In today's discussion, we talked about how some, if not most, people felt that Alma was being unfair towards Zaynab just because her relationship with her mother wasn't what Alma believed a mother-daughter relationship should look like. Adding onto that discussion, I completely agree. I was extremely frustrated and pissed off by Alma's reaction because of a few reasons. Personally, having Asian immigrant parents has resulted in a lot of "barriers" for me as their daughter, one of those barriers being generational differences/values towards having a connection and showing emotions. When Alma criticized Zaynab for not sharing anything about herself with her mother, I felt angry for Zaynab specifically because I understand what it's like to have parents that don't truly know who I am, not because they don't love me or care about me, but because they didn't grow up with the particular concept of knowing their relatives or family members. In my case, my parents' man priorities are to take care of the family financially and physically. Building a relationship with your child never really crossed my parents' minds when I was growing up, but the fact that Alma had the audacity to call Zaynab and her mother's relationship "wrong" or "odd" is disrespectful and incredibly insensitive to the traditional and cultural expectations/norms that are present in her Pakistani household. Just because Alma and her mother have a close, loving, open relationship does not mean that everyone has the opportunity to experience that kind of relationship with their parents. I may be remembering this scene wrong, but when Zaynab went to the bar to confront Alma after their fight, when Zaynab said that her path is "different", I think Alma rolled her eyes or just looked really disinterested in what Zaynab had to say, which really aggravated me. I think I would've liked to see more scenes where Alma and Zaynab talk about their cultural differences and actually learn about how their household lives have influenced the way they perform in relationships.
Lastly, I thought Amy's question concerning whether or not we'd date someone who wasn't publicly out raised some contradicting thoughts for me. I am bi-curious, but I still don't consider myself apart of the LGBTQ+ community. A part of me wants to believe I could date someone who wasn't out and respect their decision to keep things private, but I'm also really bad at being dishonest with others. I have a tendency to tell people what I think right away and be super straightforward. I guess it just depends on the person and whether or not I believe it's worth it for me... I don't know if that makes me sound like a dick or not, but that's my consensus for now.
Hi Tida!! I was also feeling quite aggravated with the way Alma treated Zaynab through the film. Something I was interested in was when she (Alma) said that she "didn't want to go backwards"... I was like, go backwards to what? In the scene where Alma is eating dinner with her family, she seems to be able to openly talk about having slept with a woman the night before (though her mom does respond in a homophobic way, mentioning that she'd rather her daughter be with a "beautiful/strong man")... and that just sort-of hinted to me that Alma's family seems to be (at least from my small understanding as the viewer) not nearly as suppressive as what Zaynab appears to face at home. So I was kinda wondering whether Alma was referring to past trauma, or just meant "going backwards" to a time before she was out to her family or etc... but yeah- I agree that I wish they would have discussed their cultural differences more rather than just having these repetitive, strained conflicts.
ReplyDeleteHi Tida! I really enjoyed your post! I also was very aggravated and irritated at Alma at multiple points throughout the film. I was especially peeved when she made her speech outside Zaynab's house after storming out, as she insinuated (not so subtly) that she was better than her because she was more experienced and she was out to her family. I really didn't like how Alma acted like her experience/life journey was superior to Zaynab's, and her apparent lack of emotional understanding and compassion for Zaynab and her decisions.
ReplyDeleteAlma's cultural insensitivity to Zaynab's situation definitely left a sour taste in my mouth as well. In addition to making her character more understanding, I would have also liked to see more of Alma's relationship with her mother and siblings, since they seem to be a lot more supportive of her sexuality as you pointed out.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely seems that a lot of people are in agreement that Alma was a very irritating and insensitive character in this film. I'm definitely one of those people. I think the film had intentions of having Zaynab and Alma get together and make it a happy ending but Alma's behavior throughout the film definitely makes that ending not as satisfying as planned. As for the dating someone who is or isn't out to their parents, it definitely is challenging. I'm not out to my family yet at all, I feel that it does complicate things. My family isn't really involved in my dating life at all though and they normally have a very very surface level understanding if they know anything at all. So I personally wouldn't know what goes through other peoples' heads when they have to make that decision since my family isn't really involved in those things.
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