Saving Face

After watching Saving Face the picture of the middle east painted in my head just got a lot worse.  I know we are trying to see the middle east for what it really is, but it seems like everything we have seen so far is negative.  I kind of just see the middle east as this war ravaged place where people step on landmines, and women get raped and acid thrown on their faces.  This place sounds like hell.  Now I have so much more respect for Hamid going back to this place after he was living the life in the US.  The doctor in the film actually kind of reminded me of Hamid because they said that he lived in London but he was coming back to help out the people in his native land.  I think by educated people going back to their countries that are "not so well off" is a real gift to their country, and if more people started seeing this as their duty the world would be a much better place.  It's sad to say but if we're looking at this through the lens of cultural relativism  then the middle eastern life that we see depicted in class is actually pretty normal for these people.  If you think about it, a majority of people live in poverty, in conditions similar to the ones we see in the movie.  If the majority of people live like this, then isn't the life they live normal?  To us we live a normal life, but many people do not have the same luxuries we have living in the United States.  So we are actually the outsiders, and people in the third world, and war ravaged countries are living a normal life since technically they are the majority.  I think the reason we don't see them as the majority is due in large to the media and the pictures and ideas that are fed to us in school and everywhere else.  It makes it seem as though the normal life is the mom, dad, son, sister, dog, white picket fence life in the US, when in fact not too many people actually live that life.

It amazed me how in the movie all the guys that committed the acid crimes just blatantly lied about how they didn't commit them, and one of the husbands even went as far as to say the girl poured acid on herself.  That was crazy.  I think it just goes to show that the culture is very male dominated and women don't really have much of a say in their society.  With that being said I was very surprised to see, the woman lawyer, and the women that were trying to pass the bill in parliament.  I noticed these women were more fair skinned than the "common" women, which says that value is placed on the lightness of one's skin tone in society.  I even noticed this during one of the scenes where it shows a billboard where everyone on it is very fair, but ironically almost everyone in the movie and all the burn victims were darker.  Not saying that the crimes happened because they were dark lol, just saying that the color of the people on the billboard, and the people in places of power did not reflect a depiction of the majority of society.  In the end I'm glad that the law was passed.  I thought because society was so passive with women that maybe it wouldn't get passed, but eventually it did and it's good that the punishment was so harsh in order to prevent future crimes like that from happening.