But funding was also difficult. Because Saudi Arabia has no film industry,
she could not get much funding locally.
(She did get some.) Most of her
funding came from a German company known to fund films on Middle Eastern
topics.
El-Mansour says she did not set out to make a feminist
film, or even one that dealt centrally with women’s issues. However, the story itself insisted on it.
Things we want to notice about this film:
The constant divide between men’s
worlds and women’s worlds, and how restrictive the woman’s world is constructed
to be. All through the film, Wadjda is
constantly being told what she cannot do (as are other women and girls,
notice). She can’t sing, she can’t go
out uncovered, she can’t ride a bicycle, she can’t be alone with the neighbor
boy, she can’t wear those shoes or make those bracelets or listen to that
music. She can’t use prize money she
herself as won in the way she pleases.
The prize money and how it is taken
away from Wadjda is important. As we noticed in class, although according to
the culture, a man is supposed to support all of his wives and their children,
in fact in this movie every woman we see has a job. Importantly, in that culture, a woman’s money
does not belong to her. What she earns
belongs to her husband. (This is why
Wadjda’s father is yelling at her mother in the scene in the middle of the
movie – she has been earning money and not giving it to him. She’s supposed to earn money, turn it over to
him, and then let him return to her for purposes of running the household the
money as he thinks she needs.) If women
do not have access to money, even the money they earn, what does this mean
about their ability to act with agency in their culture?
The driver / drivers: Notice that
woman can’t drive. If they are going to
go anywhere – to work, or to a hospital, or even just shopping beyond the shops
they can walk to – some male has to drive them.
Nor can Wadjda’s mother hire these
drivers. Her husband has to do it for
it; and when they have that fight, he apparently instructs her driver not to
pick her up anymore. Lack of access to
her own money deprives a woman of agency; lack of actual mobility deprives her
of even a way to make a living.
And notice that when a different way
to make a living presents itself (she can go work in the nearby hospital, which
provides transportation), Wadjda’s mother has to reject that, too, by the rules
of her culture, since she would be working around men, and with her face
uncovered.
Notice also how much policing of
women’s sexuality and women’s bodies we see in the movie, from the opening
scenes, when Wadjda’s teacher scolds the girls for laughing too loudly, and
Wadjda for not having her head and face covered; to the jokes about the teacher
who is visited by a “thief,” to Wadjda’s classmate with the boyfriend who
becomes a source of gossip.
Wadjda’s storyline deals with this
theme. Wadjds is a girl in the liminal
space – no longer a child, not quite an adult – being policed by her culture
into the “proper” role of the adult woman.
Notice that almost all the policing (or oppression, if we want to use
another term) comes from other women.
Her teacher, Ms. Hussa, is the most obvious example; but other students
also teach the rules, as does her mother. Recall the scenes where her mother
tells her not to sing with men in the house, and scolds her for being alone
with Abdullah, the neighbor boy, and tells her that as a girl, she can’t
actually be part of her father’s family. Notice it is her mother who tells her
girls can’t ride bicycles.
Men also school Wadjda into her
proper role as a Saudi woman. When she
is out walking alone, she is sexually harassed by strange men. The driver of
the van, though he works for her mother, feels free to scold both Wadjda and
her mother, and to order them around, simply because they are women. Both of these incidents work to show Wadjda
her position in her culture: she is something men may treat badly, without any
fear of reprisal.
Notice how Wadjda fights back against
this social oppression. Her continued
wearing of the shoes Ms. Hussa has forbidden is a small example. Another is when she enlists the aid of
Abdullah to go and threaten the driver into resuming his work. (She needs Abdullah if she is to stray into
strange neighborhoods, since women cannot walk around without male escort in
this world, even if they are eleven, even if the escort is another eleven year
old.)
Her largest rejection of the constrictions
being imposed upon her, however, concern the bicycle. Her culture forbids women to ride bicycles,
or to own them. Also, due to the
financial restraints imposed upon women in her culture, finding the money is
another problem. Wadjda earns money for
her own uses in small ways (her father has stopped giving her money because he
is saving up for the Bride Price of a second wife). These small sums, though, will clearly never
translate into the very large sum needed for the bicycle. Thus, she uses a goal her culture deems
appropriate for women – winning the Koran prize – to reach her aim. And yet the money for this victory is
stripped from her, when Ms. Hussa – in charge of indoctrinating these children
into their roles in their culture – decides that what Wadjda wants to spend the
money on is not acceptable.
Women, that is, have a narrow range
of options and behaviors. This is being
driven home to Wadjda, here on the edge of adulthood, with strong and
unmistakable lessons. And yet Wadjda rejects
and fights back against these lessons, this oppression, in all the ways she
can.
Notice how often these ways include
trickster-like behavior: lying, breaking the rules, sneaking around, using
language as a weapon. These behaviors,
though strongly sanctioned by the culture (the culture of oppression), are
often the best weapons of the oppressed.
Men too are oppressed in the culture
(as men are always harmed by patriarchy), though this is harder to see, since
our focus is on the women. But notice
that Abdullah cannot openly befriend Wadjda – he has to lie to his male friends
about where he’s going and what he’s doing; and he gets in trouble for teaching
her to ride the bicycle. Also, notice
that Wadjda’s father very probably does not want
another wife – Do I want to support two households? he asks, early in the
movie. But under the rules of his
culture, unless he has a son, he is a failure.
Here is a link to the
script of Wadjda:
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