The Velvet Café

My 19 year old daughter announced to me from London that she’d had a tattoo made on her ankle. The motive was the female symbol, the circle with a cross beneath it. “I know that I’m going to be a feminist for the rest of my life”, she explained to her mother, who usually is a sceptic towards tattoos, at least when it involves her own children.

As time has passed, her mother has come to terms with the tattoo and even started appreciate it. It seems to help my daughter to stay strong and remain sane in a society that hasn’t come as far as she’s used to in terms of gender equality. She recently reported about yet another bad incident at the gym, which left her upset and infuriated. “Days like this I look at my tattoo to remind myself that I’m a strong, ass-kicking woman”.

If my daughter founds London somewhat misogynistic, I wonder what she’d make of living in Saudi Arabia. The level of oppression that the Saudi Arabian women experience every day makes the everyday sexism we encounter in Europe seem trivial.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is that I recently watched the Saudi Arabian film Wadjda.

A miracle
It’s a bit of a miracle that this film could be made at all in a country where there isn’t such a thing as a theatre (I reckon it’s considered a “sin” of some sort) and where women spend most of their days hiding, behind a veil or behind curtains in houses in order not to be seen by men. Not only is this movie about women, and particularly about one girl, Wadjda, who doesn’t silently accept the role that has been given her, but rebels against it in her own way. It’s also directed by a woman, Haifaa Al-Mansour, who in order to be able to do the outdoor shootings had to hide in a van and do the direction from a distance. I can only imagine what she’s gone through in order to make this film at all. She must have a mighty good tattoo somewhere on her body, providing her strength.

The story is simple. 10 year old Wadjda looks like most other 10 year old girls when she’s dressed in the mandatory veil and dark foot-long dress. But she wears converse shoes, listens to pop music at home and is great at playing video games – all things that are considered unsuitable for girls. Her rebellious attitude regularly puts her into trouble at school.

One day her life takes a new turn as she sees a green bike for sale. She wants that bike badly, so she decides to raise the money herself, which ultimately brings her to a Koran reciting competition.

Upsetting
I found Wadjda pretty upsetting to watch. While I’ve read in the newspapers about the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and that they for instance aren’t allowed to drive a car, it gets much closer to you when you see it played out like this. Wadjda is of course an imaginative girl, but her experiences are shared with thousands and thousands of girls.

As much as I understand that people live in different ways in different countries and that we should respect cultural differences, not forcing a western lifestyle upon everyone, what we see here is completely unacceptable. There’s one half of the population keeping the other half as slaves and prisoners in their own homes, treating them as things rather than as human beings with equal rights.

This is exemplified, not in big gestures, but in small, but telling scenes, which on several occasions brought tears into my eyes. One example is when Wadjda talks to her mother about the family tree that her absent father has put on the wall. In vain she’s looking for her own name until her mother says that she should stop looking, because it’s only men on the tree, they’re the only ones that count. Wadjda then takes a note, writes down he own name and attaches it to the tree, as an additional leaf. But the next day she finds the note crumbled on the floor. Someone didn’t think she belonged on the tree.

A new hope
However there isn’t just misery in the film: there’s hope too. Wadjda is a survivor. She reminds me a bit of Hushpuppy from Beasts of the Southern Wild. It takes more the joint forces of the Saudi Arabian culture to break her.

And there are more Wadjdas out there, such as the women who recently drove cars against the law. Change is in the air and no matter what happens, they should never forget that they are strong, kick-ass women who rightfully claim their rights as human beings.

I hope they have tattoos on their ankles as a reminder.

Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia 2013) My rating: 4/5