The power of narratives in advocacy media – a non-subsumptive interpretation of the documentaries Out of Iraq: A Love Story and Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America

ABSTRACT

This article draws attention to narrative practices in LGBTI refugee advocacy work in the scope of the media. In dialogue with two human rights documentaries, Out of Iraq: A Love Story by Chris McKim and Eva Orner (2016) and Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America by Tom Shepard (2019), I discuss the usage of LGBTI asylum seekers’ and refugees’ life stories in advocacy media and its ramifications for queer visibility in migration politics. Following narrative hermeneutics’ performative understanding of narratives, I argue for a “non-subsumptive” approach that acknowledges both the destructive and subversive possibilities of narrative practices and highlights the role of the interpreter. I argue that a self-reflexive and nuanced interpretation process enables a more ethical practice of narrating and interpreting stories of distant and vulnerable others for activism and research.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative hermeneutics
• queer migration
• documentary film
• advocacy media
• dialogic interpretation

Introduction

This article explores narrative practices in advocacy media on behalf of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) asylum seekers and refugees in dialogue with two award-winning human rights documentaries, Out of Iraq: A Love Story by Chris McKim and Eva Orner (2016) and Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America by Tom Shepard (2019). The documentaries depict experiences of lesbian and gay asylum seekers and refugees migrating to the US, and they have both been used for advocacy work in the US and internationally in the Global North. Whereas Out of Iraq focuses on a gay Iraqi couple’s struggle with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to gain asylum in the US, Unsettled draws attention to the difficulty migrants face after arriving in the US. Both documentaries are US-based, aimed at Western audiences in humanitarian contexts, and as such, contribute to the politics of representation and visibility. I interpret the films in their context of Western humanitarianism, and analyze how they position vis-a-vis hegemonic asylum and refugee narratives. I analyze how the narratives and cinematography encourage the spectator to make certain interpretations while discarding others. At the same time, I argue that the spectator can pay attention to the disruptions and excess in the narratives to reach a more nuanced and complex interpretation.

Drawing from research on queer migration and contemporary approaches to narrative hermeneutics, I outline a self-reflexive and dialogic method of interpreting queer refugee narratives in advocacy work and research. With this method, I draw attention to the power of narratives in advocacy media, specifically in human rights documentaries, and to the role and responsibilities of spectators in forming their interpretations of those documentaries in dialogue with their narratives and the cinematography. This contributes to research on queer media and migration, particularly the ethical and political challenges in narrating and interpreting the stories of distant others, which are at the core of advocacy work and research on queer refugee narratives. I argue that interpretation is a vital component in the ethics and politics of representation and adds an important layer to the previous research.

In the next section, I discuss the role of narratives in media advocacy and outline my dialogic approach to interpreting queer refugee narratives in advocacy media and cultural production. Drawing from Hanna Meretoja's conceptualization (2018), I will name my approach “non-subsumptive,” referring to the potential of dialogic interpretation to resist appropriation and subsumption of individual stories under hegemonic narratives. Then I proceed to the analysis section, and interpret the documentaries. My key aim is to highlight the role and accountability of the spectator/interpreter in structuring the narrative of a documentary. I conclude by discussing some implications of the dialogic interpretation for a more ethical practice of advocacy and research on queer refugee narratives. My readings are by no means exhaustive, quite the contrary: I emphasize the processual nature of interpretation.

Before I proceed, I clarify my usage of terminology. I use the abbreviation LGBTI in accordance with the prevailing usage of the UNHCR when discussing asylum policies. I use the term queer when referring to research or practices that resist and challenge hegemonic narratives and normative categories. Throughout this article, I refer to asylum seekers and refugees as categories imposed on migrants, which affect their legal status and rights, and function as “technologies of normalization, discipline, and sanctioned dispossession” (Eithne Luibhéid and Lionel Cantú 2005, xi). With hegemonic narratives, I refer to “master narratives” (Hanna Meretoja 2020), which are culturally and socially dominant scripts, storylines, or categories that guide interpretation, often implicitly. I use the term hegemony to highlight how these narratives tend to fix and universalize normative notions of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as modes of telling and interpreting. Hegemonic narratives are always activated in usage and thus prone to change, but I acknowledge that experiences are always mediated in a dialogue with hegemonic narratives, social norms and conventions, on an “interpretative continuum” (Meretoja 2018, 54–55).

Narrative approaches to advocacy media

In the case of LGBTI and queer asylum, both research and human rights organizations have noted how normative understanding of sexuality and gender intersect with biased assumptions about class, religion, and race to influence officials and decision makers in refugee determination processes (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association [ILGA] 2014; Rachel Lewis 2014; Amy Shuman and Carol Bohmer 2014; UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group [UKLGIG] 2018). Drawing from research by Laurie Berg and Jenni Millbank (2009) on how Western notions of homosexuality and sexual identity development influence what is expected of a personal narrative of “LGB” asylum seekers, I claim that hegemonic narratives intertwine with cultural modes of telling in conditioning what is tellable and intelligible in asylum hearings and interviews. For example, the decision makers often expect lesbian or gay asylum seekers’ identity to develop along a linear path from denial and confusion to coming out and self-acceptance (Berg and Millbank 2009, 206–207). Although, as Berg and Millbank (2009, 207) note, this coming-out model of sexual identity development has been contested in psychological and sociological research, it is still persistent in the Western imaginary and cultural production, affecting how officials and decision makers interpret and understand queer asylum narratives.

LGBTI rights organizations and activists have lobbied for LGBTI refugees and asylum seekers, and better practices have already been incorporated into refugee determination processes (Elina Penttinen and Anitta Kynsilehto 2017, 115). UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (2012) has trained asylum officials to be more attentive to their own biases when interviewing LGBTI asylum seekers. Its guidelines on sexual orientation and gender identity claims recognize the cultural contingency of identity categories and the difficulty of disclosing difficult or traumatic experiences in the interview situation (UNHCR 2012, paras. 58–60). However, discriminatory practices and intrusive interrogation methods persist (Lewis 2022; UKLGIG 2018). Drawing from the previous research on asylum hearings and refugee determination processes (Berg and Millbank 2009; Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman 2018), I claim that to improve these practices, the heteronormative imaginary and Western cultural narratives need to be disrupted. Challenging the existing imaginary of LGBTI politics is key to meeting representational challenges and to developing a queerer migration politics (Karma R. Chávez 2013). A self-critical and dialogic mode of listening and interpreting asylum narratives also needs to be cultivated.

Rachel Lewis (2010, 2013) as well as Amy Shuman and Wendy S. Hesford (2014) have suggested that media and cultural production can represent LGBTI asylum seekers better and offer space to critically theorize the asylum system and the politics of visibility. Today, as new media platforms and affordable distribution formats provide even more efficient and appealing channels for disseminating information, they play a vital role for individuals and NGOs in raising awareness of both single asylum cases and wider social, political issues (Lewis 2010, 2013; Sandra Ristovska 2021). Visual material, especially video, is now widely used in political advocacy by established human rights organizations, grassroots activists, and refugees themselves (Ristovska 2021), to provide evidence in asylum cases and in fundraising and advocacy work. Although media and art can raise complicated issues and produce more nuanced representations of queer asylum, they can perpetuate oppressive practices and notions based on colonial and heteronormative assumptions (Valerie Anishchenkova 2018; Carrie Hart and Rick Dillwood 2015; Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin 2019). For this reason, we need to discuss advocacy media and cultural products in their contexts. This means paying attention to the Western humanitarian spaces where they are produced, circulated and consumed, and their target audience, the contemporary Western spectator.

Lilie Chouliaraki argues in The Ironic Spectator (2013) that in Western societies, the ethics of humanitarian solidarity have transformed from pity to an individualistic ethics of irony. Western solidarity follows the logics of marketing, where the feelings of the spectator/consumer have become the motor behind acts of solidarity (Lilie Chouliaraki 2013, 4; Asta Smedegaard Nielsen 2022): to appeal to the spectator/consumer, organizations now market human rights as a feel-good product, which is easy to access and provides entertainment in exchange for solidarity. Ní Mhaoileoin extends Chouliaraki’s notion of the ironic spectator to LGBTI rights activism, and claims that international LGBTI solidarity is similarly turned towards the affects of the spectator, mobilized “by a narcissistic perception that attacks on ‘gay’ people anywhere represent an attack on the western gay subject” (2019, 152).

Along with this mediatization of advocacy work, human rights organizations increasingly utilize personal storytelling to bring distant issues closer to the viewer, to ask them to care and take action. In this way, much of today’s advocacy media focuses on life stories. Whether a close-up photograph on a campaign website, a video on YouTube, or a human rights documentary film, in all likelihood, the images portray someone’s compelling story. Sujatha Fernandes argues that advocacy storytelling has transformed from a political to a personal mode of narration (2017, 6). The production and circulation of carefully curated, universalizing model stories risk subsuming the complex experiences of individuals (Fernandes 2017, 12–13): advocacy media ends up circulating similar stories, which fit into the confines of dominant storylines, and omitting those that do not (4–5). Thus advocacy media often uses personal storytelling according to neoliberal logics of consumerism, where the suffering of vulnerable others becomes entertainment, without references to structural and political issues.

While visual material activates sensory and bodily responses in viewers beyond the realms of language, to interpret this material, viewers activate a whole archive of cultural narratives (Wendy S. Hesford 2011, 8). As this activation often happens rather automatically, it becomes difficult for viewers to recognize how cultural narratives, norms, and conventions condition all interpretation (Meretoja 2018, 19–20). bell hooks’ work on the politics of representation in mainstream cinema and her notion of Black women’s oppositional gaze theorizes spectatorship through agency (1996). Drawing from her own and other Black women’s experiences as critical spectators, hooks argues that oppositional gaze is an act of resistance to mainstream cinema’s racist and sexist representations of Black women that gives them the distance to deconstruct and critically interrogate films, and to refuse the position these films impose on them (hooks 1996) Drawing from hooks’ understanding of spectatorship as agency, I call for a self-critical analysis to recognize and challenge the dominant cultural narratives, which affirm the privileged position of the Western spectator. Recognizing how hegemonic cultural and social narratives condition narration and interpretation, and identifying how this works in the act of watching, is the first step of dialogic interpretation.

As a Finnish national and a consumer and researcher of Western media and narrative practices, I am part of the target audiences of Western media advocacy, thus connected to the ethical and political questions concerning representation and hegemony. Inspired by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1997) and Rita Felski (2015), who critiqued feminist and poststructuralist criticism of their “paranoid” obsession with exposing oppressive practices, my take on interpretation builds on a “reparative” ethos (Sedgwick 1997). My aim is to show that critical interpretation makes it possible to recognize the cultural narratives embedded in Western media and cultural production, whereas an explorative and dialogic mind-set highlights moments and ruptures in the narratives that challenge the cohesion and definiteness of the culturally dominant practices.

In order to pay attention to both destructive and subversive narrative practices, I turn to contemporary narrative hermeneutics, which draws attention to the uses and abuses of narratives in their sociocultural contexts (Meretoja 2017). Drawing from Michel Foucault’s notion of power (1975), narrative hermeneutics understands narratives as interpretative practices, and as such always socially and culturally conditioned and embedded in complex power relations (Jens Brockmeier and Meretoja 2014; Felski 2015; Hanna Meretoja 2016, 2018, 2020). This means that narratives and interpreting are intrinsically dialogic: the interpreter’s positionality and background, hegemonic narratives, and cultural modes of understanding all affect the ways the narrative unfolds, and the process also affects the interpreter (Meretoja 2020). Following Sara Ahmed, I propose to analyze narratives as constantly moving: the figures, tropes, and storylines circulate in different spaces, locations, and texts, accumulating “affective value” (2014, 45). This means that signs and narratives are performative: they actively take part in meaning-making and affect how people understand the world, others, and themselves. Drawing on Ahmed, I analyze the circulation of hegemonic narratives in the advocacy media and discuss the effects they produce in Western migration politics.

Hanna Meretoja’s “non-subsumptive” mode of understanding creates space for creative resistance and transformation (2018). Narratives and interpreting can both be non-subsumptive when they resist appropriation and subsuming new information to the already known. Non-subsumptive narratives highlight dialogue in their structure and form, inviting interpreters to ponder their own perspectives and assumptions, and possibly even question or alter them. Non-subsumptive dialogic storytelling can open up an intersubjective space that enables ethical encounters with the other’s experiences (Meretoja 2018, 265). Non-subsumptive modes of interpreting are self-critical but dialogic; the interpreter acknowledges their positionality and active role in forming the narrative. Critical media and cultural products can renegotiate notions of human rights and challenge hegemonic categories and narratives, but the spectator/interpreter can interpret with a non-subsumptive ethos even when the narrative does not encourage dialogue. A dialogic ethos can enhance and train interpreters to be more aware of conventions and their role in interpretation.

Navigating hegemonic narrative practices in Out of Iraq and Unsettled

Out of Iraq depicts the love story of Nayyef Hrebid, an Iraqi interpreter for the US Marines, and Haidar “Btoo” Allami, a soldier of the new Iraqi army. Nayyef and Btoo meet in a military camp in Ramadi, Iraq in 2004, in the middle of the Second Persian Gulf War. As the situation in Iraq becomes increasingly dangerous to Nayyef due to his employment, he is granted a special immigrant visa to the US in exchange for his service. Soon after, his partner Btoo is outed to his family and the army. With the help of an American refugee advocate, Michael Failla, Btoo flees to Beirut, Lebanon as an undocumented immigrant and seeks asylum from the UNHCR. The documentary follows Nayyef’s efforts to get Btoo to safety in the US and their struggles with the asylum system. The documentary is produced by World of Wonder productions. One of the directors, Chris McKim, has produced reality TV-shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, while the co-director Eva Orner received awards for her human rights documentaries Chasing Asylum (2016) and Taxi to the Dark Side (2007). Out of Iraq was first launched as part of the American entertainment brand Logo’s “Global Ally Campaign,” which was a solidarity campaign for international LGBTI activists. The United Nations held a screening of the film during a panel concerning LGBTI refugee issues in the Middle East in 2016, and the film has circulated in many events and film festivals in the Global North.¹

Unsettled depicts the journey of four LGBTI migrants as they resettle in San Francisco. Junior Mayema from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Subhi Nahas from Syria are both accepted as refugees by UNHCR and resettled to San Francisco after years of suffering persecution due to their sexual orientation, while Cheyenne Adriano and Mari N’Timansieme, a lesbian couple from Angola, flee to the US under student visas and apply for asylum on arrival. The documentary depicts the main characters’ struggles with the asylum process and with resettling in San Francisco. Unsettled is directed by Tom Shepard, a US-based documentary film producer and director, and produced by Open Door Productions, LLC. The film was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), other non-profit foundations, and independent donations. Circulated in many film festivals in the US and the Global North, it has been screened in events related to human rights and LGBTI refugee issues.² On the webpage of Unsettled, viewers can donate money to the subjects of the documentary or in Subhi’s case, to his organization. Both documentaries are US-based and aimed at Western audiences.

Out of Iraq and Unsettled both follow the tradition of cinematic realism and imagery familiar in the genre of human rights films (Sonia Tascón 2012). Out of Iraq and Unsettled narrate their main characters’ stories via interviews, observational footage, and additional photographs and shots from the private collection of the main characters, from media sources and photo banks, some of which are the same in both documentaries. The additional footage illustrates the interviews, operates as evidence, and represents space and time when the camera crew is not filming. The camera crew, directors, and interviewers do not appear on screen, which creates an illusion of objectivity, as if the camera was following unfolding events. With this observational human rights format, the documentaries “evoke a connection to truth that attempts to circumvent the difficult questions and critiques that may be raised, and would be raised, were they not human rights documentaries” (Tascón 2012, 871). Tascón argues here that spectators expect human rights documentaries to tell the truth because of their genre and context, even though the stories they portray are carefully curated and mediated by the directors, the film crew and the production team. For this reason, it is important to trace the storylines and imagery with a critical gaze, to become aware of where they guide the interpreter.

In my interpretation, the documentaries highlight tension and fluctuation between narrative practices of hegemony and dialogue: they render some storylines visible while silencing others. The hegemonic narrative practices are potentially oppressive but there are moments and elements in both documentaries, which challenge these hegemonic practices. Taking a non-subsumptive approach, I pay attention to the excesses and discrepancies that deviate from the hegemonic narrative. I highlight that the interpreter has responsibility to notice deviations in the narratives and acknowledge the complexities of narrating experiences of persecution, displacement, and identity. In my reading of the documentaries, I ask two questions: Where does the narrative and cinematography guide the interpreter? Are there disruptions, gaps, or excess, which could steer the interpretation in another direction?

Out of Iraq: narrative of love and suffering

Btoo and Nayyef have one of the most beautiful love affairs I have ever seen. What’s unique about Nayyef and Btoo is their bravery. I can’t tell you, I feel so happy that I was a part of helping them have a new life together. A life that they deserve. – Michael

(Out of Iraq 2016, 01:16:47–01:17:08)

The documentary opens with ominous music leading to a montage sequence compiled from media sources that depicts scenes of execution, stoning, and tossing people from rooftops (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:00:00–00:00:13). This violent imagery blends with photographs and clips of Nayyef and Btoo kissing and hugging. Nayyef’s voiceover cuts through the music, and is followed by shots from interviews with Nayyef and Btoo as they describe the dangerous position of sexual minorities in Iraq. Next, the montage moves on to clips of refugee crowds, and then Michael’s voiceover leads the spectator to his interview clip where he describes the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, following footage and photos depicting military operations and scenes of mass execution. The title Out of Iraq: A Love Story appears on the screen as the camera speeds on through a pink desert.

I saw the documentary for the first time at a queer film festival, and I remember how perplexed I was by the apparently conflicting imagery of the pink and dreamy photographs that collided with footage of violence and war. After revisiting Out of Iraq within the framework of queer migration theory, I propose here that suffering and love are woven together to generate a compelling LGBTI refugee narrative that relies on homonormative identity categories and on a colonial narrative order. These hegemonic narrative practices produce the US as a safe haven for queer love in contrast to the backward Middle East. David A. B. Murray (2014) argues that this kind of progression narrative orients itself towards the future promise of happiness and freedom in the West from oppression in the East. The title of the documentary, Out of Iraq: A Love Story, suggests that Iraq represents the closet for Nayyef and Btoo, who need to get out to fulfil their love. The love story is bounded by the colon: it can only come true if the first part—getting out of Iraq—is realized. This tension between the dualisms of suffering and love, oppression and freedom, Iraq and the US runs through the whole documentary.

At the core of hegemonic asylum and refugee narratives lies a hierarchical separation between the “first” and “third” worlds, which often forces asylum seekers to demonize their home countries to make a convincing case of well-founded fear of persecution (Sima Shakhsari 2014a). The documentary manifests this dualism by juxtaposing the Middle East as backward and homophobic with the US as modern and gay-friendly. This juxtaposition mobilizes through imagery and narration. For example, in the scene where Nayyef leaves for Seattle alone (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:31:53–00:33:54), Baghdad is presented as gloomy and grey, and the pain of the dawning separation is illustrated by a picture of Nayyef and Btoo that is losing its colors, as if merging with the hostile city that denies them their future. As soon as Nayyef’s plane takes off, the clouds subside. Nayyef arrives in Seattle at night, and we can see the bright city lights through the airplane window. The aerial shot of Seattle zooms in on its busy streets and the camera starts following speeding cars on the highway. Upbeat disco music starts off a montage sequence depicting modern and vibrant cosmopolitan life with a timelapse shot of the city, which quickly changes to a silhouetted skyline, pink light shooting out behind it, pulsating in time to the music.

If we pay attention to the temporal disconnection between the progressive time in the narrative and the ceased time in Btoo’s story, the narrative crumbles for Btoo. While the discourse on human rights organizes around the future promise of freedom from oppression, it dismisses the years of waiting and living without rights that many asylum seekers face when they flee (Sima Shakhsari 2014b). “The time of refugee rights is the time of ‘slow death’ in the in-between zone” (Shakhsari 2014b, 1000) as the refugees wait for the asylum process to be completed in refugee camps, detention centers, satellite cities or, like Btoo, in a strange city. This temporal disconnection is evident in the contrast between the depiction of Nayyef’s fast-moving life and that of Btoo’s long wait. As Btoo’s time is on hold, his years of waiting are depicted through Nayyef’s action. Nayyef dreams for both, he films a music video for Btoo and covers his bedroom wall with a giant picture of Btoo (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:51:00–00:51:30). Nayyef is trying to sustain a sense of hope and futurity for both of them.

While the narrative structure of the documentary does not fully represent Btoo’s experiences in Beirut, cracks and excesses in the narrative reveal Btoo’s life in that in-between zone. The documentary only takes us to Beirut briefly through media footage of riots and a few video clips of Btoo washing dishes and eating with his roommates, whose faces have been blurred in post-production to protect their identities (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:45:50–00:49:23). In the interviews (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:48:40–00:52:10), Btoo tells us how he lived with four other Iraqis in one small apartment, worked in a sweatshop, and drank a liter of whiskey a day. He describes how he lived in constant fear of getting caught and being sent back to Iraq where his life would be in danger. Towards the end of his interview, it becomes harder for him to tell his story and the last word that he uses to express his painful memories is “confused” (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:52:10). We also see glimpses of him through Nayyef’s computer screen when they video call on Skype (Out of Iraq 2016, 00:49:38, 00:52:15–00:53:45). The computer appears to become an extra layer of the narrative, a wormhole that connects the two realities. We see Nayyef talking to Btoo in Arabic, occasionally translating for the camera. Nayyef is sitting next to the giant poster of Btoo and his apartment floor is covered in bags full of gifts for Btoo. At the other end, Btoo lies in bed, cries, and looks anxious. When focusing on these scenes, which the cinematic temporality bypasses very quickly, the scene from Btoo’s apartment where he is eating with the faceless men comes to represent experiences of isolation, of being cut off from society, community, and the pace of urban gay life. The figure of the resilient, all-enduring refugee falls apart.

The documentary closes with Nayyef’s and Btoo’s wedding at Michael’s luxurious house (Out of Iraq 2016, 01:16:40–01:20:13). The narrative pleasure comes together at this moment, in “heterosynchronic harmony” in which all the seemingly disparate elements of the story come together at the end in heterosexist logic to a fairytale ending (Karl Schoonover and Rosalind Galt 2016, 268). The odds were stacked against Nayyef and Btoo finding each other in the middle of the war and then reuniting in the US, and this is presented in terms of predetermination: it was meant to be. In the normative framework of romantic love, Nayyef and Btoo are expected to transcend all obstacles to finally live happily ever after in the US, which is imagined to guarantee their safety and freedom. Drawing from Elizabeth A. Povinelli (2006), Luibhéid notes how “falling in love is normatively understood to produce autonomous, self-governing subjects who are no longer constrained by caste, class, or other modes of social inscription, and who therefore conform to the model valorized by Western neoliberal ‘democracy’” (Eithne Luibhéid 2008, 299). In Out of Iraq, colonial narrative practices intertwine with this ideal of falling in love as overcoming social and global obstacles. This narrative structure renders Nayyef and Btoo as deserving and authentic. The romantic love framework transforms their story into a compelling and intelligible refugee narrative. However, Btoo’s story complicates the first reading and reveals how the progressive narrative of freedom omits “the presence of refugees who live a slow death in the name of rights in-between here and there” (Shakhsari 2014b, 1013).

Unsettled: scattering the narratives

The narrative of Unsettled takes a different stance from Out of Iraq, by depicting the difficulties LGBTI refugees and asylum seekers face after their arrival in the United States. Unsettled beings where the progression narrative in Out of Iraq ends, complicating the premise that once you arrive, the struggle is over. This breaks with the representation of the US as a safe haven for queer refugees. While Unsettled circulates similar hegemonic narrative practices as Out of Iraq, and its depictions of the “third world” are just as unidimensional and problematic, it tells multiple stories, which complicates the storyline and offers more nuances. I argue that the discrepancies and dialogic potential of these scattered stories allow the documentary to be read in a non-subsumptive, anti-hegemonic way.

I’m scared because I feel responsible for her. But then she says; you know I feel the same way about you. – Mari

(Unsettled 2019, 00:03:55)

Cheyenne and Mari’s story can be seen to follow the same romantic narrative as Nayyef’s and Btoo’s: it is organized similarly around the key events in their relationship. In an interview, Cheyenne and Mari’s attorney states how she thinks that they have “an incredibly compelling case and that they deserve asylum” (Unsettled 2019, 01:07:33). Here, the word “deserving” appears again, just like in the case of Nayyef and Btoo. It seems that the normative love story renders their claim intelligible and them as deserving asylum seekers. Yet in this documentary, the narratives unfold differently. Cheyenne and Mari construct their narrative during the interview collaboratively. The decision of the film crew to interview Mari and Cheyenne together allows this shared dialogic storytelling.

In the scene where Cheyenne and Mari recount how they met, I presume the interviewer who never appears on screen has posed them the question, but the scene is edited so that Mari becomes the one who prompts Cheyenne to talk:

Mari:

“How did we meet?”[Mari looks at Cheyenne with a playful smile. Cheyenne smiles back.]

Mari:

“Tell the story.” (Unsettled 2019, 00:15:37–00:15:45)

As they are narrating their story, they alternate between addressing each other and the interviewer, which creates an intimate space between them. In asylum interviews, disclosing information on shameful or traumatic experiences might be impossible if the situation does not feel comfortable or safe (Berg and Millbank 2009, 201). Dialogic narrating creates empathy and a potentially safer environment for disclosing personal information. In a scene where Mari and Cheyenne go through their evidence for the upcoming asylum interview (Unsettled 2019, 00.25:44–00:26:36), Mari is having a tough time disclosing a painful experience about her mother, and she buries her head in her hands, shutting herself off from the situation. Cheyenne takes over and tells the story for her. Cheyenne silently comforts Mari and leans her head on her shoulder. Next, Mari exits the room and Cheyenne follows her, ending the scene with silence.

Here, dialogic storytelling counters hegemonic practices. Where hegemonic narratives aim for coherence and closure, subsuming individual stories under universal narrative models, dialogic storytelling emphasizes the relationality and processual nature of narration (Meretoja 2018, 265–266). In asylum hearings, narratives have evidential value, which means that the narrative will come under scrutiny for errors and inconsistencies (Bohmer and Shuman 2018). But here, Cheyenne and Mari construct their story by co-telling it, not as a retrospective report of events. Through Mari withdrawing from narrating her painful experiences and Cheyenne taking over as a co-witness of the events, dialogic storytelling becomes an act of compassionate witnessing to each other’s experiences: when telling becomes hard, one is able to fall silent if necessary and receive support from the other.

You are here, you’re alone and all the things that you lived with and you left behind will stay with you, but you cannot go back no matter how much you miss them. – Subhi

(Unsettled 2019, 00:24:10)

At first, Subhi’s journey seems to be a success story. After his arrival in San Francisco, he quickly secures employment with an NGO, which allows him to move to a rental apartment. His sponsor Fred Hertz recruits Subhi to speak about his experiences as an LGBTI refugee at the UN Security Council. In a scene before Subhi’s speech (Unsettled 2019, 00:26:48–00:28:24), we see his sponsor and Neil Grungras, an LGBTI refugee advocate, helping him prepare for the event. Together they rehearse his speech, try on clothes, and consider whether Subhi should wear his earring. All this dressing up is meant to ensure that Subhi looks gay enough but still professional, as the perfect spokesperson for the LGBTI community. Subhi does well at the UN Security Council event and is invited to speak at other events and talk shows. His success culminates in his being invited to act as one of the grand marshals of New York City’s Pride Parade and nominated as an honoree at the Logo LGBTI awards ceremony, Trailblazer Honors, both in 2016. In the cinematic narrative, the shots speed from one red carpet to another, flashlights dazzle, and people surround Subhi in admiration (Unsettled 2019, 00:39:27–00:41:20).

At first glance, this story seems a typical example of the progression narrative, which represents Subhi as the “grateful and authentic LGBTI refugee” traveling from oppression to freedom (David A. B. Murray 2015, 6). This interpretation mobilizes ethical and political questions around representation. As Subhi’s success narrative gains publicity as the LGBTI refugee story in public arenas like the UN Security Council, it risks becoming representative of all LGBTI refugee experiences and struggle. Lewis (2014) notes how lack of representation affects lesbian asylum cases in the UK negatively, as asylum officials’ assumptions are based on cultural stereotypes. In a similar vein, B Camminga (2018) discusses the struggles and discrimination transgender refugees face in South Africa due to the embedded gender and sexuality binarism in the asylum system. Not all asylum seekers and refugees who flee persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity conform to Western LGBTI identity categories (Murray 2015, 31). The one-dimensional narrative of Subhi’s journey from oppression to freedom is not only detrimental for queer migration politics; it diminishes the nuances of Subhi’s story.

Then, something surprising happens, and the hegemonic narrative crumbles. In a scene following Subhi’s dazzling success (Unsettled 2019, 00:48:45–00:49:28), the cheering suddenly fades away and a shot of soap bubbles floating across a bright sky seems to suggest that Subhi’s bubble is about to burst. Subhi explains that popularity became too overwhelming for him and that he no longer had the strength to be the representative everyone looks up to. The memories of Syria, his family still living in a war zone, and his traumatic experiences start to affect him. In the scene that follows (Unsettled 2019, 00:49:29–00:50:40), the camera films Subhi watching the news from Syria. His eyes are locked on the screen as the light flickering from his laptop lights up his frozen face. The shots shift from media depictions of Syria to his face, as if the spectator were watching the war with him. We can interpret this scene as an invitation to share the space with Subhi, as war and death reach him through the TV footage. This cinematic narrative calls for a dialogic interpretation where the spectator can witness to Subhi’s experiences. At this moment, the progression narrative is contested with Subhi’s sadness, longing for familiar routines and things back home, and concern for his family members. This scene contests the simplistic view of the country of origin as only oppressive and highlights the tension and complexity in leaving everything behind and moving to a foreign country (Murray 2015, Chapter 7).

It’s like you are still migrating. You are still traveling. – Junior

(Unsettled 2019, 00:19:47)

In the scene where Junior arrives in San Francisco (Unsettled 2019, 00:09:26–00:10:13), he is greeted at the airport by two refugee advocates welcoming him to his new home country with open arms, balloons, and flowers. After years of violence and harassment, his journey seems to be over. However, the cinematic narration suggests that something is not quite right. As the advocates start explaining the next steps in his resettlement to the overwhelmed Junior, their voices suddenly fade, and music starts playing. The camera first zooms in on Junior’s face and then the rotating suitcases on the conveyor belt. With this subtle hint, the scene evokes uneasiness in the viewer, a sense that something unanticipated is coming. Soon after his arrival, Junior’s hope of finally finding a safe place to settle in and making a fresh start begins to collapse. The suitcases and bags containing all his belongings become a recurring cinematic motif in Junior’s story. He has trouble finding stable housing and he ends up moving 10 times during his first year in San Francisco. Junior is in a vulnerable position, living with both PTSD and HIV. In the scenes of him moving, the camera focuses on the bags, which are carried repeatedly: up the steep spiral stairs, to a car, from a transitional house to a night shelter, then to a boyfriend’s house, and out of the door again, piled up on the sidewalk. For Junior, the lack of stability and community becomes unbearable.

Junior’s sponsor, Galen Workman, explains in an interview why he thinks Junior is having such a challenging time: “In Junior’s case, it’s the way he looks, the way he presents himself. It is prejudice that he is fighting. And he has PTSD issues. He has expressed that he recognizes he drinks, and he shouldn’t drink” (Unsettled 2019, 00:19:57–00:20:09). In another scene when Junior is having a conversation with Galen about how isolated and abandoned he feels, his sponsor turns it around as a personal problem: “So, I think that you are experiencing something that a lot of people experience. Because in some ways we want people to rescue us. And you know; ‘don’t you know I’m in pain, help me’” (Unsettled 2019, 01:11:20). What is striking about Junior’s narrative (unlike Cheyenne’s and Mari’s or Subhi’s) is that other people involved in his story often define his problems for the camera. I interpret Junior’s story as one of misrecognition and failed empathy. Junior’s story highlights the vital role of narratability in relation to intelligibility. Human beings become intelligible to others in terms of social norms (Judith Butler 2005), so storytelling is inherently bounded by these norms and narrative models, which condition the recognizability of stories (Meretoja 2016). Refugees who are perceived as deviating the rules of normative gender or sexuality “find themselves with rights but without community, home, or security, and so unable to fully actualise these rights” (Camminga 2018, 110). This becomes evident in Junior’s story: the people around him do not seem to understand how isolated he feels or recognize the structural issues behind the difficulties he is facing in San Francisco.

Conclusion

My aim in this article was to explore the role of the interpreter and the dialogic interpretation process in documentaries advocating for LGBTI refugees. In my analysis, I paid attention to how the documentaries perpetuate hegemonic narratives, and to the narrative moments that disrupted the hegemony and brought nuances to the stories. Both documentaries rely on familiar Western conventional storylines and figures. The love stories of Nayyef and Btoo in Out of Iraq and Cheyenne and Mari in Unsettled, as well as Subhi’s success story in Unsettled, fit in neatly with Western hegemonic narratives of authentic LGBTI refugees. These three stories render their subjects intelligible as deserving refugees who integrated to US, whereas Junior’s story is not granted a proper happy ending. This interpretation of the documentaries highlights how much easier it is to recognize familiar storylines than stories which deviate from the conventional narrative models and identity categories.

By taking a non-subsumptive approach, I could focus on elements in the narratives that complicate and challenge hegemonic practices. Even though many of the nuances were small or bypassed quickly in the documentaries, I hope to have shown that this approach can foreground the complex, dialogic relationship between the spectator/interpreter and the narratives of advocacy media. Understanding interpretation as a performative process, and the role of the interpreter as a situated agent embedded in that process, would enable a more nuanced interpretation of asylum and refugee narratives, which recognizes the power structures and is sensitive to the difficulties of narrating complex (and often traumatic) experiences. With a non-subsumptive ethos, the interpreter can become aware of the cultural narratives and conventions they are embedded in, and challenge their own assumptions. This process is never over – it is important to repeatedly question and revise one’s own interpretation.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers, my supervisors and my colleagues for their comments on the previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the doctoral programme Gender, Culture and Society at the University of Helsinki. Part of the research was conducted in the research project Incorporating vulnerability: a non-fragmented approach to feminist research on violence, funded by the University of Helsinki three-year grants for 2016-2018.

Notes on contributors

Ada Schwanck

Ada Schwanck is a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Programme in Gender, Culture, and Society at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on the narrative practices around asylum politics and policies in documentary films, novels, and art projects from feminist and queer perspectives.

Notes

1. For example, Time to Thrive conference in Washington D.C. in 2017; the 7th Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in 2017; BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival in 2017; Melbourne Queer Film Festival in 2017; Inside Out – Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2017; Vinokino – Finnish LGBTIQ film festival in Helsinki, Finland in 2017.

2. For example, San Francisco International Film Festival in 2019; TLVFest: The Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival in 2019; Cinema Queer in Stockholm, Sweden in 2019: FRINGE! Queer Film & Arts Fest in London, UK in 2019; Human Rights Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario in 2019.