5. Consuming Bodies, Abject Spaces: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Transcultural Expressionism

Mary Coffin. 2014. “The Mary Sue Interview: A Girl Walks Ho.me Alone At Night Director Ana Lily Amirpour and Star Sheila Vand.” The Mary Sue, November 23. https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​auFuVA8JmbY.

Shadee Abdi and Bernadette Marie Calafell. 2017. “Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34, no. 4: p. 367.

Kimberly Jackson. 2020. “Dejects and Cannibals: Postmodern Abjection in Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch.” Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 7, no. 2: p. 150.

Vice Films. 2014. “Behind the Scenes of ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’” Part 2),” December 4. https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​WCoLFR_​1BwA. Accessed 1 October 2019.

The Vilcek Foundation. 2014. “Interview with Ana Lily Amirpour, Director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” November 6. https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​CtDim5P_​_​Uo.

Vice Films. 2014. “Behind the Scenes of ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’” Part 2),” December 4. https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​WCoLFR_​1BwA. Accessed 1 October 2019.

Shadee Abdi and Bernadette Marie Calafell. 2017. “Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34, no. 4: p. 360.

This scene is additionally laden if one recalls the laws regulating make-up in post-1979 Iran. When the Ayatollah Khomeini came into power, he enforced veiling and forbade facial adornment in the form of cosmetics, especially targeting lipstick. As Valentine Moghadam explains, some young women in the early 1980s who defied this law were subjected to “a novel form of punishment by the enforcers of public morality—removal of lipstick by razor blade” (Moghadam 2004, 1).

Mahram and Na-Mahram is the Islamic law defining relations between men and women and distinguishing between private and public, insider and outsider. Mahram are those associated with the private sphere of family and kin, while na-mahram are outsiders associated with the public sphere. Women and men are forbidden, under Islamic law, to look at na-mahram men and women, and women are expected to dress modestly when out in public. By wielding her more-than-human gaze in public and entering Saeed’s home, the Girl breaches the law of na-mahram in multiple ways.

The tattoo on the side of Dominic Rain’s head, drawn by Amirpour’s mother, translates into English as “pussy stretcher” (Vice Films 2014).

Shadee Abdi and Bernadette Marie Calafell. 2017. “Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34, no. 4: p. 361.

Shadee Abdi and Bernadette Marie Calafell. 2017. “Queer utopias and a (Feminist) Iranian vampire: a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34, no. 4: p. 361.

Kimberly Jackson. 2020. “Dejects and Cannibals: Postmodern Abjection in Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch.” Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 7, no. 2: p. 141.

Matt Mullen. 2017. “The Hallucinogenic Worlds of Ana Lily Amirpour.” Interview Magazine, June 26. https://​www.​interviewmagazin​e.​com/​film/​ana-lily-amirpour.

Matt Mullen. 2017. “The Hallucinogenic Worlds of Ana Lily Amirpour.” Interview Magazine, June 26. https://​www.​interviewmagazin​e.​com/​film/​ana-lily-amirpour.

The race politics, not surprisingly, became a controversial point, and the film’s success was likely undermined by bad press following a comment from audience member Bianca Xunise at a pre-screening discussion in Chicago on June 6, 2016. Xunise asked Amirpour, “Was it a conscious decision to have all the black people have the most gruesome deaths on screen?… what was the message you were trying to convey with having this white woman kill a black mother [Maria], in front of her child and then have her assume to be the mother figure for the little black girl?” Amirpour responded, somewhat defensively, that “just because I give you something to look at doesn’t mean I’m telling you what to see.” When Xunise pressed her to “what was your message?” Amirpour snapped back, “I don’t make a film to tell you a message.” A Twitter storm followed. Amirpour herself tweeted that she did not handle the question well and sent an apology to Xunise. Watch the entire interview here (question is at 9:50): https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​Xhm6MU11PXw.