Scenes from Zinat

When we first meet Zinat, she’s running a medical facility. The facility appears to be designed to meet the needs of females. That isn’t particularly surprising, considering that Iran is very polarized along gender lines. But, barging into her clinic, there was a male, and he insisted on going first. The females there, patiently waiting their turn, told Zinat to let him go first. They obediently submitted to male dominance. This obeisance to gender dominance sets the tenor for the entire film. It also sets up dichotomies and parallels.

The woman who submits by telling Zinat to let the male go first loses her child because she leaves the clinic. She has paid the ultimate price for her obeisance to tradition. Later, Zinat saves a child’s life by breaking with tradition. The message is quite clear. Blind obedience to tradition is the path to death.

There were several elements to that first scene to consider. First, a male stepping into a female facility would have been a violation of social taboos. It would fall just short of rape in terms of social unacceptability. The women reacted to this clear violation by consenting. The scene is strange to me because I know people from Iran, and I know that they are very particular and guarded when it comes to sexuality and gender. For the women to consent to this violation is to allow this man to culturally rape them. In this scene the clinic becomes a uterine metaphor, and the violation feels very much like rape.

When we watch this movie, Zinat “THE DOCTOR”, we tend to weigh and measure her from our Western perspective. The idea of this young girl, who looks to be maybe twenty-five, seems preposterous, especially from our cultural perspective, where the tag that reads “MD” is the product of eight to twelve years of rigorous study. It’s difficult to picture Zinat as a doctor because of her extreme youth and simplicity.

In the scene where a child is dying from epiglottitis, Zinat catches us off guard because she knows exactly what’s going on, and she knows exactly how to save the child. So, there she is, performing surgery in the field with what tools she has on hands, and in one fell swoop she is no longer some young simpleton, she’s competent and capable, and we have to re-evaluate our earlier bias of her. We see a sharp dichotomy between formal Western medicine and the traditions of medicine in the Middle East. As we weigh modern medicine against traditional medicine, we are also inspired to re-evaluate how this message can extend into a broader sphere.

It’s compelling that Zinat saves the child using traditional practices. In doing so, the movie embraces tradition. At the same time the movie is embracing tradition, it is also setting tradition up as a major antagonist. It is tradition that saved the child, but it is also tradition that would have allowed that child to die. The traditional practices held Zinat to her home and her role as a wife. Her husband did not want her to be a doctor; he just wanted her to be his wife. He and his mother were slamming doors and windows to prevent a woman from asking for Zinat’s assistance. Zinat’s home became a prison.

If I were to rewrite the ending of the movie, I would have Zinat’s husband take the classes he needed to be a physician, and he would run the clinic together with Zinat as equals and partners. It would help their community by allowing them continued access to medical care. It would also work as a cultural model where gender roles and marriage would become a partnership. Sometimes through example, sweeping cultural changes are made possible.