From its commencement in the 1960s, Syrian television drama has been didactic in nature. In this context, a polyphony of voices debating love, sexuality, and marriage has emerged, (de)constructing gender identity and relating this (de)construction to larger issues of nationalism. Based on a study of sixty-five television serials and interviews with directors and writers, this paper focuses on the three most popular genres: Gendered moral tales, euphoric romantic tales, and tragic love stories with strong reformist tendencies, which often blur the distinction between modernists and traditionalists. At the heart of the nationalist discourse is the perceived role of religious tradition in society and anxiety over the West's role in Syrian identity formation. Gendered moral tales are those that yearn for a time when religious tradition was unchallenged by the West. A woman's honor arose when her husband was an able provider; a man's honor stemmed from the sexual purity of his female family members. Traditional gender constructions of identity and sexuality were unchallenged. The most well known in this category are: "Ayyam Shamiyyeh," "Layali Salhiyyeh," and "Bab al-Hara." Then there are romantic tales, which offer a model for marital success. In "Qulub Saqira," Salam and Karim are a happily married couple. Tension arises as Salam's work consumes her, and Karim feels he is no longer a "real man." When the conflict is resolved, the serial argues that gender deconstructions do not signify emulation of the West, but rather are in accord with Eastern culture. While "Qulub Saqira" deconstructs traditional conceptions of gender, "Qalbi Ma'akoom" advocates submerging the individual in the whole and a reinforcement of traditional gender hierarchy, rather than adhering to Western constructs of the individual self. Another category of love stories is represented by "Ahl al-Gharam," a serial made up of twenty-four independent stories ending in failed passion. Here the tragic ending offers a glimpse of a happy ending, which would result if traditional gender constructions were eradicated. If the writers of "Ahl al-Gharam" for the most part hold religious traditions responsible for their tragic endings, "Asiya al-Dama'a," written from a feminist Islamic perspective, critiques faulty religious interpretation and advocates a radical reversal of gender roles within an Islamic framework. Both the secular philsophers of "Ahl al-Gharam" and Islamic feminists of "Asiya al-Dama'a argue that deconstruction of traditional gender roles comes from within Eastern culture and not from the West.

“Why is it the women who have to be virgins?” demands her great-aunt in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Embroideries. Parvine poses her impassioned query to a group of women, three generations deep, about the expected state of women’s bodies at the time of marriage even while the same expectations do not fall on men’s bodies. Their conversation turns from marriage (arranged and love) and sexual pleasure (his and hers) to embroideries, vaginal re-stitching often employed to hide evidence of previous sexual relationships and, via this disguise, remake women’s bodies into – or remark them as – virgin. Throughout her visual and verbal illustrations of this conversation, Satrapi functions not as a removed narrator but as part of a larger group of storytellers, offering her own contributions while more often taking in the buzz around her: stories, told by and to other women, in which sex and sexuality are displayed on their physical and sexual bodies. Through these stories, readers begin to glean the extent to which “in heterosexual theology bodies easily become occupied territories, to be portrayed as faulty or sinful.”* Satrapi’s fellow characters-cum-narrators give in to and reject bodily (perhaps embodied) occupation by heteronormative systems and structures, specifically marriage, and in so doing accept or reject the expectation that their physical and sexual bodies be so marked. In and through a woman-only conversation spanning an afternoon, this varied group – upper- and middle-class; married and divorced, widowed and single; with various levels of education, practical, academic and both – creates a space in which they relive their life experiences, the ways they then responded and would respond if given another chance. In this paper, I trace the placement and representation of physical, sexual and embodied selves as they struggle with and, in some cases, transcend these states of occupation; I draw on Marcella Althaus-Reid’s discussion of ‘indecent theology’ and Saba Mahmood’s description of agency to trace the heteronormativity that serves as their occupier. By focusing on three women – an unnamed mother who has birthed four children but never seen a penis; Satrapi’s grandmother who has oft been called on for advice about sex and hiding its evidence; and Parvine, who ultimately rejects marriage and the bonds accompanying it – I trace the conceptualization(s) of self and body that results in or rejects transcendence. * Marcella Althaus-Reid, From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology: Readings on Poverty, Sexual Identity and God (London: SCM Press, 2004), 96.