Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Maghrebi Migrant Women in France and French Cinema
- 1 The Voices of Maghrebi Women in Documentary Films: Framing Construction and Transparency
- 2 First-Generation Women in Short Films: Crossing Barriers and Communicating Experiences through Objects
- 3 The Voices of Maghrebi Migrant Women in French Téléfilms: Portraying Agency
- 4 Transmitting the Voices of Maghrebi Women through Feature Films: From Verbal to Non-Verbal Forms of Communication
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Film Corpus and Access
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - The Voices of Maghrebi Migrant Women in French Téléfilms: Portraying Agency
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Maghrebi Migrant Women in France and French Cinema
- 1 The Voices of Maghrebi Women in Documentary Films: Framing Construction and Transparency
- 2 First-Generation Women in Short Films: Crossing Barriers and Communicating Experiences through Objects
- 3 The Voices of Maghrebi Migrant Women in French Téléfilms: Portraying Agency
- 4 Transmitting the Voices of Maghrebi Women through Feature Films: From Verbal to Non-Verbal Forms of Communication
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Film Corpus and Access
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Silence as the absence of public voice is not synonymous with absence of talk or action.
– Marnia LazregThe Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in QuestionAs the name implies, téléfilms – often referred to as fictions unitaires or unitaires de 90 minutes in France – are fiction films made specifically to be broadcast on the petit écran, whereas feature-length films are destined for distribution on the grand écran, in cinemas. Although this cinematic form is often considered to be worthy of limited critical attention on the grounds that téléfilms are intended to attracted broad, ‘popular’ television audiences, they merit attention precisely because they are frequently seen by much larger audiences than art-house movies and thus have the potential to significantly impact viewers’ understandings of Maghrebi migrant women and their families in France. As such, they can also serve to counter – or reinforce – dominant media representations about this population. In her monograph Far-flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cinema, Daniela Berghahn argues that:
[t]he media, not just in Germany but also in Britain and France, regularly give sensationalist accounts of the oppression and victimisation of daughters or wives. Forced marriage and honour killings are cited as shocking evidence of an unbridgeable culture clash between ‘immigrant’, ‘British Asian’, ‘Turkish German’ or simply ‘Muslim’ families and dominant culture. The social and cultural values by which diasporic families (though this scholarly term is not used in the media) abide are stigmatised as archaic and incompatible with the enlightened and egalitarian values of Western liberal democracies. (2013, 2)
This chapter will consider the depictions of first-generation women from the Maghreb in France in téléfilms, and in particular the extent to which they portray the women as asserting agency and crossing barriers. The aim of this analysis is to gauge whether these films, which have the potential to reach large mainstream audiences in France, challenge the perception that Muslim women from the Maghreb are silent and passive victims by according them some form of agency in their respective narratives. The idea of agency is to be understood both in the sense of ‘acting’ (as in the French verb agir – from the Latin agere) or ‘doing’, and ‘speaking out’.
- Type
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- Information
- Muslim Women in French CinemaVoices of Maghrebi Migrants in France, pp. 97 - 133Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015