Marwa Abdalla (GU-Q)

Between the late 90s and the early 2000s, a regimen of ‘ clean’ cinematic production unsullied of any explicit depictions of sexuality and nudity emerged in Egypt. This regimen has been promoted as one that caters to an ever-growing pious and conservative audience base who have long expressed their discontent with Egyptian female stars and whose westernized, sexually immoral, devoid of religion lifestyle stood in stark contradiction with that of ordinary lower-middle class Egyptians. Previous literature has attempted to analyze the cinematic genre and the shifting social sensibility that prompted its emergence through the broader religio-cultural context of the Islamic Revival that took its way in Egypt as early as the 1970s and whose effects have remained persistent. In doing so, they have attributed the changing tastes, sensibilities, and desire to Sadat’s Islamization policy, the immigration of conservative social models from the Gulf to Egypt, and heightened state-driven censorship. Building on what has been previously offered, this paper argues that the clean cinematic genre is an amalgamation of divergent elements, forces, and influences. Given the plethora of social, political, and economic influences, such as Islamization, economic liberalization, and modernization, in addition to cultural intensities, such as the veiling practice and religious discourses emphasizing the bodily discipline of women that have been prevalent in Egypt since the 1970s, this superficial genre emerges as an assemblage of these heterogeneous elements. Thus,  although the term “clean” may imply that films produced under this pretext are conservative and religiously inclined, they are not per se.