CYBERSPACE—It's rare that a mainstream publication takes an in-depth look at an explicit adult movie, but that's what Vice.com's Mark Hay did with Kelly Madison's Women of the Middle East, getting the actress/producer to comment on the creation and intent of the movie, which is scheduled for a Wednesday release.
After noting that BangBros scored a victory in releasing Lebanese-born Mia Khalifa's first on-camera sex scene "featuring an Islamic headscarf as a key prop," Hay claimed that the scene foretold a "cascade of veil smut," and that professional adult studios use "the hijab as a bigoted tool, symbolizing the 'demure Middle Eastern woman' in need of sexual conquest or salvation at the hands of white men"—though he seems to exempt PornFidelity's feature from that scathing criticism.
"To its credit, Women of the Middle East tries something slightly different," Hay wrote. "Each of its four scenes feature a different type of veil—hijab, niqab, khimar, and burqa—and each scene is meant to highlight or provide social commentary on a different aspect of women's status in the Islamic world.
"If that strikes you as a bit high-concept for a porno, that's understandable," Hay continued. "And your skepticism is deserved. While the script tries to mix up the status quo of white male domination of brown women with a scene featuring a dominant veiled woman, and attempts to portray the lesser-seen world of conservative Muslim prostitution, it does so very ham-fistedly," adding that the concept is "still a fetishistic fantasy rooted in a white savior complex with a heavy garnish of Arabo-Muslim stereotypes."
But apparently willing to give PornFidelity co-owner Kelly Madison the benefit of the doubt regarding the movie's purpose, Hay interviewed her in a long article that may be found here.
Noting that Khalifa's Twitter following exploded in the wake of her BangBros scene, though others were upset at its mere existence, Madison told Hay, "[W]e thought: Okay, that's cutting-edge. How do we approach it in a way where it's not just taking a girl in a burqa doing a gangbang?
"I wanted something with a little more intelligence," she added. "There's not a lot of intelligence in porn [laughs]. But something that had a little bit of my own voice in it saying: Hey, what's done to these women isn't cool. But at the same time, they're these beautiful, sexual beings and I want to show beautiful Middle Eastern women in a porn."
At Hay's urging, Madison went into more detail regarding how the Middle Eastern women (whom she stated were hard to find that were willing to do hardcore) wuld be portrayed in the movie.
"[We're] trying to be a little titillating, obviously, with the different kinds of traditional dress," Madison responded. "But I started the video by [thinking]: For Middle Eastern women, veiling is not just a way to suppress her sexual freedom, it's a symbol for all the human rights violations against these women like rape and domestic violence.
"[It's about] taking the veil off," she continued. "Not condemning the Muslim religion, but showing that it's sexually suppressing for women not being able to show their bodies, being hidden. So we thought we'd hit on that taboo ... with an undertone of social commentary."
Among the commentary Madison put into Women of the Middle East, she noted that according to the "crazy rules" currently in force in Saudi Arabia, "women can't drive. They can be raped. They can be beaten. They have no rights." Hence, after putting Karmen Bella, dressed only in a niqab, in a dominant role, she also has Nadia Ali sneaking a joyride in her husband's car, for which he threatens to stone and beat her; Arabelle Raphael in a "classic belly dancing girl fantasy," and Nikki Knightly as a Middle Eastern prostitute in a "full-on burqa."
"It's not like I did a whole lot of research for this. (I mean, come on, it's porn)," Madison admitted. "But I did a little bit. Prostitution has increased in countries like Jordan and Lebanon because of all the refugees. They need some kind of way to make money. There's also a lot of increasing prostitution in Iraq because of the Iraqi War."
But when Hay pointed out that Madison had begun the video with "an explicit anti-veiling message—“For a Middle Eastern woman, veiling is not just a way to suppress her from having sexual freedom. It is a symbol for all of the human rights violations against these women, such as rape and domestic violence. Take the veils off!”—Madison responded by noting the limitations of her genre.
"I can't put all the social commentary in that I'd like to [in a porn]," she said. "I'm not doing a documentary on the suppression of the women. ... But even if some of the women say they don't want to take the burqas off, it's because when they do, they get sexually harassed in the streets. They get beaten. For a woman who has total freedom here in the United States, I totally support them on that.
"Sometimes I think porn is very limiting by not being able to get some of your personal social commentary out there," she later added. "So for me to be able to get a little something going, it's cool. At the same time, I've still got to keep it safe—not go totally out there. Nor do I want to do anything highly offensive to the Islamic people," concluding with, "But it was fun, it was challenging."
Even the website The Friendly Atheist took notice of the upcoming release, with the article's author, "Terry Firma," adopting a somewhat skeptical approach.
"I'm not sure I buy any of it, but it's nicely packaged that way," he wrote. "Porn traffics in make-belief [sic] and silly (if often attractive) bullshit anyway, so you could say Madison's underlying message is par for the course.
"To be fair, there's been Catholic-themed porn for decades (supposed priests and nuns getting it on), as well as Jewish-themed porn (much rarer) and porn fetishizing Mormonism," Firma added. "I see no reason why Islam shouldn't be the inspiration for similarly feverish, outlandish fantasies, but I'm sure there are scores of people who’ll beg to differ."
To see a trailer of Women of the Middle East on AVNLive.com, click here.
