BRUTX – ON DEMAND – SERIES
On the niche, after all fairly new, of series which question the fact of being a Muslim in a Western society, women were expected. The good news is that they have arrived. And they are very fit.
The result of patient, even laborious work (three years passed between the pilot’s broadcast and that of the following episodes), the series written and directed by Nida Manzoor landed in France, after shaking viewers of the respectable Channel 4 in addition to -Handle. Awarded at the beginning of September by the student jury of the Panorama international du Series Mania festival, We Are Lady Parts confirms the judicious choices made by BrutX: to Veneno To Adult Material, the platform looks like a jewelry box.
“We make music to be represented, to be heard. “ We Are Lady Parts shows that being a Muslim woman forces you to make a little more noise than others. The megaphone created by Saira, Ayesha and Bisma is a punk group called Lady Parts (literally “female private parts”), with the appearance of a panel: Saira wears short hair and checkered shirts, the manager Taz is veiled in a niqab – which does not prevent her from having her tongue hanging out – Bisma is a mother, Ayesha is a lesbian.
Learning story
When the four young women, who are struggling to break through with their songs mixing references to Allah and generational neuroses, set out in search of a new guitarist, they stumble upon a white goose named Amina. Coming from a much less conservative family than herself, Amina has two obsessions: to be a nice girl and to find a husband. Overwhelmed by the roughness of the world around her, Amina reacts to stress by throwing up. And finally, what could be more punk than throwing up on stage? The young woman is enlisted and Lady Parts connects rehearsals, auditions and showcases with all… relative success. But after all, Lady Parts seeks fame less than a way to “Shout our truth before assholes distort it”, Saira explains to her employer.
Deceptively naive plea in favor of art and sorority, We Are Lady Parts is also a story of learning which stages the torments of the passage to adulthood by asking the question of fidelity – towards his family, his religion, his dreams. The series nevertheless takes its role as a sitcom very seriously: with self-mockery and a certain sense of burlesque, the actresses bazooka destroy the usual representations of Muslim communities. This should appeal to everyone, and this is undoubtedly its limit: without being flatly consensual, the series brings together large by its irreverent tone, its humor with British efficiency and its non-negotiable feminism. The series loses some of its bite there, and ultimately turns out to be less political than it seems. This depoliticization is, at bottom, perhaps not entirely unintentional.
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