Sukkar Banat

The movie, “Sukkar Banat”, or Caramel, depicts the lives of several Lebanese women, from different backgrounds. The audience gets to know these characters through scenes shot in a beauty salon, a symbol of the society of the Lebanese capital Beirut. In the year 2007, the movie was nominated under the Best Foreign Film category at the Academy Awards.

What one first notices is that the women, who are the main characters of the movie, are independent rather than traditional. I personally found the movie to be universal, unlike many others produced in Arab countries focusing on the historical aspects of the Middle East. However, Beirut is one of the most modern and cosmopolitan cities in the Arab World.

Each of the women’s stories is interesting and somewhat controversial. Nisrine, for example, is a Muslim woman who is engaged to be married. She fears the consequences that could occur if her future husband finds out that she is not a virgin. Rima, on the other hand, finds herself to be attracted to other women, and faces issues admitting her homosexuality in a conservative society. Layale, the owner of the beauty salon named Sibelle, finds herself attracted to a married man and has an affair with him, failing to control her feelings towards him. Jamale is an actress who faces a self-conflict in dealing with her aging. The movie thus transmits a message that the basic general understanding is that society believes that only women who are dependent on others will have fruitful futures. The male characters of the movies are placed in the sidelines, and gender inequality is highlighted throughout.

The movie, as a whole, delves into the pressures faced in societies such as the Lebanese one. The soundtrack to the film was also exceptional, in the sense that the director’s usage of the pop genre implies a crossing between modern views and traditional values. The film is critical of the culture’s gender inequality, but respectful of the cultural values upheld simultaneously.

Cultural Representation

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall tackles the idea of representation in Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. “Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of sings and images which stand for or represent things. But this is a far from simple or straightforward process.” Hall focuses on the semiotic and discursive approaches under the constructionist approach because it has become the leading perspective taken into account when delving into cultural studies.

The development of mankind came with the necessity to identify object and events with the assistance of representations. They became the primary method of meaningful communication and categorization. The global society is composed of different cultures, and individuals usually link themselves to one or more of these, incorporating into their personality norms and traditions. Despite these differences in cultures, mankind is able to share similar conceptual maps that have unified the way we make sense of objects around us. Hall, however, points out that meaning does not really rely in the words we use. It is individuals that fix certain words to certain meanings, and in that way contribute to a culture. “Representation is the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and languages which enables us to refer to either the real world of objects… or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects.” When it comes to people who inhabit a specific culture, they are nurtured by it to belong to the same linguistic and conceptual universe. Their ideas are represented in the same manner, and even their view of the world becomes extremely similar.

Although this may seem like a simple issue, it is exactly extremely interesting when one ponders the intricacies of representation, and the miracle of communication and meaning. It took thousands of years for mankind to reach this stage, and the meanings we uphold today, and will create in the future, will all be produced by cultural practices, and become significant to certain circumstances we live in. Mental representations become connected to an organized system of meaningful categories. Language is the tool we use to convey the meanings we reach, and organize the signs into the various relationships we make with other individuals and objects. Social life depends on these factors. Without the development of representation, modernization would be an impossible task to continue.

Women and Divorce Laws in Islam

“Divorce Iranian Style” is an exceptionally rare film for being able to capture the realities of Iran and the divorce courts in the Muslim world using an angle that shocks the Western audience and provides them with some sort of a wake-up-call. Islam, I have to say, is a somewhat misunderstood religion, in the sense that not many non-Muslims know the details of the laws of Shari’a. For example, unlike most people think, divorce is not forbidden in Islam, and both man and woman have the right to take that decision. “Wives have the same rights as the husbands have on them in accordance with the generally known principles.” (Qur’an 2:228)

However, Qur’anic verses show that God views divorce as something that is not favorable and something that He would want his people to avoid in any way possible. The interpretation of Islam differs in various societies. The judge in the film states clearly that he considers all cases of divorce something to be frowned upon. It is also his opinion that both spouses would like to stay in their marriages rather than separating. The film depicts the cases of three different women who approach a judge providing viable justifications for wanting a divorce. Some of these justifications include abuse, the wish to complete an education, and the infertility of the husband. These justifications if brought forth by a man would immediately be taken into consideration. However, because they are brought in by a woman, the chance of success is almost immediately diminished. Failure of the wife to attempt to console her husband and attempt to resolve the issues between them means that she does not receive any benefits from the divorce. In one case, the judge shown actually tells one of the complainants to dress prettier for her husband and make sure the house is kept completely organized at all times.

Shari’a Law and the Qur’an clearly provide clear evidence of the equal rights that women and men have when it comes to marital relationships. The interpretations of these laws are flawed and the method by which they were integrated into the judicial system in Iran breaks the theme of gender equality that is highlighted numerous times within the context of the Qur’an. The film should have attempted to highlight the flaws in misinterpretation. The way the cases were depicted only heightens tensions between the West and Islamic World.

The base of this pattern is emphasized in Diane Singerman’s article, which is titled Rewriting Divorce in Egypt. She states, “People don’t know Islam; they say we must do this and that, but really they are very selective in what they identify as Islamic.”