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The series Fallujah, Part Two of which was broadcast on Tunisian channel Elhiwar Ettounsi, answers outstanding questions from Part One such as the outcome of the case of the rape of the minor student Rahma. It also raises new issues, which are not, however, dealt with with sufficient legal precision: this reduces them to superficiality and empties the dramatic content of its educational essence, especially when it comes to violence, rape, and the employment of minors.
Many issues poorly addressed
Fallujah is a Tunisian drama series that raises important social and educational issues related to the lives and problems of teenage students in schools. These include rape, sexual harassment, violence, and drugs, but the show lacks comprehensive dramatic treatment of any of these issues. The series was directed and written by Saoussen Jemni and stars Sara Tounsi, Mohamed Ali Ben Jemaa, Rim Riahi, and Fares Abeddayem.
The director touched on sensitive issues but didn’t provide any precise legal references, rendering the story flimsy and failing to alert viewers to the gains that Tunisian law has offered to protect women from violence, such as Law No. 2017-58 regarding the elimination of violence against women.
It seemed clear that Jemni sought, in this version of the show, to escape the criticism that haunts everything on Elhiwar Ettounsi, a channel characterized by sensationalism and drama, which are given more prominence than any educational content. But the weakness of the script meant that the dramatic work produced is devoid of any meaningfulness; it presents reality and its social ramifications without any sort of embellishment and fails to clarify the legal data related to the issue at hand. This ultimately leads to a lack of meaning.
In the first episode, Jemni takes us into the family spheres of students at a high school called Fallujah as these students prepare to go back to school. The school represents the focus of events and climax of the plot as it relates to building relationships among characters and the dramatic turns these take, ultimately revealing the fate of Rahma’s rapist and Nouh, the educator’s abuser.
The first episode answers viewers’ questions, and the student Nouh is shown to be free, liberated after the educator forgives him—even though he had kidnapped and abused her. Events develop later on after Rahma’s rapist escapes punishment and is released from prison because he manages to manipulate the case somehow.
The series, which includes 21 episodes, is slow, drawn out, and weakly addressed in its dramatic treatment, as it does not focus on any main issue but shows many sub-issues, relatively disturbing the dramatic sequence, emptying it of its social essence, and making it restore stereotypical images of women.
Script lacking legal reference
The director touched on sensitive issues but didn’t provide any precise legal references, rendering the story flimsy and failing to alert viewers to the gains that Tunisian law has offered to protect women from violence.
After the scriptwriter and director made a serious legal mistake in Part One of the show when she married Rahma, the rape victim, to her rapist Ibrahim, which is not permissible under Tunisian Law 58 mentioned above, Jemni has yet again made another mistake in punishing the harasser teacher by having him fired from the institution without any other legal accountability.
Firing him and showing solidarity among victims of harassment did not help clarify to viewers the legal paths available in such cases. Law No. 2017-58 regarding the elimination of violence against women requires that crimes of harassment be reported to the school, and the punishment laid out for teachers is more severe than it is for other harassers because in this case, the harasser has power over his victim.
In terms of form, the director managed to highlight the importance of solidarity among victims of harassment, but she failed to pair this with the necessary legal awareness that needs to accompany these stories.
In this context, journalist and researcher in gender and media Khadija Souissi explains in an interview with Medfeminiswiya that the show succeeded in its anti-harassment messaging by showing the victim, Salma, in the schoolyard, shouting and exposing the harasser teacher. Souissi elaborates, “If a woman is dressed up or made up, that’s not an invitation for men to harass her. And the harasser cannot continue teaching. But the way this is presented on the show is still superficial because it does not thoughtfully include the legal background to educate viewers.”
The director touched on sensitive issues but didn’t provide any precise legal references, rendering the story flimsy and failing to alert viewers to the gains that Tunisian law has offered to protect women from violence.
By raising the issue of employing minors through the story of Rihab, whose father forced her to leave school and work as a domestic worker in the capital, the director did not show the dimensions of economic violence that are already criminalized by law, let alone the actual legal paths available in such cases. Souissi adds that such cases require the intervention of a child protection representative (a functional plan for immediate intervention when a child is exposed to any threat) as well as the intervention of the Ministry of Women and Family—not, as portrayed in the show, on-the-side mediation provided by the educator and security center intervention.
The director also over-dramatized the construction of her characters and the relationships among them to push forward event development, but this came at the expense of properly developing important issues and serious crimes in the show, which in turn is a waste of the opportunity to raise legal awareness among viewers. This is especially true since dramatic productions in Tunisia are scarce and limited to the Ramadan season, due to the limited market and lack of resources in comparison to Egypt and Syria.
Jemni sheds light on the suffering of Rahma, the rape victim, who is punished and criminalized by her family first, in a scene where the father kicks Rahma out of the house. Souissi sees in this something somewhat “positive, as this reveals the role of the family when it comes to perpetuating symbolic violence, considering the family to be one of the social institutions that perpetuates women’s inferior status—not to mention the gender discrimination also established within the family through the mother Faryal’s distinction between her son Bilal and daughter Salma, which contributes to socialization based on gender discrimination.”
The stereotype of the woman always making sacrifices
The series was not devoid of stereotypes marketing negative practices as positive: this includes the image of a sacrificial woman, like the educator Nour (played by Sara Tounsi) who waives her right to pursue her abuser, the student Nouh (played by Fares Abeddayem) so he could escape punishment—meanwhile, she is punished by having to change workplaces and go to a school farther away, facing additional suffering.
The show also has another example of a sacrificial woman tolerating marital infidelity in the character of Samah (played by Chekra Rammeh), Amal’s mother. This reproduces the stereotype of women as emotional beings tolerant of violence, marketing it as the highest level of sacrifice that reaps social approval and acceptance—making it seem like something positive.
The series focuses on showing the image of a strong man in the character of Nouh, journalist and gender and media researcher Souissi claims. “It became clear that the show was normalizing the violence perpetrated by Nouh on Rahma (played by Rahma Ben Aissa) when he notices the drugs in her bag. He assaults her instead of giving her advice or seeking to understand why she has them—knowing that she had them because her rapist was blackmailing her into drug trafficking. There is no balance between rejecting harassment and rejecting violence against women.”
On the other hand, amid the many issues that this series attempts to address, the question of single women freezing their eggs is not clearly tackled—the show does nothing to make this issue any less ambiguous. It is dealt with superficially when the school principal Laila (played by Naima El Jeni) expresses her desire to conceive with the help of frozen eggs, but Tunisian legislation does not allow single women to freeze their eggs except in specific cases, such as during treatment for cancerous diseases.
Despite the legal errors and superficial treatment of many issues, Fallujah remains an attempt to interrogate the social dimensions of patriarchal dominance that generate gender discrimination and sexual harassment.
