In February, when Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy's Film, "Saving Face,"on acid burn victims won an Oscar, I was skeptical. Accolade seemed to focus on how great it was for Pakistan to have this honor -- and whenever people get jingoistic, you know the core maybe hollow. Frankly, there are two reasons why the film won the Oscar: excellent public relations work, and choice of topic that fits the western narrative of acceptable ways to talk about Muslim women - as victims of patriarchal religious violence without any emphasis on the larger socio-economic context in which this violence ensues and whether there are any viable solutions.
Now that I have seen the film, there is certainly a lot to critique. From an objective standpoint, I am simply bewildered as to how mediocre filming and static story telling like this could win a prize. An "A" for a sophomore year Film Studies Class. Oscar, no. But then that is perhaps the nature of the Oscars when it comes to films about third world women -- and specially when it comes to recounting in a manner that indirectly legitimizes war, terror, and intervention by western powers. A film about drone victims would not gain traction.
The narrative also reinforces stereotypes about vigilante justice and charity as solution. Women's disempowerment is not countered through documentation of sustained organizing, but reinforced as they are spoken for by lawyers, select ngo workers, and parliamentarians; rich doctors are presented as humorous, patronizing saviors, and even if the disparaging voice over is missing - there is no distinct, coherent message about women's empowerment or agency. Rather, its opportunistic footage about a very important topic.
The focus on the doctor as saviour is perplexing and contradictory. In the first few minutes of the film, we are shown a billboard with the face of a fair skinned, young woman advertising beauty services -- which makes you think the film questions the beauty myth. Seconds later the doctor, in his cocky manner, talks of his work -- he "makes them bigger, makes them smaller." What then is the political narrative? From a feminist perspective, acid throwing is a particularly cruel form of punishment because it destroys a woman's face in a culture where her worth is measured by beauty and youth Yet, the protagonist and purported hero of the documentary reinforces this myth in its most narcissistic and decadent form. Dr. Jawad is a cosmetic surgeon who milks women's insecurity about their looks by subjecting the richest to the scalpel -- perking up breasts, tucking tummies, fixing features. His canvass is the woman who believes she is defective because of society's emphasis on her perfection. What better canvass than this --altruism combined with a Swadesh type homecoming -- and women who actually need the surgery and are dependent on (and in fact lucky for receiving) his charity. How perfectly rewarding to be filmed for it as well. He is not God, but a prophet, he is.
I once met a Bangladeshi woman in a New York courtroom. She wore a plastic mask on her face because her acid burnt skin lost moisture so rapidly. Its of-course not just about losing your looks as the film often seems to signify. Acid causes deep physiological and debilitating changes that are permanent and painful on a continual basis.
The depictions are borderline derogatory. Even if the women are speaking about their ordeal - one can not escape how discomfiting it must have been for them in some of the scenes. The doctor asks Zakia (one of the victims) with forced compassion how it happened. She is on the bed looking diminutive. He towers over her. She is the recipient of charity; he the benevolent giver with little emotional stake in the transaction evident before the surgery when he declares, "I'm having a party." She is made to expose her face, and even if the filmer thinks, throughout the film, this is an act of agency and defiance for someone who has masked it out of shame, it comes across as a meek act of a woman who wants the doctor to make it all go away doing as she is asked.
Even if she has signed a consent form, are doctors and filmmakers oblivious to lack of ethics and voyeurism implicit in the shot? Is she not entitled to privacy for which the case is heightened in a cosmetic surgery like this? We are privy to a private moment. During the surgery, while she lies inanimate and unconscious, a discussion ensues about how her eyeball can not be retrieved as its been too long. After the surgery the patient asks the doctor - what about my nose? As he walks away he says,"I'll see you in a few months." Lets see how the lips work out. It appears as a most undignified moment for her. And that in a nutshell is a metaphor for charity. Leave the larger and systemic problems for later. Poor should grovel and be thankful. Rich should do charity and be thanked. Also, in a few minutes, she has been reduced to eyes, nose, lips - oddly reminiscent of what some feminists say is media's objectification of women through dismemberment of and undue focus on their individual body parts.
Later, an acid victim is shown during her ultrasound. The doctor tells her she is pregnant. As she processes the bitter-sweet news, we are again watching closely. She realizes she can not be a candidate for surgery. In a country where most women do not have access to birth control and avail unsafe abortion methods, is a woman who has just lost her chance at a free surgery to rejoice that she is pregnant? Lamenting the pregnancy would make her appear selfish. Such emotional complexity is perhaps not what the film can begin to tackle with empathy. Almost accusingly, the doctor asks, didn't you use birth control, don't you wonder if something like this could happen to your child, and quite aptly, albeit in a contrived fashion, she prays for a son. With non empathetic, but pity inducing representation, I am surprised any acid survivors chose to be the subjects of this film. It is perhaps testimony to a different type of desperation in their struggle - that they become subjects and are objectified - for the satisfaction of the doctor, the film-maker, the voyeur, the cheerleader from the fringes.
Showing the legislative and legal efforts is perhaps an effort by the film maker to place the victims as not merely victims but survivors who continue their struggle. What then is perturbing is that the discourse around it is trivialized, simplified and superficial. The lawyer hopes that the perpetrator is locked up in a "cage like an animal". Ngo workers, despite an intervention by one woman against the death penalty, declare their desire for vigilante justice and dramatically ask for acid throwers to be sentenced to death, and given a taste of their own medicine. What about people in our legal system working for reformatory and rehabilitative justice? Surely, the legislative, legal, social, and political complexities we are dealing with are more than this - as are the diversity of opinion on punishments and solutions. Are we to be satisfied with happy endings? Even Hollywood films have more gray than this. A double life sentence for the offender. Vague reference to good legislative reform. A prosthetic eye for Zakia. As the offender spends his life behind bars, the victim walks through bazaars in a pointedly red dupatta.
Surely, if acid victims and grassroots women's groups against violence were organized and represented more accurately in the film, the discussion around it would be more nuanced, more empowering, and more focused on people and their struggles rather than filmmakers, the doctors, the prophets and the Oscar winners -- clichéd moments of reckoning and unpoetic justice.
"Nero's Guests" is a film about farmer suicides in India. Even if rural journalist P. Sainath is valorized for his writing about the issue, at the end of the film you have a much deeper understanding of the economic, political, and global context of the suicides. But in "Saving Face," the film and the filmmaker offers little history and analysis -- because this is the kind of mediocrity we are famous for.
PS:
See also: http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/the-real-miracle-workers-fighting-and-healing-pakistans-acid-attacks#
14 comments:
Some very good points that we might not have thought about. But I find myself agreeing with you. Interesting post.
Apologies I usually love your pieces and agree with your deconstruction of various issues. But I find it hard to agree with you on this one. Not because the film won an Oscar or that the Director is a liberal elite. But because I think you over analysed what was meant to be just a tale of a few women and their struggles to come to term with what had happened, trying to find justice (in a convoluted misogynists system), trying to regain some semblance and sense of self- all that they lost when their faces and bodies were mutated forever and most probably they were left to die.
There were heroes the the film. The heroes weren't the Dr, the director or even the legislators and lawyers. It was the women. Who were given a platform to speak. Its not as if the documentary was scripted. How can you control what someone says. Yes, maybe they edited it to portray a certain narrative. But I don't think the women's agency was lost.
And again I don't agree with you on your comments on the Dr. while you have every right to disagree he didn't come across as pompous or even God like. He certainly was not prophet either. Just because he's a plastic surgeon doesn't mean he can't take on cases that help him better someones life. By your logic lawyers shouldn't take on pro bono cases and is you are a defence lawyer and defend criminals then you are doomed for life. It does show men in a bad light, but the crimes they committed are unforgivable. But not all men where shown to be assholes.
The director didn't give solutions or even provide commentary, she drove the narrative through the subjects of the documentary.
Granted it wasn't the best documentary I've seen, I'd even go as far to say maybe it didn't even deserve an Oscar if you consider it purely on technicalities. But what is an Oscar in any case.
I can even give you the fact that yes it was for a Western audience and maybe the narrative did suit their- where people in Pakistan are barbaric, hence need saving. But it did focus on mostly local solutions, maybe not long-term sustainable ones but they were local.
I dont agree with the concept of charity in general either but reconstructive surgery isn't something everyone can do or is willing to do. This while was charity was him doing what was within his power.
I would've liked to have seen the overall context and how a society gets to where we are. But it was a 27 minute documentary to provide context you need to narrate and I think here the directors were reluctant to do so.
Anyway, always good to read your pieces. Keep writing.
Apologies for my damn typos. I seem to be very good at them
I think, Meera, over analysis is feedback you can give to any review because at the end of the day we are viewing a piece of work through our perspective, our emotional and political experiences, and our view of the world, its politics and its dominant narratives. My review would not have been the same had this film not been groomed and dressed up for the Oscars - and because it was - and did not just get picked up out of the hundreds of solid issue based films made every year - it can not be simply a brave story about women who were given a platform to speak. Its not simply about platforms - its about why something gets recognized because of the story one chooses to tell. Its an inherently unfair world when it comes to marketing your literature and film - and when something does make it, its because there is a certain dominant view its fits with. And in this case, in particular, the story line is something western audiences can understand. It is simple to the point of being contrived. Its got a happy ending. Its about helping Muslim women. Its about Pakistan and almost everyone is talking about Pakistan with our terrorist and the drones. (And sadly, in the simple narrative, drones kill militants, militants oppress women). Its got heroes - they the women or the doctor. So what if the women are speaking? Its 2012 at the very least you can have that, but you need complexity and depth of analysis for it to be a film worth the time. I found the doctor talking about boobs in the first half weird in bad way, but maybe thats just me.
After I saw the film, I told my partner, if I ever make a film like this, I will be sure to have several discussions with several womens studies Phds and women activists to see if I got the representation right. So if I get scathing criticism, I can actually face up to it, rather than SOC who will never acknowledge a single flaw with her work. Because she is a liberal elite and one of them, and because when one them gets acknowledgement they quickly stand attention and pay homage. And this is something, I am finding hard to digest about living in this society.
I agree that she does not give solution or drive the narrative..but then..she does. She really does too. :)
thanks for your comments though. I appreciate them a lot.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. If you don't mind me saying rather presumptuously I think your frustration comes more from the fact that she is a part of the elite hence saluted rather than the film. Because the women do have agency in the film and to me providing a platform is necessary in a society where women are usually told to shut up and the only women who do the talking are the ones from the privileged classes (like you and me). The rest just go unheard with millions of stories untold.
I agree with you maybe it wasn't told int the best of ways. I but I didn't find the narrative reductive as I have done with her other films neither did I find it catering to the Western narrative. Yes there was a happy ending but are we in the East against those? :)
No but in all seriousness of course the issues are far from being tackled. There is no happy end, at least not yet. Such films only add to the debate they don't shape them or drive them. We as a society have to do the driving and we as a society have to look for solutions.
Of course there is always a wider context to everything, but you can't really deny that we are a war torn country that is in a mess. While we are not all about terrorism and drones (the drones aren't our they are the US') we do have quite a fair share of it. But thats not what the film talked about. It talked about a single issue sadly the women portrayed were from certain economic classes and what I would've liked to have seen is women from various strata that are subjected to violence, maybe not many get acid on their faces by violence it prevalent amongst all classes. To me what was disappointing was the classist aspect of it. Where educated women are modern and liberal and the saviours and the others mostly suffer in silence. But you know what that has some truth to it unfortunately. Women from privileged classes have the avenues and resources to express themselves. Women who don't have such privileges and avenues rarely get heard or sadly even speak up. If they do its because they decided to go against the odds and take up the fight but then again how often do you hear about their stories? How often do we from our privileged classes interact with such brave women unless its picked up by the media or they are in our immediate vicinity. Hence I'm ok with platforms even if they are provided for.
Do you have any examples of a collective movement that organically came about? Where the women that were fighting were all from poorer economic backgrounds? Do you know of platforms that give these women and other women a voice? In the absence of such organic avenues I'd take anything that helps them get heard.
Lets see how it does in Pakistan, I think they will start showing it around the country.
Actually there is a study that was done on Pakistani women that never got any traction. It was done by a journalist called Shiraz Raj and it traces women and their achievements in various areas (academic, media, journalism, literature.....). Its quite remarkable, dates back all the way to pre-partition. Sadly he doesn't have the connections and resources to market it or make it happen.
Sadly our world is such, but I really don't let it detract from the work people do no matter which economic class they belong to.
Apologies for taking up your time again. It seems easier to talk here than with a 140 character limit. :)
thanks, Meera, once again for taking the pains to engage in debate and that too so respectfully - and in a manner that is not insistent on a point of view, but is reflective.
I agree with your point, and happily concede to your additional observation about the film in its classism even though violence permeates through all classes.
Is there a checklist of positives in the film? Sure. One of them as you point out -- a chance for some women to tell their story.
I was reading some stuff about the politics of documentary film making to understand some of my discomfort with the representation. A good political documentary is supposed to allow the voices of the under-represented to be heard and compel the watcher to ask pertinent questions.
Even though the women speak, I feel the voice that overwhelms the film is that of the doctor and the film maker, both of elite politics and with stories that follow a western film model. That of the doctor is the Hollywood type script of one man's journey through a good cause, a typical top down narrative, and certainly not one of the suabaltern, where a happy ended is exemplified by a cosmetic fix, however important it is in real life to the patient. He is bearing the white man's burden. The burden the rich must bear for the poor.
That of the film maker is as someone desperately trying to prove agency through struggle, but leaving one more despondent than hopeful. That the debate should be left at death to offenders is to me disturbing. Surely, there is some deeper research the film maker should have done about where the debate is or should be at - whether the true change will come through organizing, and where organizing has failed or succeeded - some history, some context, some diversity of struggle and mobilization.
If a documentary is supposed to represent unheard voices, then provide the historical context. Talk about the women's movement in Pakistan, not just disparate NGO consultations and one lawyers strife for hard justice. Present a holistic picture of where the women's movement is - how had WAF spread to rural areas and urban fringe, the debate would be different. Why is it limited to sterile law offices and round table ngo discussion rather than street corners and large rallies.
Are there examples of women organizing from the grassroots? Take Nepals maoists. I met women in Gadap in Karachi who took to the streets to physically encounter a sexual harasser and publicly humiliate him Is this type of action not happening in Pakistan and India? It is. But exploring it would take effort. Surely this would be truly representative of the voice of the unheard in a meaningful manner - and compel people to ask questions that are not Oscar worthy, but certainly relevant to where we go from here.
In failing to heighten the level of debate SOC's film goes only so far, and evades responsibility. Surely, debate should allow that we dissent. It should not end at - well you make that film. You cant tell her what to depict.
I met a filmmaker recently who wants to film a dalit tribe in Thar that walks on foot for seven days to serve as day laborers and are paid in kind; they walk back carrying the crops they harvested. This is struggle. I would rather see struggle uninterrupted by the noisy "voice-overs" of the elite doctor and camera.
Again, if this critique is seen by a liberal elite they will think I am mad and regressive for criticizing her. And they would not be wrong because we are at cross purpose in terms of politics.
Talking to you is just making me realize how much more deeply problematic the film really is. I would love for some marxist film critic to work on this beauty.
best,
kf
RK left this comment that I am posting here:
I haven't seen the film yet. From what I have seen of SOC's work, and one (telling) meeting she conducted for a campaign that (thankfully) never saw the light of day, your critique has pretty much confirmed my apprehensions, and added some new ones.
I'll be blunt - SOC refuses to examine how her own class privilege defines her work (because that is one system of subjugation that SHE is complicit in, and therefore not open to discussion). One can say it's because she's a mediocre (albeit ambitious) film-maker, that she lacks that fierce journalistic drive to get at the heart of a story, revealing all the power constructs for what they are and genuinely attempting to inhabit the domain of the marginalized (in more ways than simply being there). The reason most of the interviews took place in office rooms is probably that they are the domains that SHE feels comfortable in, understands her role in. Not the streets, not the grassroots. That sounds too much like homework, like a genuine examination of the issue.
In fact, she very much reinforces the dynamics of inter-class interactions (there has got to be a better term for that), packaging subaltern voices as spectacle for Western consumption (basically pandering to the most dominant power structure). In this regard her film is probably complicit in exploitation of the subaltern (after all it's not like Capitalism hasn't appropriated altruism and made an industry out of it). And we are also complicit by using the Oscar win/SOC as good PR fodder for our national image - and not acknowledging the systemic issues behind sexualised violence.
Everything being said is all well and good as far as criticism and Ipso Facto debate goes (although I do break into hives at the words subaltern and capitalist appropriation), but if this was actually translated into a documentary, who would watch that mammoth feature? Other than the people who have already digested the complex historical context and deeply nuanced socioeconomic realities that surround the subject matter?
It is my humble experience that people get indigestion easily. A documentary is a limited medium, a Pakistani documentary exponentially more so (less so?). The film you want would certainly have never won an Oscar for best documentary short, not because of a non palatable narrative or lack of marketability, but because it wouldn't have qualified in length.
I don't even query the fairness of using meticulously crafted (over a number of decades, and not by OR for the subaltern mind you) leftist (I'm going to sweep everything under this rug for brevity, apologies) critiques for a Pakistani documentary of which there are about 50 or so in existence, nearly all of them made in the last fifteen years.
What I will say, is that a documentary is not 'on the ground' activism. It is very dependent on a passively recipient audience, being useless without one. There is a natural tension between gaining an audience and getting all the nuances right. People like happy endings, people like engaging with new things within certain parameters, perhaps with an idea of false comfort.
Regardless of pandering to the evil white capitalist imperial machine, this film is reaching an audience, they are screening it (or well, work of hers that is available, with a view to showing this eventually) and talking about it in universities, and yes irate professors and students are also bringing up the same points you are.
You know what an Oscar might do though? It might inadvertently give somebody a camera and crew, in the future, to make just the film you wanted this to be.
Or it might not. These things are fickle. Although I doubt the woman herself will suddenly cease and desist, one gets the habit of being in the limelight. She's going to have to do something 'better' next time, maybe she'll start being bolder and challenge her own prejudices?
Even the first award winning nature documentary involved lemmings being pushed off a cliff. They seem to have done alright from such auspicious beginnings.
I found the movie to be insipid. The quality of the documentary was not such that it should have gotten an Oscar except for the fact that it presented a narrative which was attractive to a certain western class. A similar movie talking about women who had suffered due to drone attacks would not get the same level of attention because that hints of a moral universe that is discordant to the western audience. This was soft target, easy issue, immediately accessible and devoid of larger context - perfect little show piece.
The movie did provide a platform for 2 women to present their lives and injustice but the way it was conveyed the audience rather than feeling empathy feels pity. The doctor and the film maker are the rescuers and the women are the victims - while it is true that their position are marginalized, the larger social context of why is missing. The whole concept is that this bad acid stuff happens because ... some people are evil? There are many more chulas exploding than acid victims in Pakistan so why not them - it could easily be because without a larger context, this could be any atrocity in any country.
At best the film is an observational narrative of one social wrong following 2 people. I for one did not find it very intelligent nor that moving.
Nice article!!! I agree with you 100%
hello all,
I think this article is a must read.
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/the-real-miracle-workers-fighting-and-healing-pakistans-acid-attacks#
Yes read it yesterday, hard to ascertain the facts as it becomes there word against hers. None the less I agree that many hospitals, doctors, activists, lawyers and families of victims had been already doing amazing work on the ground that wasn't even alluded to in the film. I dont know how much of the narrative was forced. From what I know of the doctor he had being doing this before SOC and crew arrived on the scene. She presented only his and his patients side of the story doesn't mean other stories dont exist. I wish better sense would prevale and all these groups would work together. We havent resolved all our differences in the environmental movement but we realized together we are stronger and can make things change.
"If you haven't any charity in your heart you have the worst kind of heart trouble" to cure it Help people, let's unite for one good cause, be a volunteer"save live"!
mawaddainternationalaid
This is an amazing article on a heroic action of a woman through actions rather than words.
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