A woman is not permitted to desire

In Rhoda Kanaaneh’s article she describes the life of a daughter in traditional Palestinian roles and how she loses her sense of self through them. She illustrates well how the female self is a commodity. Lina Khatib’s article discussed how the female self is used in film as nothing more than a tool for revenge or metaphor for injustice. Both of these articles have a large contrast to what we saw of “women’s chit chat.”

In the movie the audience is exposed to women and their point of view. Only the women are shown (at least in the sections shown in class). There are no men present. The camera focuses solely on one or more women of a family that designs furniture. This is very different that the views of women one would have after watching any of the films that Khatib spoke about. While the media are a little different, “Women’s Chit Chat” is a documentary while the movies Khatib spoke of were cinematic, there are very differing views being portrayed. The cinematic movies that were mentioned all contain women being raped either as an “instrument of indirect political oppression” or with women used as scapegoats in a revenge situation. Not speaking freely and driving alone.

The Chit Chat movie was also not at like the story Kanaaneh told about women’s place is society. I feel like the reading does not necessarily reflect the current conditions of the Middle East, but may be more accurate as a historical context. She did a really good job of showing her reader exactly how a daughter of a king, and a daughter in general felt about her self and her place.

Khatib says that Turkish culture defines a rapist as the “enemy of honour.” However, cinema has exploited this. During this description the cultures of women as objects and not having a self identity match very closely with the story Kanaaneh told. Kanaaneh said that women are allowed to elicit desire but not feel desire, while in the movies they are used as objects of desire or to prove they are not allowed to have desire. The two articles portrayed the violent and demeaning culture women face, especially when they want to have their own thoughts, opinions, responsibilities or desires. One of the women simply did not want to marry a man and was kidnapped and raped three times because he desired her and that was that.