CRITICAL ESSAY
The power of visual culture is in the politics of representation. The way in which the representation takes place to undermine any potential for a voice to be heard outside of the predetermined patriarchal language of cinema has not changed as much from the birth of the moving image. Historically, a powerful woman on screen did not have her own voice. Considering Marilyn Monroe, who read Heidegger and wrote poetry in her free time, it is easy to think about how her true self was stripped away from her so she can adopt the image of the hyper sexualized manic pixie dream girl. She was there to be looked at and fetishized. Monroe was an “it girl”, an attractive, young, sexy celebrity with a lighthearted personality. Women onscreen were very powerful, but did not have their own voice. They were always there to serve a purpose. This phenomenon is also present in Arab media. Arab television, whether produced within the Arab world or dubbed most often features an “it girl” in distress. Much like Monroe, the Arab “it girl” is there to be looked at.
A feminine/feminist language for visual culture is necessary. To media historian and theorist Laura Mulvey, the female gaze is passive and subject to the active male gaze (Mulvey, 808). She looks into the female gaze in visual culture from a psychological point of view, which inevitably allows her analysis to fall into eurocentric patriarchal theory. Her use of psychoanalysis is archaic, forbidding or restricting the female gaze instead of giving it power. A subversion of the gaze is possible and has been activated within and outside of the west.
Women are oftentimes portrayed as lacking, in distress, as mere objects, and the main idea is that the female spectator ends up adopting a male gaze, because the female gaze is quite simply not taken up by the visual medium. In her "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey states that pleasure is always designed for the male gaze. She uses the Freudian term scopophilia (the pleasure in looking), which means identifying with a character on screen. Scopophilia in visual culture works through the active gaze of the man facing the woman on the passive "to-be-looked-at-ness" side (Mulvery, 808). Cinematographically, this is translated through a point of view shot pointed at the woman to direct the spectator’s objective gaze - allowing the onscreen male to act as a surrogate. The films Mulvey focuses on feature a dominant male figure that acts as a surrogate to the viewer - an identification similar to Lacan's mirror stage in which the narcissistic fragmented subject experiences himself as a whole in a reflected self image. To Mulvey, the representation of the female figure is paradoxical: it attracts the desire of men and evokes their fear of castration (Mulvey, 811). In order to escape this fear, the man demystifies her body by rendering her submissive or fetishizing her. According to Mulvey, films allow men to come to terms with their fear of castration and desire for the opposite sex. Mulvey's piece has been criticized for only focusing on heterosexual and for describing the spectator as passive. To Mulvey, the active gaze is only possible through a male gaze… Mulvey presents the reader with a set of binaries: pleasure and unpleasure, active gaze and the passive gaze, as well as voyeurism and fetishism within the active gaze. If pleasure leads to the active gaze, then why must the female gaze remain passive?
The phenomenon of “Noormania” in the Arab world is discussed in Christa Salamandra’s piece “The Muhannad Effect: Media Panic, Melodrama, and the Arab female gaze” as a regional panic that stems from the erotic female gaze in Arab culture.
Nour is a successful fashion professional whose handsome and romantic husband, Muhannad, regularly expresses love and appreciation to his wife. Arab commentary focused on the popularity of Muhannad, played by the Turkish actor Kıvanç Tatlıtug ̆, with Arab women viewers. According to several news reports, Arab female viewers’ fascination with the series and its star caused divorces in Sudan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
Salamandra shows that the series created not only a media sensation but also a backlash among Arabs. According to Salamandra, the panic caused by Noor was primarily the result of the ‘social discomfort provoked by Arab women’s erotic spectatorship’, which centred on the male character (47). A backlash against the male gaze is unheard of, at least within the Lebanese community if not within the In this way, women are looking back, discussing men's physique, effectively disrupting and subverting the male gaze. This heartthrob as an object to be admired and desired is a longstanding trope and a perfect candidate for women's viewing pleasure, a reversal of Laura Mulvey's concept of the male gaze. To Mulvey, the active gaze is only possible through a heterosexual male gaze, but here we have an example of an active female gaze.
The androgynous character of Muhannad also calls back to an ungendered beauty that existed in the Arab world beforethe mid-19th century, when the West dubbed “homosexual practices as unnatural and linked romantic love to marriage”. It is no secret that the gay community was also “looking back” and subverting the gaze. Instead of identifying with Muhannad, they fetishize or sexualize the character. Noormania paved the road for the reconsideration of female and queer pleasure in Arab TV narratives. The show’s characters ultimately follow their happiness, and it ends on an upbeat note.
It is also noteworthy that men have a more active representative function on screen. The spectacle of the male body is not typically objectified and eroticized, as their function is not to satisfy a spectatorial gaze. That gaze is indirect and is guided by the glances of other on screen characters. The spectator does not necessarily look at the male body with desire, so it is quite interesting to see the Noormania phenomenon unfold in the Arab world, where women are taught to never look back and are more likely to look away when looked at. The societal censorship of women’s gaze has been declining in the past few years, at least in Lebanon. However, Noor does tell the story of a young woman in distress. It is the story of a mother who abandons her family home to start a new life with her child. It is also the story of a woman who is with child out of wedlock. The narrative is driven by stories of women in distress. Issues that are quite propagated in the Arab world. However, Noor is also an “it girl”, a woman who flaunts her wardrobe and poise in public, despite her narrative being driven by hardships.
It’s interesting that Noormania began in the living rooms of Arab families, but then moved on to Netflix. This platform has been a turning point for intersectional representations in the visual media world. Netflix offers a very intimate viewing experience and has been credited for the diversity of the media it showcases. However, the series and films available more often show that women must always be in distress for them to move the narrative forward. This affects the female viewer pejoratively. Representation matters, and if women are most often portrayed to struggle in order to keep up with the storyline, then that is all female spectators have to identify with. Like David Foster Wallace argues, the spectator tends to identify with the characters on screen (Wallace, 53). It is evident that audiences over the years compare themselves to idealistic beauty standards (Wallace, 54). However, the issue of the “it” girl in distress is rarely given attention. There has been much awareness about idealistic beauty standards with the body positive movement for example, but the deplorable narratives that come with it mostly stay in the shadows.
Another show that took Lebanese Television viewership by force is Al Hayba, the first Lebanese show to be featured as a Netflix original series. The show is ridden with abuse and Stockholm syndrome, which the Lebanese population already suffers from. Al Hayba was released on Netflix towards the end of 2018. Renowned actress and celebrity Nadine Nassib Njeim plays the role of Alia who is visiting Lebanon from Canada to attend the burial of her recently deceased husband. There, she meets his family for the very first time. After that, a series of unfortunate events begin to unfold. Alia is imprisoned with her son and held hostage by her dead husband’s family. Her brother-in-law is ordered to marry her. They pretend to marry each other until it turns into a real marriage. Fans praise their marriage although the brother-in-law is clearly abusive. He even physically harms his pregnant sister at one point in the show and he also beats his wife on numerous occasions. The show flagrantly normalizes domestic abuse. Here, fans typically adopt a passive gaze, identifying with the male character in the series, wanting to take up the role of his betrothed. At the time, cases of domestic abuse were on the rise, and it comes to no surprise that women managed to see themselves on screen passively.
Mosalsalat [serialized dramas; singing: musalsal] are the biggest examples of series portraying women in distress. Much like Arab women, actresses’ dress and make-up are over- done, especially in domestic scenes, portraying that all is well in their world even when it is falling apart. One Arab critic contrasted the Turkish Nour with the Syrian musalsal, Bab al-Hara (The Neighborhood Gate), which topped drama ratings across the Arab world in 2006 and 2007 before the advent of Turkish drama. Bab al-Hara ran for five seasons, ending in 2010. It is the most popular series in the Syrian drama genre known as al-bi’a al-shamiyya (the Damascene environment), nostalgically evoking and imagining early 20th century neighborhood life in Damascus, with controversial representations: glorification of chivalrous men engaging in leadership and violence, set against portrayals of women as subservient and humiliated. Arab and Turkish soap operas most often portray women in distress. While it is true that the fetishized gaze has been subverted, it is not a victory seeing that the narratives still portray women as weak, lacking, and constantly in distress. Although the male gaze has been subverted to an extent, it is essential to place women in a position of power by stripping the drama away from them. In order for the gaze to be completely subverted, women must move the narrative without having to struggle so deeply.
Most female characters on Arab and Turkish television are still stereotypical, but the representation of women in the media has tremendously taken a turn and this is as a result of a sociological shift in cultures and societies worldwide. There is also the case of contemporary feminism and the fact that women are able to have more of a voice and say in how they lead their lives, whether if it is on the streets on through online forums or instagram posts. Women have often been invisible in the media, but what kind of visibility is it when they are mostly portrayed in great distress? Why does the narrative only move forward when they are deplorable characters? Several western produced shows on Netflix have the reputation of showing women in power, such as in Suits, How To Get Away With Murder, The Queen’s Gambit, House of Cards, Scandal, Killing Eve, Law & Order, and many more. It is difficult to think of Arab shows that do the same. Perhaps, some may pop up through extensive research, but this goes to show that the main concern with portraying women is pejorative.
How to Get Away with Murder has been a huge turning point in the representation of both gender and race on television. Annalise Keating is the main character who is portrayed by Award Winning actress Viola Davis. Her character is a criminal defense attorney and a law professor at Middleton University and she is portrayed as a strong and determined woman. She is sexually empowered, a complicated woman, and someone not to mess with. Her great confidence is however contrasted by her vulnerability. The narrative definitely moves forward as her problems in life unfold... This is not to say that her pure and raw character is not important for the Black American female community, but there is something to say about the constant struggle to break away from such portrayals of women on screen. The most striking and reviewed scene in the show is when Keating takes off her wig before she goes to confront her husband. What is interesting is that she was showing a vulnerable side. Women worldwide are taught and told to always look perfect and polished. Much like the portrayal of women in Arab and Turkish shows, women are taught to portray a perfect image of what their lives should look like, and Annalise Keating was letting go of that at this moment. Although Keating led a difficult life in the series, this moment was quite empowering, especially for the black female community, who oftentimes must hold their heads high in order to survive within a systemically racist society. Another show that succeeds to portray women rising from their struggles is Orange is the New Black. The most notable character is that of Sophia, a black trans woman. She is portrayed with all her hardships. The misunderstanding of trans women struggles and their interpersonal relationships are also highlighted in the show (159, Kearney). A few empowering and vulnerable scenes are also at the center of the show. Sophia plucks out her chin hairs in one scene (159, Kearney). She also manages to educate heterosexual women about the female sexual and reproductive anatomy, pointing out the technical terms and describing them biologically. It is also important to state that Laverne Cox, who plays Sophia is a queer “it” girl in distress. Although we are exposed to queer representations contemporarily, we haven’t broken from the narratives that are full of distress. Laverne Cox is a celebrity who is oftentimes sexualized and looked at for her lightheartedness, and praised for her rising from her struggles, much like the characters she is chosen to portray on screen.
It’s true that the gaze has been subverted over the years, but what does that really count towards when women still need to be in distress to move the narrative forward? This is not a reiteration of the Hitchcock blonde or the final girl in slasher films, because women are necessarily portrayed as stronger and more powerful. However, it is important to consider that the narrative needs to move forward without having to use women’s stories as a sacrifice. The Arab world much like the Western world is guilty of sticking to such representations. There is a need to break free from them for the sake of women empowerment.
