The Object-Gaze: Shame, Hejab, Cinema

The method for torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib was chosen because it was assumed that the Islamic modesty system, or hejab, makes Muslims especially vulnerable to shame. Through an examination of the films of the Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami, who directs films under the censorship rules imposed by hejab, and an examination of the philosoph- ical and psychoanalytic literature on shame, this paper calls into ques- tion both the assumption of the torturers and many of the restraints of the modesty system.