I just saw the movie. I'm still a little shaky. It's horrific to see the stoning- and sickening to watch the evil unfold that leads to the stoning. The evil includes silence.
But first, let's dispose of the idiotic Washington Post review that called it "the worst kind of exploitive Hollywood melodrama, presented under the virtuous guise of moral outrage." The Post reviewer is a professional film-goer, not a normal viewer. Too bad for the reviewer. There were definitely weak points in the film but that was almost irrelevant, given the monstrous true story it tells. The story of how oppression kills, body and spirit.
Soraya is stoned to death because her cheating husband falsely accuses her of adultery (so he can get rid of her and marry a 14-year-old) and gets one other man to go along with the lie. The village mayor allows the sentence to be imposed, although he's ambivalent and hopes for a "divine" sign that he should stop it. That's the storyline. Now for the meaning - I think it's that oppression kills. Internalized oppression kills because it robs a person of the ability to act in his/her best interest - whether you are a Jew who stays in Hitler's Germany or an Iranian wife who refuses to leave a brutal, violent and ultimately murderous husband or a battered woman or man or a person in a destructive, demeaning job or relationship. You accept your oppression - you may even embrace it. After all, it's your life. The mayor also fell to oppression, but he didn't lose his life - only his soul.
To get away with torture and murder, at least in this case, you also need external oppression - laws and social/religious norms and economic conditions that make it acceptable - ordinary - to deny a person's humanity and degrade him/her. Soraya had no way out - this was her world. The ayatollahs and mullahs said it was so. Someone drew a chalk line around the pit where she was to be stoned to death and she marched into it - this was her world.
About two thirds of the way through the movie I found myself thinking - hell, why doesn't she get out? Run away? Why doesn't she grant him the divorce? [She had excuses - mainly, she and her two daughters would starve without her husband.] I bought into blaming-the-victim: more internalized oppression, on my part.
Victim - an inadequate description. Soraya fell prey to the most horrific excesses of dominance - religious, tribal, political, gender. The men who threw the stones the hardest - as she was tied up and trapped in a dirt pit and helpless to shield herself - were asserting their dominance. Pathetic cowards.
Soraya's murder justified and glorified the oppressive theocratic rule of the ayatollahs. No justice in this regime. Just revenge. And Soraya was an easy target. Besides - the villagers would say (men and women) - she deserved it. Soraya refused to be a "good" wife - refused to submit to the brutal physicality of her cheating husband.
The feminist take-home message is that society can quickly and easily strip you of your humanity if you do not play by the rules and do not have real power and real control. "Real" means you've internalized the values of equality and you have financial resources and political power - and the laws that make those possible. (Caveat - Even with power, we can still lose our rights unless we have a lot of friends in high places who care what we think and how we vote. Will the ERA change that?)
Real equality = real power.
See the movie (in Northern Virginia, it's at Shirlington right now - July 15th) and share your thoughts on this blog.
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