Skin and Silence in Selected Maghrebian Queer Films

ABSTRACT

The main premise of this article is that Maghreb cinema cannot openly represent queerness. Nadia El Fani's Bedwin Hacker (2003), Raja Amari's Al Dowaha (Buried Secrets) (2009) and Abdellah Taïa's L’Armée du Salut (The Salvation Army) (2013) represent queerness as muted, silent and secret, performed in darkness and shadowy spaces. Drawing on cultural theories of the significance of skin, I argue that in the selected films, skin and silence are expressive screens on and through which queerness is disclosed and from which it can be viewed and also interpreted. As sites of interrogation and expressive screens of queerness, skin creates layered visual narratives that challenge the silencing of queer sexualities in the Maghreb. Skin is a surface from where and through which forms of embodied self-fashioned resistance against racialised, gendered and sexual norms are performed.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer sexuality
• skin
• silence
• Maghreb
• cinema

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Prof Eric Levéel for making it possible for me to present an early version of this article in a seminar series in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at Stellenbosch University. I would also like to thank the reviewers, whose comments and questions have vastly improved the quality of the article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In her book Red Lipstick: An Ode to a Beauty Icon, Rachel Felder observes of the trope of red lipstick:

Of all the striking makeup items that women rely on – inky black mascara, eye-defining liners, powders and creams and gels to contour, conceal, and accentuate – nothing has the intense power of red lipstick. Vivid, charismatic, and eye-catching, it's feminine but never demure. Sensual, glamourous, it's a bold communicator, telegraphing self-assurance and strength – and, in some contexts, defiance – without uttering a word (2019, 1).