Paradise Now Analytical approach to Hany Abu-Assad’s film

Paradise Now Analytical approach to Hany Abu-Assad’s film Kristin Einarsdottir Conflict Zones: Case Studies. David Landy 10 January 2014

The film I chose to analyze for this essay is the Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominated film, Paradise Now. The film was made in 2005, and directed by Hany AbuAssad. The director and producers have in several interviews, described the harsh environment in which the filming took place. Bombings and multiple attacks made it almost near impossible for the film to be completed, as negotiations with both the Israeli and Palestine authorities were strenuous and difficult, due to both parties wanting to guard their reputation. I found it quite challenging to find a film that was not biased or one sided in its representation of the subject matter. Looking at the production credits for Paradise Now, I saw that it was made up of a multinational crew. The director is Palestinian, and the production team is comprised of one Dutch, two Germans, an Israeli and French individuals. The director AbuAssad is a diaspora Arab. Abu-Assad was born in Nazareth in the 1960s and raised in the conflict area. In and around the age of twenty, Abu-Assad left Israel in 1980, and settled in the Netherlands. According to definition, Paradise Now can be defined as a ‘diaspora film’ (Knott and McLoughlin, 2010. P. 158) The film surely represents the Israeli/Palestine conflict. It is a widely known fact, that Israel, a land that is constructed as the state of the ‘Jewish nation’, hand out citizenship to all person’s willing to move there, and can prove they have a mother with Jewish lineage, while denying citizenship to Palestinians born in Israel. The dehumanization of the Palestinians becomes very clear in this film, and I would imagine left audience members feeling quite emotional and conflicted once having seen the film. My essay starts off with an outline of the narrative, as told in the movie, followed by a theoretical segment on suicide bombers and masculinity. I then move from Foucault’s description of the sovereign state and biopolitics, to discussing Zygmundt Bauman’s theory on the ‘wasted life’, and conclude my essay by outlining the contents of the film. Paradise Now tells the story of two young men, Said and Khaled, who live in the city of Nablus on the West Bank. The film covers 48 hours of their lives. We get a glimpse into the

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daily life and routine of the people of Nablus, a life that is defined by poverty, and the occasional rocket blast. The two friends seem quite inactive. You see them hanging out, smoking hookah, drinking tea etc., between going to work as auto mechanics in the village car repair shop. One day at the repair shop, a young woman called Suha, brings her old car in for repairs. The audience instantly gets the impression that Suha and Said like each other. Their background is quite different, as Suba’s father was a great martyr, while Said’s father was a collaborator. This will become a major factor throughout the film, as Said is very ashamed of his father’s actions, while he admires Suha’s father. Both Said and Khaled have expressed that they want to die together as martyrs. They have in fact been preparing their whole lives, to go over the border as suicide bombers. Their families are unaware of their intentions. When the right assignment comes along, a task that entails them carrying out a strike in Tel Aviv, the young men are approached by Jamal, a middle age man who works for an unnamed Palestinian organization. The lads spend their last night at their home, and we get a glimpse into the close relationship they each have with their mothers, especially Said. Said is also mesmerized with Suha, and sneaks off that night before the assignment to go see her and tell her good bye. Suha does not take the news well. She is educated in Europe and her views on suicide bombing reflect that. We see her trying to convince Said not to go on with the strike, but he walks away from her. Next we see Said and Khaled trying to get through a hole in the fence surrounding Nablus. On the other side they are to meet a driver that is supposed to take them to Tel Aviv. But everything goes wrong from hereon. They get scared and run away from each other and separate. All the scholar articles I have read in relation to this essay, refer to suicide bombers as terrorist. I will not use that term; I will only refer to them as “bombers” or “suicide bombers.” “Suicide bombing is rising around the world. From the onset of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 through August 2005, 151 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks have been launched against Israeli targets, killing 515 people and injuring almost 3,500 more” (Benmelech and

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Berrebi, 2007). There are many Muslim myths and legends regarding the rewards associated with the notion of great sacrifice and of dying as a great martyr. The most common one is that the suicide bomber will enjoy the sexual favors of 72 angelic maidens in heaven. The Koran (Surah 55) says, “In the Gardens of Paradise will be fair houris.” According to the psychoanalyst Vamit Volkan (1997), who competently explains the reasons why suicide bombing is accepted within the Palestinian culture, that the eternal Paradise is promised to those who die in battle. The suicide bombers are told that their death will be celebrated as a “wedding ceremony”, where friends and family can join together in the belief that the deceased bombers are now in the hands of the angels in heaven (Volkan, 2001, pp. 210-211). They become martyrs as the sacrificial lambs. (That in essence, as sacrificial lambs, they have become martyrs) To understand better the culture surrounding suicide bombing, Volkan, (1997), explains how the training of young people goes about: “The typical technique of creating a Middle Eastern Muslim suicide bombers includes two basic steps: first the “trainers” find young people whose personal identity is already disturbed and who are seeking an outer “element” to internalize so they can stabilize their internal world. Second they develop a “ teaching method” that “forces” the large-group identity – ethnic and/or religious – into the “cracks” of the person’s damaged or subjugated individual identity. Once people come candidates to be suicide bombers in training, normal rules of behavior and individual psychology no longer fully apply to their patterns of thought and action. The future suicide bomber is now an agent of the large-group identity which is perceived and threatened – and will attempt to repair it for himself or herself and for other members of the large group. Killing one’s self (and one’s personal identity) and “others” (enemies) does not matter. What matters is that the act of bombing (terrorism) brings self-esteem and attention to the large group identity” (Volkan 2001, p. 209)

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In the film, Said and Khaled do not come across as the stereotypical suicide bombers, or as I have sometimes found the media to perceive them to be (usually referred to as terrorists). Only once will you see Khaled wear the famous ´Arafat – scarf’ or ‘keffiyeh’, which is the powerful and emotional scene, when he is being filmed saying his last words and making the statement for why they use suicide bombing as a weapon against the Israeli occupation. Even then he wears the keffiyeh casually over his shoulders. You never see Said wearing that particular apparel. They wear Adidas jackets, t-shirts and jeans, and come across as confused, traumatized and as angry young men. Controlled by patriarchal ideology, they are under the influence that martyrdom is the only way to resolve the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and that their religious interpretation of Mohammed’s words has convinced them that, this is the way they will reach their ultimate goal: To live in Paradise. Throughout the film, we see symbolic relations to fathers. Said’s father was executed for collaborating with the Israelis. Suba’s father was this great martyr. Also in the film, a taxi driver discusses with Said how the Israelis have polluted the drinking water in such a way, that it has been found to reduce the sperm production in Palestinian men. I find it important to discuss masculinity in this essay, as patriarchal ideology runs throughout the whole film. Said and Khaled appearance, though masculine, is rather soft and gentle). Both actors playing the young men have a mild, gentle look and curly hair (which they later shave off – symbolic to Jewish women in concentration camps?). We see how Said loves his mother and we see him develop warm feelings for Suha in the film as well. All this gives the audience a chance to develop an certain empathy for the young men. Dina Georgis, (2011) describes Said’s and Khaled’s obedience, in the term that it verges on what can been associated with ‘‘feminine’’ passivity: “indeed, martyrdom and sacrifice are in the symbolic world a womanly performance. Hence, if masculinist obedience to the nation and to God has an inherent ambivalence because it borders on femininity, it is never stable”. What we see, however, in Khaled is that, when the leaders of the unnamed organization approach them with the assignment, he is visibly happy at the thought of becoming a martyr. The viewer never really gets a clear view of why he decides to not go through with the suicide bombing. The Paradise Now

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scene when Khaled is reading his last words in front of a camera is very strong and emotional. What happens is that the leader of the group pulls out a sandwich and starts eating it while Khaled is making the statement. We never see or hear Khaled articulate that event, but one can only assume that it was in that moment the logic of performing the strike starts to crumble. Said seems, despite his initial hesitation on performing the strike, more eager to go through with the suicide. It may be that him having hesitations had something to do with the fact that he had romantic feelings for Suha and therefore more reason to live. But, according to Dina Georgis (2011), “love and pleasure is in the order of the feminine and thus threatens the logic of nationalist obedience and Said’s masculine pride”. We can see that Said is constantly thinking about the fact that his father was a collaborator, while Suha’s father was this great martyr everyone adored. Therefore, the shame he had for his father becomes much more unbearable. Also, living under constant humiliation, reflecting how the Israelis have set up their checkpoints, having constant interrogation, demolitions to their homes, unemployment and being totally dependent on Israeli work permits. Over the course of time, ones dignity and pride become diminished, resulting in feelings of anger and frustration. According to Dina Georgis (2011), Said’s reparation for his broken masculinity is to have the courage to die for his nation and God. When Said and Khaled are on their way to perform the Strike, Khaled tries to convince Said that there are other ways to resist. Said does not listen, his arguments are that he is “already dead”, referring to the fact that he is a son of a traitor and that is unforgivable by their culture’s standards. Said’s ultimate declaration of love for the Palestinian Nation is therefore to commit suicide and hopefully kill as many Israelis as possible in the process. In chapter eleven, at his 1975-6 lecture series at the Collège de France (2003), Michel Foucault goes from talking about war, as war between races, to showing that even though race does not disappear, it becomes a part of something very different, namely State racism (p. 239). In the nineteenth century the trend was to hold power over life – ‘to make die and let live’. What he meant was that the power of the State holds a power over the biological human being. The sovereign power can obviously not grant life in the same way it can inflict death. There is always unbalance, life will always be tipped in favor of death and “sovereign power’s effect on life can only be exercised when the sovereign can kill” (p. 240). Then there became a shift – a

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transformation in political right. Foucault refuses to go as far as saying that “sovereignty’s old right - to take life or let live – was replaced”, but rather sees it as a complementation by a new political right. The right to “make live and to let die”, a new right that penetrates the ‘old’ sovereign right (p.241). Biopolitics of the human race and biopower involves, controlling birth rate, fertility, mortality rate and longevity just to name few. It also holds the power of economic and political problems (p.243). All that can be seen in the film. For me personally, the most disturbing part was when the taxi driver discusses with Said how the Israelis have polluted the drinking water in such a way, that it has been found to reduce the sperm production in Palestinian men. Not only does it show how Israel is using biopower to control the birth rate and fertility of the Palestinians by smuggling chemicals into the drinking water, but we also see how the Israeli State has with all kinds of restrictions, caused economical and political problems among the Palestinians. Problems that obviously can influence the longevity and cause higher mortality rate, as is proven that poverty does. But in a way, the same goes for the suicide bombing. An ‘open death’ that is intended to kill as many of the Israeli population as possible, is a strategy or a structural violence that for me can be seen as immanent to the system of biopower. In my mind there is no doubt that the director Abu-Assad has had traumatic experiences growing up in conflict zones. The film reflects on how the pressure of the occupation puts ideological, masculinity pressure on the two young men. An identity, that for me, a western middle age woman, with no cultural relation to neither Jewish nor Islamic religion, seems very forced, and very ambivalent and a racialised form of identity. Although the film takes place in the West Bank city of Nablus – it could take place anywhere within the occupied territory. The Palestinians are refugees, seeking asylum and fighting for their rights within the country, that once belonged to them and they feel is theirs. Palestinians can be seen as ´wasted lives´ (Zygmunt Bauman, 2004. p 12). In his book ‘Wasted lives – Modernity and it Outcasts’, Zygmunt Bauman (2004) talks about the sociology and political science statement ‘The planet is full’. It refers not to the state of the earth, but to the ways and means of its inhabitants. The ´planet’ here, might refer to the State of Israel, who is

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forcing Palestinians to live in restricted territories. In the Palestinian territories, lives are wasted every day, and surely there is a form for dehumanization of the Palestinians that is ongoing in Israel. In the film, we are brought into the world of a desperate nation, through the eyes of two young men (and a young, European educated woman), to whom every day survival is defined by resistance, both violent and nonviolent. We see the sympathetic young lads, sitting around, dreaming of a heroic death. Where they are willing to sacrifice their own miserable lives for their nation and for a VIP passport to an afterlife in Paradise. As said in the beginning, I did not want to write about a film that would only show one perspective of the complicated conflict between Israel and Palestine. But it was difficult to find a film that showed both Israeli and Palestine perspectives. This film does in a way put a human face on the Palestinians, and shows us a more intimate view into the world of suicide bombers. Abu-Hassad gives us a chance to view the Israeli Palestine conflict from various perspectives through each character in the film. Personally, I found this fearless film to be a valuable contribution to understanding more clearly how political power and the Israeli occupation affects the daily lives of thousands of people.

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Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. 1995. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press, Sanford. Avner, Falk. 2004. Fratricide in the Holy Land: a psychoanalytic view of the Arab-Israeli conflict/Avner Falk. Madison, Wis,: University of Wisconsin Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2004. Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts. Malden and Cambridge, MA: Polity. Benmelech, Efraim and Berrebi, Claude. 2007. Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers. Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 21, Number 3—Summer 2007—Pages 223–238 Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. Allen Lane, London. Georgis, Dina 2011. 'Masculinities and the Aesthetics of Love: Reading Terrorism in De Niro's Game and Paradise Now', Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12: 2, 134 — 148 Knott, Kim and McLoughlin, Seán. 2010. Diasporas – Concepts, Intersections, Identities. London/New York: Zed Books Volkan, Vamuk D. 1997. Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Volkan, Vamuk D. 2001. September 11 and Societal Regression. Mind and Human Interaction, 12 (3), 1996-216.

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