Badis: A Journey towards the Colonial Legacy!

Badis (1989) is a Moroccan film by the Moroccan filmmaker Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi. This film must have been of a great influence broadly for it had “great critical success, both locally and internationally, winning prizes or special mentions at festivals in Amiens, Montreal, Locarno, Milan, Carthage, and Meknes, among others. Tazi also had a number of stimulating experiences showing the film abroad.”[1] The film is co-produced with a Spanish television that helped in its finances. It is worth mentioning here that Tazi is married to a Spanish wife, and he was living in Spain for certain period where he got his education. Thus, to some extent the film does mirror some of Tazi’s life.

Surprisingly, and despite of the great success, Badis when released in Morocco got “close[d] after one week, drawing a total of barely three hundred spectators.”[2] It is then when the director Tazi “proposed to Spanish television (TVE) that it ‘co-produce’ the film.”[3] This means that the film, Badis, has certainly been shaped by the Spanish television’s opinion to serve a particular interest. Tazi, however, claims that nothing was changed, neither added nor removed, even a comma from the screenplay.[4]

The title “Badis” is the name of an actual village in the regions of al-Hocima. Obviously, the setting is not arbitrarily chosen; it is a village in the north of which the fort has been occupied by Spain. Tazi, however, claims that the reason behind this choice is that he simply felt in love with the place. I think it is far more than that; the village has a rich history, and it is that history that Tazi is trying to bring to the surface. There is one single setting; this means that the setting itself is of a great importance to the film, besides being the title of the film.

The opening scene gives a general view of the village with the camera moving from left to right, and the call of prayer in the background. It familiarizes the viewer with the setting of the film; it gives the impression that this tiny village is a world of men, while women are hiding within their domesticated spheres. In this atmosphere where we are introduced to the first character in the film; Moira dancing flamenco, Spanish dance. Moira eventually falls in love with the Spanish soldier who everyday goes to the village for water. Meanwhile, a school teacher moves to the village with his wife, Touria. The latter was going loose in Casablanca, and as a form of discipline, her husband brings her to the tiny village where she will be under his supervision, while throughout the film we witness that he is the one under her gaze.

Women are a complex issue, the role of women is problematized. The female characters appear to be revolutionists; Moira monopolizes her domesticated sphere to dance while the man (her father) is not there. Touria feels more comfortable when the man (her husband) is not there. The owner of the café (woman) is running loose and having an affair with the postman while her husband is abroad.

The movie is very complex in terms of its explicit themes: patriarchy, mixed-marriage, etc, as well as the implicit ones that of the journey towards the colony. Touria and Moira were seeking refuge towards the colonizer, which is, obviously, the destination of their escape. They were heading to the arms of the colonizer, running from a patriarchal prison to a military one, knowing that the fort was used as a prison as Tazi states that “up until 1976 it was a prison for opponents of Franco.” They will be imprisoned, and might be even used as sex objects in another kind of men’s world. There “escape” or journey towards the colonizer is soon interrupted by the native men.

Another important feature of the film is that all actors are central, though the story might seem to revolve around certain characters. Every individual has a central function, the teacher and his wife, Ba Abdellah and his half-Spanish daughter Moira, the all-seeing postman and his mistress the café owner. Tazi explains that “each character is rather linear and has his or her own particular story. The cafe´ owner is thinking about building a tourist hotel with the money her husband sends from abroad, the postman is looking forward to a transfer, the teacher is trying to punish his wife, the fisherman wants to keep his half-Spanish daughter on the straight and narrow. Within the setting that brings them together, each has a line to follow.”[5]

Importantly, the postman knows everything; he is the one in charge of all the private letters and the news of the whole village. Through him we have an insight into the film. He appears to be manipulative and a source of troubles. In the end of the film, he leaves the village, which he used to always call “the hole,” because he was transferred to a big city.

The final scene is very symbolic, after Moira and Touria are caught by the fishermen while attempting to escape, they are brought back to the village and eventually encircled by the men of the village. Moira starts to exhibit her body as if telling the men staring at her “here is the body that you have longed for.” All of a sudden a woman appears in the crowd and, paradoxically, throws the first stone on the women within the circle, and then followed by the others. The two women are stoned till death, this has a religious dimension of what is called in Islam the hudud[6] that a woman should be stoned till death if she is betraying her husband. The camera shows two lifeless bodies lying on the ground with a white wall in the background. Tazi explains that “it was not to kill that the old woman did this, but to stop the spectacle. Women are the guardians of tradition; the men were shocked, mesmerized, so the woman in a sense acted to protect the young women.”[7] It could also be explained that the woman is punishing them for going to the colonizers to prostitute themselves. Interestingly, the teacher, even after the women’s death, is still stoning the circle-like place where women were stoned, which could be interpreted as stoning the Satan that had embodied the two women.

The director gives no room to another ending; he believes that this is the tragic end that fits the film. According to the film, women are hard to predict and easy to go loose, and this is the tragic end of such trespassing.

[1] Kevin Dwyer. Beyond Casablanca: M.A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema. (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004) P, 154.

[2] Ibid., p. 154.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 161.

[5] Ibid., p. 178.

[6] Religious punishments based on Shari’a.

[7] http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Audio_Visual/North_African_10051.html

 

Bibliography

Dwyer, Kevin. Beyond Casablanca: M.A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004.

www.africa.upenn.edu

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Cinema and Spectatorship

I will focus on the spectator’s agency that remains of central importance, and the spectator’s identification with the screen. According to Michele Aaron what is important is “the individual’s own role and activity in participating in the pleasures of the text, in determining the meaning of a film and, even, the meaningfulness of cinema.”^[1] Spectatorship is a crucial issue within critical thinking in general and film studies in particular; the spectator’s involvement is important, their activity or passivity, manipulation or resistance, distance or implication. Michele Aaron makes a distinction between the Spectator and the viewer; the spectator is not the viewer, He states that the viewer “according to cultural studies, is the live, breathing, actual audience member, coming from a specific socio-historical context. This viewer exists in sharp contrast to the spectator as ‘subject’.” For Judith Mayne, whose Cinema and Spectatorship^[2] is the key book on the subject, “Spectatorship is not only the act of watching a film, but also the ways one takes pleasure in the experience, or not; the means by which watching movies becomes a passion, or a leisure-time activity like any other. Spectatorship refers to how film-going and the consumption of movies and their myths are symbolic activities, culturally significant events.” P. 1 The Spectator is not simply a passive viewer, but he/she interacts in the action of the film, taking the pleasure of watching and giving a meaning to the film. The spectator can be a ‘decoder’. Usually the film relies on signs and it is up to the spectator to decode them and give them meaning.

“The Birth of the Spectator”

Louis Althusser, a French Marxist theorist who would have a profound effect on film studies, and in particular, on the birth of the spectator. Michele Aaron emphasizes on “[Althusser’s] rethinking of Marxist notions of state control would instate the notion of the ‘subject’ into the functioning of ideology. When applied to cinema, this ‘subject’ would emerge as the hypothetical spectator of 1970s film theory.” (7)

The filmmaker anticipates the spectator’s uni-directional view: “The image is composed for the spectator’s vision yet seems to be a product of the spectator’s vision.” (10) The spectator becomes both a receiver and sender. However, it is argued by Veijo Hietala that “the quattrocentro^[3] positions the spectator as the target of its address at the same time, however, concealing this positioning by allowing the subject an illusory sense of him/herself as the producer of meaning.” (11) From this quote we deduce that the spectator is given an illusion of agency. He is reduced to the absent spectator. The ‘moving image’ opens the film to different interpretations and a multiplicity of point of views, especially through editing which gives coherence and smoothness to the film. Cinema gives the illusion of sameness. But we should not forget the function of editing which basically takes different frames separately and makes it appear wholly: “The projection mechanism allows the differential elements (the discontinuity inscribed by the camera) to be suppresses… the individual images as such disappear so that movement and continuity can appear.” (11) For Baudry it is a ‘denial of difference’ that feeds the film and furnishes the spectator with the welcomed illusion. The spectator is anyhow aware of the artifice of the cinema but they prefer to believe in it. (11)

The Significance of the Spectator’s identification

Baudry likens spectatorship to the mirror stage. He establishes the reasons for the spectator’s imaginary relation to the screen. Christian Metz in his article “The Imaginary Signifier” first published in 1975, he prioritises this initial identification with the screen image as a resuscitation of the earlier experience of the mirror. For Metz the “film is like the mirror. But it differs from the primordial mirror in one essential point: although, as in the latter, everything may come to be projected, there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in it: the spectator’s own body. In a certain emplacement, the mirror suddenly becomes clear glass.”^[4] (822) In the cinema there is always something on the screen but the reflection of the spectator’s own body disappears. Metz explains what makes possible the absent of the spectator from the screen is the fact that he/she had already experienced the true mirror, and is thus “able to constitute a world of objects without having first to recognize himself within it.” (822) At the cinema, “it is always the other who is on the screen; as for me [as a spectator], I am there to look at him. I take no part in the perceived, on the contrary, I am all-perceiving. All-perceiving as one says all-powerful (…) absent from the screen, but certainly present in the auditorium, a great eye and ear without which the perceived would have no one to perceive it.” (823) Metz from this quote argues that the spectator who makes the film through the great importance he has as the one who gives meaning to the film. He shows that the spectator, even if not present on the screen, is all powerful.

To conclude, because the film industry is a moneymaking enterprise, the more it learns about individual film spectators, their tastes, likes, and dislikes, the better chance it has of ensuring the profitability of its investment.

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[1] Aaron, Michele. Spectatorship: The power of looking on. Wallflower Press, Great Britain: 2007, p 1.

[2] Mayne Judith. Cinema and Spectatorship. Routledge: London. 1993. P. 1.

[3] A perspective of Italian Renaissance painting to demonstrate how the film image is constructed and unfolds for the all-seeing, all-powerful spectator. (10)

[4] Metz, Christian. “The Imaginary Signifier.” Ed, Braudy, Leo. Film Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. P, 822.

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The notion of ‘Home’ in Diaspora

The notion of ‘home’ is much more complex. We cannot talk about one singular ‘home’ in diaspora; what mainly characterizes diaspora is the multiplicity of ‘homes’ and the ‘multiple belongings’, as the following quote indicates:

· “The notion of diaspora can represent a multiple, plurilocal, constructed location of home, thus avoiding ideas of fixity, boundedness, and nostalgic exclusivity traditionally implied by the word home.” (Walters, Wendy. At Home in Diaspora. USA: University of Minnesota, 1923. P: intro xvi)

The link between diasporas and countries of origin is usually marked with ambivalence and psychological anxieties; basically because the diasporic subject is torn-between two different ‘homes’.

· “Th[e] scattering leads to a splitting in the sense of home. A fundamental ambivalence is embedded in the term diaspora: a dual ontology in which the diasporic subject is seen to look in two directions – towards a historical cultural identity on one hand, and the society of relocation on the other.” (Ed. Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin. The post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge, 1995. P 425)

‘Home’ and ‘abroad’ are mingled in diaspora, ‘home’ can be ‘abroad’ and vice versa; they are not necessarily fixed geographical points. There is a tension between “where are you at?” and “where are you from?” Sometimes, to feel ‘at home’ while they are in the ‘host country’, diaspora people create their own space. Chinatown is an example of a Chinese minority in London; a very important place for the Chinese population which creates a familiar space and makes them feel ‘home’. It is important in terms of creating a sense of belonging.

It is not uncommon to feel a kind of loss of home at home. As the title of Wendy Walters’s book At Home in Diaspora indicates. In this book she talks about her experience as a black American woman living in America which is supposedly to be her ‘home’, but she is always reminded that she is an African. In the introduction of her book she mentions Patricia Hill Collins, a black feminist, who writes of her own childhood:

· “I now see that I was searching for a location where I ‘belonged,’ a safe intellectual and political space that I could call ‘home.’ But how could I presume to find a home in a system that at best was predicted upon my alleged inferiority and, at worst, was dedicated to my removal? More important, why would I even want to?” (Walters, Wendy. At Home in Diaspora. USA: University of Minnesota, 1923. P: intro xviii)

Here we clearly see that the black American population is unwanted. They are looked down upon though they are American citizens. The perception of a state-sanctioned racism has been the reason that black writers continually ask in what sense the United States can be a home to people of color. The notion of ‘home’ in diaspora is based on inclusions as well as exclusions. As manifested in the following quotes:

· “The notion of home therefore is much more complex than approaches to diasporas premised on the power of nostalgia would want us believe. It ‘is intrinsically linked with the way in which the processes of inclusion or exclusion operate and are subjectively experienced under given circumstances. It relates to the complex political and personal struggles over the social regulation of ‘belonging’” (Tsagarousianou, Roza. “Rethinking the concept of diaspora: mobility, connectivity and communication in a globalised world”. P, 52)

Importantly, Stuart Hall reminds us that America itself begins as “the New World … [that] has to be understood as the place of many, continuous displacements… [I]t is the signifier of migration itself.” Vè Vè Clark says that “all cultures in the ‘New World’ are diasporic.” (Ibid. xix)  

For Gopinath, diaspora can “be seen as part of the nation itself.”

· “Diaspora suggests a dislocation from the nation-state or geographical location of origin and a relocation in one or more nation-states, territories, or countries.” (Briziel, Jana Evan, et al. Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. Blackwell: 2003. P. 1)

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Post-Colonial Studies Reader

I. The double colonization of African women and the ambivalent position of the black feminists

Feminist theory and postcolonial theory have much in common; women and the colonized races and cultures both share the politics of oppression and repression. Women have always been represented and mis-representated in literary texts, and African literature is no exception. Kirsten in her essay “First Things First” opens her argument with a poem called “letter to a Feminist Friend,” by the Malayan poet Felix Mnthali:

I will not pretend

to see the light

in the rhythm of your paragraphs:

illuminated pages

need not contain

and copy-right

on history

My world has been raped

looted

and squeezed

by Europe and America

and I have been scattered

over three continents

to please Europe and America

AND NOW

the women of Europe and America

after drinking and carousing

on my sweat

rise up to castigate

and castrate

their menfolk

from the cushions of a world

I have built!

Why should they be allowed

to come between us?

You and I were slaves together

uprooted and humiliated together

Rapes and lynchings –

the lash of the overseer

and the lust of the slave-owner

do your friends ‘in the movement’

understand these things?

…

No, no, my sister,

My love,

first things first!

Too many gangsters

still stalk this continent

too many pirates

too many looters

far too many

still stalk this land –

…

When Africa

at home and across the seas

is truly free

there will be time for me

and time for you

to share the cooking

and change the nappies –

till then,

first things first!

Petersen, Kirsten. “First Things First.” The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. Pp.252, 253.

Omar Sougou comments on this poem saying that it clearly “puts cultural liberation first and attacks Western feminism. It recalls the rape and looting of Africa by Europe and America, from which Euro-American women have profited. The voice considers Western feminism as synonymous with castration, and laments” (Writing across Cultures, p. 22) While Ogundipe debunks “the male-centered perspective of the poem, which phases women out of the victimization of Africa and black people by Western imperialism, and of the social formation itself.” (ibid)

“Women writers are involved in this process of themselves creating and recreating a history within their communities. They address specific issues pertaining to their own social situation, such as gender politics. In their writing, woman as subject is a focal point, but it is dealt with in conjunction with other problems of national interest. It is a truism that African men and women alike are subjected to imperialism, but women are subjected to male dominance on top of this.” (Writing across Cultures. 2002. P. 21). And here Peterson wonders “which comes first, the fight for female equality or the fight against Western cultural imperialism?”

African and black women carry a doube yoke (23). They are confronted with the implications of their need to liberate themselves from societal structures and of societies grappling with imperialism; which leads to an ambivalent position (24). The blackness of African women writers disturbs the mainstream feminist outlook and look, since blackness has always been associated with inferiority.

Kirsten Holst Petersen’s essay “First Things First” addresses the question from this angle. She criticizes Achebe’s treatment of female characters, “his traditional [Ibo] women are happy, harmonious members of the community, even when they are repeatedly beaten and barred from any say in the communal decision-making process and constantly reviled in sayings and proverbs. It would appear that in traditional wisdom behaving like a woman is to behave like an inferior being.” Petersen, Kirsten. “First Things First.” The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. P. 253.

Kirsten focuses on Ngugi. This writer earns her approval for his radical view of the position of women, whose exploitation he links to their class or colonial exploitation (Writing across Cultures, p. 21). Kristen states that “Ngugi’s ideological starting point seems to me ideal.” ‘No cultural liberation without women’s liberation’ (Petersen, Kirsten. “First Things First.” The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. P. 254). She stresses the role of women as active agents in contributing to liberate their society from imperialism, which will, she believes, be fruitful.

II. Spivak’s ‘Critique of Imperialism’ and the notion of ‘feminist individualism’

Imperialism is seen as England’s social mission. And the 19^th century British literature plays an effective role in the production of cultural representation and imperial project, which “should not be ignored”, as Spivak states in her essay “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” (1985). Spivak, the postcolonialist and feminist theorist rejects imperialism, because, like patriarchy, is a phallocentric, supremacist ideology that subjugates and dominates its subjects. The oppressed woman is in this sense similar to the colonized subject. She offers sustained intellectual critique against the domination of western colonialist thought and structures.

In the previously mentioned essay, Spivak examines three novels by women: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; basically to reveal the manner in which imperialist ideology structures the expression of 19^th century feminist individualism. Spivak argues that the feminist ‘program’ of Jane Eyre, which has become a ‘cult text of feminism’, is also closely allied with imperialist ideology. “Sympathetic U. S. feminists have remarked that I do not do justice to Jane Eyre’s subjectivity. (…) feminist individualism in the age of imperialism, is precisely the making of human beings, the constitution and ‘interpellation’ of the subject not only as individual but as ‘individualist.’” (Spivak, Gayatri. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” 1985, p. 244) “As the female individualist, not-quite/not-male, articulates herself in shifting relationship to what is at stake, the ‘native female’ as such… is excluded from any share in this emerging norm…  In a reading such as mine … the effort is to wrench oneself away from the mesmerizing focus… of the female individualist.” (Ibid, pp. 244- 245)

She gives ‘worlding’ as an alternative to the so called ‘the Third World’ which connotes the inferiority of the “native” who is considered as object for enthusiastic information- retrieval and thus denying its own ‘worlding’. The notion of ‘the Third World’ connotes a classification of the world into First, Second and Third, and of course from a Western perspective. She goes further to criticize feminists who reproduce the axioms of imperialism.

“We must rather strategically take shelter in an essentialism which, not wishing to lose the important advantages won by U.S. main-stream feminism, will continue to honor the suspect binary oppositions-book and author, individual and history-and start with an assurance of the following sort: my readings here do not seek to undermine the excellence of the individual artist.” (Spivak, Gayatri. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” 1985, p. 244). Spivak puts the feminist “cannons” into question. They universalize their western feminist experience. They homogenize using ‘WE’!!

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“Semah Osiel Believes He Has Expiated His Crimes And Will Fight Extradition”

Semah Osiel^[1] is a handsome young Moroccan Jew^[2]. He formerly lived in London where he first got married, at the age of 15, with Annie Blasker in 1894. They were living with their two children. Years later, he moved to America and married Miss Sadle Brandon in October, 1899, at Jersey City. Unexpectedly, he disappeared 48 hours after the ceremony along with some money which came to him as a result of the alliance^[3]. Apparently, the second wife did not learn of the English wife.

However, in 1904, while at Coney Island he was arrested. He was sentenced to the State prison at Trenton for four years. Interestingly, he was released on parole for good behavior in 1905. He took advantage of his liberty to marry a third wife, the daughter of a Utlea hotel keeper, Miss Ernesline Miller in the city Trenton. He went/ fled to Havana to look after a tobacco plantation, and remained until June 27, 1906.

The women who are said to be married to Semah Osiel who charged him with bigamy; they wanted to “punish” him. The wife No. 1 came to New York as soon as she heard of her husband’s arrest, and also because she had to appear as a witness in his trial. And she met Mrs. Sadie Osiel who congratulated her on bringing their mutual husband to justice.

So he was again brought to Trenton on August 7, 1906. He was sentenced to one year and four months in Sing Sing prison. For good behavior he was again rewarded with a commutation of sentence. He finally admitted his marriage to the three different wives, but “Anna Blasker is [his] only legal wife. The other two are entitled to divorces because [he] committed bigamy.”^[4] Surprisingly, in “The New York Times” (August 1, 1904) it is believed that Semah Osiel could have had a fourth wife in New York!

Semah Osiel’s marriage from three (or four) different wives is very problematic and challenging indeed. On one hand his Jewish religion does not permit marrying more than one wife, which shows that he was not a religious man. On the other hand the Moroccan culture tolerates marrying more than one wife. So he was using this tolerance in Europe as well as America; which did not work and was jailed because of bigamy. He looks like an adventurer person. He was described as “interesting” by his second wife’s father in one of the articles.^[5] He could trick Sadle’s family and the American justice.

In almost all the articles, he is portrayed as a good-looking handsome young man. Therefore, it seems that he was using his attractive appearance to win women’s hearts and make them fall for him from the first sight. He had a magical power in speaking with women, the father of Sadle, Joseph Brandon, said about Osiel and his daughter that “[they] were constantly together and every time they met the foreigner poured tales of love into Sadle’s ear, until she had no thoughts of anyone but her latest admirer.”^[6] In addition, he is well versed in languages, which make it easy for him to communicate with women. As Mr. Brandon says that “Osiel speaks several languages fluently and that (…) he spent all of his time getting acquainted with young girls.”^[7]

Osiel is from a very wealthy family, or that what Sadle told her parents. Obviously she was trying to convince them by any means to get married to Osiel. Later she managed to get married with her lover though her father, who was extremely fond of his daughter, wanted a better husband for her. Osiel was showing an apparent love to Sadle as he said that “Life without Sadle was not worth living;” while he was planning to deceive her.

Osiel is a well-behaved person. He managed to get out of the jail thanks to his good behavior. Different newspapers wrote about this issue of Osiel. He must had been an important person. Media was covering all the events of his “bigamy.” He was not simply a stupid, naive person living in Britain or America. He tricked many women, families, and even the American Justice.

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[1] In some other newspapers articles the same person is mentioned as: Sema, Oziel, Oslel.

[2] Semah Osiel as a Moroccan Jew is only mentioned in one article (Niagara Falls NY Gazette 1968 Sep Grayscale), whereas in others he is identified as a Spaniard. But after doing a research about his family name, it is proved that he is from Moroccan origins, if not a Moroccan.

[3] In another article it is mentioned how much money he had stolen from his second wife “he is alleged to have taken $300 worth of the young woman’s jewelry, besides $140 borrowed from her father.” (“The New York Times” published: August 1, 1904)

[4] “Faces Another Bigamy Charge.” Publication: “The New York Times” (September 20, 1907)

[5] The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. New York. Friday. July 1, 1904.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

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Review of the movies: Morocco (1930) and Ishtar (1987)

Morocco (1930) is a movie that takes place in Mogador – Morocco. It deals with the colonial presence in Morocco. Looking at the general review of the movie we see that on the surface it deals with a love story. Ishtar (1987) is an American comedy movie which takes place near the Moroccan border – Ishtar.

Morocco hasn’t got much of a plot; Amy Jolly falls in love with Cooper, the French Foreign Legion. In this movie the director Josef Von Sternberg focuses more on the Oriental representation of Morocco; there is an obvious Arabnightizing of Morocco in terms of music, decoration, lascivious women, etc. Ishtar is directed by Elaine May. The cover shows a blind camel in the act of singing framed within an Aladanian gate. In another version of Ishtar’s cover, there are two American men wearing Oriental clothes and trying to move the blind camel forcefully, and hills of sand in the background. The movie revolves around two untalented lounge American singers and songwriters, Chuck Clarke and Lyle Rogers, who travelled to Morocco looking for work, and all of a sudden they found themselves entangled into Middle Eastern politics and war. Eventually, the fate of the entire Middle East is in the hands of these two American men. Again in this movie Morocco is represented as mysterious, and again the same static image of Morocco: camels, sand, primitive people, etc. The American woman, Shirra, disguises her real identity wearing native man’s clothes throughout the movie.

Morocco, in both movies, is represented as an empty space that is occupied mainly by Westerners. Natives are not given space; they are just there confirming the exploitation of their space with no action, and only giving a local touch to the films. Westerners who are in control of the action and of the fate of the native’s country. The titles of these movies remain just attractive names, inviting the West to conquer and colonize this empty space.

                               

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