Review of Offside (2015) by Edith N — 23 Oct 2012

Anything for Your Passion.

I'm not sure why women aren't allowed at Iranian sporting events. The women in today's story are told that it's the swearing, but since they're in a pen next to a stadium gate, that's about all of the game they are exposed to. Another claim in the movie is that it's unseemly for the women to sit next to men, but of course the solution to that isn't keeping them out; it's segregating them, the way they're segregated in Iranian colleges. I've read a theory that it's because the men play in shorts. The women aren't supposed to see that much bare skin on a man who isn't their husband. Of course, men are watching the match on television in the public streets, but women are on the honour system, I guess, and aren't supposed to look at the televisions. I know sports are generally considered to be a man's field of interest, but that's not entirely true. And as one of the women points out, the women have their own matches as well.

In 2006, Iran and Bahrain played a football match against one another to qualify for the World Cup. This was obviously a great big deal for Iranians; it was the third time they qualified, the second since revolution. Our story begins in a taxi, where a father is searching passing buses for his daughter, who he believes is sneaking into the game dressed as a boy. The girl whose story we then shift to (I believe Sima Mobarak-Shahi, but few if any of the characters have names) manages to buy a ticket to the game, but she is detected as she enters. She is escorted to a small pen near one of the entrances to the stadium--though just far enough away that there is no view of the game. Any women detected are brought there, their names taken, to be arrested. Most impressive is the young woman (Mahnaz Zabihi) who disguised herself as a soldier. The other women crowd around her to admire her costume. A young man is arrested for smuggling in fireworks, and then they are all hauled off to the station.

They claim that the limitations on women in Iran are intended to protect them, but I don't think most women want to be protected in that way. "Smoking Girl" (Shayesteh Irani) points out that she is perfectly capable of dressing like a lady when the occasion arises, and we also see that she is capable of taking care of herself. (She is also the sexiest, in a boyish way.) Another of the girls seems to be an extremely skilled football player herself. All of them want to see their country qualify for the World Cup. It's a love of sport and a love of their country, and while I suppose it can be argued that women shouldn't have the first (though I wouldn't believe it), surely they want all those women to love their country. The women also point out that Japanese women had been allowed into the stadium when Iran played Japan, and there were apparently Bahraini women watching the match from an isolated glass room, which these women would cheerfully do.

Of course, no one responsible for the decision to keep these women out of the stadium has anything to do with the actual work of keeping them out of the stadium. They are left in the hands of young men who would themselves rather be watching the game. Or, in the case of one of the men (Safdar Samandar), home in Tabriz, herding his cattle. The women are not persuaded by any of the arguments as to why they're not allowed to watch the game; the argument that it is to protect them from violence doesn't hold much water to them, either, even though one had a friend killed the year before during that match against Japan. After all, the idea that they will be in special danger because they are women doesn't hold much weight if men have been killed. Certainly those soldiers would probably be more effective if routed to crowd control instead of shepherding a handful of women. They're just doing their job, and no one wants to know their opinion on the subject.

As it happens, I lived in a host city for the 1994 World Cup. Unlike quite a lot of the rest of the United States, I even lived in an area with more than a few fans. There are certainly a lot of baseball diamonds and basketball courts in the parks of Los Angeles, but a Sunday's drive through Los Angeles will also take you past innumerable soccer matches, and that was true before the Soccer Mom became a national trope. Today, South America produces a large percentage of World Cup-qualifying teams every four years, and there is a large population of South American immigrants in LA. So. I know better, I think, than quite a lot of Americans how important this game would have been to these women, if they were serious fans. The World Series doesn't really compare, except on those rare occasions when a Canadian team gets it. If it isn't one American team, it's probably another. But to countries where they call the game football, the World Cup is extremely important. This was about national pride, and the idea that maybe half the country shouldn't be blocked from it is probably why this film is banned in Iran as much as the drag.