Jasira, a 13-year-old mixed-race girl, feels this strongly. Her father is from Lebanon and her mother is white American. At school, Jasira was very lonely. She was initially identified as Latino, and as soon as her classmates learned of her Middle Eastern heritage, she was called "Arab guy" (Towelhead), a racist language. Towelhead originally meant an Arab man wearing a white turban.
American female author Alicia Erian published a best-selling novel under the title "Arab Guy" in 2005, telling the story of Jasira in the first person; in 2008, Alan Ball, the producer of the HBO TV series "Six Feet Under", adapted the novel as screenplay and directed the film of the same name.
Alan Ball specializes in dissecting the boredom, confusion and depression of middle-class American life. He was the screenwriter of the 1999 Oscar-winning film "American Beauty." In this film set in the middle-class suburbs of Nebraska, every family looks glamorous and the American dream has been fulfilled, but every character is in the anxiety of suppressed desire, Life has lost its fun.
Several characters in "Arab Guy" can't be said to have much fun in life, and the internal contradictions of each character are very prominent. At school, Jasira was lost, but her sexuality was extremely awake, early and intense. After her parents divorced, she lives in upstate New York with her mother, Gail. One day Gail found out that her boyfriend had used a razor to remove the freshly grown body hair on Jasira's body. In a fit of rage, she didn't sue her boyfriend for sexually assaulting a minor, but sent Jasira to Houston to let her and her be with him. Live with father.
Jasira's father, Rifat, works as an engineer at NASA, and he resolutely suppresses the germination of his daughter's sexual consciousness. Jasira had to abide by a series of rules and regulations, including no revealing clothing, no tampons, only sanitary pads, and more. At the same time, when he was making out with his girlfriend, he didn't care that his daughter was around. As a minority, on the one hand, he is extremely sensitive to the discrimination he may encounter, on the other hand, he blatantly forbids Jasira from dating black men.
The black boy Thomas is the friendliest of his classmates. He doesn't care about Jasira's minority status, but his inner drive comes from libido rather than the pursuit of racial equality. When he was with Jasira, he never talked about Martin Luther King, only about sex.
Jasira's neighbor, reservist Travis, is also friendly to her. Like Thomas, his motivation also came from Libby. Travis is also different from Thomas. Thomas and Jasira belong to juvenile free love, while Travis is committing sexual crimes against juveniles.
Indian-born actor Summer Bishil, who plays Jasira, is 19 years old and looks like 13. Thirteen-year-old Jasira has several physical pleasures in the movies — peeking at a Playboy magazine under Travis' bed, and being touched by Thomas, and she claims to have an orgasm. Many women pursue things that they can only experience occasionally in their entire lives. Jasira has already acquired them at a young age without any effort.
By contrast, the film itself fails to form any climax until the very last shot. In fact, every main character has enough thickness, the actors' interpretations are good, and Alan Ball has no obvious mistakes in writing and directing, but the whole work still lacks soul and is not a success. Girls' sexual confusion and American racism are hot topics, and Alan Ball weaves the two together into a lukewarm movie. What is the movie trying to say? Audiences may be difficult to determine.
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