One of the movies I'm most looking forward to this fall is Towelhead, a creepy coming-of-age drama with the twist that the lead character, Jasira Maroun, is an Arab-American girl from a strict traditionalist family. Based on a surprisingly good novel by Alicia Eran (herself of Egyptian descent), Towelhead may be a disappointment or it may be a success, but one thing's for sure: it's already generated a stupid, meaningless controversy, and for a small indie film, that's money in the bank.
As an Arab-American, I've learned to take everything that comes out of CAIR -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- with a grain of salt. They do vital, much-needed work in exposing the often insidious amount of racism, prejudice and bigotry that Arabs and Muslims suffer in this country, and since 9/11, their work couldn't be more necessary. They're also particularly adept at pointing out the numerous cultural stereotypes by which Arabs and Muslims are victimized, and they keep up the good work despite the profound hatred they generate from right-wingers, who seem to regard them as quasi-criminals and terror-abbetors who are morally just south of Osama bin-Laden. That's the upside. The downside is that they have the typical thin skin of every advocacy group, and every so often they find themselves on the wrong side of an argument, as is the case now, when they have demanded that Warner Brothers change the name of Towelhead, which they find racist and offensive, to Nothing is Private (the name under which it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year).
Of course, the film's writer and director both make the rather obvious point that it's specifically because "towelhead" is a racist word that they chose it as a name. The Hot Blog reports on writer Alicia Erian's comments on the controversy: "I am of course aware that the title of my book is an ethnic slur. Indeed, I selected the title to highlight one of the novel's major themes: racism. Towelhead...is an ugly word. The job of the artist, however, has been, and always will be, to highlight that which is ugly in the hopes of finding something beautiful. This charge, by necessity, will at times put the artist at odds with admirable groups like CAIR. The solution, it seems to me, is not to force the artist to alter his or her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion."
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