If You’re Going to Have a Multicultural Requirement, Do It Right

Op-Ed

Liberal arts colleges have recently struggled with issues of diversity on their campuses. Minority students are often underrepresented and under-supported, and they face micro-aggressions on a daily basis. On some campuses, tensions around issues like race have exploded, as at Middlebury College, where a talk by the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray caused intense controversy in 2017. Liberal arts colleges, like Middlebury, have begun putting into place various programs to deal with their diversity issues. Students at many of them must now fulfill multicultural credits to graduate—credits that are added in addition to traditional distribution requirements in the fields of mathematical reasoning, natural sciences, social sciences, history, and foreign language.

Unfortunately, schools are putting little effort into creating and enforcing these new requirements. If a school is going to mandate multicultural coursework—which they should—they need to put in the work to make sure that it is truly opening students’ eyes. It is often said that the purpose of college is to expose students to broader perspectives and new experiences, and push them outside their comfort zones. If this is true, isn’t learning about cultures other than their own an intrinsic part of this education? Take liberal arts schools, which aim to give students a well-rounded education that makes them knowledgeable about many subjects, as opposed to the career-focused approach they might find at a non-liberal arts schools. This well-roundedness comes in an attempt to challenge students’ beliefs, make them critical thinkers and writers, and prepare them to become global citizens. In this light, it’s obvious that multicultural requirements are as important as any other area that liberal arts schools might require.

These requirements are often constructed in ways that defeat their purpose. While many schools have caught on and made multicultural credits necessary for graduation, they are not always doing so thoughtfully or developing the new requirements in ways that will effectively challenge students—a deficiency that is particularly relevant to the many liberal arts colleges that remain majority white and have low populations of international students. Colleges must take special care in developing multicultural requirements because what constitutes “multiculturalism” is not as clear-cut as natural science or literature. Multiculturalism can take many forms–learning about cultures foreign to one’s own experience, learning about minority cultures in one’s own country, coursework that takes an intersectional approach to issues within the student’s culture. The central focus of multiculturalism must be learning about experiences outside of the student’s own. Some schools are doing this better than others, some are doing it worse. At Middlebury, for example, multicultural requirements have met resistance in the form of student outcry—students must have coursework in two multicultural areas: one course about Europe, one course from AAL—Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This is a problematic division of mandatory coursework because it privileges European/ Western civilization as equal in importance to Asia, Africa, and Latin America combined. In the wake of recent negative feedback from the students, the school’s administration is considering reformatting this curriculum decision. They are right to do so.

Another issue at some schools is allowing classes about minority cultures in the United States to count for their multicultural requirements. Now, this is not inherently a bad thing, and in some cases it is done well—at Mount Holyoke College, if a class about a Western country or North America is to count, it must be about people of color in that country or region, or about people in North America whose primary language is not English. On the other hand, at Wellesley College, classes about queer culture in the United States are deemed adequate—even though some that count toward this requirement do not include the study of queer people of color, which is essential to a class that is supposed to be “multicultural.” These classes have the potential to be multicultural, but as currently constructed are not fully so. In many cases, it all comes down to what is being studied in these classes and how the curriculum is structured. For example, French language and culture classes that don’t address people of color in Paris or countries other than France that have large French-speaking populations, such as the many African nations once colonized by France, don’t count. In most cases, unfortunately, it can be assumed that schools are not taking the right approach. Some colleges are conspicuous offenders, like Columbia University: classes such as Intro to Geography and Intro Biology can satisfy Columbia’s multicultural requirement. It goes without saying that these courses should not count.

Colleges just aren’t trying hard enough to diversify the perspectives their students encounter in the classroom. It’s not just multicultural requirements: it’s literature classes that don’t include any authors of color and women’s and gender studies classes that don’t include the intersections of class, race, sexuality, and gender. College multicultural requirements are an opportunity for academic institutions to challenge themselves and their students. Any college that allows an intro to geography course to satisfy a multicultural requirement is definitely not trying hard enough–even if it has plenty of company.

The Boys’ Club: An Antiquated, Entitled System of Oppression

Op-Ed

No matter where you look it seems like there’s a new headline emerging about admissions fraud or gender discrimination, as elites manipulate the situation to their advantage. As if it weren’t bad enough that the less fortunate, myself included, have to compete with affluent students whose parents can pay for private school, tutors, test preparation courses, coaches, campus visits, and more to sharpen their academic skills and burnish their résumés. Innate ability can only take a student so far without the opportunity to actually take advantage of it. Money is a large enough hurdle without our sex also being held against us.

Now proof has emerged that parents have taken the extra step of bribing officials to get their kids into college, paying for test results to be manipulated, and having experts write their children’s entrance essays?! Not that any of us is surprised to hear this, but I feel outrage nevertheless. Scandals such as these are, unfortunately, true of most countries. However, having lived in Japan for over a year, I was surprised to discover this country was no exception to the scandalous trend.

You think it’s hard getting into medical school here in the U.S.? It could be worse. Getting into medical school in Japan is a hugely challenging process for two reasons. First, the difficulty level of the entrance exam is extremely high. The necessary knowledge for the exam is not covered in high school, which means just preparing for the test already requires that you attend an additional prep school every day after regular classes for as long as four years—and these classes themselves aren’t cheap either. Second, even if you do pass the exam and the interview, private medical school can cost from $180,000 to $270,000. This is 5 to 7 times the regular cost of a college education in Japan. Furthermore, they don’t have financial aid there like we do, so this is money your family is expected to pay out of pocket. It’s not uncommon for students to have to take the entrance exam multiple times, and each medical school has a separate exam that students have to pay to take. Thus, just taking the exam already involves a significant financial, physical, and psychological cost. Imagine all the hours of sacrifice and study, only to be cheated out of a place as less-qualified applicants circumvent the system.

Last year, an investigation into the medical school acceptance of an education ministry bureaucrat’s son in exchange for backdoor promises of research funds revealed more than expected. It brought to light widespread score manipulation based on donations and connections—and on gender. Women’s scores were being purposely decreased across the board at multiple top medical schools in order to keep their acceptance rate around 30%, so men would remain the majority. Investigation revealed this had been going on for more than a decade, and more than two decades for some of the schools. The guilty have claimed a variety of justifications, the main one being that women cannot be “real doctors” and will just leave their profession if they have a child or get married. Considering that women are traditionally expected to quit their jobs if they marry or have a child, is it any wonder? Given Japan’s current birthrate plight (its population is shrinking: of the 32 countries with a population of 40+ million, Japan ranks at the bottom with just 12.3% of the overall population being children), you would think they would be taking this more seriously. How hard would it really be to expand the child care options and support these women so they can do their job? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was recently re-elected, promised to fix the daycare shortage and put women in positions of power. Like the head-bent apologies of those responsible for the med school admissions scandal, Abe’s promises seem likely to be nothing more than empty words.

In the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report, the World Economic Forum ranked Japan 114th out of 144 countries in terms of economic participation and opportunity and 123rd in terms of political empowerment. Approximately 50% of Japanese women are college-educated, one of the world’s highest levels, yet rampant sexism and discrimination against women make it difficult for them to find high-level or full-time positions. Only 4% of managerial positions in Japan are held by women, and on average women earn just 70% of what a man with the same job and experience would receive. This boys’ club should have long since faded into the annals of history. That this antiquated, entitled system of oppression is still such a systemic problem is  absolutely unforgivable no matter where you live.

Here in the U.S., women are similarly shortchanged on pay and advancement because our reproductive capacity makes us a “liability” in the workforce. Plenty of memes pop up on the internet everyday about how hot it is to find a man who offers to wash the dishes or pick the kids up from school. That’s because it is not expected of them. Women are expected to marry, have children, and take care of the home. Sure, we’re “allowed” to work, but we are still expected to do everything else.

America or Japan, getting into school or making it in the workplace—discrimination and unfair practices seem to be everywhere you look. Officials bow their heads to apologize or are replaced, but it’s all window dressing. Nothing really changes. We need to start taking this seriously and level the playing field.

On the Primacy of Geography

Op-Ed

Americans’ lack of knowledge related to geography and world events has become a bit of a joke that in today’s political climate has stopped being funny. Last year, the crew of a late-night talk show went around New York City, asking Americans to label a country on a blank world map. Not a specific country, just any country out of 195 recognized states. There were more than a few awkward silences. This is one of many examples that, especially since the 2016 election, have given the rest of the world something to laugh about. These people on tv may not represent the average American. However, recent events have shown a harsh light on the degree to which Americans are uninformed about world events, and the response has been the equivalent of an indifferent shrug.

The picture doesn’t improve when you turn to statistics. Two surveys conducted in 2006 and 2017 by National Geographic and the Council on Foreign Relations found that in 2006 three-quarters of young Americans (aged 18-24) thought English was the most widely spoken native language in the world. It’s not. It ranks behind both Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Three years after the beginning of the war in Iraq, only 37 percent of young Americans could locate that country on a map despite the attention it was getting in the media. In 2017,  a survey of 75 geography-related questions showed an  average score of 55 percent among American college students, who would be scurrying to office hours with their tails between their legs if that score counted towards their GPA.  

The problem isn’t that Americans can’t properly label a blank map or know the difference between temperate and continental climates, since a policy of forcing middle schoolers to do just this hasn’t resulted in a more aware public. The problem is geographic illiteracy- a lack of knowledge that signals, more troublingly, a lack of interest.

If you don’t know where Guatemala is on a map, chances are you’re unaware that in 1954 the United States backed a coup in Guatemala that sought to overthrow a democratically elected president with left-leaning policies. The violence and civil war that followed in Guatemala has had huge implications for immigration flows from Central America today. Knowing the location of Guatemala is the first step in grappling with complex ideas like immigration that will be at the center of 2020 debates. But you wouldn’t know this if you didn’t know where Guatemala was.

The truth is, politics don’t stop at the border; having regional context is an increasingly integral part of understanding an issue. Take Yemen, which is currently the site of the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The same Americans who couldn’t locate Iraq when we were fighting a war there probably can’t locate Yemen now. This makes it unlikely that the average American is aware that the civil conflict in Yemen and the resulting scourges of malnutrition and cholera are exacerbated by actions of other governments vying for power in the region. It’s equally unlikely that these same Americans know that the U.S. supplied weapons to Saudi Arabia that played a role in this crisis until the senate voted against the policy in March.

This lack of understanding of basic geography becomes increasingly dangerous in a democracy where we vote for leaders who are tasked with responding to emerging situations. But instead of embracing their democratic responsibilities, it seems as if middle-class Americans, many of whom were central to the outcome of the 2016 election, are willing to evade this duty and to avoid grappling with the implications of bringing an individual to power who is equally indifferent. Engaging with the context and geography that shapes the realities of millions of people who have no say in the outcomes of these elections has become merely a nuisance. The danger isn’t limited to citizens: if you’re indifferent to the location of Syria, you’re liable to accept political and economic analysis from politicians who themselves can’t locate Syria.

Americans can afford to be ignorant, because geopolitics has little discernible effect on our daily lives. We don’t see our lives as directly impacted by a failure to engage in a larger international conversation. We are largely buffered from many of the effects of crises happening in the far-off amorphous regions that lie beyond our borders. Why bother? We can pawn off this engagement on other people.

This is a shame, because geography is a subject that has no age limit, and no prerequisite. It doesn’t require enrollment at a top university, or late nights hitting the books. It requires only curiosity, and perhaps a sense of global citizenship. We are living in a world rife with big complex problems, but turning our backs to these issues gets us no closer to solutions. There are areas for incremental progress in our own lives and communities. We need not bear the burden of these global issues alone, but in choosing to engage, we are taking one small step towards understanding the issues and forcing our leaders to understand these issues too. So if you find that you’re ready to reengage, feel free to start with the survey linked above. Don’t worry about your score. The bar is exceptionally low. There are no failing grades.

Welcome to the Job Hunt

Op-Ed

Most millennials are familiar with the term “ghosting”: when a person stops responding to online communication. It is a pretty cowardly and lazy act that frequently happens in online dating. Yet surprisingly, this same cop-out used to discreetly reject Tinder matches is what employers use on applicants in a job hunt. Applicants will submit their resumes; an automated email will say “thank you for your application”. Then that’s it. No, “we’re sorry but” or “thank you but unfortunately” — just a silent rejection that applicants have to guess they received.

At least in the world of online dating there are standard practices. For example, if someone reads a greeting but doesn’t respond after a few days, it’s understood that they’re not interested. With a company, it can take well over a month to hear back about an interview, let alone a rejection. Perhaps companies would seem less like FuckBois if they actually made an attempt to communicate instead of hitting someone up after months of silence for a face-to-face. Just a one line automated email giving an estimated number of days to expect a response by would be an improvement.

Why is this behavior okay? Millennials are famously criticized for not wanting to work, yet as older millennials take charge of companies they’re making it difficult for the younger generations to navigate the job hunt. For example, if a graduating senior needs to find a job by graduation, but most positions aren’t posted until February, then that applicant won’t hear back from employers before March. Most jobs require at least 3 interviews which could take all of April to complete. So by the earliest, if an applicant succeeds after their first application, they’ll find out by May if they have a job. Congrats grad, now just graduate, find an apartment, move, and start a brand new job all by June. And this is only for the successful applicant. Those who don’t succeed on their first wave of applications might have to wait until March before sending out a second wave because they weren’t sure if their first applications were successful. It’s difficult for students who need a job to secure their housing to – ‘try try again’ when they’re homeless. Being forced into an am-I-going-to-be-homeless-or-not position is what can happen when employers give no answers. Finding a job shouldn’t be like reading Stephen King, there shouldn’t be this much suspense.

The most infuriating aspect of this is that it’s not even that difficult to fix! In an age where Facebook can alter an election and Google can read our minds, it’s not as if companies don’t have the technical capacity to send out rejections. Even a one-line automated email to rejected applicants saying “thanks but no thanks” would suffice. It would be nice if employers had a progress bar that tracks the application. First, it would say submission accepted, then under review, and finally done. After that point, if the applicant doesn’t receive information about an interview they would know they’re rejected. It’s a simple no-muss no-fuss system. If Domino’s can track every pizza they make, then HR departments should certainly be able to track their applications.

There is no reasonable explanation for why things are the way they are. Applying for jobs is difficult enough without having to guess about one’s application status. When applying to other things like colleges, insurance companies, or credit cards, issuers inform applicants when they’ve been rejected. It’s standard practice. Only in the professional world is it okay to treat applicants like an accidental Tinder match. Why?

On Hope: A Review of Women Without Men

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

“Women Without Men” (2009) is a radical push to expose the severe gender inequality in 1953 Tehran, but the esoteric scenes and surrealist moments of the film keep it from fully making its point. Directed by Shirin Neshat and based on the novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, the film follows the stories of four women as they navigate a society rampant with sexism. Faezeh is a traditional young woman who will do anything to marry her friend’s abusive brother Amir. She is an example of how women are raised to perpetuate the systems that oppress them. Zarin is a prostitute who desperately needs to escape her brothel; her situation testifies to the violent dehumanization of women in financial need. Fahkri is a disillusioned middle-aged woman who longs to leave her husband. She’s not afraid to question and challenge society’s idealized view of marriage. Then there’s Munis, a young woman fascinated by the political realm around her. She alone packs the punch of the movie’s underlying theme: that patriarchal society leaves no hope for women, and that it is time to fight for gender equality and a better future.

Right after we meet Munis, we see that Tehran is in uproar. In order to secure an Iranian government that is sympathetic to their oil interests, the CIA and British intelligence have successfully enacted a coup to overthrow the democratically appointed Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The streets are filled with turmoil, including anti-coup protests which capture Munis’ attention. However, Munis’ harsh older brother Amir condemns her interest in anything but marriage, threatening to break her legs if she leaves the house. This first interaction between these two characters follows the opening scene where Munis makes herself fall off a building to her death. This juxtaposition is not an accident. The two scenes set the stage for the depiction of oppressive systems that the film will later explore.

In the surreal portrayal of her suicide, it’s clear that Munis is hopeless to the point of death. As she fades into the sky, her voice says, “Now I’ll have silence, silence, and nothing,” then she hauntingly adds that the only way to obtain freedom is to escape from the world. Since this opening scene is paired with the next one, her brother subjecting her to his commands and threatening her if she does not comply, we understand that he is the cause of her suicide. Neshat seems to be saying that as long as society condones men’s control over women, the women are doomed. Their fate is utterly hopeless.

The film shows Munis’ surreal suicide three times, marking the beginning, middle, and end. It also punctuates every other scene of the movie, recurring as a constant reminder of Munis’ destiny. In an interview, Director Neshat elaborates on how Munis provides structure for the story:

Munis represented a political character, a woman who believed in social justice and political activism without being ideological. And also by her being dead, in a way in her spirit and being, she connected the story of the country and the woman together, so she became the narrator.

By saying this, the director gives Munis’ story and voice more external authority than those of any other character, because it is she who stands as a bridge between the political climate and the personal experiences of the characters. In these ways, Munis drives the film. We always return to her perspective, as well as to her death.

The film’s intense focus on death is the principal reason this film seems bereft of hope. What is left but nihilistic surrealism? The answer: the very existence of the film. Elsewhere in her interview, Neshat speaks of the courage it took to make and distribute such a movie. Not only was the original book banned in Iran, but many of the people involved with the story were banned from their homeland as well. The writer spent five years in jail. Many cast and crew members hired to work on the movie were prohibited from being involved. However, the movie is still in circulation, even if illegally, and in response Neshat exclaims: “I couldn’t be more delighted that there is a piracy of distribution.”

The impetus to produce such a film, and the effort of distributing it, whether under the table or openly, are moves for the exposure of unjust systems. The film refuses to let these problems exist without confronting them and shares with the world just how destructive they can be. By using a movie as a tool for social reform, the creators are combining the audience’s desire for entertainment and and society’s need for justice–an effective and accessible way to mobilize for action.

On the other hand, the film is often ambiguous and opaque. Many may watch it and leave without a clear sense of its meaning. The surrealistic elements and magical realism make the plot hard to follow and the message difficult to decipher–even Munis’ triple death, the repeated centerpiece of the movie, makes no logical sense. Between a faceless man and unrealistic shifts in color–from almost monochrome shots to vibrant garden scenes–viewers are hard pressed to say exactly what happens. Arguments for social justice may be lost in such esoteric scenes. Perhaps these abstract features allow the film to cram in more meaning, but the challenge of unpacking that meaning may mitigate the benefit.

Neshat and her team may feel truly passionate about their political achievement, and the risks they took to create it are admirable. However, the means they employ blur their mission and leave viewers confused. The movie may have paid tribute to the magical realism of the novel, but was it worth keeping such convoluted metaphors?

Film Review Women Without Men: A Powerful Watch

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

Watching Women Without Men is an engaging experience. The film’s director, Shirin Neshat, is best known for her photography. The cinematography throughout the film is outstanding. The detailed images and long takes work in tandem with minimal diegetic audio to both draw the viewer in and focus attention on the immediate scene. As a result the audience comes away with hearts pounding, feeling as if they were really there beside the characters. There are some glaring plot holes in the film, but even the plot seems less significant compared against intense and immersive experience Neshat’s artistry creates.

For this, her first dramatic feature Neshat chose to adapt a novel by Shahrnush Parsipur into a movie. Both the film and the novel are currently banned in Iran. The film follows the lives of four Iranian women in Tehran during the 1953 American-backed coup. The four, Munis, Faezeh, Zarin, and Fakhri, all represent very different backgrounds of women in Tehrani society. Despite their initial differences, all in their own way go through a transformative struggle that changes their life. Throughout the film, the characters’ stories weave in and out of each other, with touches of magical realism that highlight symbolic moments.

The first scene depicts Munis falling off a building. Her death is a central element not only to her storyline but to the film as a whole. This same scene is shown three times throughout the film: at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. Even though the image of her falling through the air, face turned towards the sky with a serene expression, is repeatedly shown, the moment of impact when her body hits the ground is never actually seen. The audience is only given the scene of her falling, indicating that the most important action is Munis’ choice to jump rather than the act of suicide. Munis’ voice breaks the silence; she speaks of the desire for freedom as she falls. Her calm voice begins speaking unsettling words which seem to describe suicide as a choice to be free. Together,  Munis’ expression and message create a pervasive eeriness that lingers with the viewer, returning echoes throughout the film each time she is shown falling.

Unlike Munis, Zarin does not choose to die, nor is she resurrected. Scenes of Zarin lying down in nature precede her death. Often in these scenes the colors are uniquely vibrant. Lush green backgrounds are in stark contrast with Zarin’s pale form. These scenes are more subtle than the scenes where Munis appears, but in their mysterious beauty they are equally powerful. In contrast with Munis’ rebelliousness Zarin comes across as resigned. She gives no explanation to anyone, and shows no signs of illness until she collapses. On her deathbed Zarin expresses no desire to get better, or not to die. At the moment of her death, the sounds of Faezeh’s cries, without background music or other theatrical effects, pulls at the viewers emotions. It’s hard not to feel have an emotional reaction to Faezeh’s cries. Given that Zarin’s silence throughout the film, it is difficult to know what her death symbolizes. Perhaps it foreshadows a future in which women are unable to escape in time from their torment. Despite the ambiguity of Zarin’s character, the beautiful artistry that surrounds her death make it a deeply affecting moment, much as in the case of Munis’ death.

Throughout the film there are often glaring instances of plot holes. To name a few, after Munis’ resurrection she visits a cafe that women are not allowed to enter. Faezeh is with her, and she is noticed by the men in the cafe, but Munis is not. Later on when Munis is sitting in another cafe, she is approached by a man she saw earlier in the town square. Parts of this inconsistency can be explained by the genre magical realism, like Munis’ resurrection, and her invisibility. But even magic has logic. Munis’ selective invisibility seems random. Calling this randomness magical realism sounds more like a cop-out than a credible explanation.   

In important scenes like these, the audience is never left feeling indifferent to the characters. Neshat’s skill in cinematography expertly guides the hearts of viewers to beat strongly with each character, even when it’s hard to understand their actions. The intense, dramatic visual experience of the film leaves a strong impression that stays with the audience long after the final credits have rolled.

Wo[men]: Shirin Neshat’s Foray into Film is Allegorical Genius

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

In her first feature-length film, Women Without Men, the visual artist Shirin Neshat paints a complex picture of Iranian life in the 1950s. Based on stories by Shahrnush Parsipur, the movie follows the lives of four women who, for various reasons, are living their lives outside the status quo. Munis is almost thirty years old and refuses to get married, contrary to her controlling older brother’s wishes. Her friend Faezeh is a modest young woman who wants to marry Munis’s brother; he, however, is betrothed to someone else. Zarin is a prostitute who cannot bear to spend one more day in the brothel where she works. And Fakhri is so fed up with her marriage and emotionally neglected by her husband that she divorces him and moves out of the house. Munis, the film’s narrator, spends much of her time in the city, while the other three women meet in a safe house owned by Fakhri, where each finds her own form of refuge.

The women’s disjointed–yet somehow connected–stories are told against the backdrop of 1953 Iran. The power of Women Without Men, which began as a series of audio/video installations, does not lie in its narrative. It is a story told in moments, with the signature techniques of an installation artist visible throughout. The intensity and individuality of each scene can be appreciated as a piece of art; narrative is not prioritized. Were the scenes to be shuffled around and rearranged, not much of the story would be lost; it would almost be akin to walking the opposite way around a gallery. Like many other films in the genre of magical realism, Neshat’s creation weaves together the familiar, the uncanny, and the aesthetic, and the result is a work of art that is deeply moving. All four of the women transcend their environments and together they become an allegorical representation of the ways in which the male gaze oppresses women. And reciprocally, through each woman, we bear witness to the ways in which women fight back.

Neshat tackles the concepts of death as freedom, society’s definition of purity, the reduction of woman to her body, and the intellectual freedom of the independent woman. She invites viewers on a journey to investigate each theme through Munis, Faezeh, Zarin, and Fakhri. Remarkably, Neshat does this without succumbing to the temptation of an over-the-top, heavy-handed visual allegory.

Munis uses her death as power. Her brother cannot control her from beyond the grave, and the audience sees her resurrected with the power to participate politically and enter spaces in which she was not formerly welcome. Munis is our narrator, and through that role we see her freed from even the confines of the film, being the only character able to break the fourth wall. Munis establishes her agency when she closes the film speaking directly to the audience: “Death isn’t so hard. You only think it is… All that we wanted was to find a new form, a new way. Release.” Munis’s message–and Neshat’s–is that the concept of women’s freedom must be reframed. Munis’s independence lies not only in listening to the radio and going into male-dominated spaces; it is the power and the agency that she acquires when she takes her life, death, and resurrection into her own hands.

At the beginning of the film, Faezeh is adamant that her destiny lies in being a devout wife; her image of purity is tied closely to her virginity. When she is raped by two men from the town, she is plagued by painful memories and the knowledge that she has been irreversibly changed. It is through reclaiming her body in Fakhri’s sanctuary that she is able to transcend this suffering. Faezeh must remove herself from her everyday life in order to begin fully embracing herself, reiterating the independence and autonomy required to experience this kind of shift. Fakhri’s sanctuary gives Faezeh the space to explore herself without society pervading that exploration. Having been led there by Munis, with whom she has a profound connection, Faezeh is also an example to viewers of the power of two women working together for the betterment of their womanhood.

Zarin is the literal embodiment of the male gaze reducing woman to her body. This is especially true given the exclusively visual nature of her character: she does not speak throughout the film. Zarin’s fight takes a different form than those of the other women. In contrast to Faezeh’s life of religious modesty in which her body is constantly hidden, Zarin’s days are spent acting as an object of pleasure for paying customers. Her message is one of healing, in which she takes a journey away from the pain inflicted upon her by society, and replaces it with a kind of acceptance that she had not previously known. Zarin also represents the unity in adversity fostered by the women in the film, primarily Faezeh and Fakhri. For them, the silent Zarin provides spiritual and emotional healing. While, by the end, Zarin does not find bodily healing, we have already learned from Munis that bodily healing is not necessarily that which brings the most peace.

Fakhri makes the difficult decision to divorce her husband, who is a high ranking official in the Shah’s army. During such a politically turbulent time, Fakhri’s decision is seen as even bolder than it might have been without the surrounding social and political context. Her mystical orchard home is a safe haven for the women, and provides the physical space of escape in the film. The home is a liminal space, not connected with the politics or the societal turmoil until the very end. This space allows Fakhri to grow just as much as her counterparts. The last image we see of Fakhri is that of a woman who has finally carved out her space in a world dominated by men.

Shirin Neshat’s stark images and intense scenes largely ignore the chronological, placing much heavier emphasis on the allegorical. She powerfully highlights concepts of death, purity, physicality, and oppression in Women Without Men, inviting viewers into the art gallery that is this film. Not only does she show us the power of each woman by herself–she shows us the meaningful connections and small community that form within the confines of an oppressive society. Through each scene, Neshat paints a picture of the visceral feelings associated with witnessing the radical agency of women who do not operate according to the rules of men.

‘Ida’ Film Review: A long take on Polish memory

Movie Review: "Ida"


Still from the film PC: Opus film

“Ida”, Paweł Pawlikowski’s brutally simple yet deeply powerful film is as much a deep-dive into collective Polish memory as it is about the conflicting emotions of a novitiate nun’s journey through her own past. The film swept up two Oscars at the 2015 Academy Awards (Best Foreign Language film & Best Cinematography), but was less well received at home. In a country that has recently passed a controversial law against forms of holocaust guilt attribution, it is no surprise that a film with a strong message about Polish complicity in Nazi atrocities has caused some backlash. One might try to link this to the rise of right-wing populism in the country, but in fact the controversy over this film was not limited to one side of the political spectrum. By means of a compelling narrative presented through stunning cinematography, the director confronts his native Poland with a dark and uncomfortable side of its history. One that carries an important message for the present day.

“Ida” tells the story of Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), who at the start of the film is days away from taking her vows. Her mother superior at the convent, where she has spent her entire life since being orphaned as a child, sends her away to meet her only living relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza). At their first encounter, this woman who was once known as ‘Red Wanda’, a reference to her time as a staunch communist state prosecutor, reveals Anna’s true family history to her. The young novitiate’s real name is Ida and she comes from a Jewish family that was murdered during the holocaust. In this pivotal scene, Wanda offers only an insensitively brash explanation and walks around the house smoking a cigarette as the viewer is left staring at Ida, who is composed, yet in shock at the revelation. Her wide, expressive eyes and young features exert a strong emotional pull on the viewer in this moment and throughout the entire film. This young non-professional actress has eyes that can tell a whole story. I can’t help but see in them the looks of Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Together, Wanda and Ida go on a journey into their past and across Poland to retrieve the remains of their murdered family members and reach some form of reconciliation with their unspoken history. They start to unravel bits and pieces of their own identity and, in doing so, pull at the threads of Polish memory regarding the historical fate of its Jewish population.

In one scene, the son of Wanda’s former neighbor bends down crying while he sits inside the hole in the ground out of which he has just dug up the skull of her son. He was the one who had delivered Ida as a child to the convent and murdered her mother, her father and her older cousin, Wanda’s son. Until this scene, the viewer is never invited to view Wanda as a Jewish victim herself; here we see her in pain for the first time, although we are not given enough of a moment to fully register that pain.

Indeed, the film never lets the viewer engage directly with the scenes or even the history they refer to. There is no soundtrack and very little diegetic sound to guide our emotions, but there are narrative elements in every corner of every shot. Quite literally in fact, for most of the film the characters are confined to the margins of the frame, depriving viewers of the satisfaction of taking in a full action or even a full person at once. The camera is tilted upwards and rarely ever moves. Most shots are long takes that last a little too long, yet don’t wait for an action to be fully completed. The space above weighs down heavily on every scene, almost pushing the characters out of the frame to center on an absence of people, a dead space.

A plot twist towards the end of the film, after Wanda suddenly commits suicide, changes the pace of the film completely. The narrative jumps awkwardly as Ida returns to her aunt’s home and explores every aspect of Wanda’s sinful and adulterous life at once. She wears her late aunt’s dresses, forces herself to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol; she suddenly reunites with a musician who had taken an interest in her and sleeps with him. The narrative jumps seem jarring and removed from the raw feeling of the rest of the film. This sequence is short and the events it recounts confusing. They culminate in Ida’s return to the convent after her lover fails to give a satisfactory answer to her repeated question: “And then what?”

The film ends by breaking all of its own rules: An audible soundtrack accompanies Ida home as she walks towards us, center-frame. Her glance looks past us, in a final, shaky long take we lose our grip on all the threads of Polish memory this film has pulled up and we abandon, just as Ida does her lover, all the questions left unresolved. Despite this unexpected ending and the narrative jumps leading up to it, Pawlikowski suceeds at confronting the viewer with the complex internal struggle of the film’s main character and the dark points in Polish history that many might wish to forget. He manages to provoke thoughts and questions, but not to resolve them.
That is the viewer’s task.

Ida (2013)
Director Paweł Pawlikowski
Writers Paweł Pawlikowski (screenplay), Rebecca Lenkiewicz (screenplay)
Stars Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
Rating PG-13
Running Time 1h 22m
Genre Drama

Women Without Men – An Allegory Falls Flat

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

Shirin Neshat, primarily known for her video installations and photography exploring gender issues in the Islamic world, forays outside familiar territory with Women Without Men (2009), her first feature-length film. Though born in Iran, she currently resides in New York, having been banned from entering Iran since 1996 due to her politically controversial photographs and experimental videos. Overly ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful, Women Without Men was originally envisioned by Neshat as a video installation. The film was loosely adapted from feminist writer Shahrnush Parsipur’s 1989 novel of the same name. This audacious debut feature looks back at the pivotal moment in 1953 when the progressive Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown. The Shah was then re-installed as dictator in a coup d’état engineered by the American and British governments. This film, which won Neshat the Silver Lion award for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival, revolves around the lives of four women from different classes and backgrounds during this turbulent period in Iran’s history.

Representative of the expectations their society places on women, the four characters are largely cliché and their behavior often predictable. Munis (Shabnam Toloui), a serious woman obsessed with listening to the radio for reports on the Mossadegh situation and eager to participate in the street protests, refuses to limit herself to the circumscribed roles approved by her society and mandated by her tyrannical brother Amir Khan (Essa Zahir). In love with this brother who makes Munis’s life a misery, her conservative friend Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni) is a timider woman. Emaciated prostitute Zarin (Orsolya Tóth) impulsively flees the brothel where she worked after the men’s faces start to blend together into a surreal blank. Lastly, Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad) is a stylish older woman unhappily married to the powerful General Sahri (Tahmoures Tehrani). After an old flame rolls into town she leaves her husband to live in a lovely country orchard where she encounters the other three women, who also arrive seeking refuge before the military coup intrudes on their peaceful idyll. Through these characters, the film celebrates women’s resilience and courage in the face of an oppressive, unyielding patriarchy that is present on personal, political and cultural levels.

While each of these women represents an aspect of what their country expects women to be, they simultaneously buck these roles, which gives them a presence greater than that of simple flesh-and-blood. Munis is desperate to take an active role in the politics of her nation, to affect change, but is forbidden by her fundamentalist brother to set foot outside the house or act other than the demure woman he expects her to be. Zarin is abused daily by men in the brothel as her only way to survive and get by, eventually leading her to flee to a women’s public bath where she scrubs herself bloody in an attempt to feel clean of their touch. Fakhri is reviled by her husband because she is menopausal and no longer sexually desirable to him; when her former lover returns she runs away with him to the orchard. These women come together in the almost magical orchard after their travails to form a family, cementing the importance of freedom and working together to attain it.

The director’s instincts as a photographer are evident in every frame of Women Without Men. The treatment of light to contrast with shadow and the expert use of color to paint each scene with rich, shifting hues creates a realistic view of the world that is still, at some level, magical.  The precise compositions of each shot present alternately troubled and serene landscapes, which contribute to the almost fantastical atmosphere of the movie. In contrast to the lush color palette of the orchard scenes, the scenes taking place in Tehran (re-created in Morocco) are muted and monochromatic-more like a newsreel. Each frame in the film appears carefully composed and it gives Women Without Men the ambience of an exhibition whose figures have come to life, like Pygmalion’s Galatea, to act out this tragic feminist allegory.

It’s more than just the composition and palette of each frame that lends the film its fantastical quality—it’s the surrealistic elements as well. This is especially evident when Zarin looks up at a client’s face and sees that it is completely featureless; this initiates the breakdown that ultimately leads her to leave the brothel. The orchard is another of these surreal elements. Purchased by Fakhri it is clearly located in the real world, but its representation gives it more the feel of a dream space set apart from reality–sometimes menacing, sometimes divine.

Both the original writer and the director have been persecuted by the country of their birth because of their beliefs. Women Without Men allows viewers to feel their emotions—and through them those of the women still held down by the men in their lives—and desire to be free and true to themselves in these characters. These performances are successful largely due to the skill of their actresses in achieving the right level of emotional intensity in each scene: Shahrzad’s portrayal of her character’s dissatisfaction and desperate desire to maintain sexual and social confidence, Tóth’s display of fierce intensity, Tolouei’s depiction of pride and deep-seated melancholy.

The actresses’ portrayals are especially important given Neshat’s lack of experience with extended narrative. While her compositions are arresting, the narrative sometimes fails to pack much punch. The film feels awkward and overloaded and, despite decent performances by the actors, the viewer never gets to know their characters. Ultimately this results in the emotional impact of their respective fates falling flat and somewhat predictable. Neshat bit off more than she could chew in this ambitious debut with its heavy socio-political and cultural commentary. Nevertheless, her film is worth watching for its message, striking imagery, and distinct blend of realism and imagination in the service of an affecting feminist message.

Exploring the Meaning of Freedom

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

It’s hard to reconcile the masterful cinematography with the subject matter of Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men. There is a magical quality about the filming, something that fits in with the film’s central theme of freedom, and Neshat’s artful shots, each frame itself a photograph, almost seem out of place in such a violent setting.

The film takes place in 1953 in Tehran, Iran, during the Anglo-American-backed coup d’état that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh’s democratically-elected government and restored the Shah as dictator. The narrative begins with Munis (Shabnam Tolouei), a thirty-year-old woman who is trapped in her home by her fundamentalist brother. The opening scene shows her suicide, taking place directly after her brother unplugs her radio—her only connection to the world outside the walls of the house. Instead of mourning her, her brother curses her for disgracing him and buries her in their garden.

Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni), a friend of Munis’s, discovers her body. She secretly wishes to marry Munis’s brother, and when she learns of his marriage to another woman, she seeks the help of a seer to ensure that the marriage fails. Instead, she hears Munis call out to her when she is in the family’s garden; when Faezeh digs through the dirt, Munis returns to live a double life as an independent woman, protesting against the planned coup d’état against Mossadegh.

Zarin (Orsi Toth) is a prostitute. So many men have abused her body that it becomes impossible for her to tell one from the next, and she flees the brothel when she sees that her last customer is seemingly faceless. The next time she is on screen, she tries to wash the marks of these men from her body; it is a painful thing to watch because these marks are indelible, and no matter how hard she scrubs, even leaving her skin raw and bloody, they will never disappear. It is only by leaving Tehran and the men who hurt her that Zarin breaks free from the loveless caresses that haunt her.

Finally we meet Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad), a wealthy woman married to a war general. Following the arrival of an old flame, Fakhri leaves her husband and purchases a villa at the edge of town. This villa becomes her refuge—and in turn becomes a safe haven for Faezeh and Zarin, who eventually arrive at Fakhri’s door. Here, the three women help each other heal from the invisible injuries men have left on them. In this newfound freedom, they can live their lives undisturbed by men. Together, they take care of each other without fear of saying or doing something wrong; Neshat seems to be telling us that they understand each other in a way that a man never could. Meanwhile, Munis is free to pursue her desire to not only interact with the world beyond her radio, but become an activist herself and fight for what she believes in.

Each shot and frame of the film is ethereal, reflecting the surrealistic nature of the cinematography. It is a unique contrast that both invites the user to question the reality of the film and decide for themselves what hidden message each scene might contain. But in keeping with this artful, ever-shifting style, the peace at the villa and Munis’s activism do not last. When Fakhri announces that she is going to throw a party to celebrate the opening of the orchard in which the villa is located, Zarin falls ill; meanwhile, the coup begins in earnest, and Munis watches helplessly as the leadership of the protest fractures after the capture of one of the key activists.

The party and the crumbling of the protest unfold in tandem as the film progresses. At first it seems odd that the two events happen together, but they are linked the moment that a woman voices her distaste for the Shah at the party. Suddenly the viewer is reminded of the coup and the ensuing rebellion, and not long afterwards the Shah’s men arrive at the villa’s door, searching for one of the activists. This marks the end of resistance as their leaders scatter and Munis mourns the freedom that could have been. When Fakhri walks around in her empty villa the next morning, it dawns on her that that party was perhaps the last moment of freedom for Tehran and its citizens.

That Neshat’s work is forbidden in Iran, as is the novel, a magic-realistic book written by Shahrnush Parsipur, that the film is based upon, creates another tension with the film’s central theme of freedom. Women Without Men is a self-explanatory title that explores the possibility of freedom—a place where women can dictate their own lives in any way they choose—in an environment where there is no way to win. Perhaps it is a reflection of how Neshat sees the world today, or perhaps it is a call to arms to fight for the freedom she shows us in the film. Whatever the case, Neshat’s love for Iran is apparent at every turn, and her artful depiction of freedom and what it means to women is central to each frame, surreal and real.