FOCUS ON ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST Pedal

Pedal Power : Haifaa Al Mansour’s Wadjda

The first ever feature film directed by

a Saudi Arabian woman is a heartwarming story of a little girl who wants to transcend the limitations of her patriarchal culture, and own and

ride a bike. More significantly, however, the film’s central theme of mobility

alludes to the little steps taken by the conservative kingdom in recognising

the rights of women, writes Gabrielle O’Brien.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, perhaps more than any other Arab nation, has remained a sociopolitical entity resolutely shut off from the West. Significantly, there is no national cinema to contribute to a discourse of nationhood, to reflect the society back to its Saudi audience, or to introduce the culture to the wider audience of ‘world cinema’. Given this context, it is not surprising that Wadjda (Haifaa Al Mansour, 2012), the first feature-length film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, was warmly received by both festival audiences and critics when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won three awards, in 2012. The film has also received recognition at film festivals in Rotterdam, Los Angeles and Durban. It was nominated for a BAFTA Award, and is the

first ever Saudi Arabian entry to the Academy Awards. Its director claimed a further important milestone: Al Mansour is the first Saudi Arabian woman ever to direct a feature-length film. Wadjda engages with the treatment of Saudi Arabian women and the gender disparity that underpins the kingdom’s rigid adherence to patriarchal laws and social practices. By invoking the broad umbrella of Islam, the country’s political regime severely restricts the mobility and autonomy of women, particularly in the public domain (the kingdom is ranked 127th out of 136 countries for gender parity1). But Wadjda takes up these issues with a gentle, lightly comic mode of address, placing a feisty ten-year-old girl at the heart of the narrative.

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FOCUS ON ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The tropes of difference and standing apart from restrictive conventions are clearly combined with the desire for mobility, and the prospect of a more progressive Saudi Arabia for women is literally and figuratively constituted via the theme of movement.

Young Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) lives in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. She is determined to raise enough riyals to purchase the green bicycle that she has caught sight of in a downtown store. Her wish is to be able to race her best friend, local neighbourhood boy Abdullah (Abdullrahman Al Gohani), who seems to ‘own’ the streets along with the other local boys on bikes. The charming protagonist is repeatedly told that girls cannot ride bikes, but is both determined and naive enough to believe that she can eschew the rules that govern Saudi women. Consequently, she uses her entrepreneurial talents to sell hand-knitted bracelets to her peers at the madrasa (school). When the headmistress announces a Qur’an-recitation competition with a prize of SR1000, Wadjda believes she has found the means to purchase the bike. Meanwhile, her mother (Reem Abdullah) is consumed with anxiety that her husband (Sultan Al Assaf) will take a second wife, as she cannot bear him the son that his culture venerates. Wadjda works tirelessly to learn the pas-sages from the holy text despite her interest being purely motivated by material desire. Her teachers are impressed by her commitment and believe that she is a reformed girl who has parted ways with her former ‘rebellious’ spirit. After winning the competition, however, she realises that nonconformity is transgression, and that her agenda will not be tolerated by the authoritarian politics that shape her world.

The narrative trajectory of Wadjdja engages with the familiar conventions of mainstream cinematic storytell-ing. However, rather than detracting from the power or effectiveness of the film, this cross-fertilisation with recognisable elements of popular (Hollywood) filmmaking only increases Wadjda’s emblematic potency; it helps to confirm the film’s status as a contemporary reference point for Saudi Arabia’s gender politics, creating a new dialogue with domestic and global audiences. In recycling and re-appropriating mainstream narrative conceits, Al Mansour has crafted a film that occupies an interstitial location in terms of its audience, register, film language and style, and of course in terms of the sociopolitical commentary being expounded. So, while the narrative structure is somewhat schematic, the representation of women opens up a window to a previously shuttered discourse in cinema.

The notion of gender as ‘performance’ and the idea that social structures effectively create and naturalise norma-tively gendered behaviours have been well documented by Western theorists. Judith Butler’s seminal work Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’2 is still the cornerstone of this feminist criticism, and her ideas have been taken up by a wide range of auteurs interested in gender issues (most notably Pedro Almodóvar3). The opening sequence of Wadjda nods to this school of thinking, and foregrounds the role of ritual and religious customs as a collective performative exhibition of gender. Here, the wider social system is collapsed with the teach-ings of Islam, which the regime uses to prescribe appro-priate behaviour for women. Al Mansour opens her film with a group of schoolgirls on stage being instructed to recite verses from the Qur’an, and this rigorously enforced ‘exhibition’ recalls Butler’s feminist philosophy. Just as Butler insists on gender as a social construction, separate from the biological reality of a person’s sex, the young girls are being indoctrinated into a closed system of socially acceptable (gendered) conduct. By underscoring both the artificiality and enforced uniformity of the expectations placed on Saudi girls, Al Mansour positions the specta-tor to respond sympathetically to the film’s protagonist while establishing the wider context in shorthand. Saudi Arabia’s national identity and its sociopolitical landscape are embedded within Islamic strictures, and its constitution is explicitly founded on the teachings of the Qur’an. Within this highly ritualised, starkly codified country, the fear of social exile or state-imposed sanctions looms large for any woman flirting with behaviour deemed ‘deviant’.

Yet, from the opening sequence, Wadjda’s individuality and spirited difference from her peers is underscored. Notably, Al Mansour signals this difference via the recurring visual motif of feet and shoes – Wadjda’s Converse shoes peek out defiantly from under her school uniform. While all the other schoolgirls wear nondescript footwear, Wadjda’s Western shoes operate as a powerful (if problematic) signifier of the desire for autonomy and female agency.4 The tropes of difference and standing apart from restric-tive conventions are clearly combined with the desire for mobility, and the prospect of a more progressive Saudi Arabia for women is literally and figuratively constituted

PREVIOUS SPREAD: WADJDA (WAAD MOHAMMED) WITH THE GREEN BIKE SHE DESIRES THIS SPREAD, L–R: WADJDA WITH HER MOTHER (REEM ABDULLAH) AND FATHER (SULTAN AL ASSAF); WADJDA WITH HER SIGNATURE CONVERSE SHOES PEEKING OUT FROM UNDER HER SCHOOL UNIFORM

48 • Metro Magazine 181 | © ATOM


via the theme of movement. Freedom from static laws and customs comes with the promise of autonomous tran-sit through public spaces, self-determined and without restriction, but the independent mobility of women is still perceived by many sectors of Saudi Arabian soci-ety as haram (running counter to the laws of Islam, or suspected of leading people away from the country’s constitutional beliefs).

The ideas of movement and agency within the diegesis of Wadjda are also significant in terms of the film’s produc-tion. Much of the promotional hype surrounding its release highlighted the restrictions imposed on Al Mansour, who had to direct many scenes from within the confines of a van, so as to not offend Saudi customs by being seen interacting with men in the streets of Riyadh.5 Of the ex-perience, the director concedes that there were frustra-tions, but is intent on emphasising the country’s status as what she terms ‘a moving society’. Her negotiation of the politics of censorship seems contingent on connecting gently with her audience, and on highlighting the positive conditions that permitted her to shoot and distribute her film in the first place. To this end, she enthuses that

it’s exciting just to be part of what’s happening in Saudi now […] for me just to be a part of it, it’s alright. Like, in

a van or outside the van, I think the most important thing is that I was able to make a film – an authentic film.6

Radical resistance servicing an urgent feminist agenda is anathema to Al Mansour, who seeks to tell an intimate story that is neither fierce nor didactic. She is keen to em-phasise her respect for the views of conservative Saudis:

I understand that change is such a painful process, and people need to take time to change on their own pace and not be forced to adapt into a new lifestyle without really believing [in] it.7

This careful staking out of the ‘middle ground’ within the narrative of Wadjda and the politics surrounding it are powerfully disarming. By placing an engaging ten-year-old at the heart of the film and following a familiar narrative template, Al Mansour manages to strike a sugary feel-good note that makes the film warmly entertaining despite its potentially unsettling and divisive themes. Interestingly, there is a discernible triangular relay between protago-nist, director and the wider experiences of Saudi women. Young Wadjda pushes boundaries in the hope that some might be permeable, but she is earnestly self-possessed rather than aggressive or confrontational. She is entrepre-neurial and tries to work within the structures imposed on


her to achieve her own goals; in order to win the Qur’an competition, she must demonstrate the qualities of piety, servitude and discipline that are esteemed by the adult rule-makers in her world. This, in turn, mirrors some of the experiences and strategies of the director, who is at pains not to be perceived as antagonistic or incendiary by the Saudi regime.

While Wadjda’s efforts to work within the existing system ultimately prove fruitless (the prize money is taken from her when she naively announces her intention to buy a bicycle), Al Mansour is able to negotiate the system more successfully. Given the very specific context of the film’s production and reception, the claims of some critics that Al Mansour omitted any significant criticism of the state or of Islam8 seem misjudged. While it’s true that the film did not depict state bodies like the mutaween (the ‘religious police’), what is really significant is the representation of Saudi women in Wadjda. This is what offers the possibility of a rupture in the closed circuit of female experience in the kingdom. The medium of cinema lends a voice to the Saudi women who are challenging the status quo and to

what they perceive as the oppressive forces of religion, custom and familial honour. It is true that Wadjda is not an aesthetically or formally innovative work, but it is not intended to be. After all, this is not a case of reframing the discourse but rather of framing it in the first instance.

Writing about the cinematic production and perceptions associated with Arab cinema, Viola Shafik suggests that

because its existence is based on a Western technique, Arab cinema is frequently criticized as evidence of Westernization and acculturation. Its consideration inevitably touches on the relation between Arab-Muslim culture and the West, and raises questions about notions of authenticity and acculturation, tradition and alienation, and the roots of these relations and ideas.9

At both representational and formal levels, Wadjda en-gages directly with some of the problematic associations of Western ‘contamination’ in the Arab consciousness. Wadjda listens to Western music and makes mixtapes, which she sells to her schoolmates; her entrepreneurial

The medium of cinema lends a voice to the Saudi women who are challenging the status quo and to what they perceive as the oppressive forces of religion, custom and familial honour. It is true that Wadjda is not an aesthetically or formally innovative work, but it is not intended to be.

ABOVE, BOTTOM LEFT: WADJDA WITH ABDULLAH (ABDULLRAHMAN AL GOHANI)




skills and desire for a bike despite warnings that ‘[she] won’t be able to have children if [she] ride[s] a bike’ all point to Western influences and raise suspicion or contempt within the narrative, the structure of which takes its cues from Western mainstream cinema.

It is perhaps at this juncture that a ‘diaspora sensibility’ – the some-times dichotomised cinematic gaze that comes from transnational filmmakers – comes into focus. Wadjda brings a sense of being simultaneously within and an outsider to the native culture. Resisting the tendency of some filmmakers associated with diaspora works to ‘exoticise’ the homeland,10 Al Mansour’s treatment of city spaces (both urban and domestic) is fond and familiar. At the same time, this familiarity is undercut by an awareness of the inequality that restricts and segregates women within the minutiae of their daily lives. One particularly resonant image is that of Wadjda’s mother’s entrapment when her obnoxious male chauffeur refuses to drive her, leaving her unable to travel to the school where she teaches. (The power struggle between Saudi women and their drivers is not unusual, as male drivers know that the women are beholden to them for transport but are also the source of their income, which thus creates conflict.11) She sits in despair, seemingly ‘engulfed’ by an exquisitely ornate sofa. The effect is of being marooned, and the notion of a beautiful gilded cage is sug-gested: when the access to transport is removed, women (who are not allowed to drive in the kingdom) are abruptly cut off from public life.

This is further underscored in a later scene in which Wadjda poignantly attaches a homemade leaf that bears her own name to a pictorial representation of her paternal family tree after her mother informs her that only male children warrant a branch. The disjuncture that comes from being within and without is evident here, as the depic-tion of the home and of interactions between father and daughter are gently wrought, despite Wadjda’s dawning realisation of the restrictive culture she must negotiate. This positioning of the diasporic lens is not unsurprising, given the director’s history and international citizen-ship; Wadjda was, in fact, written while Al Mansour was on a Master of Arts scholarship at the University of Sydney, her children attend an international school in Bahrain, where they reside, and her husband is an American diplomat.

In Saudi Arabia there are no cinemas, as the regime frowns upon the mixing of genders, especially in a collective darkened space. Yet film is consumed avidly in homes – and for the first time ever, the cityscape of Riyadh may be seen in narrative form by its own residents as well as by the wider world. Many Saudi women view any intercessions by the West as treacherous to the preservation of their culture, and Wadjda has been met with varying responses, from celebration to relief to disdain. What seems evident is that the film suggests a subtle yet irrefutable turning point. Conditions for women are slowly evolv-ing: most notably, they will be able to vote in municipal elections from 2015,12 a not-insignificant development. In line with these sociopolitical changes, Al Mansour’s work filters warm sunlight through the dark in-tersections of the highly conservative kingdom’s gender politics. Rather than a renegotiation of Saudi Arabia’s limiting conditions, Wadjda seeks to open up a space for new possibilities, for new perspectives, for female storytellers and for female journeys.

Responding to the sobering realities of Saudi life for women, the film’s final image is of reaching a boundary or crossroads that is both personal and sociopolitical. Wadjda is jubilant after racing and beating Abdullah on the glorious green bike her mother eventually

purchases for her. This apparent act of female agency is, rather, an admission of the need for solidarity; after her husband takes a second wife, Wadjda’s mother tells her mournfully, ‘You are all I have left in the world.’ Clearly, the terrain that Wadjda has managed to stake out still leaves her vulnerable. She pauses where her neighbourhood road meets the busy traffic of the city proper. Her own momentum has taken her as far as it can. The mobility associated with further social transition must now come to meet her, where she waits – impatient, but smiling all the same.

Gabrielle O’Brien is a London-based film writer and teacher. She has a Master’s degree in film studies from Kingston University. m

Endnotes1 World Economic Forum, ‘The Global Gender Gap Report 2013’,

<http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report -2013/#section=country-profiles-saudiarabia>, accessed 12 May 2014.

2 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’, Routledge, New York & London, 1993.

3 See, for example, Sze-man Lam, ‘All about Sexuality: Gender Studies in Pedro Almodóvar’s Films’, Master’s thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2004, available at <http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/31287>, accessed 12 May 2014; and Georgina Wardrop, ‘Redefining Gender in Twenty-first Century Spanish Cinema: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar’, Master’s thesis, 2011, University of Glasgow, available at <http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2925/1/2011wardropmphil.pdf>, accessed 12 May 2014.

4 The notion that Western brands of feminism are being ‘imposed’ on Arab women is a contentious, challenging and sensitive debate that should be taken up and interrogated, but it exceeds my scope here.

5 Steve Yates, ‘Haifa al-Mansour: “In Saudi Arabia, Any Woman Voicing Her Opinion Will Be Seen as Controversial”’, New Statesman, 17 July 2013, <http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2013/07/haifa -al-mansour-saudi-arabia-any-woman-voicing-her-opinion-will-be-seen -controv>, accessed 12 May 2014.

6 Xan Brooks & Henry Barnes, ‘Wadjda: Haifaa Al Mansour on Becoming Saudi Arabia’s First Female Feature Film Director – Video Interview’, The Guardian, 16 July 2013, <http://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2013/jul/16/wadjda-saudi-arabia-female-director-video>, accessed 30 February 2014.

7 ibid.8 See, for example, Tariq al Haydar, ‘Haifaa Al Mansour’s Wadjda:

Revolutionary Art or Pro-state Propaganda?’, Jadaliyya, 13 January 2014, <http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15996/haifaa-al -mansours-wadjda_revolutionary-art-or-pro/>, accessed 12 May 2014.

9 Viola Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, new revised edition, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo & New York, 2007, p. 4.

10 See, for example, Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy, comprising the films Fire (1996), Earth (1998) and Water (2005).

11 Alyssa Rosenberg, ‘Wadjda Director Haifaa al-Mansour on Saudi Women, What Sexism Denies Men, and Digital Filmmaking’, ThinkProgress, 20 September 2013, <http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/09/20/2658481/wadjda-haifaa-mansour/>, accessed 19 May 2014.

12 Martin Chulov, ‘Saudi Women to Be Given Right to Vote and Stand for Election in Four Years’, The Guardian, 26 September 2011, <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/25/saudi-women -right-to-vote>, accessed 12 May 2014.


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FOCUS ON ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST Pedal