed, documentary can never be neutral. Rather, according to Nichols, by dint of the organization of sound and images, documentary provides ‘metaphorical’ representations of social practices. In this way, documentary rhetorically solidifies and enhances its perspective and argument. By means of these ‘metaphors,’ documentary gives meanings to social practices and values deploying different rhetorical strategies that are “deliberative, judicial, and panegyric.”[8] Demonstrating this, Nichols contends that facts, objects and situations that documentary deploys as evidence exists “within a discursive or interpretive frame.”[9] Hence, Nichols emphasizes that “rhetoric remains at work, even in the domain of the most intensely scientific discourse. Propaganda is not as far away as one might think; ideology is always in the air.” [10] Indeed, the deployment of evidence and the language of persuasion in documentary shows that ideology is always in the air and subjectivity is the filter through which documentary becomes a discursive text. [11] This makes objectivity in documentary an unattainable ideal, or rather a myth.

Before moving to examine the VPRO documentary film Saudi Solutions, I deem it important to note that the film’s form and content are considered. This twofold way of analyzing this filmic text helps in understanding its meanings and implications. As Andre Bazin suggests “as good a way as any towards understanding what a film is trying to say to us is to know how it is saying it.’[12]  Further, following this method helps in considering the different elements of the filmic text which enables bringing to view its instability. As Sara Mills argues, while some elements may be dominant, there are sections of the texts which temper a straightforward position being offered.^[13]

Saudi Solutions 

Saudi Solutions is a 77-minute documentary made by VPRO Dutch Public TV in 2005. It is directed by Bergtji van der Haak, a political scientist, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Despite the fact that the film is nearly 10 years old, it has not yet been explored by film critics. Furthermore, the film was released in a number of documentary film festivals, among them: the BANFF World Television Festival (where it was a world Television award nominee), 2006 Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2006 Independent Film Festival in Paris and 2006 Pärnu International Film Festival.

What is important to note in this documentary is its explicit claim of   “objectivity”. The journalist Suzan Zawawi, who features as a main subject in the film, writes in The Saudi Gazette that the documentary’s crew is “on a mission to shed light on the truth of Saudi working women and the reality of their lives.”[14] The director, Bergtji van der Haak, announces that Saudi Solutions is truthful and factual; she said to The Saudi Gazette that the documentary’s goal is to “present the real image of Saudi working women;” therefore it will “break the stereotypical image of Saudi women and show the progressive change of Arab women’s positions as workers.”[15] Hence, as Zawawi writes, the Saudi government welcomed the documentary’s goal and the Ministry of Information offered to pay the film’s expenses. Yet, stressing the film’s claim of objectivity the documentarist “declined gratefully” such offer, saying: “we are independent; we pay our own costs, because we want to present an objective journalist program.”[16] 

However, this paper will attempt to show how Bergtji van der Haak’s Saudi Solutions does not present viewers with an objective “reality.” Rather, it strives to insidiously enhance the director’s stereotypical Orientalist perceptions of Islam and Muslim women under the mask of objectivity and documentary “discourse of sobriety.” In doing so, the film’s claimed truth and objectivity are destroyed. This will be demonstrated by exposing the different layers of contradictions.

To be continued HERE:

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[i] Bill Nichols uses the term “discourse of sobriety” when explaining that documentary film genre deploys seriousness in its production of information in a way similar to nonfictional systems such as science, economics, politics, and history discourses which show gravity and sober presentation of a particular subject, claiming to reveal truth, deal with facts and hence produce the “real.” In the light of this characteristic, documentary films are seen as socially engaged films that inform instead of sensationalize and exploit. Nichols, also, explains that the “Discourses of sobriety are sobering because they regard their relation to the real as direct, immediate, [and] transparent.” Based on these characteristics, documentary works belong to the “discourses of sobriety.” See, Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 3- 4.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (United States: Library of Congress Cataloging, 1994), p. 54. Based on this view, Nichols makes the phrase, ‘Documentary: A Fiction (Un)Like Any Other’ as the title for a central section of his book Representing Reality. John Corner borrowed this title from Nichols entitling his article “‘A Fiction (Un)Like Any Other’?” in which Corner objects to those who say that documentary is the film of “fact.”

[4] Significantly, Stuart Hall defines “representation” as a process of producing meaning in relation to culture, arguing that culture consists of the “maps of meanings,” the framework of intelligibility and that meaning exists because of the “shared conceptual maps.” Hence, according to Hall, culture plays a central role in representation; things and events have no meaning in themselves but they are culturally constructed. This is why we do not make sense of things in the same way; each has different conceptual world. See, Stuart Hall, “The Work of Representation,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Sage Publication, 2003), p. 15,  and  “Representation and the Media,” lecture shot at the Studios of the University of Westminster, accessed May 15, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzMsPqssOY.

[5] Constantine Santas, Responding to Film: A Text Guide for Students of Cinema Art (Chicago, Illinois: Burnham Inc. Publishers, 2002), p. 75.

[6] Jill Nelmes, An Introduction to Film Studies (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 188.

[7] Michael Renov, The Subject of Documentary (Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. 70.

[8] Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 74.

[9] Bill Nichols, “The Question of Evidence, the Power of Rhetoric and Documentary Film,” in Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices, eds. Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong (England: Open University Press, 2008), p. 29.

[10] Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 197.

[11] ‘Ideology’ is a theoretical term that comes from Marxism: “Marx and Engels first use it,” Kellner writes, “to attack ideas which legitimate ruling class hegemony and serve the interests of class domination.” Then the concept, Kellner notes, is made by cultural studies central to the study of culture and society. It is “extended to cover theories, ideas, texts, and representations that legitimate interests of ruling gender and race as well as class powers.” See, Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies between the Modern and the Postmodern (London and NewYork: Routledge, 1995), pp.57-58. Ideology can be “broadly defined as the total system of beliefs, which selectively provides limited perceptions of reality.” see Media Studies: Content, audiences, and production, eds. Pieter Jacobus Fourie (Lansdowne : Juta, 2001), p. 225.

[12] Andre Bazin, “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” in Film Theory and Criticism, Sixth Edn, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 46.

[13] Sara Mills, Discourse of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 195.

[14] Suzan Zawawi, ‘A Dutch Crew Here to Debunk a Stereotype,’ Saudi Gazette,  11 Sept. 2005, accessed  May  10,  2011, http://icarusfilms.com/new2006/sau.html

                      

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

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Bazin, Andre. “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema.” In Film Theory and Criticism, Sixth Edn. Eds. Leo Braudy and  Marshall Cohen, 41-53. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Bernstein, Matthew. “Introduction.” In Visions of the East: Orientalism in Films. Eds.  Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, 1-18. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1997.

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———.“Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” Accessed April 25, 2014. http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf

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———. “Representation and the Media.” A lecture shot at the Studios of the University of Westminster. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzMsPqssOY.

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 Nelmes, Jill.  An Introduction to Film Studies. London: Routledge, 2003.

Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

———. Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. United States: Library of Congress Cataloging, 1994.

———. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

———. “The Question of Evidence, the Power of Rhetoric and Documentary Film,” in Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. Eds. Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong, 29-38. England: Open University Press, 2008.

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Zawawi, Suzan. ‘A Dutch Crew Here to Debunk a Stereotype.’ Saudi Gazette, 11 Sept. 2005. Accessed  May  10,  2011. http://icarusfilms.com/new2006/sau.html