‘For Us, Heaven is Green’: Resistance Symbolism in Wadjda and Offside
My first peer-reviewed essay is available to read at the Essex Student Journal.
Abstract
Under repressive regimes, wherein overt social, political and/or religious criticism is censored, filmmakers rely on symbolism to express resistance. This essay analyses and compares two Middle Eastern films which both use vehicles and colour symbolism in narratives about female suppression. Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjda (2012) follows a young female protagonist’s efforts to purchase a bicycle – a vehicle forbidden to girls in Saudi Arabia, while Jafar Panahi’s Offside (2006) explores tensions between female football fans trying to sneak into a World Cup qualifying match in Iran, and the male guards whose duty it is to stop them. Both the bicycle in Wadjda and the football fan buses in Offside are green: a religiously significant colour in Islam, as well as a colour more widely associated with growth and new beginnings. In film, vehicles have historically symbolised freedom and social mobility. By making them green, Al-Mansour and Panahi create potent, multi-layered, culturally-specific symbols which address what Al-Mansour refers to as a ‘tension between tradition and modernity’. Blending the traditionally significant colour green with symbols of modernity, these filmmakers acknowledge the necessity of compromise and negotiation. As audiences we benefit from learning how to read and understand the rich visual language of symbolism.
