Citational Hooks

Abstract

In this chapter I conceptualize the citational hook, a term I use to describe within a cinematic or theatrical narrative, the interpretation of a popular song that imbues the lyrics with new and subversive or transgressive meaning), which is introduced through sing-along performances to Anglophone rock songs in Marjane Satrapi’s film Persepolis (2007) and Wajdi Mouawad’s play Incendies (2003). Working with Judith Butler’s concept of citation, Roland Barthes’s essay ‘The Grain of the Voice,’ and Michel Chion’s analysis of cinematic syncresis, I demonstrate how the performances in Mouawad’s and Satrapi’s respective works can be heard as subversions of French universalist stereotypes of Middle Eastern femininity and masculinity that are linked to the symbols of the veil and the gun. I contextualize the performances through the universalist representations of immigrant men and women in France that have led to strictures on Arab women’s dress and the social marginalization of Arab men. The sing-along performances demonstrate that it is imperative to look beyond received symbols of Middle Eastern women’s oppression and the stereotype of Middle Eastern men as inherently violent and to allow for a broad range of possibilities for how masculinity and femininity are expressed within Middle Eastern ethnic identities.