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Satin rouge

Sana Hasan
Sana Hasan

The film Satin Rouge tells the story of Lilia, a widowed woman living with her conservative in-laws in an Arab nation. She rediscovers her sexuality through learning belly dancing. While dancing empowers her and helps her find joy, it also places her in a marginalized profession with low wages. Though dancing allows her to transcend social rules, she still hides her job from friends and family out of fear of rejection. The film aims to portray female empowerment, but some critics argue it also objectifies women and places belly dancing in an orientalist context. Additionally, the ending where Lilia uses her relationship with a man to blackmail him undermines the message of empowerment through most of the film.

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Satin Rouge Satin Rogue is a feature film by Raja Amari of the female genders self-expression in any age or class. The tale of a delightful widowed worker from a legitimate family who rediscovers her sexuality through hip twirling has the same vision of the swiveling body as a vehicle toward individual freedom. Since ''Satin Rouge'' is set in an Arab nation, the social obstacles that the courageous woman, Lilia (Hiam Abbass), must overcome to accomplish her self-disclosure are significantly more imposing than the obstructions of age and class. Lilia, who lives in a similar house with her strait-bound in-laws and disobedient daughter, feels constrained to keep her night exercises a mystery. Lilia's change starts when she watches her daughter Salma at a dancing class and suspects her of having a affair to one of the performers. Researching further, she visits a supper club and finds an exotic underground culture where sparsely clad ladies in sequined ensembles move alluringly for uncontrollably thankful, generally male groups of onlookers. Hiam Abbass in Lilia she creates a character whose beauty is enhanced by her sadness and is only lacking that animation that she eventually gets through dancing. With her high-arched, darkly defined eyebrows and tight facial features, its like watching a prep school headmistress finally learn to cut loose and express herself. In dancing, shes practically learning to breathe, learning how to get the joy out of life that has eluded her for so long, and watching it, you cant think of anyone who deserves it more. Anytime Lilia is on the screen, its easy to forget any flaws the film may have, because Abbass leaves no space between the audience and herself; its the kind of performance that is able to honor the traditional female role even as it taps into the rawness of discovering that new you that you were always meant to find. Film scholar Viola Shafik denounces the disintegration of the female body through editing into close-ups and the male voyeuristic gaze associated with belly dance performances on screen (Shafik, 2007: 165). While her reading remains accurate, one could argue that belly dance cinematic representation is also the site of tensions between the exhilaration and celebration of the female body and the conservative views of a society in which female dancers are demonized and cinematic productions are tightly censored. While these conservative views are scarcely challenged by the narrative, famous belly dance stars who incarnated married characters, or characters in love with the male protagonist.
Moreover, by emphasising Lilias trance-like state, Amari suggests that her heroine is able to enter a transcendent state in dance, whereby patriarchal rules are irrelevant and she can overcome the oppressive morality that incarcerates her. Reading the film as just another example of eroticisation or exoticisation thus misreads the many formal and thematic features that Amari deploys in order to maintain her heroines agency and resist submitting her to an objectifying (male) gaze. Nevertheless, despite Amaris attempts to avoid objectification or exoticisation, the ambivalent critical responses to her portrayal of Lilias body in Satin rouge illustrate Keft- Kennedys argument that [t]he belly dancer produces a constant and complex slippage between the practice of belly dancing as a symbol of female empowerment on the one hand, and orientalist figurations of Eastern otherness linked to colonialist discourse on the other. While Amaris film positions the belly dancing body as a site that enables the (re)discovery of (older) female sexual identity and desire, it nonetheless places belly dance against a backdrop of poor working conditions, social stigma and societal marginalisation. Not only does Lilia earn a low wage and get mistaken for a prostitute, but she remains unable to express her nocturnal identity in her daily life for fear of social rejection and alienation. She hides her new job from her neighbours and her daughter and must lie when her late husbands brother, Uncle B辿chir (Salah Miled), comes to stay. On the one hand, the heroines decision to keep her new profession hidden from family and friends reveals the overwhelming power of the prevailing social order; however, on the other, it also fails to challenge it in any real way. Rather than confronting social hypocrisy, Lilias dual existence effectively endorses it, thereby undermining the subversive power of her actions. By contrast to Lilia, the character of Folla refuses to hide her unorthodox lifestyle and outwardly confronts the parochial opinions and attitudes of others. She lives alone and seems completely unashamed of her non-conventional profession and/or lifestyle. But theres still those pesky message issues. Lilia starts her own affair with Chokri, who has no idea that he is sleeping with his girlfriends mother. In the end, this gives Lilia power over Chokri, and in a scene of surprising Queen Bitchiness, Lilia basically tells Chokri that he will marry Salma or risk her finding everything out. What exactly is this trying to tell us? Supposedly, up until this point, the whole film has been built on the idea of a liberating kind of empowerment, a kind with the distinctly positive effect of helping a mourning woman overcome her pain, but now, suddenly were supposed to allow blackmail onto the list of privileges that come with this liberation? An entire film based on good intentions is suddenly turned on to a more dubious power definition. It mars an otherwise amiable little film that up until that point, gamely insists that breaking out is the only way to find happiness. But female empowerment is something way different in the way, you shouldnt expose yourself just to break the chains of constraint. Instead it acts as a visual pleasure for the men, the theory of Laura Mulvey. Instead of being empowered the women become submissive under the dominant men of the society. As for female empowerment, a woman should not please the man and gain that much freedom as she does when she does please him.
Thus in regards to Satin Rouge I agree to it somewhat, the woman should embrace her sexuality and in doing so must not give herself to the men to attain her freedom, as that is not true empowerment or freedom, as you are still chained in the mans world.

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Satin rouge

  • 1. Satin Rouge Satin Rogue is a feature film by Raja Amari of the female genders self-expression in any age or class. The tale of a delightful widowed worker from a legitimate family who rediscovers her sexuality through hip twirling has the same vision of the swiveling body as a vehicle toward individual freedom. Since ''Satin Rouge'' is set in an Arab nation, the social obstacles that the courageous woman, Lilia (Hiam Abbass), must overcome to accomplish her self-disclosure are significantly more imposing than the obstructions of age and class. Lilia, who lives in a similar house with her strait-bound in-laws and disobedient daughter, feels constrained to keep her night exercises a mystery. Lilia's change starts when she watches her daughter Salma at a dancing class and suspects her of having a affair to one of the performers. Researching further, she visits a supper club and finds an exotic underground culture where sparsely clad ladies in sequined ensembles move alluringly for uncontrollably thankful, generally male groups of onlookers. Hiam Abbass in Lilia she creates a character whose beauty is enhanced by her sadness and is only lacking that animation that she eventually gets through dancing. With her high-arched, darkly defined eyebrows and tight facial features, its like watching a prep school headmistress finally learn to cut loose and express herself. In dancing, shes practically learning to breathe, learning how to get the joy out of life that has eluded her for so long, and watching it, you cant think of anyone who deserves it more. Anytime Lilia is on the screen, its easy to forget any flaws the film may have, because Abbass leaves no space between the audience and herself; its the kind of performance that is able to honor the traditional female role even as it taps into the rawness of discovering that new you that you were always meant to find. Film scholar Viola Shafik denounces the disintegration of the female body through editing into close-ups and the male voyeuristic gaze associated with belly dance performances on screen (Shafik, 2007: 165). While her reading remains accurate, one could argue that belly dance cinematic representation is also the site of tensions between the exhilaration and celebration of the female body and the conservative views of a society in which female dancers are demonized and cinematic productions are tightly censored. While these conservative views are scarcely challenged by the narrative, famous belly dance stars who incarnated married characters, or characters in love with the male protagonist.
  • 2. Moreover, by emphasising Lilias trance-like state, Amari suggests that her heroine is able to enter a transcendent state in dance, whereby patriarchal rules are irrelevant and she can overcome the oppressive morality that incarcerates her. Reading the film as just another example of eroticisation or exoticisation thus misreads the many formal and thematic features that Amari deploys in order to maintain her heroines agency and resist submitting her to an objectifying (male) gaze. Nevertheless, despite Amaris attempts to avoid objectification or exoticisation, the ambivalent critical responses to her portrayal of Lilias body in Satin rouge illustrate Keft- Kennedys argument that [t]he belly dancer produces a constant and complex slippage between the practice of belly dancing as a symbol of female empowerment on the one hand, and orientalist figurations of Eastern otherness linked to colonialist discourse on the other. While Amaris film positions the belly dancing body as a site that enables the (re)discovery of (older) female sexual identity and desire, it nonetheless places belly dance against a backdrop of poor working conditions, social stigma and societal marginalisation. Not only does Lilia earn a low wage and get mistaken for a prostitute, but she remains unable to express her nocturnal identity in her daily life for fear of social rejection and alienation. She hides her new job from her neighbours and her daughter and must lie when her late husbands brother, Uncle B辿chir (Salah Miled), comes to stay. On the one hand, the heroines decision to keep her new profession hidden from family and friends reveals the overwhelming power of the prevailing social order; however, on the other, it also fails to challenge it in any real way. Rather than confronting social hypocrisy, Lilias dual existence effectively endorses it, thereby undermining the subversive power of her actions. By contrast to Lilia, the character of Folla refuses to hide her unorthodox lifestyle and outwardly confronts the parochial opinions and attitudes of others. She lives alone and seems completely unashamed of her non-conventional profession and/or lifestyle. But theres still those pesky message issues. Lilia starts her own affair with Chokri, who has no idea that he is sleeping with his girlfriends mother. In the end, this gives Lilia power over Chokri, and in a scene of surprising Queen Bitchiness, Lilia basically tells Chokri that he will marry Salma or risk her finding everything out. What exactly is this trying to tell us? Supposedly, up until this point, the whole film has been built on the idea of a liberating kind of empowerment, a kind with the distinctly positive effect of helping a mourning woman overcome her pain, but now, suddenly were supposed to allow blackmail onto the list of privileges that come with this liberation? An entire film based on good intentions is suddenly turned on to a more dubious power definition. It mars an otherwise amiable little film that up until that point, gamely insists that breaking out is the only way to find happiness. But female empowerment is something way different in the way, you shouldnt expose yourself just to break the chains of constraint. Instead it acts as a visual pleasure for the men, the theory of Laura Mulvey. Instead of being empowered the women become submissive under the dominant men of the society. As for female empowerment, a woman should not please the man and gain that much freedom as she does when she does please him.
  • 3. Thus in regards to Satin Rouge I agree to it somewhat, the woman should embrace her sexuality and in doing so must not give herself to the men to attain her freedom, as that is not true empowerment or freedom, as you are still chained in the mans world.