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."
Towelhead's director, Alan Ball (of American Beauty fame), adds, "As a gay man, I know how it feels to be called hateful names simply because of who I am. Therefore, I felt it was important to retain the title of Alicia Erian's novel, in which she so effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language...I believe one of the unintended consequences of forbidding such words to be spoken is imbuing those words with more power than they ever should have."
Warner is standing by the choice and retaining the name, having issued a boilerplate corporate 'we-apologize-to-anyone-who-is-offended' apology, and CAIR continues to argue for a name change. As someone who has been called a raghead on more than one occasion, what I want to know is this: why couldn't they get an Arab-American actress to play the lead? Summer Bishil looks like she'll do a perfectly fine job in the role of Jasira, but she's of East Indian descent. Is it that hard to find a real Arab in Hollywood?