It's too bad that Hollywood, which is always interested in making another anti-That's a fellow named Steve Rhodes, writing about the latest film by Iranian director Jafar Panahi. The "Islamic oppression" on display here is the practice of barring women from attending male sporting events, and the movie tells a fictionalized adventure of several resourceful fans of the Iranian national football team who try to slip through the security net to watch the team clinch a place in the 2006 World Cup.American picture, couldn't make a few showing the consequences of Islamic oppression. OFFSIDE isn't much of a movie, but it at least tackles subjects that Western studios avoid lest they upset Islamic fundamentalists.*
I am a bit skeptical of the presence of films like this and the 2003 Afghani movie "Osama," both films about Islamic fundamentalists' treatment of women that scratch a certain American itch to feel smugly superior to to backward Orientals. This shouldn't take anything away from the quality of both films; despite my reservations I actually like "Offside" better than Rhodes. Perhaps he resented having to sit and listen to not-English for 90 minutes (which is, admittedly, a problem for this picture if you don't understand the language as it's very dialogue-heavy and some of the more comic touches will be lost to them).**
If you listen to right-wing blather about Teh Mooslim Menace for very long, the appeal to the degradation of women in these societies, such as the given example, will likely be the first, and possibly the only, thing that will be beaten into your head. The image of your sisters and daughters tied down and forced into burkas is regularly evoked as the price you'll have to pay for a lack of vigilance against the Islamunistonazifascist hordes. This is curious in that Western societies are not all that far removed from having similar attitudes, which were generally enforced by the same traditionalist prudes and their intellectual heirs now so outraged about Muslim subjugation of women that it's enough to justify an imperial crusade to liberate them.
This story persists so much because the American right and conservative Christians in particular understand it as a social issue in which they believe they are demonstrably different from the fundamentalist Muslims in the funhouse mirror (and they are even wrong about that, as I'll argue shortly). On most of the other social causes the Christian Right bathes itself in, from homosexuality to abortion, child rearing, pornography, censorship and others, there's hardly any substantive difference. (A cat the unfortunate wingnut Dinesh D'Souza infamously let out of the bag last year.) If you could drag Jerry Falwell and the Ayatollah Khomeini out of Hell long enough to have a conversation--and keep the topic away from religion--they would find a lot to agree upon.
But I don't think the current American rightists deserve even the small amount of credit they believe their self-piously liberal attitude toward women should get them. Even in this case, the difference between Christian and Muslim fundamentalists is one of degree, not of premise; that premise being that women must cover themselves up and keep out of sight so as not to tempt the uncontrollable lust raging in the soul of a man and cause him to stumble out of favor with God. They have already decided it's the women's fault; the rest is just haggling over how much they ought to be punished. (I appeal to my own experience here. Modesty, ladies!)
*Glenn Greenwald had an excellent post yesterday debunking the notion that "speaking against Muslims" somehow sets one up as a unique target for reprisal than remarks about other religions.
**I have the feeling watching a lot of foreign films that the subtitles aren't catching as much of the dialogue as I would like. They are always much cleaner and lacking in inflections than I'm willing to believe. Try watching a film in English and imagine how it might be subtitled (or even put on Spanish subtitles if you like) and see what the difference is between what you hear and what you read. Maybe I'm paranoid about this, though.
