In the last few years, the stories and perspectives of Indigenous peoples have moved toward the global center stage. And though its reception has also been fraught, AlRawabi School for Girls seems to at least have planted a seed for dialogue-if not genuine cultural change.Īvailable on HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others It does not feature any kissing or alcohol, but it is a far more explicit rebuke of the rigid norms undergirding Jordanian society. The show’s gravity made the controversy surrounding Jinn seem all the more ludicrous. When I finished watching AlRawabi School for Girls, I had a pit in my stomach. The color pink takes on very dark undertones.
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So the series becomes a stunning condemnation of misogyny’s capacity-both internalized and societal-to permeate, define, and destroy women’s relationships and spaces. At this single-gender school, male characters are secondary. What begins with the seemingly trivial ends with tragedy. Throughout its six, hourlong episodes, the girls of al-Rawabi School escalate their feud by wielding patriarchal violence against one another. But it is so much more-in all the worst ways. When a triad of teenage bullies-and the nerdy girl they terrorize-emerge against this backdrop, the show appears to be a Levantine spin on Mean Girls. From the first minute, the color is everywhere: on the school’s walls, uniforms, and notebooks.
The universe at al-Rawabi is painfully pink.
Like Jinn, AlRawabi School for Girls is a teen drama set at an elite Amman high school, where rich kids divorced from their country’s mainstream speak in a mix of Arabic and English. It was with great trepidation, then, that I watched Netflix’s second Jordanian production, Al Rawabi School for Girls, when it was released in August. The acting was subpar and the narrative woefully predictable. Although the show, in many ways, marked a milestone for Arab media, it wallowed in drab mediocrity. The show briefly depicted teenagers kissing and drinking alcohol, and many Jordanians felt these scenes tarnished their country’s image. When Netflix released its first Arabic-language original series, Jinn, in 2019, it provoked an uproar-and even a rare political scandal-in Jordan, where it was filmed and produced.