O ctober 23. 2013
®lf* Ç ortlanb (Observer
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Inspired Determination
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O I ijONY S^l 1*^ J F 'I /Y
" * * hery° Ung male f" end in the fllm ’WadJda’ ' a stofy that gives us a rare window into everyday life for
‘Wadjda’ offers
windows into Saudi
(and American) life
by
D arleen O rtega
I im agine that A m erican audiences
watching "W adjda" - the first feature film
shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first
directed by a Saudi woman - will be doing
a lot of clucking over how restrictive life is
for Saudi women and girls. Yet when I
scanned for review s after seeing the film,
nearly all of them were written by men: Film
criticism , like m ost other spheres o f influ­
ence in A m erican culture, is dom inated by
m ale voices. I'm guessing that most of us
would not even notice that fact.
A film like this offers Am ericans some
t t I k
opportunities that we rarely get. M ost
obviously, it gives us a rare window into
everyday life for Saudi wom en and girls.
D irector H aifaa al-M ansour gives us a
fairly simple story of a m iddle-school-aged
girl, W adjda — whose small rebellions
evidence sim ply a desire to be herself -
and fills that story with particular details.
W adjda's determ ined self-expression is
evident, for exam ple, in the hangers she
has attached to the radio on which she
listens to forbidden Am erican pop m usic;
in the black Converse high-tops she wears
under the long, shapeless gray dress that
serves as her school uniform; and in her
little schemes for earning the money she
would need to buy a bicycle so that she
can race (and beat) the boy with whom she
shouldn't even be associating.
But the Film also offers us an opportunity
which I wonder if we are really up for - the
opportunity for self-examination.
It is easy for Am ericans to judge a
culture like this because its flaws are readily
apparent to us. How strange to imagine
living in a society where a girl riding a bike
is unheard o f because o f concerns that it
will damage her fertility, or where a woman
is not allow ed to drive a car!
Yet part o f where the film succeeds is in
dem onstrating how inevitable such lim ita­
tions seem to be for many m em bers o f that
society, and how its norm s are enforced,
even by those who are oppressed by them.
A film like this, which deftly deconstructs
a culture that seems alien, has the poten­
tial to awaken our sensitivity to m anifes­
tations o f oppression in our own culture.
The film is perceptive about the stric­
tures o f the girl's life, and that o f her
m o th e r, c la s s m a te s , an d te a c h e rs .
W adjda's father mostly works and lives
apart from her and her mother, a real beauty
who works as a teacher but isn't allow ed to
manage her own money or drive herself to
work. Instead she must pay a driver who
addresses her with the disdainful tone one
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