On Friday night, Mohammed al-Sayed donned a pale pink shirt and denim overalls to join a friend at a movie theater in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where the men settled in to watch a film about a doll on a mission to dismantle the patriarchy.
Similar scenes played out across the conservative Islamic kingdom last weekend. As women painted their nails pink, tied pink bows in their hair and draped pink floor-length abayas over their shoulders for the regional debut of the movie, “Barbie.
” While critics across the Middle East have called for the film to banned for undermining traditional gender norms, many Saudis ignored them.
They watched as the movie imagined a matriarchal society of Barbie dolls where men are eye candy.
They laughed when a male character asked. “I’m a man with no power; does that make me a woman?
” They snapped their fingers in delight as a mother delivered a monologue about the strictures of stereotypical femininity. Then, they emerged from the darkened theaters to contemplate what it all meant.
A snide headline in the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat declared that Saudi cinemas had become “havens for Gulf citizens escaping from harsh restrictions” — a twist in a country whose people once had to drive to Bahrain to watch movies.