Valley of the Wolves: Iraq

I have watched the trailer for this movie, and a few scenes that I can come across for class this week. It looks bloody and vile...but most action/adventure films like this make my skin crawl. I think without a doubt the Americans in this movie don't look hot. Producers have even said that 60-70% of the movie was based on actual events. The American press has labeled it as anti-American, anti-Christian, and even anti-Jew.

I don't know if this film was released in the States? If it was, it definitely wasn't a wide release.

Funny enough, my favorite news network, Fox News...(I think I threw up a little) made sure they made their viewers aware of this atrocity. Click on the following link:

I love that in the opening of the dialogue on the subject was the confession that no one speaking about the movie had even seen it. But, the anti-Muslim banter that occurs afterward was shocking. Are we shocked that someone else in the world may be pissed with the US and hence portray Americans in such a light? The Fox commentators even had a discussion of Free Speech not actually meaning Free... and a shout out that all Muslims hate the fact we have Freedom of Speech in our country. Are you kidding me? No really.....

I must be really un-American.

Two Women

Post is in regards to "Two Women", directed by Tahmineh Milani

This movie tells a moving tell about the plight of women in Iran. These two women meet at college and create a tight sisterhood. Both are well educated, wanting to return to University. At this time, they are close due to conflicts revolving around the Iranian Revolution. Roya is a smart, middle class girl from Tehran. Fereshteh is brilliant student who is from a small town, but is working hard to afford her education in the big city.

The fun for this girl click is that Fereshteh can't shake the advances of men. One in particular, Hassan, begins to stalk her. As much as the girls try to get him to leave Fereshteh alone, he becomes more demanding that she be his. In one event, he tries to defile her with acid to make her unsuitable for no one else, but ends up hitting her cousin instead. Because the authorities are called to intervene, Fereshteh's father travels to Tehran to collect his daughter who has completely disgraced him. As if she was the one to cause this catastrophe.

When she flees the capital, she hopes that he would disappear...but he ends up finding her and sends her on a wild car chase that ends up injuring and killing children in the street. Again, her father screams at her, saying that sending her to school was the worse thing he ever did. He repeats that she is a disgrace and locks her in a storage closet until her trial. Because of upcoming expenditures, another suitor, Ahmad, comes into the picture. He has offered to marry her three times and she has said no. Now that she is in a financial bind, he convinces her father to promise her hand in marriage in exchange for payment of all expenses.

The trial sends Hassan to jail for 13 years for killing the one child, and Fereshteh gets off relatively easy...but is turned over to the hands of Ahmad. Fereshteh protests the proposal, but soon their parents eventually convince her that there is no other option. Fereshteh tries to make the best of it, hoping to make a life for them. But, Ahmad's jealousy locks Fereshteh into a submissive hell. He refuses to let Fereshteh interact with Roya, he won't even let her out of the house to see her own family. Two kids latter, and Fereshteh seems to have lost all hope of the life she once wanted for herself.

Roya on the other hand ends up graduating and joining an architechture firm. She marries the love of her life, and she is powerful and prosperous. She receives a phone call from her old friend asking for her aid. She is at the hospital, where Ahmad is gravely ill. As they reconnect, Fereshteh tells her the story, which ends with Hassan getting out of jail and stalking her again in hopes of killing her. Ahmad and Fereshteh get in a horrible fight, where she finally storms out of the house. Fereshteh knows that Hassan is around, but she doesn't care.

Fereshteh runs, Ahmad is hot on her trail, but at some point she loses him. Just when she sits to collect her breath, Hassan comes after her. She continues to run until she becomes trapped in an alley. Realizing there is no escape, she collapses on the ground and tells Hassan to kill her. Ahmad shows up and beats Hassan with a stick, but it becomes clear that he is in the hospital because the knife wounds from Hassan have subdued him.

So, as I put this DVD in (available via Net Flix), the first thing you hear is Arabic (I think) promoting other films at irmovies.com. It is a little intimidating. I don't know why....but it was a little scary. The movie starts showing Roya as an adult. She was powerful, at a construction site, managing men. Something I was initially intrigued with. The movie than goes into the girls introduction at school. The classroom was mixed, and the instructor seemed very respectful of his female students. There is a montage of the girls learning English and Math, but you could see Fereshteh a little uncomfortable around certain men. Matter of fact, this movie is about women...but you really don't see a ton in this movie. The streets are filled with men, and there are several scuffles...related to the political climate at that point. Another interesting thing is they show Fereshteh and Roya cheating on a test, and it doesn't get either of them in trouble.

The scenes with Hassan are troubling. He will not back down, unless the girls can get a hold of other men who finally run him off. The police are viewed as not something you want to be involved with. Later, through her father, you realize that employing their help is cause for disgrace. So who should protect her? The father is incredibly scary at first. He screams at Fereshteh and blames her for so much. He curses her forwardness and sees education as almost corrupting her.

When Fereshteh leaves Roja and Tehran, she leaves what little freedom she knew. In the town she was going, no woman was educated and the phone was seen as corruption for the young. When Hassan is finally jailed, Fereshteh is placed into another jealous man's hands. During the proposal meeting, she is not given a voice. Her father is eager to give her away, seeing her as trouble and a disgrace.

Quickly you learn that Ahmad is very suspicious of Fereshteh. He wants to conquer her. Her desires to talk to Roja and go to school are quickly seen as ways for her to get with another man. He is so jealous that he almost murders a man for looking at his wife. At this point, Fereshteh's father begins to actually stick up for her. He tells Ahmad that he gave him a wife, not a slave. Fereshteh tell's her father if you really care for her, you would let her divorce Ahmad. So, her father actually takes Fereshteh to the authorities to plee for a divorce.

In this seen, the official asks: Does he pay the bills? Does he drink alcohol? Does he hang around bad/corrupt people? Does he beat you? Fereshteh answers no, but states that he is emotionally abusive, locks her in her house, entraps her, kills her spirit. the official states that there is no cause for a divorce. She is human, doesn't she deserve to be treated with dignity and respect? The official replies that she is wasting the court's time.

Shortly after, she finds she is pregnant and is horrified by this forced motherhood. She didn't want to be married, or with child. She had dreams, ambition, a future...but now she is forced to take care of her family. Killing her. In the finally seen, when she tries to escape but finds herself trapped by Hassan, she pleads for her death. "I've had it with a lifetime of threats, insults, humiliation."

At the end of the movie, you can see Roja completely destroyed after hearing her friend's story. A call confirms Ahmad is dead, and Fereshteh is almost stunned at her predicament. Roya asks what her friend would do now, and Roya's husband responds, "live." To Fereshteh, it is not that easy. She does not know if she remembers how to live. "I feel strange, like a free bird that has no wings."

Funny, during that chase scene at the end...there was absolutely no one in the streets of Fereshteh's town but Ahmad and Hassan. It symbolizes what her life was to that point. She was entrapped by her society, her father, this stalker and her husband. They all seem to want to deny her humanity. Subdue her. Force her to fit their conventions. Of course, she can not live in this world, and has to almost kill herself to become free.

Sorry again for bringing in another class, but we have been reading Little Women in my Adolescent Literature class. Some critics of this novel suggest that Louisa May Alcott kills Jo much the same way. In order for her to "grow up" and be the perfect "little woman" she has to give up her own ambitions and submit the the industry of caring for others in the way society demands. So, one can say that even in America...this same sort of cultural expectation or demand on women exists.

Still, the male dominate culture of Iran makes it almost impossible to free women out of these types of bonds. Women are completely second class citizens. Fereshteh even mentions at the end that she didn't even know if she would still get her children after her husband's death. That they might be taken to their paternal grandfather or uncle for raising. The murdering of the human spirit is criminal and a universal tragedy no matter what gender, race, or type of person you are.

This movie is impactful, but could be scary for children and some teens. It was a powerful statement that deserves to be heard. I am happy that it did show that there are some women who have thrived like Roja, but I ache for the other Fereshteh's that have no voice.

Arabic Literature and the Postcolonial Predicament

Response to reading: "The 'Middle East'? Or ... / Arabic Literature and the Postcolonial Prediciament" by Magda M. Al-Nowaihi

In this paper on the Arabic Literature, Magda M. Al-Nowaihi starts with a statement on the difficulty of doing an overview of Literature of the Middle East and Orientalism. It was a powerful piece that cautioned his bias and voiced his intent in writing the main piece on Arabic Literature and the Postcolonial Predicament.

Getting into the paper, he describes some great works of Arabic literature that could provide a great starting point for reading literature from that area. As the literature developed, he gives a great overview of how the authors thought of themselves and their characters after several historical events.

I was moved by the synopsis of Mahmud Tahir Lashin's short story, "Village Small Talk." the story describes a visit by a son of an aristocratic landowning class and a narrator to a small village in Eygpt. The narrator is horrified by the conditions of the towns people who looked about as well kept as the livestock. The friend states that their lifestyle was suitable to this class, but the narrator tries to impart a lesson on free will and how they could better themselves. The natives respond dumb-founded, and finally ask their local shiek to basically repeat a story about a peasant who went to the city, based on the advice of a friend that ends in tragedy for the peasant. It becomes a tale of the American dream...Eygptian style...and ends leaving the reader feeling like the natives are almost too dumb to know what is good for them.

This tale made me reflect on something I had read recently. In David Walker's Appeal in Four Articles, Walker drones on about enslaved Blacks needing to free their minds from internalized racism and fight back against their masters. He would get heated over stories of slaves spoiling the revolts of other slaves. Walker even had an encounter with a Black shoe shiner. Stating to the man something to the effect that even in his work he is kind of the dirt under a white man's foot. The Black man responded, that shining shoes was one of his favorite things to do. So taken a back by this response, Walker could only reason that a person so beaten down by the ills of slavery could come out enjoying such lowly work.

What is the connection? There is a sort of perceived understanding in Lashin's story that a better life is only achieved through a believe in free will and ambition. The misundertanding of this signals an incompetence or inferiority in the impoverished peasants. This same sort of presumption could be said of Walker in regards to the shoe shine. Also, the view of slaves in some of the Abolishionist literature I have been reading is simular to the culture and the quality of the natives in some of this early post-colonial Arabic literature. Maybe others see it differently, I just think is interesting.

Why is success soley based on the Western ideal of it? In another book, Dhat, by author Son'allah Ibrahim, the story revolves around a middle-class woman "whose aspirations become progressively limited to the acquisition of more consumer goods than all her neighbors-the more foreign and unnecessary the goods the better." Sound like an American Suburban house wife you know of? Yet, where has that got us in America? Are we suffering from the overindulgence of such spending in this little recession of ours? Have you watched an episode of Hoarders? How much is too much?

The last thought I'll leave with you is a memory of a conversation I had with a friend of mine in Nicaragua almost 15 years ago. I was talking with a man name Hugo, and discussing with him the plight of many Nicaraguans. Many lived in shanty towns, in a horrible sort of poverty. Stabilty was not a constant in the city of Managua. He was discussing the desire for more foreign business development and investment in his country. Or maybe it was a discussion between him and some of the Americans we were with. That this influx of money could change the plight of the people there. My 17 year old mind thought to herself, yes...maybe. But, in some ways it would be sad to lose some of what Nicaragua is. I think I meant that with this acceptance of globalization and rush to assimulate to this new age, some cultures are giving up a lot too. This forced shift seems to have both positive and negative connotations, that don't always reveal themselves until the form self is extinct.

History of Palestine

In this You Tube, film documenting the land of Palestine before WWI and through the creation of the state of Israel, you get a different sense of why the conflict in this area has been so bitter. I know few Americans know the true history of this land, though many know and sympathize with Jews from the Holocaust. What is disturbing is that one horror seems to be righted by another wrong. Obviously, Europeans and Americans felt some sort of guilt or empathy for the undescribable horror of the slaughter of millions of Jews. This never should have been an excuse for creating another holocaust of the Palestininans who had nothing to do with WWII.

Our skin may crawl reading accounts of Jews being dragged out of their homes, into ghettos in Germany and eventually concentration camps in Europe. Whose skin crawled when Palestinian families were being displaced? Even killed? Why do we never get to tell this story in the classroom?

Interestingly enough for me, we had a conversation in my Adolescent Literature class about the disappearance of intellect as a quality in American Literature and culture. Basically, Americans were tired of trying to live up to the ideals of intellect from Europe and cast the notion off as an Old World ideal. The model of the self-made man appeared. Street-smarts were valued above book-smarts, and the European cherished notions of philosophy, art, literature, culture were thrown out for models of invention and industry. Culturally, we do not value anything that is considered "old." We do not value the need to study other languages or culture. History is just something we have to take...and even then, it is usually about ourselves.

Why do I beat down on Americans so on this blog? Do I hate who I am?

Actually, I think I do it because I know we are better than this. If we valued truth and knowledge in this culture, we wouldn't have discussions about teaching Darwin's evolution theory in our classrooms. The only way this will change, is if the information is available and we create an interest and a value to knowing it.

Personally, nothing against Jews, the whole history of Israel is a scar that won't heal until they stop being selfish.

Reel Bad Arabs

Reaction to the viewing of Reel Bad Arabs. Click on following link to view.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-223210418534585840#

Reel Bad Arabs is a film that looks at Hollywood's portrayal of Middle Eastern people. The story isn't pleasant. Most of the depictions are racist and dangerous. Middle Eastern men are vilians or money grabbers. Women are seen as disposable, or sexual objects. One movie was noted for the justification of a blood bath of women and children in Yemen, because they were "terrorists." Palestinians were portrayed as the lowest of all people.

Reflection on this film has made me evaluate some of my own preconceived notions and bias of the Middle East. I have always felt some sympathy for the Palestinians. I think in some ways I have always felt like there was more to the Israel/Palestinian conflict than we are told. I am also acutely aware of the presence of Christian Arabs which seems to be consistently ignored by the West. That being said, I have also been concerned of the plight of Middle Eastern women. Magazines like Marie Clare and Ms. have done several stories on the stripping of women's rights and the abuse and honor killing of women in countries like Iraq and Afganistan. Although true, the context makes Arabic men look violent and uncaring. Makes Arabic women seem powerless and fraile. Made for TV movies also caution American women from having children with Arabic men because they might steal the children and return to their homeland where women are powerless to fight back.

Although I am aware of my own potential bias when it come to Arabic men, I know it unfair and unjust. I met a beautiful, faithful, Muslim man from Eygpt who had an American wife. He was devote, and good. I was pleased to know someone like him. By knowing him, I was able to check my own bias. Maybe that is what we are asking here. To recognize the stereotypes and bias we have as individuals, and challenge them. To recognize the humanity of all people. I am positive that a great portion of the women in the Middle East are educated, progressive, and free to express themselves fully. Still I cringe a little when I see a woman in a burka because I associate it with repression, instead of her expression of her own religious beliefs.

I truly hope that in researching Middle Eastern Literature and film that we can find that "other side of the story" that is so sorely lacking in this country. You can't make informed opinions or decisions when you don't have the information.

Lastly, I want to comment on the opinion that in denying the humanity of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood, we are denying their humanity in life. I recently watch Food INC. (highly recommended) The picture was dedicated to showing Americans where we really get our food from. It is disturbing and necessary to watch. Nonetheless, there is a scene where they show the treatment of our livestock. Chickens forced to live their lives in windowless chicken coops, unable to walk because they are so overweight their bone structure collapses. Pigs and cows covered in feces, paraded to the slaughter house like Jews to the shower houses in WWII. The commentator, maybe it was a farmer, says the reason it is important to understand how these corporations and people mistreat these animals is because if they are that uncaring and inconsiderate of animal life, it makes it that much easier to dehumanize their workers, employees, consumers and people of other cultures. Many parallels...

Orientalism

Written after reading "Orientalism" by Edward Said

In preparation for this journey of immersing ourselves in the literature of the Middle East, one of our first assignments was to read a text that examines the perceptions of the Middle East from the "West." I am very grateful for this exercise because I fear I might have fallen victim to the unsaid but practiced stereotypes of that area from the perspective of a typical American.

Edward Said mentions in this text that there is a perverse misunderstanding of the peoples and the culture of the Middle East from the West that is based on the observations of foreigners who either lived in the area mentioned as occupiers or from individuals who had never set foot in the area. This practice grouped the Middle East with the Far East under the context of "Orientalism," to try and group or categorized the area for foreign occupiers like Britain and France. The intent was to better understand the native people they were trying to rule, or to share that knowledge with their citizens at home. Unfortunately, this attempt was clouded by the lens of an Imperial power that saw itself as superior, possibly demeaning the cultures it was trying to understand to the point that these stereotypes became the "truth" for many foreigners who had no access to differing opinions or views. Hence, Eygptians, Indians, and Asians were all treated under this same umbrella. All Middle Easterns were Arabs. Backward and undeveloped or intellegent people. Said even quoted a notable University's department head, an expert on the Middle East, as saying the area was devoid of value and not worthy of too much focus.

Think of the last film you saw, even television show, that portrayed anyone from the Middle East. What was the depiction? A snake charmer? Belly dancer? Terrorist blowing up someone or something? Even the most benign of these illustrations may be clouding us, or allowing us to completely ignore the humanity and value of a whole section of the world. Remember the old "black face" routines of old? Think of how demeaning that might be for our African American friends...that is the same kind of feeling we are getting at here. The problem is that we might see the ill in racial slurs for Native Americans, African Americans or even the GLTB community here in America, but there seems to be a pass for this same sort of behavior when it comes to anything from the Middle East.

Again, reflecting on my past in Nicaragua, I have seen this before. How badly did the American media paint the Sandanistas during the Iran-Contra affair? When we teach Spanish to our kids in the US, we often teach Mexican Spanish. We rarely note that every Latin American country has its own destinct language and culture, at least one doesn't speak Spanish. Also, I think Americans immediatly assign Spainards to the Hispanic community, stripping them of the notion of their European roots. I can't tell you the number of Americans who came to study in Salamanca, Spain when I was there, who didn't know where on the globe they were and could not understand why they couldn't find a taco. (you really think I am kidding?)

To insert my own bias, I read the title "Orientalism" and thought of the Far East or Asia. Who can remember their grandma referring to Asian people as Oriental? Of course, for many Americans...if you have slanty eyes you are all Chinese. Now, my Sister-in-Law is Japanese...and I assure you in the education I have gotten of the region since I met her...there are HUGE differences between Japan and China, Korea and Thailand. A Japanese person can tell the difference between them and and individual from another Asian country by sight alone. I can't. There are some Americans who feel the same way about Black people. Then, they might call every Black person they see as African American...when some may actually be African, Jamacian, or even a person of an ancestry that never touched the continent of Africa.

When I was in Spain, embarrassed by my countrymen, I also tried to explain to my Spanish friends that it was just plan ignorance. "They don't know any better." This supposed harmless naivity is really having a detremental impact on this world, and our current state of being. Edward Said wrote this book in the late 1970s. If we would have had a serious disscussion in our schools, encouraged more classes on the learning of Arabic language and culture, maybe we wouldn't have been so fearful after 9/11. The understanding might not have prevented the bombing, but a cultural understanding might have given us more pause. Our response for war was based in fear. The lack of knowledge and understanding made it easy for those with agendas to manipulate information and feed it into our minds from a money thirsty media wanting us to consume.

Even if this wouldn't have prevented the war in Iraq, maybe it would have compelled us to be more understanding of our Middle Eastern friends and neighbors, some, who were born American, but were assigned guilt by their family name, food preference or association to the house of their worship. For some reason, it is okay to strip search a woman in a burka at the airport because of "national security."

This sort of racism is deeply institutionalized and engrained in the culture of our country right now. My hope is that Americans are good people. I know many of us who pride ourselves on being open and understanding. The problem is elightenment and a cause to action. We are too satisfied and self concerned that we rarely react to such large causes or ills without a great deal of effort. Again, I state, ignorance is not an excuse. Just because we refuse to look, doesn't mean it evil can't exist. In this case, evil is not the "Axis of Evil" it is our ignorance to reflect on our own stereotypes and perversions of Middle Eastern peoples.

Statement of Initial Thoughts and Possible Bias

I signed up for a Post-Colonial Literature class. I didn't really know what that meant at the time, just that it fit what I needed and I was familiar with the professor. I was returning to undergrad studies to pick up a teaching certificate after graduating from the same institution approximately 10 years earlier. I had initially tried to do it seven years prior, but gave up the pursuit for a full time job doing something else. Last Spring I had an epiphany. I got a Masters in Organizational Management and was working on a Doctorate in Leadership...but decided that I was studying the wrong thing, and in the wrong career. After a good length of discernment, I felt called to return to finish what I had started.

So, stepping into the class...I was just open. As Dr. Webb started talking about the content of the class and the great journey we would be taken on this semester, I felt really excited that I was able to participate. Then he talked about the history of world Colonization and the aftermath, and I was immediately transported to my Senior year of High School. I went to Nicaragua on a Mission Trip, and was so moved by their people and their history. I told their story in presentations to every class the teacher would let me. I described how the US had overthrown a democratic government and help install and back a ruthless dictator. It troubled me and my young mind. Yet, when I gave the presentation...I was called a liar by fellow classmates and told that the US doesn't engage in that sort of conduct. It was unfathomable.

Well, what was upsetting was the reminder that this is still occurring. Back in my teens, my experience in Nicaragua and Mexico motivated me to do more. I chose to study abroad in Spain because I thought if I didn't, I would harbor too much angst for the gringos. The experience shed light on movements in Spain during the Colonization of the Americas that fought for better treatment of the Native peoples. It opened my eyes that there is always more to the story than what we are told. Like so many people though, I tried to assimilate to this crazy chaotic American culture. Get a job, get a car, get in debt, that I lost sight of these causes that I was passionate about. The lecture at this first class touched me profoundly. Made me realize that not only had I stopped being aware, but like most of my countrymen had also allowed us to remain ignorant to the significant impact political decisions are making to humankind around the world.

Not that this class is designed to save the world, but how can we be a truly democratic society if we are not fully informed. How can we make decisions, if we don't know all the variables at play? How can we make value judgments on peoples and cultures of the world when we haven't taken the time to really try and understand them? I hope this class inspires more people to make the sometimes uncomfortable choice to witness the stories and lives of others. Our self-imposed ignorance doesn't prevent us from being responsible for the atrocities that might be going on in the shadows of the world. Maybe we might even learn how someone so far removed might have even the slightest impact on the improvement of humankind.