Not Without My Daughter

We watched a 1991 film starring, American sweetheart Sally Field, appropriately titled Not Without My Daughter. In the film Sally Field, her Iranian husband played by Alfred Molina and their daughter set out on a proposed two-week vacation to Iran. Once they set foot on Iranian soil that are greeted by a crowd of fully clothed people coming to aggressively hug and kiss the three of them. In the film this seen is visually alarming; Sally Field looks terrified as she is swarmed by an army of black cloaks. Within weeks, her husband changes for the worse. His Iranian roots come to light, and after five years of marriage, a trip back home was all it took for him to become an abusive maniac, or at least that’s how its portrayed in the film. The film is portrayed with a xenophobic anger; the women are all constantly victimized by the villainous bearded dark-skinned Iranian men. Little attention is given to Sally Field’s character’s manipulation of her daughter and the racist rhetoric of the film. The film ignores any manic behavior from Molina prior to his arrival; it just reinvigorates the stereotype of the heathen oriental. They may try to cover it in American appearances, but at some point that heathen blood takes over.