Screening Gender and Popular Culture in Moroccan Cinema

Abstract

This paper tries to analyze the construction of gender in modern Moroccan cinema. By considering some Moroccan postcolonial films, this paper is an attempt to question the notion of cinematic representation of gender and popular culture in Moroccan contemporary cinema. Indeed, much academic research and scholarship have been written on Moroccan cinema, but the research on gender representation is still in its infancy. The present article attends to the problematic of gender agency as represented by contemporary Moroccan cinema especially in the following films: Trik Layalat (2007) (Deux Femmes Sur la Route), Mille Mois (2003), Youm w Lila (2013) (Day and Night), Rock the Casbah (2013). These films have been chosen in order to shed light on the controversial (mis)-representation of gender in modern Moroccan cinema. In this way, this paper aims to foreground the complex ambivalent formation of female identities and temporalities. Thus, this work examines the politics of women's recognition as represented in Moroccan cinema. The portrayal of the women in Moroccan cinema, oftentimes contradictory, reveals the dominant patriarchal attitudes towards gender in Morocco, and continues to provide insight into shifting social roles in the period after Moroccan independence. The films selected by this paper highlight the grounds behind the abrogation of women, their alienation and loss in a society that is imbedded in patriarchal discourse. Ipso facto, in this paper attends to the problematic of transmitting a culture that is de-alienated by discursive conditions related both to women and men, without each one blaming the other to be the cause of his or her everyday shock and loss.