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A feminist fantasy of sorts, Nair's film has plenty of political and cultural axes to grind. Yet Nair is ultimately less interested in taking whacks at "patriarchy" than in masterminding a marriage between the best of the old and the new. Technically, that's impossible. The principles of modernity and tradition in a place like India are ultimately incompatible. The two types of society can't help but drive each other out. Yet life is often somehow lived on ground that is impossible to hold. Never having been advised of the untenable nature of their mixed-up lives, Nair's cosmopolitan Hindus simply continue to live them. So maybe the problem is that Middle Easterners are too consistent and smart for their own good. Nair's bride-to-be is torn between her affair with a television host unwilling to leave his wife, and the groom selected by her family in a traditional arranged marriage. That's an unorthodox dilemma, to say the least, in a society where virginity at marriage is still a requirement. When the bride decides to tell her traditional groom about her sexual past, the issue is joined. The virginity problem, and a climactic family confrontation over charges of child sexual abuse, give the film its feminist twist. Nair is hoping for a society in which female virginity and the silencing of scandal for the sake of family unity go the way of the dodo. Nair's far from hostile to the men of the family, though. After all, the hero turns out to be a patriarch. But the problem is that so many of the things that draw audiences to this movie depend upon traditions that the film itself is challenging. In response to fascination with the film, Salon.com has even come out with a "viewer's guide" that lists and explains the various wedding rituals featured in the movie. Most of those rituals are designed to draw together the extended families being linked by marriage. In fact, that's the point of arranged marriage, which is more a way of cementing alliances between extended families than a love match between two individuals. The sophisticated Western audiences lining up for Monsoon Wedding are enthralled by India's exotic and elaborate wedding traditions, which the very modernity of the film makes accessible. But those lovable traditions may not long survive Mira Nair's feminism. Nair may fantasize about the perfect Indian feminist groom — a man traditional enough to contract an arranged marriage, yet confident and modern enough to accept the truth of his "virgin" wife's affair with a married man. But on the whole, arranged marriage and premarital sex are not compatible, precisely because not all grooms are unselfish paragons, and because not all brides would ultimately forsake illicit affairs for arranged marriages. So the blending of tradition and modernity that Nair is looking for is inherently unstable. Well then, so much the better. Why not have done with a barbaric custom like arranged marriage anyway? Of course, arranged marriage has been by far the most prevalent form of marriage throughout human history. And when you consider the population of places like South Asia and the Middle East, arranged marriage is probably still the most prevalent form of marriage in the world today. Maybe we ought to think twice before dismissing as barbarism the form of marriage that has sustained the human race throughout its entire history, and to this very day. Understanding the dramatic tension at the heart of Monsoon Wedding depends on understanding arranged marriage. The film's climactic dispute over the accusation of child abuse turns on a relationship between families of the sort that we find in societies with arranged marriage. In the film, the heroine's family is originally from what is now Muslim Pakistan. The Vermas are Hindus who migrated to New Delhi for safety's sake during the violent partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The family was rescued all those years ago and set up in business by their in-laws, who now offer to house the Vermas' daughter in America after her wedding, and to pay for her entire education. So when an accusation of child sexual abuse against one of the in-laws is raised, it threatens to tear apart families connected by the deepest of debts, both marital and material. Cementing those bonds between families is what all of those charming Hindu ceremonies (and arranged marriage itself) are all about. An American heroine would no more think of accepting a marriage arranged by her parents than an American family would think of paying for a distant relative's college education. We Americans go our own way (although with backup from government student loans, welfare, 401(K)'s, Medicare, and Social Security). In the Third World, though, there's no nanny state. The nanny's are your parents, aunties, and uncles, and when you get old enough, your children, nieces and nephews. In fact a critical role in Monsoon Wedding is played by the bride's cousin, a niece who was effectively adopted into the Verma family after the death of her father (a typical practice in traditional societies). Part of the point of the movie is that, when the chips are down, this niece is treated as though she were no different from an actual daughter of the house. On the whole, despite their happy blending of tradition and modernity, the Verma family is a highly modernized lot. Emotionally, they seem "just like us," and that's a big part of why American audiences are embracing this film. But in the parts of India where arranged marriages and all of those endearing marriage ceremonies are in full flower, the emotional calculus works out differently. The deep personal interchange and friendship that characterize modern marriages at their best are not present in many traditional Indian marriages. Instead, there is a delicate and complex etiquette of inter-family alliance building and collective honor, which takes up a lot of the emotional weight that we in the West give to one-on-one love. In a world where one-to-one love is not the only key to personal satisfaction, arranged marriage is far less of an "oppressive" burden than we imagine. So what, if anything, does Monsoon Wedding tell us about marriage, modernization, the Middle East, and the war? The Verma family does seem to hold out hope of a solution. Somehow this family and those around them are able to live through the sadness and contradiction of a changing world, and emerge with a life both vibrant and dignified. There are real families like this. In general (if in ways far less modernized than the Verma family) South Asia has been slowly experimenting with workable blends of the old and the new. What Americans — and especially conservatives — need to understand is that what makes Monsoon Wedding hopeful and attractive is that it is a blending of tradition and modernity. In our understandable anger and frustration with an Arab world which is literally trying to kill us (or which at least sympathizes with those who seeking to do so), many conservatives are now embracing repudiation of Islam, and forced radical modernization throughout the Middle East, as a fundamental aim of the war. This is a bitter and dangerous (if understandable) fantasy, one that no sensible conservative would entertain as either possible or desirable for any other society. It is all-too-true, however, that the Middle East's road to the bumpy, but provisionally successful compromise between tradition and modernity depicted in Monsoon Wedding is strewn with daunting obstacles. In principle, the problems in the Middle East and South Asia are the same. Societies built on dense kinship networks, collective family honor, and arranged marriages are inherently in tension with the individualism which is modernity's foundation stone. (See my earlier piece, "With Eyes Wide Open," for a discussion of how the arranged-marriage system in the Middle East serves as a fundamental barrier to modernity.) But the Middle Eastern kinship system is in many ways the extreme of a type. That system was originally designed for a tribal society that was entirely independent of the state. In that and other ways, the Middle Eastern kinship is characteristically "involuted," walling off families and villages from one another, and from the state. The upshot is that the Middle Eastern kinship system tends to force people into a kind of all-or-nothing choice between tradition and modernity. The traditions of collective family solidarity and honor, and the associated sexual morality, are so strong, elaborated, and consistent, that almost any move in the direction of modernity is immediately flagged as a threat and an abomination. It's no coincidence that the movement called "Kemalism" (the total repudiation of traditional religious and social practice) originated in a Muslim country (as the legacy of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey). And despite my criticism of American conservatives who dream of using the war to spread Kemalism throughout the Middle East, there is certainly a case to be made that, precisely because the opposition between modernity and tradition in the Middle East is so radical, Kemalism is the only way out. But Kemalism has reached an impasse in Turkey, and hasn't proven itself anywhere else in the world either. It's hard to believe that it will sweep the Middle East, even in the wake of an American victory. The reason is that more than a repudiation of Islam is at stake. We're talking about something deeper than religion — something of which Islam itself is ultimately only an expression. Ultimately, the barrier to modernization in the Middle East — and everywhere else in the world — hinges on the structures of everyday life, things like who, when, and why people marry. Even with the smartest of smart bombs, we will find it difficult to devise a new system of marriage for the Middle East. So after our victory
in this war, we'll just have to muddle through as best we can toward some
more complicated cultural compromise, of the type perhaps too optimistically,
yet also delightfully, and hopefully, suggested by Mira Nair's Monsoon
Wedding. - Mr. Kurtz is also a fellow at the Hudson Institute |
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ndian filmmaker Mira
Nair's Monsoon Wedding is an art-house hit, and deservedly so.
The film's wild mixing of English and Hindi, ceremonies and cell-phones,
pop and folk, illicit affairs and arranged marriages, somehow manages
to maneuver tradition and modernity into a fun and friendly detente. And
Nair's film couldn't have come at a better time. Although the protagonists
of Monsoon Wedding are modernizing Hindus, they can't help but
put us in mind of the Muslim world, where arranged marriage is also the
norm, but where modernization has turned into a frightening fiasco, instead
of a joyful romp.
