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Sandra Schäfer / Madeleine Bernstorff
The Ladies
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| Portrait of Frida Kahlo in Nimeh-ye penhan
(»Die versteckte Hälfte«, 2001) by Tahmineh
Milani |
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| A short time after the revolution the protagonist
Fereshteh puts up posters with appeals of an left-organisation
in Teheran, in »Die versteckte Hälfte«. |
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| The protagonist talks to her invisible lover,
which she never meets during the whole movie. In Banu-ye ordibehesht
(»Mai-Dame«, 1998) by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. |
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| Arezoo searching a flat in Teheran, in front
of an estate agency. In Arezoo, die Wunschkandidatin (2002)
by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. |
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INTERNALIZATION OF CENSORSHIP
Starting in the mid-eighties, film production was rationalized and
local production strongly subsidized. Cinema was now a part of Islamic
culture. With the film Davandeh ("The Runner",
1986) by Amir Naderi, Iranian cinema achieved recognition at international
festivals and now became a cultural article of export. The speaker
of parliament at the time, Rafsanjani, spoke in favour of cinema
(9) and Mohammad Khatami, the Minister of Cultural Affairs at the
time, supported this liberalization: "I believe that cinema
is not the mosque … If we remove cinema from its natural place,
we will no longer have cinema … If we transform cinema to such
an extent that when one enters a moviehouse one feels imposed upon
or senses that leisure time has become homework time, then we have
deformed society." (cited in Naficy 2002:49) The moral codes
were loosened a bit after Khomeini issued a decree in December 1987
which primarily addressed the representation of women. (10)
In 1992 Khatami stepped down from office. The reason
was the fierce hostility of conservatives towards the director Makhmalbaf
and his film Dast-forush ("The Peddler") which
in gloomy tones speaks out against the corrupt and criminal structures
of society from the perspective of the socially disadvantaged. Mohsen
Makhmalbaf (11), a former supporter of the revolution, was accused
of betraying it.
In 1997 Khatami was surprisingly nominated as the
presidential candidate of the reformers and elected president by
a vast majority - among others, through the votes of many women
and culture workers. Reassignments in the institutions relaxed the
atmosphere for producing films. Khatami spurred privatization. For
the film industry, this implied less state interventions in film
production as well as in distribution and screening decisions.
TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE REVOLUTION
The filmmaker Nahid Rezaie (12) experienced the revolution as a
teenager. In her documentary film Khab-e abrisham ("Dream
of Silk", 2003) she returns to her former girls' school to
discuss with present-day pupils their ideas of the future. Only
few express the hope of achieving what they really want. Several
girls are hanging around depressed in a corner of the schoolyard
because they didn't pass the admission tests to university. (13)
Others complain: "Nobody respects women and girls". Standing
amongst her school-friends, who are looking to the ground, embarrassed
and laughing to themselves, one girl says she hates being a girl.
When she's sick she asks the doctor whether he could do something
for her to make her a boy. She wanted to marry a classmate. Her
parents forbid the relationship to her girlfriend and put her in
Islamic woman's clothes which she reluctantly wears since then.
As opposed to homosexuality, transsexuality is officially allowed
in Iran and was legitimized by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, yet
it remains a social taboo. (14) The reason for the legal approval
of transsexuality is surely because it functions within the heterosexual-binary
order.
CROSS-DRESSING
The film Adam barfi ("The Snowman") by Davoud Mir
Bagheri was initially banned after its completion in 1994 and only
released for screening after Khatami assumed office. Taboo themes
such as cross-dressing, the depiction of unveiled women and the
lifestyle of criminals were most likely the reason for the attacks
of Islamist hardliners (Naficy 2002: 56). The trashy, grotesque
film using drastic language is set in a hotel in Istanbul where
Iranians in transit live and is about Abbas (played by Ali Abdi)
who wants to reach the United States via Istanbul with all means.
(15) After he is beaten up by Turkish criminals he complains to
the hotel owner: "Our history abroad is like that of the Afghans
in Iran. We look upon the Afghans like the Turks look upon us".
A dubious Mr. Johnson is Abbas' last chance: "No longer be
a man". Abbas agrees to disguise himself as a woman and marry
this American citizen so he can get a green card. The people smugglers
maliciously make fun of the naivety of the prospective emigrants
and their idealized notions of the U.S.A. for which they would even
sacrifice their masculinity, like Abbas. However, the budding love
to pure and chaste Donya and the growing conviction that the freedom
in the United States determined by competition may not be that great
after all, allow Abbas to reinstate the heterosexual order: He becomes
a man again. Only then can he show Donya his feelings. The happy
end is marriage and the return to Iran. The "U.S.A sickness"
was a temporary wrong track. The film is permanently at pains to
uphold the nationalistic and gender order. Cross-dressing serves
to connote emigration and loss of masculinity.
In the film Dokhtar-e Tondar ("A Girl
Called Tondar", 2000) by Hamaya Petracian, the moments of "unfeminine"
behaviour set in the present - e.g., when Tondar knocks about the
city of Tehran as a tomboy on her motorcycle - are brief. Soon the
action film turns into a history film and makes way for a vague
past. Dressing as a boy is shown by Petracian as a passing, adolescent
act of defiance caused by the emotional inability of the female
protagonist. As soon as she's true to herself she gives up the "trouser
role" to return to true love and thus to her female role. What
remains as a moment of rebellion is the plea not to wait for the
man knocking on the door to "pick the flowers".
After her uncle had an accident on a construction site in Tehran,
the Afghan girl Baran, in the film of the same name, Baran (2001)
by Majid Majidi, has to disguise herself as a boy to replace the
uncle as the supporter of the family. Since she has difficulties
carrying the heavy bags of cement, she's assigned work as an apprentice
cook. As an alleged boy Baran now makes herself indispensable with
her "feminine qualities". She cleans up and cooks excellently.
When her competitor Lateef catches her by chance combing her hair
and notices that she's a girl, his rivalry immediately turns into
romantic love and care. Baran remains silent and beautiful to look
at, otherwise she does not undergo any changes in her role.
Neither of the three films make use of the potential
of cross-dressing, namely, to appropriate forms of conduct and spaces
in which one could otherwise not move about freely. The reversal
of gender roles either serves to polemicize against emigration,
as in Adam Barfi, results from adolescent defiance, as in
Dokthar-e Tondar, or occurs out of economic necessity, like
in Baran, but it may by no means appear as if individual
dissatisfaction with the traditional gender roles is the main reason.
The protagonists do not develop and their relationships to other
characters remain rather one-dimensional.
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