#and thus cannot have been based purely on her but on a wider 'discourse of defamation focused on “problem” women' as Ormrod puts it

[wonder-worker]

Within this broader condemnation of [Alice Perrers'] behaviour, a number of specific themes can be identified. These include sexual immorality, political influence, and [...] numerous and repeated references to greed and avarice. This is particularly striking in two literary representations which may have been inspired by Alice: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and, most compelling, William Langland’s Lady Meed in his allegorical poem Piers Plowman, a character whose name has become a byword for venality. Meed, like Alice, established her presence at the royal court and acted as a counsellor to the king, but was eventually banished on accusations of being a whore and undermining the workings of law and justice. In particular, in introducing Meed to his audience, Langland describes her hands as covered with rings of the “purest perreize,” a word meaning precious stones or jewels, which would seem to be a play on Alice’s surname, Perrers, and thus directly identifying her with Meed. Chaucer also notably named the wife in the Wife of Bath Alisoun, raising the possibility that she was in part based on his direct contemporary Alice Perrers. The Wife had a husband named Jankyn, similar to the name of Alice’s first husband, Janyn, and was a businesswoman with a mercantile and urban background, echoing Alice’s own early life in London. The Wife was notoriously prolific in her lustful desires, but invariably they had a financial motivation, fusing, in the words of Paul Strohm, “the categories of economic and sexual assertiveness into a single epitome of contemporary male dread.”

-Laura Tompkins, '"Edward III's Gold-Digging Mistress": Alice Perrers, Gender, and Financial Power at the English Royal Court, 1360-1377", "Women and Economic Power in Premodern Courts" (edited by Cathleen Sarti)

[salmanadergalal]

Identifying with the “Other”: Visual Analysis of Fellahin Stereotypes in El Beh El Bawab Film by Salma Nader Galal.

Introduction: Fellahin in Egyptian Cinema

The fellahin have been mostly stereotyped in Egyptian cinema while comprising the majority of Egypt’s population (CAPMAS, 2014). Before the 1952 revolution, fellahin were almost never represented, except on the sideline of aristocratic life. During the 50s and 60s, the newly shaped government policies influenced films to portray fellahin as victims of the feudal system imposed by the former ruling class. As a result, there was a significant hike in the percentage of films casting them as main characters. Peasants’ cinematic depiction then dropped down in the past 30 years, while going back to embodying superficial and stereotypical roles.

This retrospective is an occasion to analyze the rural Egyptian life beyond what is on TV and in film. Most of the inhabitants of Cairo and large cities hold certain prejudices towards fellahin, specifically how they look like and how they expect them to act. Are these preconceptions due to media representations or does the media reinforce already existing racial bias that urban Egyptians have toward what they consider, a lesser class?

This paper will examine the film, “The Prestigious Gatekeeper” or “El Beh El Bawab”, an Egyptian Comedy-Drama that came out in cinemas in 1987, which coincided with significant changes in the social class within Egypt.

Literature Review: Beyond Edward Said’s Orientalism

“Orientalism” is a visual and cultural theory that is based on the writings of Edward Said. Said proposed that his theory sprang from postcolonialism and defined it extensively in his well-known publication “Orientalism” (1978). Said argued that Orientalism -as a product of colonialism- is not only a political project, it also involves ideological construction of different modes of representation (Mambrol, 2016). Thus, he defined Orientalism as the construction of the East through the lens of the West, which consistently portrayed the East to be primitive, undeveloped, exotic and a backwards culture (Said, 1987).

In his postcolonial literary criticism, Said adopted a contrapuntal reading of texts where he identified the ideological frameworks of literary texts to find imperialized discourses. This reading will conceptually differ when developed in a different historical narrative and context. It’s difficult to precisely trace back the origin of the distinction between the West and the East. However, according to Said Orientalism as a system of ideas to remain perpetual in academics from late 1840s until present, indicates that this is a systemic issue and not a collection of lies (Said, 1987). It would also be too limiting to argue that Said’s findings are strictly the result of a Western gaze only. Orientalist subjects have received, contributed, challenged, and modified Orientalism.

Hassan Ibrahim, the director of the movie under study presented a social critique of the Egyptian society during the late 1980s, a historical period known for economic and cultural openness in Egypt. Most movies of the time were reflecting the Egyptian society as being highly westernized, especially the elites who were heavily exposed to Western cultures. Ibrahim in “El Beh El Bawab”, introduced the protagonist in the role of an Egyptian fellah serving as the gatekeeper of a building having most of its residents of the Egyptian elite. In this film the director reflected the Orientalist lens through which the wider society perceives fellahin to be e.g. gatekeepers, dark-skinned, belittled, illiterate, have an exaggerated rural accent, wear Jalabiyas and are always made fun of- because they are different. In his attempt to show the cruelty of the higher class towards lower classes, Ibrahim stereotyped the fellah character in all the previously mentioned features and instead of sympathizing with the poor peasant, the fellah became a subject of humor to the viewers. Most of Hassan Ibrahim’s movies were concerned with how lower classes in Egypt rebel against the obstacles they face, but in that he notably stereotyped his main characters. One example is “The Lady’s Driver” or “ Sawaa’ El Hanem” (1994) in which Ibrahim presented a love story between an upper-class girl having Western features and her driver who was played by Ahmed Zaki.

Theoretical Framework: Orientalism and Subcultural Diversity

Said’s Orientalism was debated and criticized for its treatment of the Orient as a homogenous structure. It ignored gender differences and class dimension and did not take into account how the colonial took in, endured and/or endorsed the Orientalist discourses projected on them. 

Homi K. Bhabha suggested that colonial discourses cannot work as smoothly as Orientalism might seem to suggest. Instead, Bhabha contends that, “Orientalism is diluted and hybridized, and therefore, the identities of the colonizer as well as the colonized are unstable, shifting and fragmentary” (Moosavinia, Niazi, Ghaforian, 2011). Globalism is one of the processes of cultural hybridization, which results in diluting and removing pure or authentic culture. That’s why Bhabha's reading of the colonial discourse presented a shift to understanding the subjectification of Orientalism that was there through its stereotypical discourse.

In conclusion, Orientalism lies at the core of understanding the world in the framework of binary oppositions, in which the Occident/West is the (unmarked) primary category, whereas the Orient/East is the (marked) Other. Understanding the world in terms of what is normal and what is different, is encoded with values and concepts of superiority. In dealing with issues of ethnic and cultural diversity, ideologized media messages present subcultures according to the institutional criteria for what gets to count as knowledge in a given society. Said’s Orientalism functions to help the West define itself by constructing an Other. Otherness in cultural studies refers to a culture image that establish its own value in order to identity itself, while to shape a confrontation with itself and less than its own (Éigeartaigh, 2011). Orientalism is intertwined with complex social and cultural psychologies. Similarly in Egypt, we understand our identity by comparing ourselves to Other rural cultures like fellahin, Nubians, Bedouins...etc. We perceive those Others to be interesting, eternal and static and ourselves to be the dynamic, innovative inhabitants of the city.

Contextual Analysis: The Other Fellah

Orientalism as a way of seeing, exaggerates differences between people. The movie director depended on the same strategy starting with casting Ahmed Zaki who is naturally Asmarani or dark-skinned in the role of Abdel Sameaa the fellah, to emphasize on the Oriental image that Egyptian guards are either villagers, nubians and/ or Sudanese. The naivety of Abdel Sameaa was focused upon from the opening scene where he kept all of his savings of money underneath his hat, which he then lost while getting on the train to Cairo. This was the beginning of a series of misfortunate events that he encountered because he is simply a goofy fellah. It symbolized the fact that city life wouldn’t not be as simple as his life used to be. 

The scene in which Abdel Sameaa gets invited to a party by the female protagonist needs to be contextually analyzed. She got him drunk and as a naive fellah he did not realize that he had been drinking. He then started to drunkenly sing, with the camera showing him at a low angle, sitting on the floor, symbolizing the social difference between him and the party guests. He then became the subject of entertainment as the party attendees started cheering him instead of being surprised that the building’s guard was at their aristocratic party. The camera followed him as he swirled around not willingly, instead the guests kept passing him off to one another. Abdel Sameaa here was represented under the camera or the Orientalist gaze of both the party attendees and the viewers. The director used Otherness as a mode of representation in this scene. The camera was moving with him, but they were the ones in power and control of moving him around. The same applies to the viewers who are in power to perceive him as different from them, even if they don’t want for him to be treated in such a demeaning way.  

The camera then captured the scene in a bird’s eye view in which Abdel Sameaa appeared to be very small among the rest. In this high angle, the camera represented and emphasized the viewers’ Orientalist gaze of the fellah who is lower than them. Abdel Sameaa started to sing saying “where is my hat, where is my hat, my hat got lost, and I got trapped in Egypt the mother of the world”, and he then fell down and again was shown at a low angle. Abdel Sameaa then sang “I swore to be a Pasha in Egypt” and stood up and kept singing “I am a Pasha I am a Pasha” and the guests sang along jokingly “You are a Pasha, You are a Pasha” and by the end of the party they kicked him off. 

Abdel Sameaa’s hat symbolized his naivety and decent villager principles from the beginning of the film. It was used to exemplify Abdel Sameaa’s comfort zone, he used it as a safe for his money to imply its value to him. After he was faced by the harshness of the city life, he had to lose the hat and set himself free from its restrictions and become someone who is respected in the city no matter what it took and that is exactly what happened in the film.

Conclusion: Internalized Orientalism

“The Prestigious Gatekeeper or “ El Beh El Bawab” reflects upon the milestones of the 1980s in Egypt. It subtly referred to a postcolonial predicament in which the formerly colonized have internalized colonial epistemes. Generally, Egypt was colonized by several Western civilizations throughout history. Colonization colonizes perception in addition to countries and it helps alter their cultural priority (Nandy, 1983). In this process the West generalize concepts of Western superiority from a geographical perspective to a psychological level in which colonial subjects internalize and absorb Orientalist colonial understandings.  As a result,  a double consciousness is constructed; a consciousness of the self and a consciousness of the colonizing Other. Hence, in the decolonization process, a reflection of this internalized Orientalism remains. These remnants were reflected in Egypt through cinema. Similarly in “El Beh El Bawab”, the elites had the tendency to think in Orientalist terms of the fellah whom they considered as the Other. 

In sum this have became a standard basis for how urban Egyptians understand themselves. Therefore, Orientalizing fellahin both in movies and in real life, shows how cultural hierarchy helps provide an understanding of the self against the Other as an underground self. Film makers may cultivate stereotypical images about villagers, Sa’idi people, Nubians and Bedouins, but they mostly portray what they understand and what the audience would like to see.

El Beh El Bawab:

Abdel Sameaa flees to Cairo with his wife and children looking for a better lifestyle. He then becomes a gatekeeper of a building and then a broker. He manages to gain a fair amount of money, but one of the building residents tries to set him up to steal it away, will he fall in such a trap?

Director: Hassan Ibrahim

Crew: Ahmed Zaki, Safia El Emary, Fouad El Mohandes and more.