West Beirut Sexuality

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Now we can move onto the role sexuality plays in these works. In the film “West Beirut” (at 20 minute mark) Omar and Tarek begin to talk about the woman their uncle is with. They view her in an overtly sexual manner and even film her from Omar’s room. They share highly provocative and sexual stories, smoke a cigarette, and then confidently strut around town, while “Rock Your Baby” plays in the background. This is the beginning of sexual tones in the movie. As the movie progresses we see a shift in attention from the adolescents sexuality to sexuality in a larger frame in society. This shift is brought about when Tarek enters Oum Walid’s brothel. Upon entering we are presented with the sight of guns and two angry men. One of the women working in the brothel …show more content…

When Tarek first enters the brothel, two angry men came out and grabbed guns. The tension created by the brothel could be enough to cause violence in the area, and as we’ve seen earlier in the movie, one attack could cause a big change to politics. After the first attack in the movie, Beirut is divided into east and west Beirut, and Tarek can no longer attend school. A similar situation could occur due to sexuality, if the men in the brothel decided to attack those of another faith. A scene like this nearly did play out when two men of differing faiths had bed the same woman. Although they did end up taking revenge on rosie instead of each other, we can still see the role sexuality has in religion. As Oum Walid says “Since when does a bed have a religion?” Another example of the role of sexuality is the “Secret Code”. The secret code is that in Zeytuni having a bra on your car or person is what gets you safe passage. The bra determines whether or not you’ll be killed for passing through a no go zone or not. This shows a that sexuality has an enormous amount of power and influence in

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