Moolaadé (2004)
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène
This was Ousmane Sembène’s final film. He passed away in Dakar in 2007 at the age of 84. For this last picture, the filmmaker focused his energy on a critique of his own culture. Female genital mutilation or circumcision is a common practice in several African countries. It’s traditionally performed with an iron sheet or knife. An elder will remove part or all of the female genitals with no anesthesia and then suture the wound with a needle or plant thorn. As much as 15% of girls forced to endure the procedure die from excessive blood loss or the infections that follow. Sembène wants to intensely critique his culture and highlight how some traditions must stop.
In a small village in Burkina Faso, the people live disconnected from the outside world. It’s like someone has preserved a place outside the influence of the West and colonization. Collé lives there, one of her husband’s three wives. Her daughter Amasatou is engaged, but she never allowed her child to endure the genital cutting that is seen as a prerequisite for marriage in their community. Collé has become infamous for this decision and is viewed with disdain by many, especially the elders.
One day, four little girls show up at Collé’s door. They have run away from the ritual preparations and want sanctuary in Collé’s home. Collé draws a symbolic line with thread across the threshold to protect them. This is a Moolaadé, a magical protection that won’t allow the women elders who perform the circumcision to enter. However, as social pressure mounts, Collé finds it increasingly challenging to protect these little girls or even her daughter when her suitor returns home.
One of the elements of this story that surprised me and speaks to how little I knew about the subject beforehand was that it was a group of women elders insisting upon and performing the mutilations of these children. I think in the West, we imagine this must be men imposing patriarchy on girls, but I think it’s more complicated than that. Apparently, in every culture that practices FGM, it is always women who organize and carry out the procedure. I began searching for the precise reasons why this is preferred, knowing full well that it is couched in irrational religious reasonings, and, therefore, I couldn’t find something that made objective sense.
FGM appears to serve a purpose in marking boundaries of both ethnicity and gender. African scholars have pointed out that much of male-centered thought in the West believes the clitoris is the most important symbol of female sexuality as it is where most pleasure is derived. However, the majority of African cultural traditions point to the womb as the core symbol of female sexuality. The cultures who practice FGM believe that cutting ends the androgeny of childhood and positions the girl in her gendered place within society. From a visual perspective, they see male sexuality as something that emerges while female sex is covered and hidden away. Regardless of their particular reasoning, this is performed on unwilling children who, in many cases, suffer horrible infections and can even die.
As a preeminent postcolonial voice, Ousmane Sembène speaks from this place of cultural reforms. Life under the French colonial boot was a nightmare for the people of West Africa. Gaining some semblance of independence (which Sembène comments on most beautifully in Mandabi and Xala) was good for the people. They could lead themselves and prioritize the needs of the people before those of an extractive empire. However, postcolonialism does not simply say the colonized should return to their roots and adhere closely to tradition. To not question your culture’s history & social norms is to add support to colonialism. Allowing history to become mythologized is what imperialists do, and it is a practice that Sembène knows will only do harm to the growth of the people.
While previous films have been more direct in Sembène’s hatred of Europe and its oppression of Africa, he’s no less angry here but has developed a mastery of his craft to present his ideas more nuanced and brilliantly. Collé is presented as the central figure in the story because, on an issue like FGM, it can only be women who save themselves from it. Men can serve as allies, but the hands that will tear the system down must be those of women. In the same way, Sembène, as a communist, understands that capitalism will only fall at the hands of the workers because they are the direct victims of it.
I see a lot of takes online about this film that cite it as a condemnation of patriarchy. I’m not sure that it’s that simple. Women are at the center of the practice, and Collé’s greatest foes are the elders who demand that every girl submit. Ultimately, men have the final say in the community or are supposed to. Collé’s brother-in-law becomes incensed that his younger sibling allows his wife to speak so freely and beats her when her husband refuses to. In the background, the women elders cheer this on, shouting about how Collé needs to be taught.
There is undoubtedly a strong vein of patriarchy here, but there’s also gender-neutral conformity to a degree, the idea that we must mindlessly continue traditions regardless of the harm they cause simply because “we have always done it.” It is a fascinating reminder that patriarchy is not just a thing carried out by men. It is rooted in gender binaries, without a doubt, but it is reinforced just as much by women as men in many societies. Any system under which a person’s rights are given or withheld due to their genitals or physiology is wrong. No one’s value is centered in any sort of artificial notions of “purity.”
The more I researched, the more complicated FGM became. Several critiques leveled at those who oppose the practice come from African women. They cite a tradition of Westerners using cultural traditions they do not follow as evidence of the “barbarism of Arabic and African people.” Several famous images used in anti-FGM campaigns are of the genitals of minor African girls who did not give their consent. Yet those making that argument are ironically ignoring the disregard for consent when performing the procedure on these children.
I think there are lots of cultural traditions that should be respected, but any traditions that involve forcing something on a person that could lead to chronic illness or death are unacceptable. If you have paid any attention to my reviews here, then you know I don’t believe in “sacred cows” in the West either. If an adult chooses to undergo this procedure, then I would say they should be allowed, but no child should have this done to them. Sembène is not going to present a narrative so simply, and there is an essential element that brings the conversation into a broader context.
Within this village is an outsider nicknamed Mercenaire. He’s African but has lived and worked among the colonists. He runs a market selling various valuable things, from clothes to kitchenware. Mercenaire also hits on every woman who comes by to make a purchase. He even goes as far as to suggest to those who cannot pay that they can come by that evening and exchange sex for the goods. This figure represents a Western modernization that has come to Africa, a devastating force that seeks to exploitatively sexualize the women of Africa. FGM can be seen as a reactionary counter to that aggressive transformation, not in that it justifies it, but it can explain the powerful resurgences of the practice.
Sembène is pointing out that on FGM, only an internal struggle can end the practice and protect these children from harm. Outside forces coming in thinking they can course-correct African societies while understanding nothing about them will fail and only impose other harmful elements onto communities. It is Collé, an African woman who was born & raised in this small village, who brings down the practice in her community.
By the film’s end, dozens of other women have listened to her and come to understand the harm FGM does. One mother tragically learns her child has bled to death after the cutting, and Collé offers her comfort within her home despite this woman being such an emphatic defender of the practice before. This is another point Sembène makes, that we must allow people to learn. Maybe tragedy leads them to understand, but brutally forcing a change of belief onto people because you “know better” isn’t going to embed the lesson permanently.
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