The bait and switch of patriarchy

This review is my opinion and contains spoilers.

“I didn’t realize what the consequences would be”

“What Will People Say” is a 2017 Norwegian film by Iram Haq about a Pakistani-Norwegian teenager who does her best to survive under the constraints of sexism seen in Desi culture. It portrays a specific experience as the film is set in Norway and Pakistan, with the latter filmed in Rajasthan, India. It’s assumed the family is Punjabi by the father’s insistence on dancing to a Daler Mehndi song, but you don’t have to be Punjabi to appreciate the classics. Some famous Bollywood actors star in the film, which can create some confusion as to what the specific culture is portrayed. As someone who grew up around Pakistanis and has seen a handful of Pakistani films, there are slight differences that make it hard for me personally to believe that the film is set in Pakistan (the pronunciation of Pakistan as “Pak–ee-stan,” the way scarves are worn in the market, or references to gol gappas as pani puris, treatment of Khwaja seras), but the type of story which invokes honor killings as a result of family shame is prevalent in both Pakistani and Indian cultures. This story does not result in an honor killing but threatens it often. It tells of a family learning of their daughter’s secret boyfriend and forcing her to marry someone else to preserve the family honor. I’ve seen this in the 2020 Pakistani television show, “Churails.” In Churails and What Will People Say, an independent teenage girl runs away from home after being hit and locked up by her parents when they learn about her secret boyfriend. The girl, in some form, runs away and is coaxed to come back, only to be forced into a situation where she’s subjugated and made to see herself as an object to her parents, her in-laws, and her culture.

In Churails, one of the storylines involves Zubeida (Meher Bano), a teenager who pays her eleven-year-old brother to cover for her boxing sessions but hides the fact that she dates. By the time she’s developed a relationship with Shams (Kashif Hussain), there comes a time when she forgets to pay her brother. He tells their parents that she boxes, resulting in them ripping through her bag to find her boxing gloves and reading through her text messages on her phone, where they find topless photos of Shams. She’s hit and locked up, unsuccessful in punching the door out despite how much her knuckles bleed. It’s thematically similar to when, in What Will People Say, Neha (Maria Mozdeh) is sent to Pakistan, her relatives also lock her in a room after she tries to run away, telling her she is engaged to a boy in a village in Sialkot. Zubeida, however, is successful in running away with the help of an outcast widow (Nima Bucha) who has been attentive to Zubeida’s abuse in the mohalla. Zubeida’s mother calls her back, saying she misses her. Everyone cautions Zubeida not to go back that something seems off. The rationality is that her mother loves her, and if her father is genuinely sorry, everything should be fine. An identical scene happens in What Will People Say when Neha’s mother calls her at Child Protective Service with the same message, leading Neha to brush off the suggestions of the supervisors at CPS to wait until the next meeting. When Zubeida goes home, her brother bets she is too fat to fit into their mother’s wedding dress. When Zubeida comes out in the dress, she sees the apartment decorated with a stranger and his parents smiling and waiting for her. Zubeida is shocked, but her father grips her tight throughout the ceremony, whispering that he will kill her if she refuses. It’s just like when Neha and her other brother pick her up from CPS in Norway; they only take a different route than she expected, causing her to run away. She tries to text for help, but her father tosses her phone out, telling her he’ll kill her if she runs away again. He says this until he finally drops her off at his sister’s in Islamabad.

Both films are horrific in their portrayal of the experience of a family obsessed with their honor over the needs of their daughters. Churails comes with the consolation that her new-found family is vigilant about the issues Zubeida could face, and they set up a plan for a possibility where they may not hear back from her. What’s unfortunate about What Will People Say is that Neha is unfamiliar with the culture she’s being forced into and, therefore, cannot identify with it (a culture she sees as “her parents’” culture). Perhaps Neha feels a distance when she’s in it because she realizes then how different her home environment was from what she grew up with. CPS did not seem to have a plan in place in case they didn’t hear back from Neha, despite feeling it was best to fit into a structure designed for conflict resolution and knowing full well how her father behaved in the previous meeting and being aware of the violent incident he provoked which brought her to CPS in the first place. When in Pakistan, she doesn’t find a community, even silently, at school. The girls at school say it was rumored she was forced to come to Pakistan because she was involved with a boy. Although she wasn’t in the same circumstances, Zubeida hadn’t found herself like other girls. Perhaps more familiar with where she could arrange for moments of liberty away from her parents, Zubeida was more able to form connections or build a life with others when she had the chance. Neha never had the opportunity, but even to the extent of gaining trust in some way to get permission to go out by herself, she hadn’t felt comfortable creating an arrangement like the one Zubeida created with her brother. Or was Neha just traumatized to behave outside the norms? The only comfort she found at home was a romance with her cousin, which resulted in tragedy very quickly when they were caught by the police, who recorded and forced them to have sex. The police threatened to release the video if her aunt and uncle didn’t pay 20,000 rupees. The aunt beats Neha and tells her father that Neha seduced her son. The father wants the cousins to marry, but the cousin refuses. Things don’t get much better from there, as her father tries to convince Neha to fall off a cliff. She comes home and is isolated by her family. After she runs away, there is a shot of her father looking into the camera, crying.

Compared to Churails, What Will People Say shows some remorse found in families who suppress their daughters. Considering how common honor killings are in these cultures, What Will People Say may have some nuance to its story, even though many of its criticisms are that it lacks subtlety. Both stories provoke strong emotions, but What Will People Say is likely to cause an audience member to seek ways to address the misogyny of the culture in tangible ways. Churails surveys many issues women face in Pakistan, with an overall call for respecting women in society in mindset and discussion, hopefully leading to actionable change. Both these stories, and the many like them, have value.

You can watch What Will People Say on Google Play with subtitles, but if you know Norwegian and Urdu, you watch on Prime without. Churails is available on Zee5.