ANT 261-503: Resistance in Film and Text - Wadjda and Abu-Lughod

This essay explores the theme of resistance in the context of the film 'Wadjda' and Laila Abu-Lughod’s article “The Romance of Resistance,” examining how different forms of resistance manifest and their varying levels of power. The analysis focuses on specific examples from the film, where Wadjda challenges societal norms and expectations, and synthesizes these with Abu-Lughod's perspective on resistance as a diagnosis of power dynamics. The essay discusses Wadjda's ability to resist due to her upbringing within a restrictive society, contrasting it with the struggles and everyday actions of women described by Abu-Lughod. Ultimately, the essay concludes that gender roles are a significant site of struggle, and that the tools women use for resistance are often intertwined with the traditional structures they oppose, highlighting the complex relationship between resistance and power.

Running head: SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Society and culture
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Introduction
Director, Haifaa al-Mansour made the movie Wadjda, for the audience of Saudi
Arabia. Her movie was about a Saudi girl who wanted to ride a bike and race with Abdullah,
who was her neighbor. She was not supposed to play with the boys. There are many instances
where Wadjda resists the oppression of the male society. There was a scene in the film where
Wadjda writes her name on a notecard and pins it to her father’s family tree that had the
records of only the sons that were born. The power of resistance was not restricted to the
incidents depicted in the film but also in the instances in the making of the film. The same
scenario has been observed in the work of Abu-Lughod.
Discussion
The director in one of her interview said that had to take shots from a van as the
females were not allowed to work with the men in the same place (O'Brien, 2014). The
protagonist every day passes by a store and she dreams of buying a bicycle. The girls were
not allowed to ride the same in Saudi Arabia and this is the reason her mother refused to buy
her a cycle. It does not end here. The father of Wadjda plans to marry a second wife as her
mother can no longer have a child. He wanted more sons. In order to avoid this her mother
bought a new red dress with the intention of wearing the same in the marriage of her brother-
in-law and scare all women who would want to marry her husband. Even the haircut was
decided by the man of the house. The idea of feminism creeps into the essay through the
analysis of the resistance of the females. Wadjda was able to resist the restrictions of the
society because she was brought up in the society where such restrictions was a common
matter and she was expected to be submissive towards those restrictions (Mahdi, 2016). The
idea of resistance is more evident in the work of Abu-Lughod. In her paper she wrote that
resistance should be seen as the diagnosis of the power. The power and resistance are inter-
elated to each other. The author said that she was accustomed to find pistols under her
mattress and she was used to attending the feast that was held for the people who has served
as criminals by the Egyptian government (Urla & Helepololei, 2014). The struggle she
mentioned about in the article was the control of the freedom of women and the everyday
action of the women were checked and regulated
Conclusion
The gender roles were therefore a strong site of struggle be it in Wadjda or in the
work of Abu-Lughod. The writer stresses on to understand the forms of resistance and power
on various levels. The biggest irony here is that the very tool the women used as resistance
towards the moral code belong to the same traditional structure as that resistance is never in
an exterior position to power (Richard, 2016).

2SOCIETY AND CULTURE
References
Mahdi, W. F. (2016). Wadjda.
O'Brien, G. (2014). Pedal power: Haifaa Al Mansour's' Wadjda'. Metro Magazine: Media &
Education Magazine, (181), 46.
Richard, R. (2016). Bedouin Rights, Bedouin Representations: Dynamics of Representation
in the Naqab Bedouin Advocacy Industry. Journal of Holy Land and Palestine
Studies, 15(1), 97-124.
Urla, J., & Helepololei, J. (2014). The ethnography of resistance then and now: On thickness
and activist engagement in the twenty-first century. History and anthropology, 25(4),
431-451.