Two assigned film essay.

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcsm20

Critical Studies in Media Communication

ISSN: 1529-5036 (Print) 1479-5809 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsm20

Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Shadee Abdi & Bernadette Marie Calafell

To cite this article: Shadee Abdi & Bernadette Marie Calafell (2017) Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A�Girl�Walks Home�Alone�at�Night, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34:4, 358-370, DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2017.1302092

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2017.1302092

Published online: 16 Mar 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2477

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night*

Shadee Abdi and Bernadette Marie Calafell

Department of Communication Studies, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

ABSTRACT In 2014, the black and white vampire spaghetti western, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (AGWHAAT) follows the narrative of the Girl, a forlorn chador-wearing feminist-vampire-vigilante in the fictional world of Bad City. In this queer utopia, the Girl preys on immoral men so that she can protect the female residents of Bad City from the violence of patriarchy. We explore themes of monstrous feminisms and queer doublings to consider how the film uses the trope of the vampire to manifest queer utopias and reflect Iranian and Iranian-American feminist themes.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 27 August 2016 Accepted 28 February 2017

KEYWORDS Iran; monstrosity; queer; feminism; horror

Ana Lily Amirpour’s (2014) film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (hereafter, AGWHAAN), took Hollywood and the horror community by storm. The black and white Iranian vampire spaghetti western received a positive critical response of 95% on the popular movie review website, Rotten Tomatoes, and earned an estimated $544,032, in domestic box office revenue (Rotten Tomatoes, n.d.). The film features Sheila Vand, as the title character, the Girl, a forlorn chador-wearing feminist-vampire-vigilante, attempting to rid the fictional world of Bad City (translation: Windy City) from the vio- lence of patriarchy.

The interconnected cast of characters and their interactions with the Girl are significant to understanding the film. Arash (Arash Marandi), the Girl’s love interest, is a James Dean looking protagonist, in a film which otherwise suggests men are vile depictions of human- ity. His U.S. American “cool” aesthetic intrigues the Girl, who on the outset does not know how to engage with a man who is not bad. Arash lives with his father, Hossein (Marshall Manesh), a heroin junkie, whom he has cared for since the death of his mother. Then there is Saeed (Dominic Rains), a pimp drug dealer who supplies Hossein with heroin. Saeed is stylized in 1980’s hip-hop aesthetics, with a Vanilla Ice hairdo, Adidas style track suit, heavy gold chains, the word شکاج (Pimp) tattooed on his head, and “SEX” tattooed on his throat. Through Saeed, we come to know Atti (Mozahn Marnò), a prostitute whom the Girl develops a fondness for, and attempts to save from Saeed. Finally, there is the

© 2017 National Communication Association

CONTACT Bernadette Marie Calafell [email protected] Department of Communication Studies, Uni- versity of Denver, 2000 E. Asbury Ave., Sturm 200, Denver, CO 80208, USA *This essay was presented on the Top Paper Panel of the Organization for Research on Women and Communication at the 2016 Western States Communication Association.

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION, 2017 VOL. 34, NO. 4, 358–370 https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2017.1302092

unnamed little boy (Milad Eghbali), whom serves as an innocent bystander, witnessing all that goes on in Bad City.

Born in the UK, Amirpour eventually landed in Bakersfield, California, after her parents, described as atheists, left Tehran at the start of the 1979 Iranian Revolution (Aftab, 2015; Leigh, 2015). She first had the idea for AGWHAAN when she was a student at UCLA working on a short film and “an extra walked through the set wearing a chador” (Aftab, 2015). After Amirpour tried it on, “looking at herself in the mirror, she felt like a bat. She immediately thought, ‘Iranian vampire’ and wondered why no one had thought of it before” (Aftab, 2015). Having chosen Iran as the setting for the film, Amirpour wrote the script in Persian and hired an entirely Iranian cast (Leigh, 2015). Additionally, while the film is set in Iran, it was shot in southern California, materializing a geographical location aesthetically influenced by both.

The first film of its kind, AGWHAAT is not only a significant text in horror; it also offers an opportunity to engage possibilities of social resistance for Iranian-Americans negotiating often discordant Iranian cultural/familial/social identities. We examine the film through theories of monstrosity and Iranian feminism to understand its creation of a queer utopia through the monstrous feminist anti-hero and queer doublings.

Vampires and monstrosity

Calafell (2015), Poole (2011), Ramirez-Berg (2012), and Phillips (2005) examine how rep- resentations of monstrosity are tied to specific events and the cultural anxieties of societies. Calafell (2015) argues for studying “monstrosity not as lingering within the human psyche, but instead intimately connected to our pasts, presents, and futures as a society” (p. 5). Monsters become a frame for understanding the cultures that produce them, exemplifying specific cultural moments as well as ideologies surrounding Otherness (Cohen, 1996). Thus, monsters are shapeshifters whose meanings morph within their given contexts (Calafell, 2015; Hoglund & Khair, 2013). Cohen (1996) further argues that monsters chal- lenge and unsettle us, as they defy easy categorization, and our fear of them is often driven by our desire for what is unfamiliar. No more is the reciprocal relationship between fear and desire, and morality and immorality, present than in the vampire (Byron & Stepha- nou, 2013).

Similarly, Dowdle (2010) maintains that vampires can be a gauge of societal norms around sexuality and repression, noting that a vampire’s hunger for blood can also be understood as a sexual hunger. Recent popular representations of vampires in the Twi- light series, for instance, depart from traditional sexualized codings by portraying vam- pires who choose to practice celibacy. Additionally, Benshoff (2002) writes that vampires are often coded as queer because they exist in “shadowy closets” (p. 91), noting that the “monster as homosexual” rhetoric emerged in the early days of HIV/AIDs, as gay men were seen as “contagions - vampires, who with a single min- gling of blood, can infect a poor innocent victim, transforming him or her into the living dead” (p. 92).

It is also imperative to consider the racial and class codings of vampires. Perhaps, most notable in vampire lore and class codings are novelist Anne Rice’s vampires who Grady (1996) describes as “aristocratic, elegant … erotic, and occasionally ethical” (p. 226). Abbott (2007) likens vampires’ “insatiable hunger” and speed to “the global elite who

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 359

only care for accumulating more capital and profit and not for the human consequences of their greed” (p. 219).

Chambers and Chaplin (2013) argue that more recent representations of vampires move away from the “monstrous embodiment of evil, or of a culturally vilified ‘otherness’, the vampire has increasingly become a ‘site of identification’” (p. 141). Despite stemming from traditional literary tropes of heroism, this type of vampire, “occupies a highly ambivalent moral universe in which ‘monstrosity’ no longer signifies any kind of cosmic principle of evil; rather, the vampire embodies a fraught, victimized otherness which becomes for the reader/viewer a potent source of sympathy and identification” (Chambers & Chaplin, 2013, p. 141). The authors further assert that this vampire gains an audience’s “sympathy and identification” not in spite of being a vampire, “but because of it; the vampire condition becomes that of the ‘rebellious outsider (belonging to a) persecuted minority” (Chambers & Chaplin, 2013, pp. 141–142). Chambers and Cha- plin’s (2013) framing is important when considering the representation of the Girl in AGWHAAN.

AGWHAAN marks a critical departure from these representations. We assess what the transgressive possibilities of this vampire are, particularly when we consider how people with lineages connected to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been histori- cally coded in the United States, as simultaneously invisible and threatening, traits associ- ated with vampires. Technically considered Caucasian by the U.S. census, most Arab and Iranian-Americans endure commonplace realities that mark their bodies as the antithesis of white, as monstrous, anti-patriotic threats to the state. For example, after 9/11 the United States initiated a Muslim registry targeting Muslims from the MENA region. Pre- sident Donald Trump supports its continued use. This presents a dangerous lived reality for Arab and Iranian-Americans in the United States, particularly in our current political climate, where hate crimes are rapidly increasing towards those who are visually read as non-white. Informed by this, we use the perspectives advocated by Calafell (2015), Cohen (1996), Phillips (2005), and Poole (2011) to understand how the film manifests ten- sions and cultural resonances for Iranian-Americans who consistently must negotiate their Americanness and their Iranianness in a post-9/11 culture that has become increas- ingly hostile to people from the MENA region. Against this context, AGWHAAN mani- fests feminist themes of possibility, identification, and anxiety.

Iranian and Iranian-American feminisms

To understand the significance of the film it is important to situate it within the context of Iranian feminism, which through familial and cultural connections, informs the lives of Iranian-American women. Although the film is set in Iran, it manifests tensions that con- tinue to be relevant to Iranian-American women in the diaspora. Thus, we draw on both Iranian and Iranian-American feminisms to unpack an Iranian vampire who manifests issues that continue to inform the experiences of Iranian-American women.

The fall of the Persian Empire fundamentally reshaped the economic, educational, social, and political foundation of Iran, resulting in the complete restructuring of gendered expectations and the state’s regulation of women (Poya, 1999). Iranian feminist scholars have long documented the significant role women have played throughout Iran’s political and economic history (e.g. Afary, 2004; Mahdavi, 2008; Moghadam, 2002; Najmabadi,

360 S. ABDI AND B. M. CALAFELL

2004, 2013). Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iranian feminists were divided into two distinct categories: Islamic feminists, concerned with women’s liberation through Qu’ranic reinterpretations, and secular feminists, calling for a complete emancipation of religious ties to the state (Barlow & Akbarzadeh, 2008). Despite these ideological differ- ences, Islamic and secular feminists have sustained a history of cooperation toward women’s liberation and continue to reclaim their identities (Barlow & Akbarzadeh, 2008).

In 2009, the Iranian Green Movement drew attention to a younger generation of Iranian feminists and activists (Tahmasebi-Birgani, 2010). With more than half of Iran’s population being under the age of 30, young Iranians have been demonstrating a louder, more visible form of political resistance that urges the state to enact significant social and economic reform reflective of Iran’s rapidly changing social climate (Barlow & Akbarzadeh, 2008). As such, the current feminist aesthetic paints contemporary Iran with women challenging gendered expectations, specifically by utilizing social media, reclaiming sexual agency, embracing makeup, and donning brightly colored and form fitting manteaus in place of traditional chadors (Naghibi, 2007). Still, it is essential to note the contradictions of what is morally encouraged and what is actually practiced within the Islamic Republic of Iran. For example, even when resisting gendered expec- tations, women are still responsible for child bearing, rearing, and socialization, while men continue to be privileged in relation to child custody, divorce, and inheritance laws (Shaditalab, 2006). While there are many differences in the lived experiences of Iranian and Iranian-American women, many of the cultural expectations remain steadfast. Thus, while we may see Iranian-American feminists flout traditional cultural expectations, as exemplified in AGWHAAN, we also see how those norms and values continue to mani- fest themselves in divergent lived experiences of Iranian and Iranian-American women.

At this time, limited communication studies scholarship has considered Iranian and Iranian-American women’s perspectives. Abdi (2014), Abdi and Van Gilder (2016), Van Gilder and Abdi (2014) examine the ways that Iranian-American women must nego- tiate familial relationships and cultural discourses surrounding queer identity. Their sus- tained Iranian cultural practices, religion, and relationships with family, both in the United States and in Iran, create complex and transnational identities that defy borders and simply identity categories.

Queering monstrous feminism and queer utopias

Driven by theories of monstrosity and Iranian feminism, our analysis explores the queer utopia, reflective of the aforementioned identities, alongside the possibility of resistance for (queer) Iranian and Iranian-American women in AGWHAAN. We examine queer utopias through themes of a monstrous feminist anti-hero and queer doublings.

Our approach to queerness is informed by queer of color scholarship, which sees queer as a practice or verb, as well as a continually shifting identity and space. Anzaldúa (2012) argues for a vision of queerness that is predicated upon an intersectional understanding of identities. Furthermore, her conception of queerness is located in a borderlands space where those who are strange, out of place, or queer live. Anzaldúa’s (2012) borderlands are tied to the Southwestern U.S.; the Mexican and U.S. border. This land, previously Mexico, represents for Chicanxs, who are ideologically and materially in a middle space, not being Mexican nor American (because of the continual violence of racism,

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 361

sexism, and homophobia), a sense of being out of place. However, Anzaldúa (2012) argues for the reclamation of space ideologically, as a site of empowerment, in part because of the ability of those who dwell in the borderlands to consistently shift positions and live in ambiguity. Thus, those who live in the borderlands are shapeshifters who can navigate between constantly shifting or queer terrains.

Building on the work of queer feminists of color, like Anzaldúa (2012), Muñoz (1999, 2009) further nuances the performances of queers of color in the everyday. The complex working through of discourses that can be simultaneously oppressive and empowering results in spaces of disidentification (Muñoz, 1999). Furthermore, Muñoz (2009) writes, “Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on poten- tiality or concrete possibility for another world” (p. 1). This desire for a better future or space of possibility connects to Anzaldúa’s (2012) redefinition of the borderlands as a space of possibility. Halberstam (2011) writes that studies of queerness and failure offer the ability to imagine alternatives to hegemonic systems. This is the queerness that drives AGWHAAN. The film, in its feminist and queer leanings, uses the genres of spa- ghetti western and horror to imagine spaces of possibilities that don’t yet exist or are in the process of becoming. The in-between space of Bad City, neither the Islamic Republic of Iran nor the United States, exists as a transnational middle or hybrid borderland of hope and belonging for a diaspora. While this film uses an Iranian aesthetic, Persian language, and Iranian actors, it is in and of itself a discussion of hybridity and of conflicting and complicated cultural anxieties. We see this in Amirpour’s discussion of her identity that in many ways points to the possibility of Bad City, and the film itself, being a diasporic middle space or borderland, “Yeah, it’s a mash-up, but it becomes really liberating, because as a kid growing up I wanted to be American, like my white American friends, but I am Iranian and my culture is very fixed and strong and it’s been an overwhelming presence in my life. How do you explain that is part of who you are?” (quoted in Aftab, 2015). Additionally, both Amirpour and Sheila Vand agreed, “with this movie, we kind of made our own place that was as Iranian as we are, which is a mash-up of so many things” (quoted in Ito, 2014). These “concrete utopias can also be daydreamlike, but they are the hopes of a collective, an emergent group, or even the solitary oddball who is the one who dreams for many” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 3). The concrete utopia of AGWHAAN is described by Amirpour as a fairy tale that is not “beholden to the rules or laws of the real world” (Edelstein, 2014). Thus, a queer utopia needs a feminist monster, a fairy tale or malleable figure, to serve as an anti-hero to help actualize it. In our analysis, we further develop our understanding of queer utopias in AGWHAAN through our discussion of the monstrous feminist anti-hero and queer doublings.

Monstrous feminist anti-hero

Like any good western, AGWHAAN sets the scene for the dire need for a hero. It begins with Arash walking through the city casually passing a ravine filled with dead bodies. His casualness signals the normalcy of this image. The song that plays as the movie starts becomes warped the closer he gets to the dead bodies, as the title of the film boldly appears across the screen. The audience is soon shown the head of a pumpjack methodi- cally undulating into and out of a landscape that marks the liminal geographic space between Iran and the United States. The machine, whose sole purpose is to extract oil

362 S. ABDI AND B. M. CALAFELL

by force, is a symbolic gesture of pulling life from beneath the surface. This theme of taking life is further echoed by the dead bodies lined throughout the ravine on the outskirts of Bad City. The pumpjack speaks to larger cultural debates about the acquisition of oil from the MENA region by the United States, and the methods by which the United States has upheld necessary international oil trade to preserve U.S. economy. Much like the vampire needing blood to survive, the United States relies on international oil trade to survive economically. The pumpjack immediately sets the tone of the film, as Bad City seems like a post-industrial wasteland.

The queer utopia of AGWHAAN is predicated upon reimagining a superhero as a vampire, a monstrous feminist. Similar to heteronormative panics around queerness often being seen or unspoken, one of the potential strengths of vampires is that their mon- strosity is not always visible. In the queer utopia of Bad City the vampire is a feminist that strongly embraces the chador, a symbol that many mainstream U.S. feminists have long considered abject (Abu-Lughod, 2013). The chador, which covers her entire body, allows the vampire to be simultaneously visible and hidden, therefore enabling possibilities for transgression. By re-imagining the chador as a superhero’s cape and a source of strength, Amirpour’s vision embraces the complexities and contradictions that many (queer) Iranian and Iranian-American women must live within.

Unlike other female vampires who are often highly sexualized, calling attention to their bodies as a source of power, the vampire in AGWHAAN finds her empowerment in her quietness and her ability to blend in, challenging stereotypes of passivity associated with women in the MENA region. The Girl rarely speaks, but when she does it is in Persian. However, in highly emotive scenes, English language music seems to speak for her, such as the pivotal scene in her apartment when she emotionally connects with Arash. This choice speaks to the complexity of her identity as a transnational subject and may echo Amirpour’s own diasporic subjectivity. For example, the Girl plays “Death” by White Lies as she silently stands with Arash behind her. This is noteworthy as a running commercial throughout the film features a man telling women to take care of their children and the house before their husband leaves to find a new younger wife. This commercial, as well as the vampire’s choice of embracing the chador, illustrates the tensions surrounding the need for women to be both hyper visible and invisible. Fur- thermore, the vampire is the only woman in the film who wears a chador as others don’t cover or simply use a hijab (head cover) over their hair.

We first learn that the Girl is a vampire when she goes with Saeed back to his apartment. As he is making Atti perform oral sex on him, he sees the Girl and is intrigued. When he sees her again he invites her back to his apartment during which he tries to seduce her with drugs, music, and his dancing. Saeed, who is obsessed with demonstrating his strength and sexual prowess, imagines himself in control, as he has previously been seen in control with everyone else. However, he is clearly not in control as the vampire’s true nature is revealed when her fangs descend. High, Saeed initially thinks her fangs are cool, but when he finally realizes that he is her prey, it is too late. She begins seductively sucking his finger mimicking oral sex, harkening back to the scene she witnessed between him and Atti, before biting off his finger. Saeed falls to the ground screaming trying to slither away, but the Girl bends down, gazing at him ambivalently. She then turns the tables by tracing his lips with the finger and making him suck it. Thus, in making him suck the finger that she bit off she not only symbo- lically castrates him, but also mimics a sexual dominance that he used against women, against

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 363

him. The Girl is the anti-hero who uses monstrous feminism to free Bad City of one of its biggest criminals; a drug dealer and pimp who performed toxic masculinity and violence.

The vampire’s role as an anti-hero also comes across when she meets with a young boy on the street. As he rides his skateboard he senses someone behind him. After several moments of a cat and mouse game, she appears in front of him as he literally runs into her. Asking if he is a good boy, pressing him for an answer, he finally answers, “Yes.” As she implores him not to lie, she asks him several more times. Eventually, the vampire bares her fangs as she tells him, “I can take your eyes out of your skull and give them to dogs to eat. Till the end of your life, I’ll be watching you … Be a good boy.” Running away scared he leaves his skateboard behind which we see her riding in the next scene. Her actions with the boy serve a measure to intervene in early formations of masculinity and the (re)production of patriarchy.

Another significant example of her role as monstrous feminist occurs when the Girl senses that Atti is in trouble and flies in like a superhero with her cape-like chador to rescue her the moment after Hossein has forcibly injected her with a heroin needle. Hos- sein’s addiction has led to his family’s debt to Saeed and his desire for drugs (which he calls his medicine) that are killing him. Through Hossein’s addiction, we also see how illness and depression manifests itself in his continual mourning for his dead wife. This loneliness and sickness leads him to try to forge a connection with Atti.

In a scene at Atti’s home, Hossein asks her to dance for him in a reversal of the prior scene in which Saeed tried to seduce the Girl with his dancing. We hear his voice as he says, “I want to watch you.” Hossein seeks to exert control here, though he has no control over his addiction. In a moment of desire for a connection and patriarchal power, Hossein forcibly injects Atti with heroin against her will, telling her they are going to have a good time. We soon see the Girl walking through Bad City and stopping as if she senses something is remiss. She slowly turns around and moments later she jumps through the door with her chador floating through the air like a cape. With lighting speed and strength, she lifts Hossein off the bed killing him by biting him. Later, the two women work to dispose of his body. The vampire responds to the symbolic act of penetration by needle as she becomes the one who then kills and penetrates Hossein with her fangs. By replicating the act of penetration, the Girl is queering the heteronormative notion that women cannot penetrate or that penetration is solely the property of cisgender men. The Girl’s reclamation of agency (both for herself, and for Atti) within this context, should be read as a disruption of the patriarchal realities that many Iranian and Iranian-American women adhere to. Additionally, as Atti is not disturbed by the Girl’s monstrosity, we argue she also sees herself as a cultural outsider or queer in Bad City.

By the end, we see the Girl free Atti from Saeed and Hossein, and Arash from caring for his junkie father. Arash’s gratefulness manifests at the end of the film when he wants to leave Bad City with her to start a new life, despite knowing she killed his father. In acting as a vampire anti-hero, the Girl also disrupts dominant narratives of vampirism. Byron and Stephanou (2013) and Grady (1996) argue that vampires are often constructed as capitalist bloodsuckers. However, the Girl has little interest in this, if anything she is trying to make sense of a postindustrial world whose resources have been plundered. For example, she ignores all his money when she kills Saeed, but gives Atti his gold so she can use it to start a new life outside of Bad City. The Girl is a protector of women, and, by virtue, humankind in general.

364 S. ABDI AND B. M. CALAFELL

Queer doublings

Another key aspect of the film’s queer utopias is what we term queer doublings or relation- ality where we see the vampire and another central character as mirroring one another’s sense of being outsiders and lonely. They desire the utopic space and community. By the end of the film both Atti and Arash know the Girl is a monster; however, they accept her, monstrosity and all, because we argue they see their Otherness reflected in her. Her mon- strosity and melancholy in some ways mirror their own feelings of sadness and of being outsiders constrained by patriarchy. Specifically, we see this in her relationships with Atti and Arash. These doublings point to queer potentialities and utopias as they are driven by a sense of hope for the future. As Muñoz (2009) writes, “We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there” (p. 1). He further argues, “The field of utopian possibility is one in which mul- tiple forms of belonging in difference adhere to a belonging in collectivity” (p. 20). Like- wise, in theorizing liminality, Turner (1977) describes it as “a time of enchantment when anything might, even should, happen’” (cited in LeMaster, 2011, p. 107).

When the vampire first meets Arash, he is high after taking drugs at a costume party. Arash, dressed as Dracula, asks her where he is. Following this small talk, he tells her, “I’m Dracula. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.” As he turns to walk away she follows him until he turns around and asks her why she is there. She does not answer so he continues speaking to her and then sweeps her up into his cape to hug her. Looking confused and shocked by this intimate act, she invites him back to her home.

Once they reach her home, a pivotal scene occurs. Having removed her chador (her superhero cape) she walks over to the record player and puts on “Death” by White Lies. She silently listens to the music, staring at the record player with her back to Arash. As she intensely listens quietly she seems to be in despair or no longer in control of her emotions, perhaps conflicted about what to do with Arash. The music mirrors her mood as it describes the fear associated with change, being vulnerable, and falling in love. Arash slowly approaches behind her, pushing his face into her hair. As the vampire turns she locks eyes with Arash and then pushes his head back so his neck is in her proximity. She leans in and it initially appears she will bite him; however, she instead rests her head upon his chest, listening to his heartbeat. We hear his heartbeat thump loudly over the music. The scene illustrates a deep moment of intimacy between Arash and the Girl. She chooses not to enact violence upon Arash, instead relishing in the possibility of humanity denied to her. She may long for that which she does not have, which is potentially symbolic of her ambivalent relationship to power and monstros- ity as it causes her alienation. It allows her to fight patriarchy; however, she is still living within a patriarchal society in which her raced, classed, and gendered body is disciplined.

Immediately following the scene with Arash in her apartment, we are introduced to a transgender woman, dressed in a western style fringed shirt and bandana headscarf playing and dancing with a balloon. The balloon had been previously floating in the air somewhat unattainable; however, the transwoman now has a hold of it and is delighting in it. She invites the viewer to join her in the dance and its euphoria. We see the joy of the transwoman capturing and dancing with the balloon mirroring the joy the Girl feels in finding intimacy with Arash. The transwoman harkens to the laws established after the 1979 Iranian Revolution which made same-sex sexual acts illegal, and condemned gays

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 365

and lesbian individuals to punishment or death through a “codification of a particular interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic law)” (Bucar & Shirazi, 2012, p. 418). Subsequently, the Iranian government began to offer state funded sex reassignment surgeries (Bucar & Shirazi, 2012; Najmabadi, 2004). Thus, the transwoman in the film not only marks this oppressive history, but points to the power of liminality, and the possibility of queer utopias. Like the vampire, she is an outsider. In her scenes she is most often alone. She is not a central character and exists on the periphery of the film, much like the Girl exists on the margins of Bad City. However, her moments of euphoria, as evi- denced in her dance, serve to mirror the feelings of the Girl, and potentially signal new potentialities that are starting to be concretized not only in her or the Girl’s life, but in Bad City in general.

Like the transwoman and Arash, the Girl has forged a connection with Atti who first interacts with her after she keys Arash’s car (in Saeed’s possession). As the Girl follows her, Atti demands to know what she wants and they eventually return to Atti’s home. The vampire offers her the gold jewelry she took from Saeed. As the women remove their head coverings, Atti asks the vampire if she is religious. Finally speaking, she responds, “No.” Atti continues, “Do you want to do what I do? It’s not easy. If that’s why you are following me around I’m not a teacher.” The vampire responds, “You don’t like what you do.” Atti proceeds to ask why the Girl was watching her. The vampire shares, “You’re sad. You remember what you want. You don’t remember wanting. It passed long ago. And nothing ever changes.” Atti retorts, “Idiots and rich people are the only ones who think things can change.” As the vampire stares at Atti’s map of the world she states, “You’re saving your money. For what?” No answer is given and we are quickly taken to a shot of the Girl outside walking on the sidewalk. It is unclear what else was shared between the women. However, their interaction marks a moment of a shared sense of sadness, desire, and hope for other potentialities. Whether it is Atti’s hope to leave Bad City and prostitution behind, or the Girl’s desire for connec- tion, it is clear the women are bonded in their sadness and desire. Furthermore, Mendoza Forrest (2011) notes that prostitutes or “whores” were seen as evil just like menstruating women in ancient Persian writings. Given our argument about the reversal of menstrua- tion or bleeding by the vampire, the queer doubling of the vampire and Atti is unsurprising.

We mark the closeness or intimacy between Atti and the vampire within this context. The female vampire does not possess the (white) patriarchal power that vampires such as Dracula do. Thus, her relationality and Otherness as not only a monster, but as a woman within a patriarchal world, make her choice of male victims significant, as does her choice to align herself with women. The shared intimacy of Otherness in a world in which women’s bodies are commodities that they must continue to fight for control over, is sig- nificant as is the lack of sex in favor of Other or queer intimacies. Halberstam (2011) argues, “Heteronormative common sense leads to the equation of success with advance- ment, capital accumulation, family, ethical conduct, and hope. Other subordinate, queer, or counterhegemonic modes of common sense lead to the association of failure with nonconformity, anticapitalist, nonreproductive life styles, negativity, and critique” (p. 89). Halberstam (2011) echoes Muñoz’s rejection of the “impoverished” present. This rejection of heteronormative common sense in the present undergirds our con- ception of queer intimacy in AGWHAAN. Moments of queer intimacy are driven by

366 S. ABDI AND B. M. CALAFELL

the characters’ desire for be-longing and something better. Rowe (2005) describes be-longing as “a sense of ‘self’ that is radically inclined towards others, toward the communities to which we belong, with whom we long to be, and to whom we feel accoun- table” (p. 18). Similarly, Calafell (2004) describes the space between two bodies as home, drawing on work on the ambiente. The vampire creates community rather than progeny. Writing of the postcolonial gothic, Anatol (2015) argues that this genre often depicts “characters who refuse to use their bodies as ‘the locus of patrilineal preservation’” (p. 126).

LeMaster (2011) cautions against films that humanize vampires as they can limit the representations for queer audiences, instead calling for liminality. The doubling we see between the vampire and each of the characters is not about humanizing her, instead it is about marking the queerness or abjection of each of the characters. Their connections are moments of queer potentiality and Othered belonging undergirded by liminality. Muñoz (2009) writes, “I point to a queer feeling of hope in the face of hopeless heteronor- mative maps of the present” (p. 28). Certainly, the film presents the hopeless heteronor- mative maps of the present through Atti’s narrative of prostitution, the transwoman, and the failed moments of heterosexual connection Arash experiences earlier in the film. For each of these characters “the present is not enough” as it is “impoverished and toxic for queer and other people who do not feel the privilege of majoritarian belonging, normative tastes, and ‘rational’ expectations” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 27).

Calafell (2015) writes about intersectional decolonial monstrosity in demonstrating “the present is not enough” as queer temporality drives a future perfect of performativity that gestures not only to a thing done or imagined, but “a thing projected forward” (p. 68). The relationality and queer utopias of AGWHAAN are driven by intersectional desires not just for something better, but something that sustains them. By the end of the film, Arash leaves Bad City with the Girl to start a new life, perhaps driving toward the queer utopia they both desire. Atti, thanks to the Girl, now has more resources to leave Bad City should she choose, and the transwoman seems content, having found her place in Bad City.

Conclusions

Through a critique driven by monstrosity, Iranian feminism, and queerness, this project contributes to the incorporation of transnational feminist perspectives within communi- cation studies scholarship, specifically pertaining to the MENA region and its diaspora. The consideration of the intersection of monstrosity and Iranian feminism provides an outline for potentialities of queer utopia. The inclusion of MENA feminist critiques within Western feminist discourse allows scholars to expand upon, enhance, and call for more inclusive feminist scholarship within communication studies, media studies, and feminist studies. Providing counter hegemonic examples of MENA women resisting cultural suppositions, affords cultural scholars unique insight into the ways in which MENA women are fully capable of “saving” themselves.

Furthermore, our essay demonstrates the ways that the trope of the vampire becomes a resistive tool for (queer) Iranian and Iranian-American feminists. The fantastical nature of the vampire allows for a queer utopia through themes of the monstrous feminist anti-hero and queer doublings. Theorizing these themes, we find that queer temporality and rela- tionality undergird them as they create moments of resistance that blend glimmers of

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 367

the past, present, and future. These themes perform new ways of being in the world or identities that reflect globalized, postcolonial, and diasporic lived experiences where lines between cultures are simultaneously rigid and malleable, particularly for those in his- torically marginalized communities. We argue, “The film reframes female monstrosity as a source of physical power that enables women to combat a culture of gender violence” (Kelly, 2016, p. 98).

We find it significant that the Girl does not have a backstory or a name. While some might read this as disempowering; we wonder about the potential this ambiguity permits for MENA women to read their own stories into the narrative of the Girl. Abu- Lughod (2013) titled her book Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, AGWHAAN powerfully answer her query by working against hegemonic ideologies that position Muslim and MENA women as passive victims. Instead, perhaps it is time we start listening to and cen- tering their voices, as we question who is really in need of saving.

Acknowledgment

We thank Dr. Robert Brookey and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and support.

Notes on contributors

Shadee Abdi (M.A., California State University, Long Beach) is a doctoral candidate in the Com- munication Studies Department at the University of Denver.

Bernadette Marie Calafell (Ph.D., University of North Carolina) is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Denver.

References

Abbott, S. (2007). Celluloid vampires: Life after death in the modern world. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Abdi, S. (2014). Staying I(ra)n: Narrating queer identity from within the Persian closet. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 10(2), 1–20. Retrieved from http://liminalities.net/10-2/ staying.pdf

Abdi, S., & Van Gilder, B. (2016). Cultural (in)visibility and identity dissonance: Queer Iranian- American women and their negotiation of existence. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(1), 69–86. doi:10.1080/17513057.2016.1120850

Abu-Lughod, L. (2013). Do Muslim women need saving? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Afary, J. (2004). The human rights of Middle Eastern & Muslim women: A project for the 21st

century. Human Rights Quarterly, 26(1), 106–125. doi:10.1353/hrq.2004.0002 Aftab, K. (2015, May 20). Ana Lily Amirpour has created a completely new film genre - the Iranian

vampire western. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/films/features/ana-lily-amirpour-has-created-a-completely-new-film-genre--the- iranian-vampire-western-10265538.html

Anatol, G. L. (2015). Things that fly in the night: Female vampires in the literature of the circum- Caribbean and African diaspora. New Brunswick, NJ: University of Rutgers Press.

Anzaldúa, G. E. (2012). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.

Barlow, R., & Akbarzadeh, S. (2008). Prospects for feminism in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Human Rights Quarterly, 30(1), 21–40. doi:10.1353/hrq.2008.0009

368 S. ABDI AND B. M. CALAFELL

Benshoff, H. M. (2002). The monster and the homosexual. In M. Jancovich (Eds.), Horror: The film reader (pp. 91–102). London: Routledge.

Bucar, E. M., & Shirazi, F. (2012). The ‘Invention’ of lesbian acts in Iran: Interpretative moves, hidden assumptions, and emerging categories of sexuality. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 16(4), 416–434. doi:10.1080/10894160.2012.681263

Byron, G., & Stephanou, A. (2013). Neo-imperialism and the apocalyptic vampire narrative: Justin Cronin’s The passage. In T. Khair, & J. Hoglund (Eds.), Transnational and postcolonial vampires: Dark blood (pp. 189–201). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Calafell, B. M. (2004). Disrupting the dichotomy: Yo soy Chicana/o in the new Latina/o south. The Communication Review, 7(2), 175–204. doi:10.1080/10714420490448705

Calafell, B. M. (2015). Monstrosity, race, and performance in contemporary culture. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Carrillo Rowe, A. (2005). Be longing: Toward a feminist politics of relation. Feminist Formations, 17 (2), 15–46. https://muse.jhu.edu/

Chambers, C., & Chaplin, S. (2013). Bilqis the vampire slayer: Sarwat Chadda’s British Muslim vampire fiction. In T. Khair, & J. Hoglund (Eds.), Transnational and postcolonial vampires: Dark blood (pp. 138–152). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Cohen, J. J. (Ed.). (1996). Monster culture (seven theses). Monster theory: Reading culture (pp. 3– 25). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Dowdle, S. (2010). Why we like our vampires sexy. In A.M. Clarke, & M. Osborne (Eds.), The twi- light mystique: Critical essays on the novels and films (pp. 179–188). Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company.

Edelstein, E. (2014, November 20). Ana Lily Amirpour is the raddest filmmaker working right now. Indiewire. Retrieved from http://www.indiewire.com/article/ana-lily-amirpour-is-the-raddest- filmmaker-working-right-now-20141120

Grady, F. (1996). Vampire culture. In J.J. Cohen (Eds.), Monster theory: Reading culture (pp. 225– 241). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Halberstam, J. (2011). The queer art of failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hoglund, J., & Khair, T. (2013). Introduction: Transnational and postcolonial vampires. In T.

Khair, & J. Hoglund (Eds.), Transnational and postcolonial vampires: Dark blood (pp. 1–9). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ito, R. (2014, November 12). The shadow in the chador: Ana Lily Amirpour’s World: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/ 16/movies/ana-lily-amirpours-world-a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night.html?_r=0

Kelly, C. R. (2016). Camp horror and the gendered politics of screen violence: Subverting the mon- strous-feminine in Teeth (2007). Women’s Studies in Communication, 39(1), 86–106. doi:10. 1080/07491409.2015.1126776

Leigh, D. (2015, May 7). The skateboarding Iranian vampire diaries. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/07/skateboarding-iranian-vampire-ana-lily- amirpour-feminism-porn-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night

LeMaster, B. (2011). Queer imaginings: Liminality as resistance in Lindqvist’s Let the right one in. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8(2), 103–123. doi:10.1080/14791420.2011.566277

Mahdavi, P. (2008). Passionate uprisings: Iran’s sexual revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Mendoza Forrest, S. K. (2011). Witches, whores, and sorcerers: The concept of evil in early Iran. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Moghadam, V. M. (2002). Islamic feminism and its discontents: Toward a resolution of the debate. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 27(4), 1135–1171. doi:10.1086/339639

Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Naghibi, N. (2007). Rethinking global sisterhood: Western feminism and Iran. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 369

Najmabadi, A. (2004). Women with mustaches and men without beards: Gender and sexual anxieties of Iranian modernity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Najmabadi, A. (2013). Reading transsexuality in “gay” Tehran (around 1979). In (Eds.), Susan Stryker & Aren Aizura, The transgender studies reader: Volume 2 (pp. 1–56). New York, NY: Routledge.

Phillips, K. R. (2005). Projected fears: Horror films and American culture. Westport, CT: Praeger. Poole, W. S. (2011). Monsters in America: Our historical obsession with the hideous and the haunt-

ing. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Poya, M. (1999). Women, work and Islamism: Ideology & resistance in Iran. New York: Distributed

in the USA exclusively by St. Martin’s Press. Ramirez-Berg, C. (2012). Immigrants, aliens and extraterrestrials: Science fiction’s alien ‘other’ as

(among other things) new Latino imagery. In B.K. Grant (Eds.), Film genre reader IV (pp. 402–432). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Rotten Tomatoes. (n.d.). A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014). Retrieved from https://www. rottentomatoes.com/m/a_girl_walks_home_alone_at_night/

Shaditalab, J. (2006). Islamization and gender in Iran: Is the glass half full or half empty? Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 32(1), 14–21. doi:10.1086/505276

Tahmasebi-Birgani, V. (2010). Green women of Iran: The role of the women’s movement during and after Iran’s presidential election of 2009. Constellations, 17(1), 78–86. doi:10.1111/j.1467- 8675.2009.00576.x

Turner, V. (1977). Frame, flow and reflection: Ritual and drama as public liminality. In M. Benamou & C. Caramello (Eds.), Performance in postmodern culture (pp. 33–55). Madison, WI: Coda Press.

Van Gilder, B., & Abdi, S. (2014). Identity management and the fostering of network ignorance: Accounts of queer Iranian women in the United States. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 43(2), 151–170. doi:10.1080/17475759.2014.892895

370 S. ABDI AND B. M. CALAFELL