Warner Bros., Erian, Ball refuse to throw in 'Towel'

By Sarah Sluis

One of the most surefire ways to encourage viewership is through censorship, and Towelhead is no exception.  Towelhead, scheduled for a September 12th NYC/LA release, received a ton of buzz after the Council on American-Islam relations (CAIR) asked Warner Bros. to remove the racial epithet and change the title back to its film festival moniker, Nothing is Private.  Refusing to budge, the original book's author, Alicia Erian, and director Alan Ball issued an eloquent statement defending their position.

Judging by the trailer and Film Journal and Variety's reviews, Towelhead appears to be a coming-of-age movie first and a movie about racism and identity second.  Alan Ball, artisan of the suburban dystopia (through his work on American Beauty and Six Feet Under), has been criticized for producing an uneven film, but the opportunity of hearing a story about an Arab-American in suburbia, far away from terrorist plots, piques my curiosity to the $12 New York City movie ticket level.

The film follows Jasira, who moves from New York City, where she lived with her white mother, to live with her strict Lebanese father in Texas. There, she must deal with her father's discomfort with her burgeoning sexuality, racism against her black boyfriend, and epithets from the community around her, which alternately calls her a "towelhead" or mistakes her for a Mexican immigrant.

Pare down the plot to a story of a mixed-race child raised by a white mother, and then thrown into another community where she must come to terms with how other people view her identity, and you have the story of Barack Obama.  The subject of race and identity is a compelling one, but superficially explored in Hollywood (didactic Crash and Tropic Thunder's "making fun of people who make fun of black/retarded people" come to mind).  With the upcoming and groundbreaking election, any story that engages with the subject of American race and identity, regardless of tone or flaws, will be on my to-see list.