The Active Cry of the Double Other Nadine Labaki in the Perspective of Postcolonial Feminist Theory

Abstract

In the Arab world, where the film industry is not well-developed, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki gained the world's attention in 2018 with Capernaum, through which people see the social problems of the Third World and through director Nadine Labaki, people see the double oppression and plight of women in the Third World. As a female director from the third world with female consciousness, Nadine Labaki uses the film as a tool to cry out for the double other actively. As an American scholar from India, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has always focused her attention on the Third World and its women, combining deconstructionism, postcolonialism and feminism to form her own unique postcolonial feminist theory. Nadine Labaki and Spivak have a certain identity overlap- both are Third-World women, both have female consciousness, both have some connection with the Western academic or art world, and both have certain social status and their own achievements. Combining Spivak's postcolonial feminism with a film text analysis, this paper attempts to explore how director Nadine Labaki actively cries out for the double other in her films and draws a conclusion that the double oppression suffered by third-world women is in synergy. The greatest significance and purpose of this theoretically-oriented analysis of film practice is the social dimension, to provide the right to speak for the subalterns, for women, and also to expect to see more marginalized people and things through the medium of film, thus dissolving the authority of centrism.