Synopsis Of The Movie 'Oma': Redefining The Human

Medha Alisetty
Ms. Arpita Mandal
English 1010
November 28 2014
Redefining the “human” The utter meaning of life is to be able to abide by the rules of being human. Being human is not that easy though. It can be described in many ways like being able to differentiate between what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, whether to help someone in pain or not. Questioning oneself about whether being human has been their forte might bring up many questions. Grief, oppression, gender differences and violence bring out the true human, the translucent human, true colors of the human. Butler describes these and some other values in different ways that provoke questions in minds of philosophers and daily beings. Being beside oneself
while amidst grief and violence is what describes the inner side of a being human. Grief and violence, while being beside oneself, are what describe the inner soul of a human, the reasons of which do not count as human. Being beside oneself means not being in a state that is the normal condition when present in a community or in public; it is like a trance state of mind, where one is not aware that they are being different from their original conditions. Butler defines being oneself as being greater than one’s own self and knowing (Butler 115). It is something that controls the mind, illuminates from the mind, and makes the distance between present and the far region infinitely distant (Butler 115). It affects the daily life, the everyday processing and the regular chores when poured upon by soul shaking disasters like grief, violence, gender differences and oppression. It reveals the inner personality, making vulnerability more detectable. It separates from the outer world and slowly pushes a mind into an inner world of guilt and pressure. It may seem like knowing oneself better and alienating the originality in daily life from a mind filled with tension. The meaning and outcomes of grief, violence, gender differences and oppression, along with some other values of what counts as human, can be seen in the movie Osama.
It describes the lives of the people, especially women, when Afghanistan was under the cruel control of the Taliban. Women were highly oppressed and constrained in the society. They could not work or roam outside without an alive man in the household. In this movie, women of three generations have lost their husbands, sons and fathers, which means it is highly burdensome for them to survive in the Taliban society. They would only survive on food that neighbors or friend bought to them, the mother was a nurse but could not work anymore. They decided to dress their preteen girl as a young boy and go venture out to search for a job. Only a boy named Espandi and the job giver new her real identity. It was all going well until the boys were called into schools for war training. Espandi named her Osama so the boys would not suspect her, since Osama was a boy’s name. Suspicions grow and finally she starts bleeding, which is when the Taliban school officials find out that she is not a boy. The punishment she gets is being married off to an old Mullah who locks her up in his house, like all his other wives. (Osama,
Barmak) The movie Osama is so deliberately touching and smoothly defines all the harsh realities about what counts as being human. Grief comes out in many ways but some were significantly true and relatable. The girl’s mother describes about how their lives would have been different if her husband was alive. She explains how she struggles every day to make their lives easy as possible, but always ended up two steps behind happiness, behind finding what she desired (Butler 114). She lost her husband and describes what they had, love, happiness and content in daily life. She was beside herself, crying, moaning, with a sense of guilt that she was unable to do much for her daughter, which she would have done if he was alive. She was feeling completely helpless of her conditions. When the girl is changed of her clothes, and her hair cut short, she feels the grief of having lost her feminism. She plants her now cut hair in a pot and nourishes it in hope that someday she will be able to become a girl again, and relive those small moments (Osama, Barmak). She finds a skipping rope and begins to skip, even though she is a so called boy now, to somehow at least feel like a girl from the inside. She lost all her feminine roots like clothes and hair, and desires to be back to normal, back to being a girl (Butler 114). She struggled through the whole process of being a boy, by thinking about her old days, her old self, and crying it out. She was beside herself, while skipping, while admiring her cut off hair, by looking at her old clothes (Osama, Barmak). Butler describes being in the state of grief as being vulnerable, socially, politically, physically and publicly (Butler 114). Osama’s mother was socially quite distant from the community. She seemed like she did not want to get into any sorts of trouble especially with a preteen daughter and an older mother. She was not allowed to work at the hospital anymore since the Taliban stopped funding the hospital and she was a lone woman. In the beginning of the movie, she asks another man to drop her home so the Taliban would not suspect her background. The Taliban though still question them, but her mother manages to fall out of the dangerous situation. The man said he cannot drop her every day; another problem in her life was transport from one place to another. But if she had a son or a husband, it would not be much of a problem (Osama, Barmak). Well, the husband is dead, so turning her daughter into her son was the only option she had. If anyone knew about it she would be so publicly vulnerable, she could get killed along with her son/daughter. Osama too was under so much pressure and oppression to turn into a son. She was under physical vulnerability, the only way to discover her was through her body (Butler 116). The only aim for Osama’s mother now, since her husband died, was to get bread and money for her only family left, her daughter and her mother.
She tried everything she could. She worked as a nurse, but is paid less or goes unpaid, since the hospital owner himself has lost Taliban funds or does not have any money left with himself. She exchanged goods in her house for food. She had an aim, a project, a plan, for everyday – to find money and food (Butler 115). Even Osama had one aim – to work at the snack store and earn money. Both of them were hit by waves of different kind but managed to get up and walk on even though it was not that easy (Osama, Barmak). Every step was higher and farther from the previous one, but somehow even without being oneself they managed to live. But looking at a long term time scale, they did not have an aim in life, they had an everyday goal for sure. They just wanted to stay
alive. Grief is a feeling mixed with guilt, confusion, sadness, questions and reasons to how it could have been avoided. Guilt comes from time that was lost, choices that were not made wisely and the reasons have no explanations. Confusion and sadness follow like a chain. It makes one completely unaware of their open vulnerability to outside negativity. Grief makes oneself camouflage themselves as being chained, being like normal society, as not being weird as such, just the same like the rest of the people in the community, with no differences (Butler 116). One desires to understand why this might be the situation of their grief, or some might just loath and drown in tears of incompleteness. It is usually unplanned but when it occurs it comes like a mild tsunami but with broad shakers. Osama’s mother and Osama herself were victims of grief, and became everything that was beside themselves, but somehow managed to go on with their daily lives (Osama, Barmak). Violence, as described by Butler, is like a harsh reality and imposed threat that exposes the vulnerabilities in most dirty and filthy ways possible (Butler 118). In the beginning of the movie, women are seen in blue burkhas, protesting for their rights to work. The Taliban soon surround them and start gun-firing and arresting them to take towards hanging (Osama, Barmak). This is the most astringent way of treating women in a country where Muslims are supposed to be following the Quran. The people were ruled by the Taliban, which is one of the worst ruling orders, where they have killed people for unethical reasons and made human vulnerability exposed. Women were got over literally without their will, without their control, under the rule of the Taliban (Butler 118). Osama’s mother and her had to cover themselves at all times, and were not allowed to roam around on the roads without a male relative. If rules were not followed, they were either killed or put in jail, and then later hanged to death. A woman’s life in Afghanistan during the Taliban rule was not considered a life after all. She was expected to cook food for the entire family, stay at home, clean the house, produce babies and then take care of them. This was the typical image of a woman. More so they were not even granted basic human rights like education, freedom, independence. They had to cover their bodies at all times and were not allowed into the Mosques. They were considered as the recessive side of all human beings basically. Physical violence against them was like eating chips out of a packet, eat all of them, but the stomach never gets full. They tried to work towards it and get their rights but many people were tired, frustrated and gave up on attempting also because the general society was already used to the dirty norms (Butler 120). Being beside oneself cannot be described completely but at least can be given a broad idea about how it feels. Butler defines it as a porous boundary that separates from reality and puts a euphoric sheet of feelings between them (Butler 120). Being beside oneself is like being another person on the inside and being a whole new person on the outside, though the outside is what the society wants to see and the inside is what is blurry. Once this state occurs, it becomes hard to jump out of it, since it is sticky to one’s own grief, inner violence and oppression. When a picture gets shaky, a solid image of the person is seen, with a shook image of the same person but translucent much. Being beside oneself is the same, it is like being shaken and not the same as the original, but still the same without any compactness (Butler 120). The movie Osama depicts how Osama and her mother face the hard realities of grief, loss, oppression, violence and gender differences and show various scenes where they go off being beside oneself completely. Butler describes grief and violence exactly as how they are felt, dissecting every feeling and solitude that is sensed. Grief is a combination of guilt and sadness that makes one loathsome and drops them into a well where they cannot lift themselves up from. Violence is an aggressive character in life, which everyone might have not experienced but might have seen happen with friends, family, on the roads, on television, etc. But the people who experience it, get into the worst trauma, which effects them on large scale in their life span. Being beside oneself is defined deliberately as not being as the original normal person. Grief and violence, while being beside oneself, are what describe the inner soul of a human, the reasons of which do not count as human.

Works Cited
“Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.” Ways of Reading. Print
Osama. Dir. Siddiq Barmak. Perf. Marina Golbahari, 2004. DVD.