Tracing Queerness in Arab Cinema

Imagine an Arab movie where a gay cross-dresser is universally loved by his whole community and the plot focuses on everything but his sexuality. This movie exists. But, it is not considered to be an Arab movie, rather, it is considered to be French. Arab cinema before this film has only hinted at the existence of homosexuality. The only reason this film exists is that the Arab filmmaker fled his home country and based himself in France, where he was able to express these homosexual themes. In contrast, many other filmmakers before this one had been exiled for making projects that merely teter on similar themes. Through the study of Arab films queerness has been expressed by tackling oppressive themes of sexual dissidence, Western colonialism, and the immigration of Arab filmmakers to show queerness and have it thrive comfortably in the spotlight. 

Queer people in the Arab world share a particular struggle: freedom. Individuals born in the Middle East must meet weighty cultural expectations; defying those expectations only makes matters worse. Arab culture revolves around adherence to a specific holy book, usually the Quran or the Bible. Although cinema is an outlet for Arabs to express themselves in ways they never thought they could, they have lived under oppression for so long that their art is often translated into visual poetry, embedded with symbols and subliminal messages. This element of anonymity has been especially crucial for filmmakers who attempt to add LGBTQ+ elements to their art. Morocco, Algeria and Egypt (the “Hollywood” of the Middle East) have pushed Arab Cinema for the past three decades into a complex direction that strives to showcase personal stories. Whether it be fleeing their country for France or using metaphorical storytelling to discreetly show queer elements, filmmakers have loopholed their way into creating their art, and in the process have even tackled the false perspectives the Middle East has on queerness.

There is irony in considering the beginning of Arab queer cinema as the world still has yet to see a breakout of queer cinema in the Arab world. Arab cinema, specifically Egyptian cinema, is usually draped with levels of melodrama; this has been its natural narrative structure for decades. Its storytelling consists of relatable fictional family dramas that never push boundaries to avoid upsetting the system. Viola Shafik, an Egyptian curator, states in her book about Arab cinema’s historic and cultural identity that “Egypt’s government has its own strict censorship law. Since 1947, this legislation has included 71 prohibitions that detail five major areas of limitation—loose morality, politics, religion, seditious ideologies, and violence.” These limitations define Arab culture and bleed its censorship into entertainment regulations. The prohibitions are a tactic to keep the culture steady and to avoid any outliers that could be distributed in a film that goes against the standards of traditional Arab behavior.

Omar Hassan states in his article about Egyptian cinema that “in 1976, these laws were reinforced, allowing the clergy to have censoring powers and thus providing fundamentalists with the final say in film output.” Arguably, when such practice is made law, such as embedding them in the building blocks of civil society, the effects tend to permeate the culture at large. The media, the authorities, and the masses tend to develop a closed-off perspective to anything that threatens the nation’s political (and patriarchal) stability. Progressing into a colonized world, Roy Armes, author of Roots of the New Arab Film, claims that Arab cinema had the need to create a new protagonist who is unable to change the world by an imposition of will or even to develop his or her own potentialities to the full as the Western hero does (Armes).

In the late 1970s, new filmmakers emerged who were prepared to take on this challenge. Independently socialized producers pushed cinema in the right direction, such as the Egyptian director Yousef Chahine: “Chahine specifically adhered to the demands and constraints of Egyptian commercial cinema with focus on musicals and melodramas, until moving to Lebanon and beginning to create neorealist masterpieces, such as the complex allegory ‘Al-ikhiar (1970)’ and movies about religious intolerance, ‘Al-muhair (1994)’” (Armes). He paved the way for storytelling that could cover trauma and personal testimonies. He was also prosecuted for blasphemy and was known to be controversial for speaking openly. As much controversy as Chahine attracted, it did not stop him from being a pioneer, bringing new realism into Arab Cinema, and intertwining personal experience with social commitment and political insight through all of his fiction.

With a pioneer such as Chahine came other filmmakers ready to assert their new voices. Algerian-director Merzak Allouache drove abroad to France to create mainstream productions with less pressure on censorship and to distribute his insider and outsider perspectives. Allouache was one of the first directors to showcase queerness in film under the Middle Eastern umbrella. Most LGBT representations from a Middle Eastern perspective are subliminal; overt representations would come with a price. Naturally, the religious culture, specifically Islamic culture, keeps creatives from making full fledged queer works for the big screen. Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, an author who wrote about LGBT+ muslims explains that “Muslims naturally commemorate the early days of Islam when they were oppressed as a marginalized few, threatened, and vulnerable to persecution. Although once they evolve into a dominant group, they tend to forget their former marginalization despite the reminder in the Quran. This allows them to mistreat minorities within their own communities such as the LGBT” (Kugle). Furthermore, the preaching of tolerance and acceptance is skewed because of hypocrisy that’s distributed through the discrimination of homosexuality. Showing that the power complex of a dominant group can forget the pain they once lived through.

The French movie mentioned in the introduction is Chouchou, a 2003 film directed by Merzak Allouache. It’s about an openly gay cross-dresser, Chouchou, who is warmly welcomed everywhere, first by a Catholic priest named Father Leon who finds him a place to stay, and subsequently by psychiatrist Dr. Nicole Milovavich, who is happy for him to work as her assistant dressed as a woman. The movie is based on a sketch by Gad Elmahleh, a straight stand-up comedian who created Chouchou as a campy, open, loveable, and untroubled character. Elmahleh never addressed the character’s sexuality, which allowed Allouache to adapt him into a queer personality that would help normalize homosexuality in the Middle East and grant proper representation for LGBT+ people. Even though Chouchou caters to stereotypes in homosexuality such as flamboyancy, he is still portrayed as a positive figure.

The artistic freedom Allouache had in France allowed this film to create a space for queer expression and the joy that comes with it. “Chouchou is set in Paris and has an inconsequential plot about a character named Chouchou in a search to find his nephew” (Armes). He finds him, posing as a singing drag queen named “Vanessa” in a nightclub called The Apocalypse. Chouchou finds work at the nightclub as a waitress and meets the love of his life, sparking a romantic storyline. The main antagonist is a troubled police inspector who takes a violent dislike to Chouchou because of his sexual identity. By the end of the film, Chouchou makes a final appearance that is as impactful as his first appearance by wearing a wedding dress and a red wig. Allouache succeeds in creating a world where there are no problems and no questions despite the outrageous actions depicted on screen (Armes). The film’s humorous mood, strong performances, and warmth have made it beloved. There’s an irony in all of this.

The fact that the gay club Chouchou works at is called The Apocalypse, the surreal world with no problems: it’s all a jab at laws that villanize the LGBT+ community. In a way, the film is a form of denial, like a call for an escape. He builds a normalized world to impact the audience of the Middle East to suppress their discrimination and to become more welcoming. “The theme of transness is seen as taboo in the Arab world, therefore this certifies Allouache as a French filmmaker and not an Arab filmmaker” (Armes). Association between the Middle East and a project such as Chouchou would only cause a storm, potentially exiling the entire crew of the film and condemning the filmmaker. As mentioned, LGBT representations in the Middle East come with a price, and for Allouache that price was no longer being labeled an Arab filmmaker. Chouchou is a sensationalized piece of fiction that depicts an uncommon reality that LGBT+ people in the Middle East only dream of living in.

This is where it sadly fails, as critics took it as a piece of camp that helps water down the reality of being exposed to homosexuals as anything other than flamboyant personalities. It is a caricature of a single gay man being the voice of homosexuality. Even though it is not an accurate representation, it is a step in the right direction.

As comedic and campy as Chouchou is, there are other films in Arab cinema that tackle homosexuality in a misguided manner by using coded story techniques and blaming Western colonialism. Hassan’s article also covers colonialism and homosexuality. He claims that “in a post-Brokeback Mountain era of filmmaking, cinematic representations of homosexuality no longer conjure up lengthy debate or public controversy” (Hassan). He states that within specific regions, such as the Middle East, Arab culture has yet to experience such a renaissance. In Egypt, the epicenter for Arab cinema production, funding sources are primarily conservative Gulf financiers whose lack of moral understanding dictates that homosexuality is nothing but ‘evil.’ Hassan uses the 2008 film All My Life as an example, explaining that it was never screened and rather was called for an “immediate burning.” Egyptian director Maher Sabry’s project was supposed to be the first balanced representation of homosexuality in the Arab World but was forbidden from public screening in the Middle East. At the same time, Zein El Abedeen, the director of Egypt’s anti-AIDS program, stated that “the film was a painful blow to all of our efforts to combat HIV.” El Abedeen used this reasoning as a crutch to condemn gay sex on screens. Sabry had an influx of hate coming from Muslims and Christians from trying to overtly display homosexuality in Arab cinema. “Deducing that homosexuality will be forbidden from ever reaching a mainstream audience in the Arab world” (Hassan). In turn, Egyptian filmmakers took to ‘coding’ to portray homosexuality allegorically. By using melodramatic devices, homosexuality made it onto the Arab screen through drag queens and flamboyancy. The word ‘khawal’ is tied to the coding of these characters, as khawal describes an overtly flamboyant and feminine man but not a homosexual one.

The ‘khawal’ in Egyptian film was scattered all around to combat the Arab world’s consideration of homosexuality as a vice stemming from the ills of Western colonizers of the North African region where Egypt is located. In 1947, the first openly gay male character in Arab culture was created: Kirsha from Nahuib Mahfouz’s novel Midaq Alley. But the 1963 film adaptation directed by Hassan al-Immam completely erased all of Kirsha’s homosexual tendencies. Instead, he is depicted as a menacing opportunist that deals drugs to British soldiers and “can’t control his desires'' of pleasuring British troops with drugs (Hassan). His moral degradation is put down to a western influence. Throughout the film the character is alluded to be a product of “colonizer influence.” Another example is where the protagonist joins a brothel with a ‘khawal,’ which is depicted as an association with the “social aberration that is the homosexual” (Menicucci).

 In 1973, Egyptian filmmaker Salah Abou Seif attempted to “confront” homosexuality in the film The Malatili Bath. The plot follows a young man leaving his family to relocate to Cairo in hopes of finding an education and a career. Unfortunately, his lack of funding causes him to frequent a bathhouse, a regular spot for gay men. A gay visitor becomes attracted to the young man and brings him home to his apartment so he can seduce the protagonist with “Western ills” like alcohol and pop music. The use of Western music and alcohol, which is known to be forbidden in the Muslim community, suggests that colonial influence is to blame for homosexual manifestation. Moreover, Hassan explains that as the narrative progresses the older gay man reveals that his homosexuality stems from his estranged relationship to his mother in result making him detest women. The character also explains that his ill feelings toward women give him a desire to dress up as a woman himself. The movie confronts homosexuality by accusing it as a source of  ‘women’s emasculation of men’, gender dysphoria and the vices of colonizers.

According to Hassan, progressive homosexual representations were not portrayed until “Yousef Chahine’s autobiographical film trilogy in 1979 where homosexuality was dealt with in a ‘matter-of-fact’ manner” (Hassan). In the film Alexandria Why? (1979), the protagonist’s aristocratic uncle has an addiction to kidnapping and assassinating British soldiers. The uncle is portrayed as a slender man who speaks with a lisp to “indicate his camp predisposition” (Hassan). The film takes a pivotal turn when one night, the uncle is presented with a drunken British soldier to execute and instead of delivering the fatal blow, the uncle lets the soldier sob in his arms. The audience watches as the uncle tells the soldier ‘to behave like a man’ right before the scene cuts to the soldier waking up half naked, with the uncle pointing a gun and staring at him lustfully. The uncle claims that he can no longer kill his new victim because he is infatuated by him. This is displayed by the uncle staring at the soldier all night and confessing that he wants to “pat his silly little backside.”

This expression of homosexuality is not needed in the narrative, yet both men express desperation for some form of physical affection through homoerotic acts. This was a rare case in Arab cinema, where these tendencies were not conveyed as an analytical philosophical issue. Hassan references M. Kiernan in his article, a journalist that studied Chahine’s cultural hegemony and film language, who “believed Chahine could only depict this relationship of two men physically bonded to one another by making them a product of “murderous hatred”” (Hassan). The only reason this relationship was accepted in the public eye was because viewers allowed the narrative to be seen as the manifestation of homosexuality allowing the Egyptian nationalist to “physically rape his colonizer,” which in return allows him to claim back his “territory/manhood” (Hassan).

The conservative Arab audience took advantage of Chahine’s portrayal by masculinizing it and giving it a political backdrop to help isolate homosexuality further away from the Middle East, exposing it as a form of anger against Western colonialism instead of a sexual identity. To add, Chahine being a heterosexual man automatically gives a cloak of heteronormativity towards the subject, which suggests that homosexuality is just a wave of abnormal behavior. Chahine may never have wanted these theories to be the justification for his plot devices, although it is still more than the stereotypical role of a ‘khawal’ in other Egyptian films.

Chahine, in the long-run, fails in portraying homosexuality as a universal facet of human nature as he deems it a product of either colonization, lust, or trauma. Nonetheless, Chahine remains an influence on queer expression in Arab cinema since other films such as Yacoubian Building (2006), a recent installment, suggests that “homosexuality is a product of child molestation or is the product of having a Western mother” (Hassan). In his final installment of his trilogy, Alexandria Once Again (1989), Chahine plays a film director who is romantically obsessed with a young actor. The nature of the relationship is dealt with subtly, with allusions to the relationship making the director’s wife jealous, and a dancing scene between two males. Chahine’s character is an allegory of a young Arab man looking to escape the repression of Arab culture and live freely in the liberal West. The internal conflict of Chahine’s character is that he cannot fight homosexuality any longer, therefore he must travel to Europe to embrace it, which is a commentary on internal homophobia in the Middle East and trying to fight off a sexual identity to not risk living a life under danger. Known to be the auteur of Arab cinema, Chahine succeeds in granting the building blocks for future filmmakers to not only create personal stories but ones with homosexual themes attached to them (Hassan). Chahine paved the way for creatives, like his assistant Khaled El Hajjar, to bring more progressive stories to the foreground.

Khaed El Hagar’s film Room to Rent (2000) offers a progressive narrative that helps tackle the tension between sexual dissidence and sexual identity. A former assistant to Youssef Chahine, El Hagar is defined by controversy just like his predecessor. Omar Kholeif writes that El Hagar “has endured more public criticism than almost any other Arab film-maker of the last two decades” (Kholeif). El Hagar has become one for producing narrative pictures only to have them cause a commotion by being censored or banned, yet he continues to survive the consequences. The filmmaker has even survived a period of exile from Egypt because of his controversy. Room to Rent made El Hagar one of the first Egyptian filmmakers to produce a film in Britain. The movie follows Ali, a character El Hagar vicariously lives through, an Egyptian screenwriter living in London on a student visa that is about to expire. In turn, Ali’s best friend promises him a “white marriage” for “naturalization in return for monetary compensation.” Ali is introduced to a Marilyn Monroe impersonator by a gay photographer named Mark, who he comes to fall in love with as she is seen as his savior. ‘The movie was banned from Egypt for having “brushes with queerness.” Kholeif links this to El Hagar’s desire to tackle sexual transgression, as he drenches the film in camp and kitsch aesthetic and states that the “saturated color palette of the film paired with the Arab quality of it’s presentation makes Room to Rent a unique picture as it succeeds in being a British and Arab film simultaneously.” 

Arab culture deems homosexuality as something that can exist in isolation in the Western world because they are convinced it is a form of sexual dissidence, not a sexual identity. At the same time, there are “unspoken rules that suggest that dominant male sexual partners engage in sexual practices with other men as merely a way to fill a human sexual desire” (Whitaker). The perception of homosexuality being a form of sexual dissidence rather than sexual identity led to the banning of Room to Rent in Egypt, merely from the prominent gay character, Mark, being in proximity to the Egyptian protagonist, Ali. Kholeif details one comedic scene in the film that explores this theme accurately. Ali is wandering around Mark’s bedroom and curiosity takes over him as he finds a stash of BDSM items he starts to navigate. Ali takes his curiosity further by handcuffing himself to the bed and wearing Mark’s gimp mask; this showcases the natural sexual dissidence that Arabs are accused of pursuing. In contrast to earlier Egyptian works, Mark enters the room furious with the intrusion and, instead of appealing to some sort of seduction scene, he shames Ali. Mark outcasts him from understanding gay male sexual practices, leaving Ali embarrassed and rejecting his dissidence because it does not correlate to his identity. “Ali is beyond merely accepting homosexuality; instead his nonchalance shows a curiosity toward sexual acts he is not familiar with” (Kholeif). The scene is comical, but it also helps express the misguidance that homosexuality is dissidence, and in return, helps normalize acts of homosexuality in public perspectives. There is always a price to pay and for this director, that was to not make the gay character an Arab. Rather, he allows a Western character to guide the Arab character toward exploring their identity. El Hagar’s overall attempt at normative representation of queer identity is successful in comparison to predecessors who used homosexuality as a demonizing element.

All of these attempts at creating homosexual characters in Arab cinema were subtly hinted until Abdellah Taia, the first openly homosexual Arab filmmaker, created Salvation Army (2013). This was the first Arab movie to explicitly depict homosexuality through a gay Arab protagonist. Taia was known to have “founded the gay voice of Morocco” as his autobiographical movie helped bring sociocultural and religious taboos regarding homosexuality to the foreground (Orlando). Denis M. Provencher wrote in his book around queer Moroccan culture that “Abdellah Taia lived unconsciously between France and Morocco and constructed himself into a hybrid self by draping himself in flexible culture scripts to switch between at the right time” (Provencher). His film was an adaptation of his book of the same title, which was published in 2006 as a coming out piece that was highly controversial and caused trouble in Morocco. It tells the story of Taia growing up in Morocco and writing himself as an act of resistance and transgressing heteronormativity. The movie follows Taia as a gay teenager living in Casablanca with his parents, five sisters, and two brothers as they build a life together. The book and movie differ explicitly, as the movie waters down the beautiful story to ease in audiences and help suppress controversy. In the book, Taia tackles power dynamics such as older men preying on younger men and conflicting manifestations of repression, but the movie portrays this from an emotionless distance. A prominent scene in the movie follows Taia ten years later with his Swiss partner talking with a rowboat owner. The rowboat owner tells Abdellah he is lucky for being with someone with wealth, implying that being homosexual for a price is a common practice that is inescapable in the Middle East. Abdellah does not protest the accusation because it would be easier to live with this interpretation, since it is more accepted that he is doing it for money rather than it being because he’s gay and has emotions for his partner. Other than this scene and the main topic of the movie, the entire narrative erases most of Taia’s original writing in a compromise for the big screen.

In contrast, people in the United States who come from Middle Eastern backgrounds have had an easier time expressing homosexual themes through documentaries and independent works. New-York based Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma is a gay Muslim who comes face to face with Islam and does not allow the oppressive atmosphere of Indian/Arab culture to come between his relationship with God. Sharma explains in a piece he wrote for Amnesty International Spring “that his life in India is different from lives in the Middle East''—therefore he wants to bring his queerness to the Middle East as a peaceful communion. A Jihad for Love (2008) is a documentary created by Sharma to depict Islam through the eyes of gay and lesbian Muslims (Sharma). The film’s goal is to share their experience without degrading the religion. It took six years for the film to be created because Sharma explored twelve countries and nine languages to showcase a new form of coexistence—an approach to Islam that conservative Muslim audiences have been afraid of coming in contact with. With movies like Salvation Army and documentaries like A Jihad for Love, Arab filmmakers in recent years have been able to get their personal stories onto screens through the help of streaming services, such as Amazon and Netflix, and by migrating to more accepting countries, such as the United States. Directors like Youssef Chahine helped fight the battle for LGBTQ representation in the past, creating more ease when it comes to controversial stories today. This has allowed queer expression to thrive by having explicit narratives that depict oppression, counter heteronormativity, and promo queerness as sexual identity rather than sexual dissidence.

The Arab world has yet to experience a true renaissance when it comes to LGBT+ representation. It will always be a battle for those trying to authentically express their queerness in the Middle East. Overall, Arab directors in Arab countries and Arab directors who have moved away to increase their artistic freedom, have tackled oppressive themes of sexual dissidence and have intertwined queerness with colonialism to allow queer expression in Arab cinema. Right now it’s relevant to think that an “Arab” film showcasing a gay character fluid in their expression is a bit strange, especially since it was made 17 years ago because that’s the renaissance Arab cinema has yet to experience. But growing into the 21st century, homosexuality is not as internally conflicted. It is no longer a product of Western influence. A lusting for a British soldier becomes just a product of desire. The discovery of BDSM items in a homosexuals closet is merely seen as a sexual preference. Inconsentual seduction is an act of sexual assault, not an act of homosexuality. Arabs fleeing their home country to pursue their dreams is honorable, not cowardly. The near future holds potential for filmmakers with a queer eye and a drive to document their Arab roots on the big screen and the audience can’t wait to experience it.

WORK CITED

Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq. Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. NYU Press, 2014. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020.

Armes, Roy. ​Roots of the New Arab Film.​ Indiana University Press, 2018. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020

Hassan, Omar. “Real Queer Arabs: The Tension between Colonialism and Homosexuality in Egyptian Cinema.” ​Film International (16516826),​ vol. 8, no. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 18–24. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020. 

Provencher, Denis M. ​Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations​. Liverpool University Press, 2017. ​Accessed 16 Apr. 2020. 

Kholeif, Omar. “Room to Rent: Sexual Dissidence in the Films of Khaled El Hagar.” ​Film International (16516826)​, vol. 10, no. 4/5, Sept. 2012, pp. 68–71. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020.

Sharma, Parvez. "A Jihad for Love." ​Amnesty International​ Spring 2008: 30. ​ProQuest. W​eb. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020 . 

Orlando, Valérie K. 2010. Francophone Voices of the ‘New Morocco’ in Film and Print: (Re) presenting a Society in Transition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009.

Shafik, Viola. Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity. Cairo, Egypt: The American University in Cairo Press, 2007.

Menicucci, G. “Unlocking the Arab Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in Egyptian Film.” Middle East Report, 206, ‘Power and Sexuality in the Middle East’, Spring. 1998, pp. 32–36. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020.

Kiernan, M. “Cultural Hegemony and National Film Language: Youssef Chahine.”Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 15, ‘Arab Cinematics: Toward the New and the Alter- native’, 1995, pp. 130–52. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020.

Whitaker, Brian. Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East. University of California Press, 2015.