Are women allowed to grieve?: 'On becoming a Guniea Fowl'

Still from On becoming a Guniea Fowl (2024)

A Guinea Fowl is a domesticated bird from Africa that is raised for its meat, eggs and feathers. In the same way women play this role in their famamlies. Girls from a young age are conditioned to serve the men around them. From their fathers to religious leaders to the men they soon must marry. Like a Guniea fowl their bodies are used without regard to their true desires in life. It seems strange to compare the two but in actuality the animal and girlhood aren’t that diffrent. Within this film we see how women are subordinated. Even in times of grief and victim hood they are not respected. The only times their life is taken into consideration is when they are discussing how their bodies can serve. 

In the Political Widowhood In South Africa, Mamphela Ramphele writes “The widow becomes the embodiment of loss and pain occasioned by the sting of death, and her body is turned into a focus of attention, as both subject and object of mourning rituals. The individual suffering of a widow is made social, and her body becomes a metaphor for suffering” In this film this experience is evident for the women involved. The widow of ‘Uncle Fred’ is unnamed and yet her grieving is made a spectical for others within the family. This peformance is made a part of womens gender construction. “...The body politic depicts and treats the female body as incomplete and inadequate…the female body usually requires a male body to render it acceptable..’ 

The film opens with ‘Shula’ in the car watching her uncle die. She’s on her way home from a party in a sparkly outfit. This outfit specifically is in reference to Missy Elliot’s ‘Cant Stand the Rain’ music video. ‘Shula’ is still and silent within this scene. She is in an impossible circumstance being told to take her uncle's body home. Magical realism adds on to the mystery and obsurdness of the situation. Everything is off. ‘Shula’s’  dress code represents a post-modernist society for women. Despite society evolving for women in  the global south this is not their reality. Women are recongnised as autonamous to a certain extent. 

She is still responsible for the family knowning when and how her uncle died. She’s dissociating, it’s showcasing the weight of being a woman in the family when death occurs. ‘Shula’ is still expected to peform mourning and her position within this film is to break away these cultural nuances that suppress women in Zambia. 

Magical realism is a narrative technique that places magic in realistic settings. In this film it plays a role by placing these characters in surreal circumstances. This technique allows for the film to explore womanhood and the limits African culture provides it. This technique allows us as an audience to navigate the film's heaviness. In a way it sheds light on how

obsurd these expectations are for these women. This film tosses between the realistic aspects of this experience for women in the Southern African region and the uncomfatable. At moments where you can enjoy the comedic breaks from the character 'Nsansa' provides 'Shula's' character brings us back to reality. Showcasing that what is happening is dark, unjust and uncomfotable.

Later,  within this film where all the women of the family are sitting in a circle discussing the funeral details. The wife is present. But she is now a widow. Though her precense is meaningless. This scene draws to a wider issue within African culture where womens sadness are completly disregarded in sake of keeping family unity. At this moment in this film it is made apparent that this uncle is in fact an abuser. He abused the girl child, he abused his wife too. But she is blamed for it. Becuase he is dead, her pain should die with him. A sad fact. The diologue brews with each of them. The space and the tension was thick and tears were cried. She is pleading with the elders but it seems that her voice does not matter.

Grief, despite being a somber emotion, is rejected by these women. As their main concern becomes the arrangement of the funeral. Their true feelings are rarely addressed.  But men are provided the privilege of fantasy, in remembrance. History can be rewritten and through death you can be idolised. There is no truth to whether he was a good man or not, and we find that he isn’t. But that isn’t important, he was a male member of the family

so in life and death he must be respected. This was fascinating to me. We see how the older women and men fight for his memory to be positive and strong despite him being an abuser to not only his wife but another girl in the family. When they are sinking in the dorm, it represents the weight of the truth. How painful it is to live with, knowing you have been abused by a man in your family that is hailed so highly. 

Patriarchy influences grief by shaping gendered expectations in the ways women react and engage with death. Women are often pressured to peform certain roles which can cause tension within themselves. Oftentimes women are pressured to become the caregiver, even if they feel unequiped. In this film all the female characters have to peform this role. So when the question is, 'Are women allowed to grieve?' comes up. I would suggest that women are to peform grief in a paticular way. A way that their true emotions are unable to be adressed. Like a Guniea Fowl they are to serve and remain domesticated in their household and in their bodies.

Refrences:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20027356.pdf