Citation

Ruoff J. South Central Review 2011; 28(1): 18-35.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, The Johns Hopkins University Press)

DOI

10.1353/scr.2011.0005

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Nouri Bouzid is Tunisia's most important auteur. His politically-engaged films have been widely praised for breaking taboos and challenging the norms of contemporary Arab societies. Bouzid's sixteen-minute short, It's Scheherazade We're Killing (1993), is a virtuoso exploration of the many disputed meanings of the 1991 Gulf War within the body politic of the Arab world. Scheherazade also examines relations between men and women and how gender defines and divides experience in Tunisia. Shot in one gorgeous long take, Scheherazade offers a stylistic unity that contradicts its manifest content. While Scheherazade paints a picture of a divided society through a contrary aesthetic of unity, the award-winning Making Of (2006) uses an aesthetic of disunity to explore one of the most contentious issues in Muslim societies today. Bouzid periodically interrupts his feature narrative about the coming of age of a suicide bomber with Brechtian nonfiction segments from the film's "making of" documentary. It's Scheherazade We're Killing and Making Of explore contemporary Arab identities as they evolve under pressure from recent wars in the Middle East. Scheherazade highlights Bouzid's feminist sympathies while staging a remarkable range of local responses to the Gulf War. A masterpiece of real-time filming, Scheherazade embodies the dream of Pan-Arab unity while examining its shards. Making Of marks a return to Bouzid's ongoing obsessions with masculinity and filial (im)piety, in the context of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, 9/11, and the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. For the secular Tunisian director, the Islamist suicide bomber represents another terrible instance of the combination of "greatness and impotence" that Bouzid finds characteristic of Arab identity today. In Scheherazade and Making Of, the characters, including the auteur himself in the 2006 feature, play out their lives on the fields of defeat that Bouzid has defined as his own. © 2012 Project MUSE.

Language: en