Tag: Arranged Marriage

Wedding Week: The Roundup

Father of the Bride (1991) is aptly named, as its focus is not on the wedding itself or the couple involved but on the titular character’s neuroses and journey to maturity. The wedding is the backdrop and the incident that provokes growth in the main character; it follows the wedding script in toto, so if you’re unfamiliar with any of the conventions of a traditional US wedding, this movie is a great primer. It’s an outrageously expensive, white wedding for thin, wealthy, white folks. People of color and gay men exist as support staff and magical queers. But the movie’s take on gender roles is constructive. Despite its focus on a male character, the movie is really about the affection a father feels for his daughter. He’s always recognized her as an individual person; now he must recognize her as an individual adult person.

The plot is pretty predictable. Female subservience is challenged, but standards of female beauty aren’t. The characters aren’t remarkably complex, but their motives are clear and almost always understandable. That said, this is a romantic comedy. I don’t mean to demean the genre as a whole, but I think it’s safe to say most blockbuster romantic comedies are pretty damn problematic, so to have a romantic comedy that subverts the notion of valuing wives who are simply beautiful and submissive while featuring a predominantly black cast and depicting Africa positively, I’d say that’s a win.
And this is where the real problem comes in. We’re clearly supposed to feel bad for Jack’s plight and the DOMA-fueled injustice being heaped on him. But as things escalate and Jack suddenly falls for Spanish architect Mano (Maurice Compte), the casual viewer is more likely to feel bad for Ali, who has to deal with him gallivanting all over the place and not even trying to make their relationship seem remotely realistic. Her future is on the line right along with Jack’s, but Jack never seems to have an inkling of just how big of a risk they’re taking for his sake.
Weddings in the movies and in television always seem to be more elaborate than those we experience in reality. Fictional characters with traditionally low-paying jobs somehow find a way to have a wedding that would cost literally a million dollars in the real world. They’re often over-the-top with hundreds of guests, extravagant meals and elaborate ice sculptures–you know, fluff.
This is the second time I’ve seen Lizzy Caplan in her easy portrayal of the emotionally damaged wild child, the first being in Bachelorette where similarly, the wedding brings up all of her feelings about past relationships and a surprise pregnancy. It’s a character I like, one that while not original, is also not the most common of characters (similar to Natalie Portman in Friends With Benefits, Charlize Theron in Sweet November). But I like the character; it’s one where, rather than neurotic, and desperately searching for love and marriage, she’s the opposite–skittish and non-committal, frustrating and sexy.
No, in Bride Wars that brand of madness is entirely female. This says nothing good or particularly realistic about the state of mind of the modern adult female. I mean, yes, we get hurt and pissed off when our friends do something that seems designed to cause pain to us, but how many of us who are not mentally ill follow them around, actively trying to ruin one of the most significant and expensive days of their lives?
Kristen Wiig’s character goes through the same kinds of ordeals we all go through—the kind that make us question who we are and what life is about. And her struggles are so frustrating and so moving that I found myself actually sobbing through the middle of the movie. The crazy thing about it is that while I was sobbing, I also started laughing. I’ve laughed and cried in a movie, but I’ve never before done both at the same time, and I did both while watching this movie more than once. I always tell my students that over-the-top comedy only works if it is paired with real, honest emotion, and my response proves that is something Bridesmaids does really well.

Fiona’s self-loathing over her ogre self goes extremely deep. When she confesses that she’s an ogre to Donkey, she says that no one would want to marry a beast like her. Shrek overhears this, and believes she’s talking about him. When he confronts her about it, and throws her words back in her face, she immediately assumes he’s talking about her. Fiona has overheard Shrek make comments about his identity as an ogre and the issues that come with it, so it wouldn’t be a huge leap for her to consider the possibility that Shrek overheard her and thought she was talking about him. But Fiona’s self loathing runs so deep that she doesn’t even consider the possibility.

Revisiting this film five years later (as a happily paired person once again), I find myself chafing against the film even as I enjoy the drama. The choices and mistakes that Carrie make from the time that she and Big decide to marry to the moment he leaves her at the altar about a third of the way through the story are the choices and mistakes that many modern American women make: ignore the man and his wishes, allow friends to convince you that you need a fancier dress, venue, event, and become more enamored with the grandeur and history of a luxurious location over the real fears and concerns your partner has about a large, intimidating, and ostentatious event.

To make matters more homophobic, in a move that makes absolutely no sense, George is press-ganged into playing the part of Julianne’s fiancé. It’s really gross to watch a gay man forced to play beard to a straight woman, shoved into a closet to suit her conniving privilege. Kimmy hyperventilates in relief that Julianne is apparently no longer her competition, because nothing promises a more stable marriage than making sure there are no hot women around to tempt your man. George gets his revenge by telling apocryphal stories about meeting Julianne in a mental institution where she was receiving shock therapy, because we might as well add mocking the mentally ill to this movie’s list of sins.
Leonato’s denunciation of Hero is the most disturbing moment of the film, as it should be. Verbal and physical abuse at the hand of a lover or boyfriend is traumatizing and life-altering, but there is something profoundly and uniquely painful in suffering at the hands of a parent. The casting of Clark Gregg, aka everyone’s favorite Agent Coulson from The Avengers, is a particularly brilliant move; any fan of Joss Whedon’s is conditioned to see Gregg as a good guy, and the moment of betrayal feels particularly pointed when coming from the mouth of such a likable actor.
So, is this a feminist film? Well, I think it highlights the significance of female friendship, but Carrie falling comatose when she’s jilted at the altar seems a bit much. While Carrie hires an assistant to organize her life, romantic love seems to be the ultimate goal. Meanwhile, Carrie bonds with the separated Miranda by telling her that she’s “not alone,” she reaches an understanding with the anti-marriage Samantha, and she celebrates Charlotte’s baby-bliss, even as she mourns her relationship, which has not actually ended. The film has its moments, and Carrie overcomes her obstacles without the direction or approval of any man. However, the film’s bigoted lines and treatment of Louise as a modern-day slave leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Even though I had fun with it, I have to say if you are engaged, you should probably limit your exposure to wedding movies. Because so many of them end with broken engagements or dramatic jiltings at the altar, you’ll start seeing potential wedding saboteurs in all your friends, family, and hired wedding professionals. You’ll see the obviously doomed engagements at the start of those movies and worry that if those characters could be so deluded, are you and your partner as well? You’ll think spending thousands of dollars renting chairs is ok because at least you didn’t invite random strangers from your mother’s past for an ABBA-scored paternity-off.

Muriel’s Wedding is basically a cautionary tale about valuing status and reputation over real connection. Muriel knows that she’s happy with Rhonda in Sydney, but by fulfilling her fantasies of beauty, wealth, and romantic achievement, she forgets her real strength: her honesty, decency, and kindness. These strengths were all there in her mother, Betty, whose cruel fate turns the movie from a girly romp into something much more meditative. She is talked over, pushed around, and utterly ignored, invisible even in her own home. Betty barely gets a moment of self-determination before she commits suicide, and her presence is felt most deeply in the frightening image of the Heslop backyard: a swath of literally scorched earth, where nothing can grow if nothing is tended and cared for.

There is one redeeming quality in this movie, and that is when Emma–who is a people pleaser for much of the movie–eventually starts to grow a backbone, while Liv–who is pushy and determined–softens up by the end. I’m hoping that the audience can take from these character shifts that women can be both determined and compassionate and that it is not disadvantageous to be both.
Jumping the Broom focuses on two strong customs — one being jumping the broom that has predated slavery, which Jason’s mother Pamela strongly supports, and saving sex for marriage. Sabrina and Jason obviously have strong physical desires for one another, but they’re willing to postpone physical intercourse and are continuing to know each other on various intimate levels — emotional primarily. This isn’t essentially common in most romantic films, especially an African American centric film.
Twenty years after Four Weddings and a Funeral, it strikes me that very little has changed. If this film were made today, Gareth and Matthew could enter into a formal civil partnership, but regardless, Charles may not have realized just how deep and committed their relationship had been all along. It’s still very bitter and chilling that it was the committed gay couple that was separated by death. The real theme of this film isn’t weddings and marriage, it’s commitment. Twenty years later, there’s still so little representation of disabled people in films. I honestly can’t think of another film I’ve seen with a deaf-mute character. There should have been more racial minorities in the cast, even in minor roles, instead of just one 5-second shot of a black extra at the funeral. And as comparatively progressive as this film is, all it does is make me think how ridiculous American films look. A film made in a country with a fraction of the US population is more representative of minorities than most films made in a country with 316 million goddamn people.

People who claim to believe films and TV and pop culture moments like this are somehow disconnected from perpetuating rape need to take a step back and really think about the message this sends. I refuse to accept that a person could watch this scene from an iconic John Hughes film—where, after a party, a drunk woman is literally passed around by two men and photographed—and not see the connection between the Steubenville rape—where, after a party, a woman was literally passed around by two men and photographed.
These posts about wedding films previously appeared at Bitch Flicks:

Movie Review: Rachel Getting Married by Stephanie Rogers

Rachel Getting Married: A Response by Amber Leab

Documentary Preview: Arusi Persian Wedding by Amber Leab

Review in Conversation: Sex and the City: The Movie by Stephanie Rogers and Amber Leab

Bachelorette Proves Bad People Can Make Great Characters by Robin Hitchcock

Feminism in Aiyyaa and Why It Ain’t Such a Bad Movie by Rhea Daniel

Realistic Depictions of Women and Female Friendship in Muriel’s Wedding by Libby White

Romantic Comedy (and Female Friendship) Arranged Marriage Style by Rachel Redfern

Movie Review: Something Borrowed by Megan Kearns

Movie Review: Melancholia by Olivia Bernal

The Five-Year Engagement: Exploration of Gender Roles & Lovable Actors Can’t Save Rom-Com’s Subtly Anti-Feminist Message by Megan Kearns

Bros Before Hoes, or How Kidnapping Makes for Great Dance Numbers: On Seven Brides for Seven Brothers by Jessica Freeman-Slade

Movie Review: Melancholia by Hannah Reck

Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids by Janyce Denise Glasper

“Love” Is “Actually” All Around Us (and Other Not-So-Deep Sentiments) by Lady T

Everything You Need to Know About Space: 10 Reasons to Watch (and Love!) Imagine Me & You by Marcia Herring

The Reception of Corpse Bride by Myrna Waldron

Movie Review: Room In Rome by Djelloul Marbrook

Movie Review: 500 Days of Summer by Stephanie Rogers

(95) Minutes of Pure Torture: 500 Days of Summer by Deborah Nadler

Gay Rights and Gay Times: Gender Commentary in Husbands by Rachel Redfern

Bridesmaids: Brunch, Brazilian Food, Baking, and Best Friends by Laura A. Shamas

Wedding Week: ‘Coming to America’ and Coming to Terms with New Marriage Traditions

Coming to America movie poster.



Written by Leigh Kolb

When I was a kid, Coming to America was one of my favorite movies. I’m not quite sure exactly what it was–maybe I just thought Eddie Murphy was really cute–but I’d like to think that I was drawn to its message of valuing female intelligence and independence over subservience. 
Coming to America was released in 1988, and helped round out Eddie Murphy’s rise to stardom in the 1980s, from Saturday Night Live to Beverly Hills Cop. While Murphy played side-kicks in many of his early films, Coming to America was unique because it featured Murphy as a romantic lead, and a cast dominated by African Americans. 
The premise of the film–a wealthy African prince travels to America to live modestly and find true love, not an arranged marriage–isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but the film worked because it was (and is, sadly) rare to find a black man as a romantic lead, especially in a blockbuster-friendly romantic comedy.
The film begins by taking the audience over the sweeping landscape of the fictional African country of Zamunda, while a South African choir sings. As the camera focuses in on a palace, it’s important to note the stark contrast of this depiction of an African country against the frequent portrayals of Africa in American media, which showcase Africa as a continent in need of our saving (after all, they don’t even have snow at Christmas time). 
The royal family of Zamunda: Prince Akeem Joffer, King Jaffe Joffer and Queen Aeoleon.  
Prince Akeem (Murphy) wakes up on the morning of his birthday, and he’s attended to by male and female servants (from royal bathers–beautiful women who clean the “royal penis”–to royal wipers in the bathroom). Akeem doesn’t seem comfortable with any of this, and even requests to use the bathroom alone. At breakfast, his father, King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones), assumes his son must be excited to meet the wife they’ve arranged for him to marry. 
Akeem acts unsure, and finally speaks out against being doted upon and the idea that a woman would be chosen for him for his rank, not because she loves him. The tradition of arranged marriage doesn’t sit well with him, and his youthful rebellion takes the form of wanting to fall in love with a woman on his own terms and to be able to be more independent.
Semmi (Arsenio Hall), Akeem’s friend and attendant, serves as a foil to Akeem’s noble goodness. He is baffled that Akeem wants a woman with an opinion instead of having a woman who would follow his every command. Semmi assures Akeem that his wife need only have a “pretty face.”
Akeem asks him, “So you’d share your bed with a beautiful fool?” Semmi says that that’s the tradition for men in power. Akeem says that it’s also tradition for times to change. 
While the film isn’t a bastion of female empowerment, feminist nuggets like that pop up throughout the film, which is always refreshing within the confines of the well-worn tropes in romantic comedies. 
Akeem asks Imani, his chosen wife-to-be, to speak privately, breaking tradition.
When Akeem is presented with the beautiful woman who is to be his wife, Imani (Vanessa Bell), he asks to talk to her privately. She proudly tells him, “Ever since I was born, I’ve been trained to serve you.” He pushes to find out more about her, her favorite music, food, anything. But all she says is that she likes what he likes and will obey him. He says, “Anything I say, you’ll do?” after she refuses to not obey him, which is what he wants. He tells her to bark like a dog, and she complies, making a fool of herself as he is convinced this is not the woman he will marry. 
The fact that she was “born to serve” this man isn’t an anomaly–in patriarchal cultures steeped in tradition, the idea that women should be indoctrinated to be subservient to men is endemic. (Just last week, a U.S. congressman suggested that young boys and girls have segregated classes to be taught gender norms.)
When Akeem pushes back to his father and tries to get out of the marriage, saying he’s not ready, the king assumes he means sex. “I always assumed you had sex with your bathers,” the father says. “I know I do.” Again, the king is presented as misogynistic and patriarchal, without considering that his son may be trying to break free. He allows Akeem to go and travel for 40 days, assuming he wants to “sow his wild oats,” and that he’ll come back and marry the bride they chose for him.
As they prepare to leave, Akeem tells Semmi that he plans to find a wife during his travels. “I want a woman who will arouse my intellect as well as my loins,” Akeem says. They decide to go to New York City, specifically Queens, because he assumes there’s no better place to find a queen.
Akeem is excited to be in Queens; Semmi is less than impressed.
It’s a priority to Akeem that no one knows he’s royalty. He wants them to stay in the most “common” part of Queens, and asks the landlord to choose the “poorest” apartment for them to rent. When a woman throws garbage out of her window, Akeem exclaims, “America is great indeed–imagine a country so free, one can throw glass on the street!” Observations on wealth and ethnocentrism are also peppered throughout the film.
The two drape themselves in New York sports teams jackets and hats, and are mesmerized by a commercial for Soul Glo. Akeem goes to the barber shop (a gathering place near their apartment, where Murphy and Hall both play other parts). He gets his long princely ponytail cut off. The barber is impressed with his natural hair, and Akeem says he’s never put chemicals in it, just “juices and berries.” Later, the barber would rant and rant when Akeem asks for a Jheri curl, touting the importance of keeping hair natural. Between that and the brief rant by a white Jewish man in the barber shop (played by Murphy) that a person should be able to choose his own name, important facets of African American history and identity are touched upon in the barber shop (which were often official gathering places during the civil rights movement). 
After a night of meeting women of various disaster levels, Akeem and Semmi end up at a Black Awareness Week rally (specifically, the Miss Black Awareness Pageant), where Akeem immediately becomes enamored with Lisa McDowell (Shari Headley), the organizer of the rally and daughter of Cleo McDowell, who owns McDowell’s (a small fast food restaurant that borrows a lot from McDonald’s). She takes the microphone to stress the importance of individual expression (somewhat belittling the pageant, even if tongue in cheek) and asks the crowd to donate to a park for children to be able to express themselves. Akeem puts a giant wad of cash in the collection basket, and the next morning, Akeem and Semmi show up at McDowell’s to get jobs.
Akeem learns how to mop, and tries to flirt with Lisa, who is hard at work on a computer in her office. Akeem clearly, and immediately, values a woman with a sense of identity and purpose beyond serving a man.
Soul Glo heir Darryl (Eriq La Salle) is Lisa’s boyfriend, and the audience immediately knows he’s an ass–he puts no money in the collection basket (and lets Lisa think he was responsible for the large donation), he buddies up to Cleo and is condescending toward Lisa. If Akeem was more like Darryl, or even Semmi, his life would have been easier–he could have simply married his chosen wife and followed in the footsteps of what’s expected of powerful, wealthy men because “tradition.” The film presents these men to be critical of how patriarchy works–or doesn’t–within a culture (or cultures). 
The film continues to present these entrenched ideas: “Is this an American girl? Go through her poppa… Get in good with the father, you’re home free,” the barber tells Akeem. “I don’t know how it is in Africa, but here rich guys get all the chicks,” says a McDowell’s clerk (played by Louie Anderson).
Akeem goes along to a basketball game with Lisa, Darryl and Lisa’s sister, Patrice, who is presented comically as shallow and very interested in sexual conquests and wealthy men, unlike the noble Lisa. Can’t have a romantic comedy without a little virgin/whore dichotomy action!
Darryl makes disparaging remarks to Akeem about being from Africa, commenting about how it must be weird to be wearing clothes, and asking if they play games like catch the monkey. Earlier, the landlord says to Akeem and Semmi that the apartments have an insect problem, “but you boys are from Africa so you’re probably used to that.” When characters reinforce the African savage stereotype, it’s clear that these characters are not good.
Akeem is a good friend to Lisa when Darryl is forceful and misogynistic.
And when characters act like women are to be subservient sexual objects without their own identities, it’s also clear that they are in the wrong. From the king’s bawdy suggestions and adherence to the tradition of submissive, chosen wives, to Darryl pressuring Lisa to quit her job (“My lady doesn’t have to work”) or announcing their engagement without asking her if she wants to marry him (he went through her father, after all), men who don’t respect women are not the good guys–they are the ones who need to change.
When Akeem stands up to a robber at McDowell’s (Samuel L. Jackson doing one of the things he does best–wielding a gun and saying “fucker” as many times as possible), Darryl makes light of the fact that he hid, and suggested that Akeem knew those moves from fighting “lions and tigers and shit.” He then says, “They might not admit it, but they [women] all want a man to take charge–to tell them what to do.” Akeem smiles at him, but knows that’s not true. 
Lisa’s affection for Akeem grows when he quotes Nietzsche and when he is a thoughtful, sensitive listener when she’s angry that Darryl steamrolls their engagement, which she refuses. 
“I’m fine,” she assures Akeem. “I’m just not going to be pressured into marriage by Darryl, my father, anybody.” Akeem says he understands, and that he doesn’t think anyone should get married out of obligation. 
When they go out to dinner, Lisa says how nice it is to be with a man who knows how to express himself and she insists on taking the paycheck. Lisa’s attraction to these stereotypically not-masculine traits serves as a reminder that there is value to these qualities in both men and women. 
Lisa is smart and independent, qualities Akeem isn’t supposed to want.
Cleo pressures Lisa to marry Darryl as he sees her drifting toward Akeem. “You only like him because he’s rich,” Lisa says. Cleo–who has positioned himself as the ultimate bootstraps-pulling American dream–tells her that he just doesn’t want her to struggle like he and her mother did. 
Akeem’s charade begins to unravel as his family arrives in Queens via motorcade. Cleo is elated that Akeem is actually a prince; Lisa is devastated that he’d lied to her (and the fact that the king told her Akeem was only sowing his “royal oats” in America before he got married). 
Akeem chases after Lisa, and begs her to marry him. He offers to renounce his throne, and explains that he only wanted someone to fall in love with him for who he is, not for his money or royalty. She hesitates, but refuses, and runs off.
Queen Aeoleon (Akeem’s mother, played by Madge Sinclair) begins pushing back against her husband, challenging him about how he knows Akeem doesn’t love Lisa, and that the arranged marriage is a “stupid tradition.” “Who am I to change it?” asks the king. “I thought you were the king,” she says. 
Back in Zamunda, a royal wedding has begun, and Akeem is waiting for his bride, looking resigned and sad. A bride in an enormous pink dress and veil walks down the aisle. When he lifts the veil from her face, Lisa’s face is smiling at him. He looks elated, and his parents are smiling (the queen’s logic reigned), and Cleo steps up to join the king and queen. 
Akeem is surprised that Lisa is under the veil.
As they ride off in a carriage among a crowd of cheering partygoers, Lisa asks if she would have really given all of this up for her. “Of course,” Akeem responds. “If you like, we can give it all up now.” She says, “Nah,” and they laugh, and live, I’m sure, happily ever after.

The plot is pretty predictable. Female subservience is challenged, but standards of female beauty aren’t. The characters aren’t remarkably complex, but their motives are clear and almost always understandable. That said, this is a romantic comedy. I don’t mean to demean the genre as a whole, but I think it’s safe to say most blockbuster romantic comedies are pretty damn problematic, so to have a romantic comedy that subverts the notion of valuing wives who are simply beautiful and submissive while featuring a predominantly black cast and depicting Africa positively, I’d say that’s a win. 
Lisa is OK with her royal title.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

Romantic Comedy (and Female Friendship) ‘Arranged’ Marriage Style

Written by Rachel Redfern
Arranged is a 2007 romantic comedy by Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer about two women, one a Muslim woman, the other Jewish, finding love in an unusual way. Setting a romantic comedy within two disparate but highly developed communities of Orthodox Judaism and Islam in New York City offered a unique perspective on the normally tired genre.

Zoe Lister-Jones is Rochel, a twenty-two year-old Jewish woman from New York, just beginning her new job as a special education teacher at a public school. Francis Benhamou is Nasira, an independent young Muslim woman also beginning her career teaching the fourth grade at the same school. Because of their shared students and more conservative beliefs, the two women become friends and help each other through their prospective arranged marriages. Both women are at a crossroads in their lives as they try to please their families and maintain their faith, while also seeking their own happiness.

As a quick side note, Schaefar and Crespo did an astounding job of placing the film within a religious setting and really giving the film a deep center in tradition and devout faith. During the opening credits, the film establishes itself within these religious neighborhoods in such a way that for the first five minutes I didn’t realize the movie was set in the United States until a character specifically stated it.

Original movie posted for ‘Arranged’
In one strong and fabulous aspect, Arranged is a feminist triumph; the film’s portrayal of female friendships might be at the very top (it also passes the Bechdel Test). These two women meet through a shared passion in their careers and their struggles to find their place and fit into their new school. But it is their ability to connect beyond their faith that is most striking; in one scene, a distraught Rochel desperately asks Nasira to join her at the cemetery and stand near her while she prays for guidance and peace. The image is one of generosity and love, since Nasira cannot participate in the ritual and must just stand by and watch her. But both women are intensely supportive of the other and it’s a positive portrayal of the ways that women build each other up in communities.

Similarly, the film is mostly women and mainly centers on the interactions among mothers and daughters, sisters and friends and the ways that they struggle to understand one another through the lenses of their own experience. I found the mother-daughter relationship between Rochel and Nasira and their mothers to be especially poignant. Rochel’s mother, Sheli (Mimi Lieber), and Nasira’s mother, Amina (Gina Schmuckler), are both incredibly sympathetic to their daughters, obviously wanting what’s best for them—Sheli is even willing to support Rochel in her decision to wait, against the judgments of the matchmaker and neighborhood women; however, they’re also dynamic forces in their daughters’ lives, fighting and pushing them to a decision they think is best. It’s simultaneously both frustrating and heartening to watch but also very realistic in how it captured many female, familial relationships.

Arranged is very focused on proving that modern ideals of love and dating are not always best and obviously wants to show that many women in these same situations are independent and beloved by their families, while also having a choice in who they marry. Unfortunately, the film does end up undercutting its own intentions to show that these women have a choice, but should they make the choice not to marry or choose someone other than a person their family approves of, it’s stated that Rochel (and probably Nasira) would have to leave their families and would ultimately be disowned.

Zoe Lister-Jones and Francis Benhamou in Arranged

Ideas about arranged marriages in the United States vary, from deeply traditional communities still using matchmakers and choosing for their children, to critics, both in and outside of these communities, who say that choices are still limited for women and believe that arranged marriages have similar levels of distress and unhappiness. No one knows the exact amount of marriages in the U.S. that are arranged (or forced for that matter), but researchers believe the number of arranged marriages globally to be around fifty percent.

The film attempts to show that love can build and grow from an arranged marriage since it belies the transience of infatuation, but by the end of the film, it feels like a too-convenient tying up of loose ends. I had hoped to see more exploration in one or two of the couples learning to love each other, or perhaps one of the women making the choice to wait or not to marry. It would have been productive to see how two very good actresses and their devout and intelligent characters would have dealt with such a situation.

It was also unfortunate that three of the four secular characters in the film were caricatures of western insensitivity, and it is sad to think that many intelligent and good people of faith, especially of more orthodox religions, have to deal with such harsh judgment (I’m guilty as well, I confess). But, the other characters seemed to be painted with a quick brush that was pretty heavy on the “airhead.” None of these characters was very informed or particularly smart, a glaring group of character flaws that need some more subtlety and diversity. The female principal of their school (Marcia Jean Kurtz) is especially inappropriate and condescending in the way that she speaks to Rochel and Nasira about their religions (in a way that I think no public school principal in New York City could act and still keep her job).

It’s interesting since this film was made over fifty years ago, but The Fiddler on The Roof is still more of a hard-hitting exploration in tradition vs. modernity, arranged marriage vs. choice, religion vs. race than Arranged.

Yet, all in all, Arranged is a sweet and uplifting film about the power of female friendship with great actresses, a beautiful score, and a uniquely positive portrayal of women. I would definitely recommend this film for a Sunday afternoon.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection; however, she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

 

‘Girl Rising:’ What Can We Do To Help Girls? Ask Liam Neeson.

Girl Rising (2013)

This is a guest post written by Colleen Lutz Clemens.

Girl Rising unites prominent female authors, such as Edwidge Danticat from Haiti or Aminatta Forna from Sierra Leone, with girls such as Wadley or Mariama from their respective countries. Together, Danticat and Wadley, Forna and Mariama, and seven other pairs have their stories of oppression, resistance, community, and family narrated by the likes of Beyoncé or Meryl Streep. Each story works as a discrete unit in the film, using animation, music, and images to give the viewer a glimpse into each girl’s reserve of resilience.
Wadley from Haiti 
Mariama from Sierra Leone

Connecting the nine stories are interludes which show other girls in school uniforms as they hold us up signs sharing dreary statistics about girls in the developing world, such as boys outnumber girls in primary schools by 33 million. The stories teach the audience that these girls live in families that love them—even if that love looks different than it does in “the West”—and that education, poetry, art, and organizing are the keys to giving each girl the tools to recognize her own importance and to find her voice.

One of the interludes.

Girl Rising knows and plays to its audience: women in “the West” with access to basic services and education who have some extra money in the bank and a desire to help other women. The documentary works to connect audience members to a movement with the lofty goal of raising money to ensure more girls are educated worldwide.

I love the idea of educating girls. LOVE IT. I love any movie that takes the time and attention to tell the stories of girls to an audience that otherwise would not hear such narratives. I want every girl who wants (and maybe even doesn’t want) to be sitting on the floor or on a chair wearing a hijab, burqa, or baseball cap in a classroom to be there. If that movie is working toward that goal, then I am just about all in, which as a scholar and critic is pretty much as “in” as I can get. However, what proves potentially problematic is the way in which narrator Liam Neeson offers the convenient promise that once girls are educated throughout the world, then global issues will diminish and all will be right.
Thus, two things are still bothering me after seeing the movie a few weeks ago. First, fixing the world via education seems like a pretty big burden to put on the shoulders of girls. The implication of the film is that if girls would just have access to education, so many of the world’s problems such as poverty and malnutrition would disappear. To me this rings the same bell as when people say, “If only women ran the world, there would be no more wars.” There would be wars. There isn’t some kind of natural peace sense linked to the X chromosome. I want girls and women to have the agency that women around the world have been working for—I believe in that idea and in the movie’s thesis that if girls have education, the world can be better. But I don’t think it is just or fair to expect girls to fix all of the problems the movie seems to think they should fix.
Second, the film exploits the burqa to make its point about women’s suffering. It should be no surprise that the last segment is the one that Western audiences will be most eager to witness: the story of Amina in Afghanistan. This young girl is forced to marry at an age when an American girl would still be hanging One Direction posters on her pink walls. Watching her story takes the viewer’s breath away. The girl seemingly has no agency, no voice, until Western filmmakers come and listen to her. She lives in fear of violence, of becoming shamed by expressing her desire to live a life different from the one prescribed to her by virtue of her gender. She is the image of the Aghani woman Westerners are so familiar with but know little about.
Amina

Here’s my concern: I don’t think any of these problems will go away if she rejects and sheds her burqa. So when (spoiler alert) veiled girls start to run up the hill tearing off their burqas as the music crescendos and the voiceover offers us the idea that liberation is just around the corner once the girls reveal their identities, I cringe. This gesture is a bravery manufactured for the audience. Taking off a burqa is a solution that makes the audience feel good. It echoes the rhetoric of post-9/11 warmongering when suddenly we needed to invade countries in the name of women who needed liberation, a convenient excuse when those same women’s plights were completely ignored up until September 10, 2001. Of course, the movie does this on purpose, allowing us to feel justified all over again in our simultaneous invasion and ignorance.

I admire the girls. I want Amina to have everything she wants, even after only meeting her for ten minutes in the film. Yet I fear the other girls’ stories get lost in the noise of the past decade’s war with countries where “brown, veiled” people live. I was thrilled to be invited to co-lead a discussion after the film, yet the moment the lights went up the audience only wanted to talk about Afghanistan, about the Taliban, about Islam. Ten minutes into the discussion I gently steered the conversation back to the girls, as they had already been forgotten in the audience’s desire, and I might say selfish desire, to forget the bigger issue and make the suffering and anxiety all about ourselves again.
But Amina’s section also contains my favorite part of the film: when she looks at the camera and accuses the audience of being silent. She pointedly asks: what are “you” going to do? Of course, right after this segment, the film gently supplies an answer: text GIVE to 5515 and donate money to the 10×10 organization. I didn’t see a flood of phones light up in the theater. But this move of Amina looking at an audience filled with Americans and calling them out for staying silent in regards to her actual issue—“I have no school to go to, my family married me off at 13”—gives me the greatest of hope. Not her running up a hill taking off a burqa that she probably put right back on when she got to the other side of the hill: I can only imagine that she was forced to put her veil back on, although the film’s website says it cannot offer information about her current status as it may endanger her. But that she would look the West in the eye and say “You cannot forget about me. I will not forget about you. We are in this together”: that kind of girl rising is the kind of movement I want to be a part of, one what works toward greater access to education and doesn’t need to make me temporarily feel good or justified in the process.
Azmera

 

Colleen Lutz Clemens is assistant professor of non-Western literatures at Kutztown University. She blogs about gender issues and postcolonial theory and literature at http://kupoco.wordpress.com/. When she isn’t reading, writing, or grading, she is wrangling her one-year old daughter, two dogs, and on occasion her partner.