Queer Muslim voices:
performing identity in
I Am Gay and Muslim and A Jihad for Love
Master’s Thesis Jelte Zonneveld 0591416 Laurierstraat 212-‐2a 1016PT Amsterdam E jeltezonneveld@gmail.com T +31(0)6 3613 7579 17th of July 2014 dr. C.M. (Catherine) Lord2nd reader: dr. M.A.M.B. (Marie) Lous Baronian
Media Studies: Film Studies Beroepsgeoriënteerde specialisatie
CONTENTS
Abstract 3 Preface 4
INTRODUCTION: IDENTITY, PERFORMANCE & VOICE 7
1. A SILENCING VOICE 14 2.1 Am I gay and Muslim? 16 2.2 Dutch homo-‐emancipation policy 25
2.3 Speaking or doing 30
2. A MUSLIM VOICE 37
2.1 The performative mode 43
2.2 Gay imperialism 45 2.3 Quaring queer 51 3. CONCLUSION 55 Bibliography 59
Abstract
Drawing on queer theory and identity politics, this study explores the
intersectional location of queer Muslims by examining Chris Belloni’s I Am Gay
and Muslim and Parvez Sharma’s A Jihad for Love. Both documentary filmmakers
argue against the irreconcilability of homosexuality and Islam, presupposed in homophobic and Islamophobic, ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ discourse, but occupy a different ‘location’ as from which side of the western/eastern dialectic they are representing their queer Muslim subjects. Using Bill Nichols’ concept of
documentary voice, this study argues how the dialectic performatively produces the filmmakers’ identities as well as their different representations of queer Muslim identity. Finally, the study will offer a ‘quare’ rearticulation of queer theory, making way for an intersectional approach to theorizing queer Muslim identity.
Keywords: queer theory, queer Muslim identity, documentary, I Am Gay and
Muslim, A Jihad for Love, documentary voice, performance, identity politics,
intersectionality, quare studies
Preface
Being a gay man myself, I recently became aware of the fact that I was
increasingly expected to give opinions on matters of gay repression in countries far away from my own, as most recently with the newly adopted laws against homosexuality in some African countries like Uganda or the ban on ‘gay
propaganda’ in Russia, that overshadowed the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In the Netherlands it became a widely discussed topic, making even Prime Minister Rutte speak out and having to defend his presence at the Olympic Games, for it was inappropriate and seemed supportive of Russia’s anti-‐gay law to be there. As a representative of the Netherlands, a supposedly liberal and open-‐minded country, he should protest against gay repression and advocate our progressive, gay-‐loving values worldwide, firmly rooted in the idea of tolerance being a positive quality that is typical of Dutch culture (Gordijn, 2010).
Of course, I am in favor of gay rights everywhere around the world and I am disgusted when I hear or see about gay people being repressed by religion, harassed or even killed because of their homosexuality. Nonetheless, during these debates, there seemed to be a double standard at work, especially in gay circles: ‘tolerance’ becomes an hollow term as anti-‐Muslim, right-‐wing politician Geert Wilders is more popular than ever, supported by a large gay electorate1. This duplicity shows how Dutch tolerance of homosexuality has come to be part of a nationalist discourse and identity that, as Jivrai and De Jong (2010) argue, has also come to be embedded in an anti-‐immigrant and specifically anti-‐Muslim discourse, in which gay rights are framed as a western achievement, a core value of the civilized world, whereas people, governments and religions against them, are put away as backward. In her article on Dutch culture and its impact on integration, Gordijn (2010) has pointed out that the highly valued tolerance is complicated by the strong desire for conformity in Dutch society, implicating that when you want to be one of ‘the’ Dutch, you will have to become exactly like them. Also El-‐Tayeb (2014) has noticed these ‘cracks in the idealized narrative of
1 According to a poll on the website of Dutch gay magazine Gay Krant, Wilders and his Freedom Party were the most popular amongst gay-‐voters in 2010, amounting to 22,3% of all votes.
Dutch liberal tolerance’, arguing that the ‘live and let live’ mentality of Dutch tolerance ‘that managed to maintain a delicate equilibrium between diverse populations for centuries, has largely been defined as caused by the nation’s growing Muslim population, unwilling and unable to partake’ (87). This
argument is especially used by Geert Wilders, who frames Islam directly opposed to ‘our’ tolerance and therefore claims Islam does not have a place in Dutch society (or any western country).
The claiming of gay rights as western values opposed to anti-‐gay and backward ‘others’ made me wonder about the queer Muslims that were ‘in-‐ between’: I started to feel a certain disregard for right-‐ as well as left-‐wing politicians or other people speaking out for ‘them’-‐ gay Muslims in our society or gay people in a country far away -‐ while there were few to none of ‘them’ heard in the media. The more research I did then, the more I wondered about the voices I felt weren’t heard in the debates: what about queer Muslims?
Keeping this in mind, I started searching for media outlets in which queer Muslims did speak out and I found the documentaries I Am Gay and Muslim (2013) by Chris Belloni and A Jihad for Love (2007) by Parvez Sharma, virtually the only feature documentaries about this particular subject. Regarding the current debates, not only the films’ subject interested me, but also their
directors: Belloni and Sharma are both gay, but only Sharma is Muslim, raising questions of their own identification with the subject and their speaking out about (or for) queer Muslims. In his film, Belloni wants to give gay Muslim men a voice and examines the possibility of coexistence of homosexuality and Islam, as opposed to Wilders’ and wider popular believes in the Netherlands. Yet, while watching the film and reading interviews with the director, I was disappointed and felt slightly irritated about his depicting of the gay Muslim ‘voice’. Although gay Muslim men do get to tell their story in the film, I felt Belloni is still mostly speaking out for, rather than with them, just like I was used to in other media. In Parvez Sharma’s documentary A Jihad for Love this, at first sight, didn’t seem to be the case. Just as I Am Gay and Muslim, Sharma’s film is about people that are gay as well as Muslim, in order to examine how the two can coexist, but I found a different representation of the gay Muslim voice than I did in I Am Gay and
Muslim. How they have come to these different representations, whereas they
have similar aims with their documentaries, is what I will subsequently examine.
INTRODUCTION: IDENTITY, PERFORMANCE & VOICE
A Jihad for Love and I Am Gay and Muslim depict various queer Muslims that have
difficulties reconciling their sexuality and their religion, or different parts of their identity that seem to be in conflict. Rahman (2010) has argued that queer
Muslim identities represent an intersectional location that illuminate a
problematic around modern values of issues of gender and sexuality, because their existence challenges the positioning of western and eastern cultures as mutually exclusive and oppositional. Following Stuart Hall’s notion of identity as a ‘’movable feast’’, in which identity is formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways one is represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us, queer Muslim identity is positioned by the discourses of culture and history, and thus dictated by a politics of position (Hall and Du Gay, 1996). Hall identified a ‘crisis of identity’, as in modern times subjects were previously perceived as having a unified and stable identity, which in post-‐ modern times is becoming increasingly fragmented and ‘composed not of a single, but of several, sometimes contradictory or unresolved, identities’ (598). This crisis is instigated by the decline of the frameworks of class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and nationality, which stabilized the social world and ‘gave us firm location for so long’, shifting our personal identities and
undermining our sense of ourselves as integrated subjects. Individuals are thereby ‘de-‐centered’, both from their place in the social and cultural world, and from themselves (596).
The ‘location’ of identity is thus no longer in one, stable place, but at a crossroad or intersection of multiple identities, which is especially relevant for theorizing queer Muslim identity. It is what Rahman (2010) has called an intersectional location: queer Muslims are subjectified to both their sexual identity as well as their religious or cultural identity, a problematic as the two seem irreconcilable in homophobic and Islamophobic, ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ discourse. He argues that in the West, Muslim identities and values are seen as irredeemably patriarchal, unassimilable to western democracy and culture and, above all, a rejection of modernity: ‘rather than arguing that queer Muslims are located in both sides of this dialectic – existing within ‘western’ versions of gay
identity and equality, and ‘eastern’ politics of gender and sexuality’, he argues that queer Muslims occupy an intersectional social location between political and social cultures (945). Queer Muslim identity, if one can speak of ‘one’ at all, is actually ‘in-‐between’ conflicting identities, contradictory in many ways,
ostensibly unresolved, and therefore at the heart of the crisis of identity that Hall has termed. It is also why queer Muslims ‘are forced to negotiate an incredibly complicated terrain, constantly confronted with silencing, appropriation, exclusion and the overwhelming demand to adapt their reality to ideologies proclaiming them an oxymoron’, as I will discuss later (El-‐Tayeb: 89).
The crisis of queer Muslim identity is precisely what comes to the fore in the documentaries I Am Gay and Muslim and A Jihad for Love. The interviewees in both films struggle with reconciling their faith and their sexuality, but their experiences, the causes, effects and possible solutions to this problematic are represented differently in both films. As Chris Belloni is ‘triggered by the current political situation in which homosexuality and the Islam seem irreconcilable’ in the Netherlands, and Parvez Sharma states that his film ‘speaks with a Muslim voice, unlike other documentaries about sexual politics in Islam made by western directors’, they each occupy a different ‘location’ as from which side of the western/eastern dialectic they are representing their queer Muslim subjects (Belloni, 2012; Sharma, 2006). Belloni and Sharma both aim to argue against the irreconcilability of homosexuality and Islam, presupposed within the eastern-‐ western dichotomy, but take out their arguments from different sides of this dialectic, attesting to the model of queer Muslim identity as located on what Rahman (2010) has argued to be ‘in-‐between’ discourse. This political discourse is an important structural context to the intersectionality of queer Muslim experience, in terms of their own identifications and the ways in which they experience Muslim homophobia and western Islamophobia, taken from existing ‘western’ versions of gay identity and equality, and ‘eastern’ politics of gender and sexuality (950). I will thus argue that the representation of queer Muslims in
I Am Gay and Muslim and A Jihad for Love is instigated by the directors’ access to
opposing discourses and that Belloni and Sharma draw their arguments from identification with only one or some of the multiple, intersecting discourses that queer Muslim identity is actually composed of. In other words: by providing
different views on queer Muslim identity, both directors and their
documentaries attest to the crisis of queer Muslim identity, in-‐between mutually exclusive spheres.
To support my argument and to examine how these opposing discourses are translated into their representations, I will use queer theory and
intersectionality theory. The identity politics that came into being during the latter part of the 20th century, are centered around the questions of identity and a revision of the idea of subjectivity, which are at the core of queer theory and its idea of the socially constructed nature of sexual identities. In this revision,
subjectivity is created through a process of what Althusser (1971) has named ‘’interpellation’’, by which ideology, embodied in major social and political institutions, constitutes the nature of individual subjects' identities through the very process of institutions and discourses ‘’hailing’’ them in social interactions. In Althusser’s theorization, the process of recognition by the individual of herself or himself as the one addressed by the call to recognition ‘’interpellates’’ the individual as a subject within ideology. The individual is hailed, and responds with an identification through which s/he is a subject in a double sense. S/he becomes both the agent of the ideology in question and subjected to it. This process of identification, as Althusser has argued, inserts individuals into
ideologies and ideological practices that, when they work well, are lived as if they were obvious and natural. A range of what he terms ‘Ideological State
Apparatuses’ such as religion, education, the family, the law, politics, culture and the media produce the ideologies within which we assume identities and become subjects. I will use this framework and its approach to identity and subjectivity to examine Belloni’s and Sharma’s positioning within queer Muslim identity discourse, as their subjectivity will prove to be determining of their
representation of queer Muslims in their documentaries: their own identities are as constructed (or ‘interpellated’) from experienced discourse and models of queer and Muslim identities on different sides of the western/eastern dichotomy as the representation of queer Muslim identity in their films is from the
directors’ identities.
Intersectionality theory and queer theory, with its focus on the uncertainties of identity categories, are a significant component of the post-‐
modern turn in gender and sexuality studies, drawing on Foucault’s theoretical framework of power and resistance, to explore the possibilities of resistance through the transgression and subversion of dominant identity discourses. In his study of sexuality, Foucault (1981) attempted to map what he called the
‘incitement to discourse’ in relation to sexuality, or the ways in which the modern discursive field of sexuality was created by the constitution of sexuality within discourses. Of particular interest is Foucault’s assertion that identity, as is sexuality, is not fixed in a traditional sense but mediated by the dialogical
discourses we encounter each day (1981, 1977). Drawing on Althusser and Following Foucault, Judith Butler has argued that subjectivity (or gendered-‐ subjectivity), and thus identity, is free-‐floating, as not connected to an 'essence', similar to Stuart Hall’s notion of cultural identity as ‘not an essence, but a
positioning’ (Butler, 1990; Hall and Du Gay: 226). Butler has argued that forms of identity are often internalized by the individual who takes them on, a process she has called ‘’performativity’’, referring to the repeated assumption of identities in the course of daily life. In this sense, identity is a ‘’performance’’, as is one of the key ideas in queer theory: ‘identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results’ (1990: 24–5). Seen in this way, our identities, gendered and otherwise, do not express some authentic inner ‘core’ but are the dramatic effect (rather than the cause) of our performances. In Butler’s language, this ‘performativity’ must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act’, but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names’ (1993: 2). As individuals inserted within specific discourses, we repeatedly perform modes of subjectivity and identity until these are experienced as if they were second nature. The individual subject and – in context of this thesis – directors Sharma and Belloni, are thus themselves producers of discourse. Following Butler, filmmaking becomes a kind of performance, something filmmakers do but only with the terms, the
discourses, available to them. In his essay Believing in Fairies: The Author and The
Homosexual, queer theorist Richard Dyer (1991) states that the model of
filmmaking as performance ‘hangs onto the notion of the author as a real,
material, person, but in a ‘’decentered’’ way’ (just as Hall’s notion of de-‐centered individuals and fragmented identity): it matters who specifically made a film,
whose performance a film is, ‘though this is neither all-‐determining nor having any assumable relationship to the person's life or consciousness. What is significant is the authors' material social position in relation to discourse, the access to discourses they have on account of who they are’ (Dyer: 188). In ‘performing’ their films, queer Muslim identity as represented in Belloni’s and Sharma’s documentaries, is thus constructed by the directors’ identities, just as the directors are constructed by their own subjectivity to discourse: the
directors become both the agent of discourse as well as subjected to it. The subjectification of queer Muslims that I will examine in this thesis thus works on two levels: by politics of position in the social and cultural world and by both Belloni and Sharma in their documentaries. As the directors’ identities are subjected to identity politics discourse, I will examine their social position and the discursive practices addressing these parts of their identities that are represented in both documentaries. In case of Sharma these are both his gay identity and his Muslim (or cultural) identity, whereas for Belloni this is foremost his gay identity. Second, I will examine how queer Muslim identity is addressed in Belloni’s and Sharma’s documentaries. Most important, I will examine how both levels are intertwined; how both Belloni and Sharma answer to the problematic of queer Muslim identity’s intersectional location differently, instigated by their own subjectivity, their position within the frameworks of identity politics, and translated into the representational practices and processes deployed.
To examine how both Belloni and Sharma’s identity is articulated in their documentaries, I will use documentary theorist Bill Nichols’ concept of ‘’voice’’. In context of Butler’s performativity, the ‘act’ of making a documentary is part of a repeated performing of modes of subjectivity and identity. In order to
conceptualize subjectivity in I Am Gay and Muslim and A Jihad for Love, ‘voice’ represent the filmmakers’ view on queer Muslim identity while representing their queer Muslim subjects. Since documentaries represent the historical and social world ‘by shaping its photographic record from a distinct perspective or point of view’, as Nichols explains, ‘they become one voice among the many voices in an arena of social debate and contestation’ or, within discourse (2001: 43). As Nichols argues that the camera is ‘an anthropomorphic extension of the
human sensorium [that] reveals not only the world but its operator’s
preoccupations, subjectivity, and values’, documentary voice underwrites to the individuality and identity of the filmmaker (1991: 79). ‘Voice’ is derived from the directors’ attempt to translate their perspective on the actual world into audio-‐ visual terms; the way the subject is framed, or the overall arrangement between sound and image. It can thus be seen as a certain style, but different from style in fiction films: fictional style conveys a distinct, imaginary world, whereas
documentary style or voice reveals a distinct form of engagement with the historical world (2001: 43-‐44). Each selection of topics, people, vistas, lens, juxtapositions, sounds, words is above all an expression of the director’s social point of view, whether he is aware of it or not. Just as the performance of identity, this is not a deliberate ‘act’, but rather part of the reiterative and
citational practice by which discourse produces its effects. The voices of I Am Gay
and Muslim and A Jihad for Love thus represent a particular point of view and
serve to give concrete embodiment to Belloni’s and Sharma’s engagement with queer Muslims; they convey a sense of what the filmmaker’s social point of view is and how this point of view becomes manifest in the act of making the film.
Documentary voice, in this context, is based on the idea that a film reflects a director's personal identity and testifies to its engagement with a social order and its assessment of those values that underlie it. Since Belloni and Sharma have similar aims with their films, but nonetheless different representations of queer Muslims, it is their particular documentary voice, their subjectivity, that shines through in their different representation of queer Muslim identity: their documentary voice is both constructed from and constructing of this identity. Thus, following Althusser and Butler, documentary voice has an interpellating or performative quality: a filmmaker’s voice is like a ’hailing’ through which the director is a subject in a double sense, becoming both the agent of the discourse in question and subjected to it. A distinct documentary voice thus attests to a form of discourse fabricating its effects, impressions and point of view (Nichols, 1991).
Above all, documentary filmmaking is a tool to visualize and give voice to groups that are ignored or suppressed beneath dominant values and beliefs of society. In theory as well as in practice, the process ‘of giving form, name, and
visibility to an identity that had never known one was most vividly displayed in relation to issues of sexuality and gender’ (Nichols, 2001: 153). As is the case with Belloni’s I Am Gay and Muslim and Sharma’s A Jihad for Love, it is queer Muslim identity they want to give form, name and visibility to. Both
documentaries have thus to be seen in context of discourse and identity politics that are at stake while speaking of queer Muslim identity: as Nichols’ concept of voice refers to representing and expressing identity through film, testifying to the director’s engagement with a certain identity and the values that underlie it, I will argue the difference in representing queer Muslim identity in both films, by establishing which discourses are performatively producing the filmmakers’ identities.
To do so, I will elaborate on the concept of documentary voice in chapter one, followed by a close examination of the representation of queer Muslims in I
Am Gay And Muslim, constructed though its documentary voice; I will then
connect this to the director’s personal identity and its engagement with ‘western’ discourse of queer Muslim identity. In chapter two I will do the same for A Jihad
for Love and, as I will set out its representation of queer Muslims, investigate
Sharma’s assessment to ‘eastern’ discourse, exercised through his particular documentary voice. To set out the differences between the two, I will often make cross-‐references between the directors, their documentaries and discourses. In the conclusion I will highlight queer theory’s ‘quare’ critique that makes way for a more intersectional approach to theorizing queer Muslim identity.
2. A SILENCING VOICE
Bill Nichols (2001) has argued that documentary voice is enunciated through all the means available to its filmmaker, which can be summarized as the selection and arrangement of sound and image, the working out of an organizing logic for a film, that is not restricted to what is verbally said (46). A distinct voice comes into being along the decisions a filmmaker has to make as to how and when to edit, frame or juxtapose shots; add or record sound, music or commentary; adhere to a certain chronology or rearrange material; add other footage than shot on the scene; and which mode of representation to rely on (46).
Documentary voice is not just the actual sound of the ‘’social actors’’ and, if present, the filmmaker’s. As far as the representation of subjects in documentary, ‘people’ are treated as ‘social actors’ rather than professional actors in fiction films: social actors continue to conduct their lives more or less as they would have done without the presence of the camera and remain cultural participants. As Nichols further explains,
‘their value to the filmmaker consists not in what a contractual
relationship requires but in what their own lives embody and resides not in the ways in which they disguise or transform their everyday behavior and personality, but in the ways in which their everyday behavior and personality serve the needs of the filmmaker’ (2001: 5).
Important is the fact that filmmakers can choose the way in which they represent others and what the alliance is between the filmmakers, the subject that is
represented and the audience or the viewers: a three-‐way relationship that relies on different forms of interactions between them (for example: I speak about
them to you) (2001: 13). It is as such the selection and organization of the social
actors’ reality within the film that allows the filmmaker to construct his own voice using that of his subjects: in choosing which parts of the social actors’ reality is filmed as well as choosing those parts of the filmed interviews, scenes etc. that are attesting to what the filmmaker wants to communicate, ending up in the final selection of the eventual documentary, is what gives a filmmaker the opportunity and power to construct its own documentary voice, attesting to the arguments or point of view s/he wants to transfer to the viewer.
Filmmakers have different methods of making such a selection, each having its own characteristics: Nichols groups documentary films in different forms or ‘modes’ in which they represent reality: ‘like every speaking voice, every cinematic voice has a style or ‘’grain’’ all its own that acts like a signature or fingerprint’ (2001: 100). He identifies six different modes: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. While his discussion of modes does progress chronologically with the order of their appearance in historic practice, documentary film often returns to themes and devices from previous modes. Modes are therefore not mutually exclusive: there is often significant overlapping between modalities within individual documentary features. As Nichols points out, ‘the characteristics of a given mode function as a dominant in a given film, but they do not dictate or determine every aspect of its organization’ (2001: 100). As I will examine subsequently, Belloni and Sharma deploy different of these modes, each constitutive of their distinct voice, attesting to their point of view on queer Muslims.
Nonetheless, Nichols has argued that far too many contemporary
filmmakers have lost their voice, as politically, they often forfeit their own voice for that of others (usually the social actors recruited and interviewed in the film). A filmmaker always takes on a personal persona, either directly or through a surrogate: the filmmaker can speak directly to us before, or off-‐camera, or as a surrogate in Voice of God or voice of authority commentary. S/he places subjects in a film for the viewer to inspect and examine as examples and illustrations, as evidence of a condition, or an event that has occurred to make an argument about the historical world, which is the referent. Social actors can speak for the director and convey the message s/he wants to express, sometimes
contradictory to the director’s overall argument. Yet, the overall voice that gets expressed is the filmmaker’s own personal perspective and unique view of things (2001: 13). As for I Am Gay and Muslim and A Jihad for Love the ‘presence’ of the director is more obvious in one film than in the other, but always noticeable and guiding.
2.1 Am I gay and Muslim?
The voice of I Am Gay and Muslim is foremost recognizable in the actual speech of the director speaking to the viewer; either directly into the camera at the time of shooting, or in a voice-‐over added afterwards, in which Belloni explains what is to be seen, whom he is going to meet and what is going on with his subjects; who they are and how their life looks like. It presents the director himself as the main authority of the film, conveying meaning, speaking about and sometimes for his subjects, as becomes evident early in the film, when the director tells us his about his reasons for making the film:
‘Homosexuality and Islam, these two concepts seem to oppose one
another. Is it possible to be both gay and Muslim? How do you shape your sexuality if this is the very reason you feel excluded by your religion? These questions arose when I met the homosexual South-‐African imam Muhsin Hendricks. Because it seemed quite difficult to find Muslim gays in the Netherlands prepared to participate for this project, I decided to travel to Morocco. Here, I met some Muslim gay guys who wanted to talk about their religious and sexual identity’ (Belloni, 2012).
In Morocco, Belloni spoke to around fifty gay Muslims. Only six of them made it to the film: Azar (29), who was thrown out of his home by his parents due to his homosexuality and spent three months in jail for a false claim of prostitution; Samir (43), a father of two children, who has repressed his homosexuality for years. He is a devoted Muslim, currently divorced; Soufian (23), who studies Technical Engineering and is devoted Muslim. He leads a double life. Religion comes first, his sexuality second; Rayan (21), who had his ‘coming out’ with family and friends. Nearly all reactions were positive; Abdelwahid (19), who was shadowed by his own father for suspected homosexual activity. Despite his religion and being attracted to men, he refuses to define people as ‘Muslim’ or ‘Gay’; and Sebastien (36), who is a French teacher, dating Rayan. According to Belloni, all the men portrayed in the film ‘openly share their personal
experiences and talk about the ambiguity and secretiveness of the life they feel condemned to live, although some have openly acknowledged their sexual orientation’ (Belloni, 2012). By presenting the ambiguity of queer Muslim
identity as a struggle between living an open and a secret life, even though this is often contradicted by his subjects, Belloni immediately implies ‘coming out’ as the only option to be(come) gay, which will be his key argument. It is a dominant in the film, Belloni speaking to us about his experiences and motives, expressing his opinion, in between which the interviews with his subjects are set. Apart from Belloni, the six interviewees are the only people who speak in the film, answering Belloni’s questions. The film cuts between these interview scenes and scenes of the director walking through Moroccan towns, shots of the
surroundings, city streets and people, mostly men, in everyday life settings – often adding images to what is said by the interviewees (fig. 1). These shots are accompanied with sounds of mosque call prayers and Arabic music, adding to the ‘exotic’ setting of Morocco. Some of the interviews are set outside and some are
inside, all in places where, as the director tells us, the interviewees feel safe to talk to him. They are filmed in static, long shots, only sometimes juxtaposed with close-‐ups of the director or his subjects. In the first three interviews the director is visible himself, sitting or standing at some distance from his subjects, which are mostly unrecognizable; in the interviews with Rayan, Abdelhawid and Sebastien, the director is not visible – only heard. Filmed under street lamps or in daylight, it is notable that in the other interviews, in which his interviewees are unrecognizable, the director is always clearly visible, making the viewer focus on him instead of the interviewee (fig. 2). The close-‐shots in which a little
Figure 1: I Am Gay and Muslim. A street shot of only men when Samir talks about Moroccan society being predominantly male.
more of the interviewees is seen, add some mystique to their non-‐visibility, getting a sense of what they look like, but still not fully recognizable (fig. 3). Visibility and non-‐visibility is thereby directly coupled to the openness or secretiveness of his subjects’ being ‘out’ or still in the closet, as the interviewees that are out, are fully visible, whereas those that are not, aren’t.
Except for one scene, the film is entirely in color and without any visual effects. Only in the title scene in a gay club, which returns shortly in a title sequence at the end of the film, a slow motion and black and white effect is
added, accompanied with loud club music (fig. 4). It seems Belloni wants to emphasize the main statement of his film, in line with Dutch ‘tolerance’
discourse: it doesn’t matter if you are gay, or gay and Muslim, it is about being who you are and having the possibility of living freely, regardless of religion or
Figure 2: I Am Gay and Muslim. The director in the first interview with Azar.
sexuality. The effects add emphasis to the ‘climactic’ message highlighted in the end, when the title of the film is changed into a question -‐ ‘Am I Gay and Muslim?’ -‐ following an answer -‐ ‘I am’ (fig. 5). The answer to the question if
homosexuality and Islam are reconcilable is answered – yes, it is possible -‐ but
this statement conflicts with the experiences of most of his subjects and goes beyond western discourse and the overall voice that is expressed, as I will argue subsequently.
The following up of the interviews is thereby of particular interest. Whereas the first interviews and scenes are adding to the secretive aspect of being gay in Morocco – the interviewees are unrecognizable and the director’s emphasis is on meeting them in secret, told in voice-‐over commentary – the film becomes increasingly ‘out’ to the end. Abdelhawid is fully recognizable and
Figure 4: I Am Gay and Muslim. The title sequence.
Figure 5: I Am Gay and Muslim. The title is changed into an ‘answer’ to the film’s main question.
speaks more openly about his sexuality, just as Rayan and Sebastien, who are the only interviewees filmed amongst other people, instead of in a ‘safe’ setting, walking hand in hand on the streets where everybody can see them (fig. 6). Notable in this scene is the text on Sebastien’s t-‐shirt, saying ‘Take me as I am’. As they tell us they can be quite open about their sexuality, they are also the only ones who are ‘out and proud’ to their environment and going to the gay club that is featured in the title and end title sequences.
The director’s presence in the film – in speech as well as visibility -‐ is becoming less as the interviewees become more open and free (fig. 7). The selectiveness and constructiveness of what Belloni wants to transfer, the overall voice of the documentary, is thus highlighted by his own presence in the film: whereas
Figure 6: I Am Gay and Muslim. Rayan and Sebastien are the only ones filmed ‘out’.
Figure 7: I Am Gay and Muslim. The director is not present in the last interview scenes.
Belloni has to ‘steer’ his subjects in the beginning much more, asking questions and adding voice-‐over commentary, towards the end the social actors speak for Belloni much more, confirmative of his perspective on queer Muslims. Belloni is stressing Rayan and Sebastien as the ‘best’ examples of gay Muslims, whereas the interviewees that are not as open as them, have more troubles in their life, with their religion and their sexuality. It is particularly notable that as the film develops, the interviewees talk less about their religion and more about their sexuality, emphasizing the homosexual over the Muslim parts of his subjects’ identities.
As I Am Gay and Muslim follows Belloni, who is visible on camera and gives comments directly addressed to the viewer, the film can be described as being participatory. Following Bill Nichols’ six principal modes of documentary filmmaking, the participatory mode ‘emphasizes the interaction between filmmaker and subject. Filming takes place by means of interviews or other forms of even more direct involvement from conversations to provocations’ (2001:34). In general, participatory filmmakers try to represent their own direct encounter with their surrounding world and represent social issues through
interviews, in which they are a social actor themselves. In I Am Gay and Muslim Belloni is seen and heard, acting and responding on the spot, in the same historical arena as the film’s subjects. The viewer therefore gets the sense of being witness to the conversations between Belloni and his interviewees, which stresses situated engagement, negotiated interaction, and emotion-‐laden
Figure 8: I Am Gay and Muslim. Azar is recognizable in the second interview.
encounter: all that is said and done seems spontaneous, as it couldn’t have happened the same way at another place in time. In the second interview scene, Azar tells about being beaten up the day before and starts to cry. Notable is the fact that, in contrast to the first interview (fig. 2), Azar is recognizable this time, emphasizing the emotionality of his story (fig. 8). During the interview, Belloni stresses the fact the beating is a ‘terrible’ deed: by responding with ‘I can imagine’ (how terrible it was) he levels with Azar, as they are (or at least could have been) in the same position, Belloni being homosexual himself. Stating that ‘he speaks out of personal experience when claiming that even in a tolerant country like the Netherlands, a homosexual is confronted with hegemonic morality over and over again’ (Kooijman, 2012), it is obvious that he has direct involvement and that the subject of homosexuality is personal. It is also
exemplifying of Belloni’s position: identification with his queer Muslim subjects works only on the level of sexuality, not on the basis of a shared religious identity. The importance of tolerance is mentioned in respect to homosexuality, not religion, emphasizing homosexuality as his most important issue, manifested in his documentary. It is a key scene in the film as it is the only time they talk about losing religion, which is directly linked to Azar being beaten up as a homosexual (fig. 8). Before, in the interviews with Samir and Azar, religion and sexuality are the main things discussed, whereas after this scene, the interviews are about the personal aspect of sexuality, instead of sexuality in context of religion.
Interviews are thus an important element in participatory documentary, as most part of Belloni’s film consists of the director talking to his interviewees; the focus is on the subjects’ personal stories. Nevertheless, as the director himself is visibly reacting and asking the questions, the viewer is forced to see them and their stories through the eyes of the director. In the staging of some of the interviews, the fact that their faces aren’t visible, but Belloni is, makes that the viewer almost literally sees them through the director’s eyes (fig. 2 & fig. 9). Michel Foucault has argued that these encounters between filmmaker and subjects, in the form of interviews, all involve regulated forms of exchange, with an uneven distribution of power between client and institutional practitioner, and that they have a root in the religious tradition of the confessional (Foucault
in Nichols 2001: 190). In I Am Gay and Muslim this confessional aspect is even more evident as the subjects tell their stories secretly and some of them are filmed unrecognizable. As they speak about their homosexuality, which is
forbidden in Morocco and unspoken of in its society, and the difficulties they face
reconciling sexuality and religion, it is as if they are literally in a confessional booth, talking to Belloni, who is the priest they are confessing to. In the interview with Soufian he speaks of guilt after having sex with a man,
conflicting with his religion: as he is barely recognizable, the framing attests to the ‘confessional’ aspect of his story (fig. 10).
In this context, all Belloni’s interviewees can be seen as a ‘confession’ quite literally, which has a significant effect on the director-‐subject relationship
Figure 9: I Am Gay and Muslim. Staging of the interview with Samir makes us ‘see’ through Belloni’s eyes.
Figure 10: I Am Gay and Muslim. Confession and guilt in the interview with Soufian.
and the ‘distribution of power’, in the sense that Belloni has power over his subjects, more than they do over him. The fact that Belloni himself has nothing to lose while doing the interviews whereas his interviewees are putting themselves in danger (emphasized in voice-‐over by the director), is a sign of disparity
between them. In the second interview with Azar he asks Belloni if he can smoke a cigarette, who then gives permission, emphasizing the unequal relationship between them. The scene evidently shows the control that Belloni has over his subjects, and by leveling with Azar, as I highlighted earlier, it is also the only scene in which we get some sense of the filmmaker himself. The filmmaker may be a participant and becomes a social actor himself, almost like any of his
subjects, but as he is ‘the one who retains the camera, he is in charge and has a certain degree of power and control over events and the subjects’ (Nichols: 182). Belloni positions himself as the ‘institutional practicer’ here, nullifying the
potential being ‘one of them’, at least as far as this concerns being a Muslim. Again, this is exemplifying of his level of identification with his subjects. What is learned about the subjects and their lives then, is highly influenced by the way the director sees them, making his ‘voice’ overshadow that of his queer Muslim subjects. Even though the stories of the interviewees are the point of focus, the participatory mode of I Am Gay and Muslim then -‐ in speech, editing, juxtaposing as well as visual presence -‐ makes the director himself a dominant, more or less guiding us through the film, attesting to a specific argument and overall voice. The subjects’ transition from secretiveness and ‘closeted’ to open and out, from non-‐visibilty to visibility -‐ whereas Belloni’s presence diminishes as the film develops -‐ culminates in the message of tolerance at the end of the film. It is evident how the documentary voice of I Am Gay and Muslim has guided the viewer to a point at which this statement, arguing for tolerance towards homosexuality, is plausible and feels like the most likely ‘solution’ for queer Muslims’ ‘problems’. As Belloni is positioning himself as the central figure, the documentary does not invite to experience what it feels like to occupy the subjective, social position of a Moroccan, gay, Muslim man: the viewer is not positioned into the subjective position of the interviewees and their perspective on the world, but are rather aligned with Belloni’s view on them.
