Azur and Asmar
January 19th, 2008
Michel Ocelot’s animated film Azur and Asmar was recently featured on The Fabulous Picture Show. I haven’t seen the whole film, but as soon as I saw the clips it went straight to the top of my To Watch list. The film has been lavishly praised for it’s enchanting, extravagant, “worthy of A Thousand And One Nights” illustrations. As Ocelot points out Azur and Asmar, unlike standardized animation, “sparkles” and “glows”. On the The Fabulous Picture Show, Ocelot baldly states “I like Persia a lot.” This partiality for all things Persian is evident throughout the film. It is why the two heroes are given “Persian-costume” when “well-dressed”. Ocelot also cites Persian miniatures and Renaissance paintings as the inspiration for the high level of detail. “The pictorial style, jewelled and incandescent” as the Financial Times review put it, results in “beautiful cinema: cinema whose every frame could be hung on an art gallery wall.”
Some of the scenes do look slightly screensaver-like to me, and at times the characters seem to have stepped straight out of some antiquated pc-game world, but this ‘artificial’ look is apparently intended. As Ocelot states in an interview he has been “careful to maintain an image somewhat artificial, to remain in the fairy tale. I am not trying to suggest that the images are real, I want fabricated images.”
Azur and Asmar is very much a fairy tale, as magical as the stories Asmar’s mother tells the two boys. But all self-respecting children’s films carry deep morally-essential messages. And this is a French film. About brotherhood, and friendship and racism. Basically, Azur has discriminated-against blue eyes, and Asmar wears a permanent frown on his Arab face.
In post 9/11 terms, there’s a mountain-load of message to claim. As this review put it, “despite once-upon-a-time setting”, the story is informed by “a modern, liberal sensibility” which calls “for racial and religious tolerance, respect for women, and the virtues of cooperation and good manners.” There’s even the seemingly necessary critique of sexist stereotypes in the stereotype of the tom-boy princess. And, in this interview Leroy Elodie points out that unlike the traditional fairy tale where the resolution and reward is locked up waiting to be rescued, Ocelot “introduces the notion of choice for women”.
“Yes, I’m being political” Ocelot says, “these princesses, shut for life in their palaces, are oppressed women everywhere.” The film maker’s fervent love of the notion of choice for women extends so far it actually crosses the shore, where it stands about looking serious and nodding to the civilized tune of laws and bans detailing where and how and when a woman is permitted to use a piece of material to cover her hair, and what colour that material should be.
Ocelot understands that the love of choice needs to be expansive and flexible and tolerant and inclusive enough to recognize the need for a certain lack of choice for certain oppressed women, whose hijab-stifled minds need a little forceful unveiling. They might choose to think it’s their religion, but Ocelot chooses to know better. “It’s not religion, its slavery”.
But, for all Ocelot’s preoccupation with oppressed women, this film is about two heroes. Two heroes who, as every synopsis and every clip of the film will tell you, are absolute antonyms as to coloring.
One overview seems to get a little carried away, indulging in some seriously excessive description in pointing out every conceivable contrast in one breath: “Blond, blue-eyed, white skinned Azur and black-haired, brown-eyed, dark-skinned Asmar are lovingly cared for by Asmar’s gentle mother, Azur’s Arab nanny.”
They do, we are assured, share the same colour of blood. The scene where Asmar’s mother exclaims “their blood is the same colour!” is pointed to by some as evidence of that very deep intellectually-challenging tolerance-inspiring message. It’s not all heart-warming child-friendly we’re-all-the-same-beneath-the-skin sappy pap though. There seems to be a heavy dose of that, but just as often the film appears to come up against shocking realizations of how very different we are.
Although subtitles are often irreverently supplied for both languages, the intention was for the French to be subtitled but the Arabic to have no translation, giving the audience a helpful push into relating to the predicament of the confused white surrounded by dark incomprehensible people. The western viewer is left with a sense of “dislocation” and “loss”.
But apparently just the fact of having characters speaking and singing French and Arabic is more than enough to prove the film not only anti-racist but of “anti-racist educational value”. Ocelot claims Arabs have told him its good to hear such “well-spoken Arabic” in a film. I will allow that the Arabic is acceptable. Skimming through a review, I saw the words “of Paradise Now” under the cast list and for a moment my blood ran cold at the thought of Lubna Azabal’s strangled approximation of Arabic in juxtaposition with the Alf Lila u Lila setting. But the fact that it is good Arabic doesn’t make it comprehensible to non-Arabic speakers, does it?
Ocelot says that children “understand right away that in the world, there are multiple languages and in reality there are no subtitles… However, adults are troubled by the lack of subtitles, so I explained that it is much more beautiful like that. I tell them that this is part of history and that when we immigrate, the failure to understand is a serious problem.”
Ocelot, who spent part of his childhood in Guinea, in what he repeatedly calls “Black Africa”, sees the issue of immigration as being a central part of his message. “I was French francophone, white, Catholic, ie all the right things.” He was also a very bad little immigrant, who went around saying impolite things a la Crapoux, who Ocelot says is “very important” to the film, beyond the comic relief.
He says he relates to both Crapoux and Azur, and these two figures are central to what he calls an inversion of the usual story of strangers in a strange land. “I’m interested in the state of the planet, in relations between the west and the Muslim world. I wanted to talk, too, about immigrants in society, but in the Middle Ages with a changing of roles. So in my fairy tale the ‘dirty immigrant’ is white, blond and with blue eyes.”
That is, while Crapoux plays the comical offensive immigrant, Azur is the discriminated-against cursed white. As Ocelot says “discrimination against blue eyes is something that exists, as I discovered. In some Muslim countries, there are people who believe that having blue eyes is bad. It is unthinkable and I think it is a sacred symbol of the stupidity of racism. On one side of the sea, blue eyes represent the beauty and purity, and on the other hand they are afraid. That seemed to me very interesting.” So interesting that “the moment I determined that there would be a hero with blue eyes, I knew there should be a hero with black eyes in front of him.”
Ocelot: With Azur, I tried to create an archangel.
Reading these words and seeing the picture, I thought I saw an Aurens. It reminded me of this paragraph, from Seven Pillars of Wisdom: Mohammed’s mother knew herself old enough to be curious about me. She questioned me about the women of the tribe of Christians and their way of life, marveling at my white skin, and the horrible blue eyes which looked, she said, like the sky shining through the eye-sockets of an empty skull.
Ironic, considering the continuing craze for the ‘colored’ eyes some Arab girls find necessary to achieve through collections of ‘colored’ contact lenses. Clearly, the eye-colour obsession has a whole long tradition behind it, so Ocelot is more than justified in pointing out that the film’s title means Blue and Brown. Although Asmar isn’t a colour. But then Blue and Dark-Skinned doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, so the vague translation serves its parallelism purpose.
The film’s even vaguer setting is, naturally enough for a French film maker, “the Maghreb”, but there are also touches of Berber, elements of Andalus, and of course Persia. Ocelot claims that his fairytale celebrates “the Islamic civilization during the Middle Ages” which was “very different from the one that we know today”. While the choice of the Maghreb is obvious, the reason for the Middle Ages setting goes back to the difference between Islamic civilization then and now. Then “it was open, bright, friendly.” Just the place to set a pomo fairy tale. Precocious princesses, Persian costumes, Berber jewellery. Juxtapose to suit your fantasy. But Ocelot insists “in addition to a fable that can be applied at any time, I gave information of a historical nature.”
It’s not that the combination of historical information and fairytale is troubling. As this very interesting comment says “the point is not historical veracity”. The point is that very important message, “the message of tolerance which is a child of European Enlightenment one would say although this is a very qualified statement regarding the situation of the natives in European colonies”. Those are big words, and this is a long post, for an innocent children’s film most often described by something silly like “pure magic”, or “eye candy.” But looking at the very scarily stereotypical sorceress, from Ocelot’s Kirikou, innocent isn’t exactly the word foremost on the mind.
Azur and Asmar, with its burden of Tolerance, that child of European Enlightenment, will either enlighten children, or lighten up 100 minutes. Either way, it’s a children’s film, it’s meant to be fun and educational. Which is exactly why, like Disney’s Aladdin, it’s a very pertinent target of extended commentary. The film is actually perceived to be an antidote to Aladdin, here. I misread antidote as complement initially. A & A even has the requisite slapstick souk scene. This recycling of stereotypical scenes in juxtaposition with preaching tolerance might be one reason this review finds the film’s “blend of Indiana Jones, A Thousand and One Nights and a socio-political commentary on European-Arab relations” muddled.
Obviously I don’t know how the film ends. This will hopefully be rectified soon, but meanwhile I’m anticipating some agreement with this analysis: “with a flimsy excuse of a legend culminating in a lame ending worthy of the United Colors of Benetton, the film may have started out intending to bring people together regardless of race and color, but in the end, it just makes the divide more apparent.”
I am of course being very judgmental and prejudiced and pre-emptive. But then, that is pre-empted. Ocelot knew “if you ‘read’ the film with a Muslim mind there will be several things you won’t like, even though I’m celebrating the civilisation that Islam came from”.
It has been confirmed. I have a Muslim mind.
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