Deconstructing the otherness of Moroccan-Dutch people through cinema: meskina as a counter narrative

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Dutch othering discourse represents Moroccans as the most problematized group in society. Their designation as such entails being homogeneously perceived as the backward others whose culture is incompatible with the mainstream. In this rhetoric, men are represented as being oppressive patriarchs and women as passive victims who need to be rescued. This article examines alternative representations of Moroccan-Dutch people in Daria Bukvic’s (2021) Meskina and the undeniable heterogeneity of their experiences and subjectivities. The film provides progressive portrayals of Moroccan-Dutch women as independent individuals with agency and full control over themselves, their choices, bodies, decisions, and men as supportive and open minded. It foregrounds their heterogeneity and agency through a focus on their negotiations and constructions of their subjectivities to answer back the essentializing Dutch discourse which constructs their otherness on the premise of being isomorphic. The analysis confirms that the film functions as a counter narrative to the established othering rhetoric in the Netherlands through problematizing the conventional attributes and traits associated with Moroccan-Dutch subjects and simultaneously deconstructing their alleged isomorphism.