RELIGIOUS REVIVAL, MINORITY STATUS, AND COPTIC WOMEN

A brief overview of recent Coptic history helps to shed light on the relevance of religious films and how they reflect modern church ideals of women's roles and duties. It is widely acknowledged that during Pope Shenouda's reign, Copts faced a challenging political climate. President Anwar al-Sadat (r. 1970–81) cultivated and supported Islamist factions to counter the populist Arab socialism of his predecessor Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir (r. 1956–70). Sadat gave financial and political support to Islamist organizations, allowing them to widen their proselytizing activities in social clubs, universities, and professional syndicates. In contrast, public manifestations of “Copticness” were deemed potentially seditious and promptly suppressed.Footnote ²⁶ Sadat's government saw any demonstrations of Coptic religiosity, symbolism, art, or historical consciousness as provocative, divisive, and threatening to Egyptian unity. While mosques, Islamic charitable organizations, and religious endowments received state subsidies, Coptic churches, monasteries, and institutions received no state funding.Footnote ²⁷ Following a public rift with Sadat—particularly after the Zawya al-Hamra incident of 1981, when anti-Coptic violence erupted following Sadat's rebuke of Coptic demands for equalityFootnote ²⁸—Pope Shenouda was marginalized from the political field, living under “monastery arrest” in Wadi al-Natrun from 1981 to 1985.

Under Mubarak's rule (1981–2011) and to the present, members of hardline Islamist organizations such as the Islamic Group and, more recently, the Salafists have targeted Copts as scapegoats for Egypt's failed political and economic policies. Copts have been frequently characterized in political speeches, religious sermons, and the media as Christian sympathizers with Western interests against those of Egypt. As Coptic churches and individuals are periodically attacked and as casualties mount, Copts have become more apprehensive about their future. To the dismay of many in post-Mubarak Egypt, radicals have continued to use anti-Coptic slogans to some effect.

But to speak of the Coptic experience in passive terms would overlook the Copts’ resolve to assert their Egyptian Christian identity. The Coptic Orthodox Church, under Shenouda's leadership, led a spiritual revival to strengthen the faith, partly by turning to the church's rich history of struggle and defiance. The Coptic calendar dates to the rule of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (284–305 c.e.), when thousands of Egyptian Christians were killed for their beliefs. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 c.e., the Copts dissented from the majority Byzantine Orthodox Church in a dispute over the nature of Christ. Through books, pamphlets, audiocassettes, sermons, and now visual media, the church has reminded believers of its fierce theological independence and of the sacrifices made by scores of saints and martyrs, noting that much as Christ delivered those heroic men and women in earlier centuries, he will enable today's Copts to withstand hardships, preserve their religious ideals, and evangelize for their faith.Footnote ²⁹

Parallel to this clerically dominated revival has been another development, which might be characterized as a grassroots “charismatic renewal.”Footnote ³⁰ Like many Catholics in Latin America and elsewhere since the 1960s, Coptic participants in the charismatic renewal movement have emphasized the power of the Holy Spirit to mobilize spiritual activism; sought “ecstatic spirituality,” including faith healing; and partaken in tangible religious experiences that provide “palpable proof of the presence of the Spirit” among believers.Footnote ³¹ In their search for spiritual gratification, Coptic believers seek faith healers, organize at-home Bible studies, and engage in lively worship services with charismatic singing and praise. At the same time, modern forms of media—from audiocassettes in the 1970s and 1980s to satellite television and video films today—have enabled a more personal encounter with God in the privacy of the home. During Shenouda's reign, some Orthodox leaders publicly shunned Pentecostal or charismatic tendencies, referring to them respectively as al-tayyār khamsīnī or al-tayyār al-karismatī.Footnote ³² But a process of charismatization, in which charismatic influences alter and revitalize indigenous forms of Christianity, has palpably touched Egyptian Christians.Footnote ³³ In the early 21st century, charismatic trends, in practice if not in name, have been embraced by many of the lay faithful and increasingly by clerical leaders. Specifically, the latter have recognized—much like their global correlates—the power of visual media to create a more visceral encounter with the divine, strengthen the bonds between believers and their church, and reinforce Orthodoxy and its leadership.Footnote ³⁴

The church has turned to diverse forms of media, including television, audio recordings, and film, in addition to the more traditional pulpit, to entrench its authority within Coptic life. As Paul Rowe writes, Pope Shenouda “and his clergy worked hard to reinforce their pre-eminence as leaders of the community in Egypt.”Footnote ³⁵ Tolerance of dissent waned and the church revived its powers of excommunication, using them against intellectuals, theologians, and ordinary believers who violated its dictums.Footnote ³⁶ Moreover, a process of clericalization, through which clergymen gained greater authority over most aspects of Coptic religious and social life, has elevated revered monastic ideals such as chastity, obedience, rigorous prayer, fasting, and gender-segregated church spaces into normative practice.Footnote ³⁷ Themes of asceticism and sacrifice, in particular, undergird many hagiopics, linking the church and its saints to the very survival of the community.

In this context, while both men and women have been more confined to rigid gender roles, Coptic women's rights and status have become particularly restricted by the church's paternalistic dictums and the increasingly conservative social climate in Egypt. In recent decades, a small number of women have served as nuns and consecrated deaconesses (mukarrasāt) and some have volunteered as Sunday school teachers and religious mentors (khādimāt),Footnote ³⁸ but the church's strict interpretations of biblical teachings and canon laws hindered most from undertaking active leadership roles within their community. This marginalization seemed out of step with the generations of women who had benefited from social and educational reforms and become more integrated within the professional labor force, serving as bankers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and university professors. Prominent Coptic activist Marie Assaad, the first woman appointed to an executive position at the World Council of Churches, from 1980 to 1986, dealt with an array of challenges “as a woman coming from a church that did not acknowledge women in the hierarchy.”Footnote ³⁹ In dismay over women's future within the community, Assaad wondered in a 2011 interview whether Coptic women could ever carve out their own space within this rigid patriarchal infrastructure: “How can we?” she noted. “We are not educated in this way.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Following Shenouda's death in March 2012, church elders compiled a list of eligible voters for the planned papal elections: only 139 of the 2,594 names, or roughly 5 percent, were women.Footnote ⁴¹

Over the years, clerical leaders have responded to accusations of women's marginalization with a mixture of denial and sarcasm. When asked by a journalist in 1999 why so few women held leadership positions within the church, Shenouda replied that there were two female representatives out of twenty-four in the Coptic Communal Council (al-Majlis al-Milli), then countered: “What do you want? A whole council made up of women?”Footnote ⁴² Sermons and writings by the pope and high-ranking bishops are characterized by literalist understandings of a woman's role. In a 1993 text, Shenouda noted that “women can perform many duties which are useful in the church, but they were not called for priesthood. We are not to be blamed for this because this is not our teaching, it is the Biblical teaching.”Footnote ⁴³ Referring to a well-known passage from 1 Corinthians, the pope continued:

As we will see, Coptic hagiopics echo these teachings, promoting female deference toward male and especially clerical authority and disparaging women's autonomy.

The church's attitudes toward women have played out not just in the community but also in the national arena. Over the past decade, sectarian clashes have erupted over accusations of the forced conversion and kidnapping (first by Muslims and then by the Coptic Church) of Coptic women, including Wafaa Qustantine (2004), Camillia Shehata (2010), and ʿAbir Talʿat Fakhri (2011), all of whom had been allegedly trapped in abusive marriages. While Muslim religious extremism and the Egyptian government's divisive policies were to blame for the sectarian discord surrounding these incidents, the church's paternalism toward women was also complicit. In consolidating clerical control over the Coptic population, Shenouda turned to fundamentalist biblical interpretations on a variety of social and legal issues, specifically with respect to women's rights.Footnote ⁴⁵ Prior to the adoption of the new constitution in 2012, marriage and divorce between members of the same non-Muslim group were generally adjudicated under that denomination's canons.Footnote ⁴⁶ But over the course of his papacy, Shenouda sought to expand the church's authority in these areas, for example by issuing decrees that effectively reduced the grounds for marriage dissolution to cases of adultery.Footnote ⁴⁷ To the dismay of feminists and other activists, two crucial conditions that had been part of Coptic legal traditions and enshrined in the 1938 Code of Personal Status were thrown out: those permitting divorce based on “life-endangering or physical harm inflicted by a spouse that prejudices the other spouse's health” and on “maltreatment or blatant violation of marital rights leading to a state of contempt between the spouses and physical separation between them for at least three years.”Footnote ⁴⁸

For some, conversion to another Christian sect or to Islam, an act that automatically placed one within the jurisdiction of Islamic personal status law and enabled divorce within Egyptian national courts, became the only recourse for marriage dissolution.Footnote ⁴⁹ In papal decrees issued in 1971 and 1996, Shenouda prohibited divorceés who had sought a civil rather than a church-sanctioned divorce from remarrying.Footnote ⁵⁰ As of 2011, this intransigence had created “a legal limbo for nearly 50,000 Copts, whose marriages [Egyptian national] courts dissolved on grounds other than adultery.” These people, as Yüksel Sezgin writes, “are practically banned from remarriage because, in the eyes of the church, they are still married.”Footnote ⁵¹ Many complained of the church's rigid tendencies,Footnote ⁵² and following Mubarak's downfall in February 2011, Coptic activists renewed calls for the church to respect their rights to divorce and/or remarry. In the final months of Shenouda's papacy, their outcries were met with rejection and even Coptic-on-Coptic violence.Footnote ⁵³ As we will see in the following sections, the church's views on the eternality of marriage and its call for women in particular to tolerate spousal abuse for the sake of marital harmony are central themes within Coptic hagiopics.

THE RISE OF COPTIC “HOLY-WOOD”

Egypt has a long history of religious films dating back to the Nasirist era, when movies like Ahmad al-Tukhi's Bilal Muʾazzin al-Rasul (1952–53) and Youssef Chahine's al-Nasir Salah al-Din (1963) explored themes of Muslim heroism and Arab nationalism.Footnote ⁵⁴ Historically, Copts and their social, religious, and political concerns have been virtually absent from Egypt's nationalized cinema. As Viola Shafik writes, only a few films have ever dealt “with the Coptic religious environment. Mosques are often depicted but rarely churches. Religious celebrations, feasts, marriages, funerals . . . bear an exclusively Muslim mark. Christian ethics, religious culture, and matters of personal status have not been represented . . . nor has Coptic history.”Footnote ⁵⁵ In recent years, Egyptian filmmakers have begun to remedy this gap, sometimes to provocative effect, with films such as Bahibb Issima (2004) and Wahid Sifr (2009).Footnote ⁵⁶ But the belated incorporation of Christian issues within Egyptian cinema followed decades of independent Coptic filmmaking. Since 1987, a Coptic “Holy-wood” has flourished under the church's supervision.Footnote ⁵⁷ In a sense, Coptic films have followed Egyptian precedents in their focus on chivalry in the face of oppression, while also mimicking mainstream Egyptian television serials, as one writer suggests, in their highly dramatized plotlines.Footnote ⁵⁸ Christian actors from popular Egyptian television and film, including Yusuf Dawud (d. 2012), Sanaʾ Jamil (d. 2002), and George Sidhum, have made regular appearances in these films. Between 1993 and 2010, it is estimated that up to 175 hagiopics were produced.Footnote ⁵⁹

Most films have been made through a close collaboration between clergymen and lay filmmakers, often veterans of Egypt's television and cinema industries, and are financed by private lay donations or the direct support of Coptic parishes and the patriarchate. Although some viewers find the kitschy productions distasteful, hagiopics require elaborate sets, dozens of actors (professional and amateur, Muslim and Christian), and modest-to-significant budgets: around 18,000–20,000 l.e. in the late 1980s and up to 200,000 l.e. today.Footnote ⁶⁰ Initially, they began as amateurish endeavors captured on Super 8 and 16mm film.Footnote ⁶¹ But like their international correlates, including the Nigerian film industry (known as Nollywood), “globalization and the availability of compact and inexpensive media . . . led to an unprecedented boom in [their] production and distribution.”Footnote ⁶² The most recent productions are shot with professional equipment and packaged for distribution on affordable video compact discs (VCDs), which have displaced the videocassettes used until the mid-1990s. In 2004 and 2005, the films had acquired a prominent enough status that filmmakers and actors were celebrated in a “Festival for Christian Narrative Films” in Alexandria.

In the early years, hagiopics were reviewed by Egyptian government censors, previewed by parish priests and a few church elders (usually Anba Musa, Bishop of the Youth), and self-regulated by directors. During the past decade, the church has taken a more active role, instituting a formal process of riqāba or censorship.Footnote ⁶³ As one report noted in 2009, “neither the current Egyptian Constitution of 1971 nor the penal code gives the official religious institutions—the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt—the right to confiscate thoughts or publications,” but “due to the decay of state bodies and the weakness of its civil institutions on the one hand and the rise of fundamentalist Islamic movements that terrify the societal institutions and its intellectuals on the other hand it has become a fait accompli.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Since films are mostly financed by the church through lay donations, it is not surprising that church authorities closely evaluate scripts and screen final cuts. Priests have also played recurring roles, and in the opening minutes of most videos Pope Shenouda offers a standard blessing or individualized minisermon, which can last up to fifteen minutes.Footnote ⁶⁵ This is typically followed by a clergyman, perhaps from the patron church sponsoring the film, who praises the filmmaker's service (khidma) and provides reflections about the saint whose life is depicted.

Despite the church's watchful eye, some filmmakers have sought to eschew formulaic scripts and document more realistic stories about contemporary men and women. Films with modern-day male heroes are plentiful, including al-Baba Kyrillus Juwa al-Tahuna (dir. Majid Tawfiq, 2008) about Pope Kyrillus (r. 1959–71), Shenouda's predecessor; al-Rahib al-Sahir (dir. Safwat Fahmi, 2007) about the monk Athanasius al-Suryani; and Hayat al-Arshidiyakun Habib Jirjis (dir. Majid Tawfiq, 2009) about Habib Jirjis (d. 1951), the founder of the Coptic Sunday school movement. Only a handful of contemporary women have been the subject of hagiopics. Usama Raʾuf's Umm al-Ghalaba (2002), for instance, focuses on Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid (1910–93), a caretaker of the poor and sick. In 2008, Michel Munir's Fakhr al-Rahbana, a two-part hagiopic about Ummina Irini (1936–2006), abbess of the Convent of Abu Sayfayn, was released with great publicity.Footnote ⁶⁶

To allow for the inclusion of female characters, hagiopics often focus on women important to the childhoods and personal lives of male saints. For example, in Taymur Sirri's Qissat Hayat al-Batal Mari Jirjis, much time is devoted to St. George's widowed mother, fiancée, and sisters, all of whom receive little attention in the written texts.Footnote ⁶⁷ In Majid Tawfiq's Qissat Hayat Filupatir Mercurius Abi Sayfayn, nearly half of the narrative is devoted to the martyr's childhood and especially his mother Safina, who is portrayed as nurturing, resourceful, and self-sufficient.Footnote ⁶⁸ Similarly, while historical sources mention St. Barsum the Nude's parents only in passing, the film al-Qiddis al-ʿAzim Anba Barsum al-ʿIryan (dir. Samir Sayf) dwells on the maternal character of “Umm Barsum,” who is shown as highly protective of her son and husband.Footnote ⁶⁹

Stories about traditional female characters are far more plentiful, and many films focus on women's roles by showcasing the lives of renowned female saints. The Synaxarium simply mentions that St. Ilaria (Hilaria) was raised in the Christian faith and then left the court of her father, Emperor Zeno, for the monastery. The screenplay draws on the far longer Coptic and Arabic hagiographies, and also invents a prolonged, soap-opera-ish conflict between Ilaria and her parents over her desire to pursue a monastic life.Footnote ⁷⁰ Similarly, a brief entry in the Synaxarium notes the martyrdom of St. Rifqa (Rebecca) and her five children, while Rifqa's hagiopic dramatizes her maternal role and the daily struggles she experienced in caring for her children.Footnote ⁷¹ Several movies couch modern issues within historical stories. Sabri Iskandar's short hagiopic al-ʿAfifa wa-Masyadat al-Ashrar: ʿAn Qissat Susanna al-ʿAfifa draws on the Book of Daniel in exploring Susanna's attempted entrapment by two elderly voyeurs. The way the plotline unfolds, with the male characters chasing, ogling, and prodding Susanna, who often feels distraught and helpless, likely resonates with female viewers in evoking a woman's sense of shame following abuse or street harassment.Footnote ⁷² Its highlighting of Susanna's viewpoint suggests that this screenplay—which was written by Amal Wilson, a familiar actress in Coptic hagiopics—may have been composed with the intent of attracting female audiences.

These realistic and diverse representations have provided filmmakers and the church with opportunities to convey their ideals of gender roles, and they have allowed audiences to identify with central characters. In particular, the prominent inclusion of women's perspectives may facilitate a “compassionate connection” between female audiences and onscreen heroines, as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ strove to do.Footnote ⁷³ In that sense, hagiopics, and Coptic Holy-wood more generally, have carved out some space for women's voices, at least within a controlled framework that encourages viewers to follow church dictums on Christian orthopraxy.

SUBSERVIENCE, SUBMISSION, AND SUFFERING

If hagiopics depict more female figures than can be found in the hagiographic or liturgical canon, clerical leaders and filmmakers have also used film to advance limitations on women's independence and life choices.Footnote ⁷⁴ Women are often shown as subservient, humbled, and tolerant of male abuse and mistreatment. Many films suggest that some female independence is possible but only through the consent of male family members or religious figureheads. In that sense, they echo pervasive attitudes within an Egyptian monastic and patriarchal context. But rather than looking to revert to a distant and “mythic” past, the films reimagine these pasts in order to present a modern Coptic femininity “by emphasizing the relevancy of female submission, male headship, and subservience to God in contemporary society.”Footnote ⁷⁵

The film Sirat Hayat al-Arkhun al-Bar al-Muʿallim Ibrahim al-Jawhari, about a prominent 18th-century Coptic notable, stresses how wives must joyfully defer to their husbands. Throughout the film, Ibrahim's wife insists on serving her husband by following church edicts to the letter, and when Ibrahim objects to her excessive humility, she robotically declares, “The man is master of woman.”Footnote ⁷⁶ Similarly, in al-Saʾih al-Qiss ʿAbd al-Masih al-Maqari (al-Manahiri), directed by ʿImad Fuʾad, the protagonist's mother is depicted as a dutiful wife who submits to her husband in all matters despite her son's protests. In one scene, Samʿan seeks his mother's help against his father, who objects to Samʿan's pursuit of a monastic life. But Umm Samʿan affirms that her wifely duty is to “stand by my husband” before assuring an angry Samʿan that “God will support you, my son.”Footnote ⁷⁷ In many of these films, male characters are depicted as sensitive and conscientious to the needs of their wives or mothers, and it is women who act as strict self-enforcers of gender roles. We will return to this point shortly.

Some films go further by suggesting that wives must endure all sorts of mistreatment. As noted, church teachings highlight that marriage is a lifelong commitment and divorce is severely restricted, to the dismay of many. Women—as protectors of a communal ethos—are often encouraged to tolerate emotional and physical violence for the sake of marital sanctity and family cohesiveness, a theme that is captured well in Umm al-Ghalaba. During her life, Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid was known for her charity and spiritual leadership. The director, Usama Raʾuf, explores these traits while also emphasizing her tolerance of spousal abuse. In the film's first scene, Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid tries to help her husband Hakim get dressed, but Hakim, played by the well-known actor Majid al-Kidwani, cruelly pushes her away. In response, she kneels before God and asks for forgiveness. A few moments later, Hakim brutally beats and then abandons Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid; she withstands the abuse with another prayer, asking God to forgive her husband because he is her “life partner” (sharīk ḥayātī).Footnote ⁷⁸

When Hakim falls ill and returns home after a sordid nine-year affair with another woman, Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid welcomes and promises to serve him, yet he leaves her several more times. Eventually an aging and bed-ridden Hakim, seemingly near death, regrets his past errors and proclaims that he is unworthy of ʿAbd al-Sayyid's love, to which she responds, “Don't say that: I'm your servant.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Nelly van Doorn-Harder has noted that since divorce is rarely granted by the modern clerical establishment, women whose husbands are abusive “have no way out. Domestic violence within the Coptic community is shrouded in deep silence.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Raʾuf openly tackles this taboo subject and shows a remorseful Hakim confessing his sins not just to a local Coptic priest but also to his wife. However, the film simultaneously upholds the idea that women must heroically bear marital hardships, including abuse, through submission, devotion, and prayer. This emphasis echoes what Sarojini Nadar and Cheryl Potgieter have identified, in the context of South African evangelicalism, as a discourse of “liberation through submission.” Often articulated by women, this narrative justifies the “inherent superiority of men,” is staunchly counterfeminist, “romanticize[s] patriarchy,” and encourages women “to believe that they too will benefit from increased male responsibility and leadership.”Footnote ⁸¹ Coptic films go even further by affirming, often through women's voices, that suffering is part of a Christian wife's duty and might even be a way to achieve sanctity.

For women who wish to find alternatives to their mundane lives, hagiopics promote religious activities such as charitable activism, prayer, Bible study, and monastic devotion. In St. Ilaria's hagiopic, for example, the saint hears God's voice telling her to put spiritual devotion above familial ties. Soon she informs her father (Emperor Zeno) that she will join a monastery because she loves Jesus more than her family.Footnote ⁸² Most women, however, follow more familiar paths. Teaching God's word, especially to other women and to children, is commonly promoted as proper work. In al-Shahida Marina, a nameless “virtuous” female governess (al-murabiyya al-fāḍila) instructs the young Marina, along with other children, on how to read the Bible, worship Christ, and sing contemporary Coptic songs. She speaks in rhymes that are familiar to audiences who have grown up listening to Abla Fadila, the well-known children's storyteller.Footnote ⁸³ In Umm al-Ghalaba, Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid leads the village women in Bible readings, hymns, and religious instruction. When Hakim abandons her, she undertakes extensive charitable work and attends to the needy, a service she believes to be her lifelong mission.Footnote ⁸⁴

Many of these scenes suggest that women are able to resist their inherent limitations and undertake some leadership roles, but only through reliance on church teachings. The importance of male clerical authority in directing and regulating women's spiritual lives is underlined by images of female characters frequently consulting priests and by monologues extolling the centrality of the clerical hierarchy, especially the pope, to Coptic Christianity. Repeated depictions of women or girls seeking priests, monks, and bishops for advice on familial, professional, and political issues not only serve as models of female obedience to clerical supervision but also map out the contours of clerical masculinity in advising, consoling, and ultimately controlling the daily decisions of lay Copts.Footnote ⁸⁵ The films channel women's service toward limited and often secondary goals, and they rarely engage positively with the possibility of women exercising autonomy or power.

VISUALIZING “MODERN” WOMEN THROUGH A SACRED COPTIC PAST

A close examination of Coptic video films reveals how the church uses hagiopics to shape characterizations of femininity within the community by drawing on familiar images from religious art and iconography.Footnote ⁸⁶ The inventive use of clothing, makeup, and narrative plots promotes the church's expectations that Coptic women be plain, humble, meek, self-effacing, and demure. As Gönül Dönmez-Colin has noted about Turkish cinema from the 1960s, the character of the “fallen woman,” who signified Western lifestyles by dressing immodestly, drinking alcohol, and having illicit relations with men, was posited as a moral lesson to the “family woman,” whose role was “to protect the private space against external pollution.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Similarly, to create a cautionary tale for Coptic spectators, hagiopics portray pagan women as licentious, decadent, hypersexual, overconfident, and often overly Westernized.

In recent years, many Coptic women have been careful to respect the moral sensibilities upheld by conservative Islamic teachings and their own church, often wearing long skirts and covering their elbows or even their hair. Some Coptic leaders have openly admired head coverings for women: Anba Musa, Bishop of the Youth, allegedly commented that a woman can use her hair “to lure and infatuate men and to hinder them psychologically and spiritually.”Footnote ⁸⁸ In May 2012, Anba Bishuy, the Metropolitan of Dumyat and one of the church's most conservative elders, announced that it would be prudent for Coptic women to wear more modest clothing and cover their hair, just like their Muslim sisters. In response, dozens of men and women staged a protest at Cairo's patriarchate, accusing the bishop of “insulting Coptic women” and playing politics with women's bodies. They also called for the eradication of “Salafist thinking” within the church.Footnote ⁸⁹

Hagiopics capture these tensions over women's bodies and suggest that women would benefit from being more demure.Footnote ⁹⁰ The character of Princess Sarah in Sirat Hayat al-Qiddisan al-Shahidan Bihnam wa-Sarah illustrates this through the transformation from elite, sensuous, pagan vanity to Christian chastity in the reimagined early church. Although both Sarah and her brother Bihnam adopt Christianity, the film focuses on Sarah's pre-Christian life, when she acted as a selfish, pampered, mean-spirited, and self-indulgent princess.Footnote ⁹¹ After she is cured from a fatal and disfiguring disease and converts to Christianity, Sarah begins dressing more modestly, donning a variety of head coverings. Noticing her simpler outfits, her governor-father asks, “What are these clothes you are wearing? Have you forgotten that you are a princess?” Sarah replies, “I am trying to forget that I am a princess!”Footnote ⁹² The transformation from prideful, gaudy paganism to humble Christian submissiveness recalls makeovers of “repentant” Egyptian Muslim actresses in the 1990s and 2000s who abandoned acting, singing, or belly dancing, took on the veil, and became devoted to charitable activism, preaching, or converting other “fallen” artists.Footnote ⁹³ Some returned to acting with their veils, taking on new roles that uphold a “personal piety and bodily modesty,” as Karim Tartoussieh writes—roles commensurate with a modern, urban Islamic religiosity.Footnote ⁹⁴

St. Yustina and St. Kibriyanus (Justina and Cyprianus) provides a particularly rich example of physical and spiritual conversion. In pagan life, Yustina seems attractive, richly dressed, and overly confident. She strides through the Antioch marketplace with her girlfriends, all wearing what many Egyptians might call “heavy makeup,” as is characteristic of pagan women in Coptic video films. Yustina and her friends issue commands to male attendants, laugh loudly, and purchase slaves.Footnote ⁹⁵ After her conversion, Yustina embodies a modern feminine role model.Footnote ⁹⁶ She begins to wear unassuming clothes, little jewelry, and even less makeup. Her robes change from bright reds and blues to muted whites, creams, and pastels. As her piety increases, she begins to don a headdress,Footnote ⁹⁷ and her female devotees follow suit. By the end of the film, when Yustina is named an abbess of a local convent, she appears in the veiled black garb of contemporary Coptic nuns. To escape her innate sensuality, Yustina's filmic embodiment changes her wardrobe, engages in long prayer monologues, and repeatedly consults with clergymen, all visual cues of her full submission to the will of God.

Hagiopics further elaborate on the church's preoccupation with alleged female inclination toward debauchery by focusing on its threat to male piety. In Qissat Hayat al-Batal Mari Jirjis, Emperor Diocletian decides to break St. George's Christian resolve by sending the beautiful Susanna, a stereotypical seductress and “a woman whom no man can resist.” When she enters George's prison cell, the camera begins at her feet, focusing on her sandals and rattling ankle bracelets, then moving up to show her bright, sleeveless red dress, bold metallic jewelry, red-stained fingernails and lips, and light brown-blondish hair. Susanna sways her hips as she walks toward George, who ignores her advances because he is enraptured in prayer. As she tosses her hair and flashes an alluring smile at our hero, she asks in a low, breathy voice, “Oh Prince George: will you not turn your head to view all of this beauty, which is coveted by the city's great men?” Avoiding her gaze, George prays for Susanna's salvation and, in response to her queries, teaches her about Jesus and gives her his crucifix to wear. Within one minute, Susanna has accepted Christ, and soon she is martyred by Diocletian's executioner while George looks on. As she steps up to the chopping block, we hear a female voice singing, “Jesus I can see you; Jesus I can hear you. Come nearer to me!”Footnote ⁹⁸ Although Susanna dies in that red dress, St. George's prayerful gazes and the background music help to signify her true redemption.

Susanna is delivered, but most unbelieving women are not: they are generally to blame for men's moral and physical downfall. In Umm al-Ghalaba, the “other woman” Fahima, played by the well-known actress Salwa Khattab, is beautiful, greedy, and capricious. Umm ʿAbd al-Sayyid forgives Hakim for his infidelity, violence, and abandonment, faulting Fahima alone for seducing and corrupting her husband.Footnote ⁹⁹ Hakim, too, holds Fahima responsible for all his troubles, noting that “the devil himself could learn from her [tricks].”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Secondary (and usually invented) female characters, particularly in films dealing with monastic life, are deemed especially lustful, as fallen temptresses who endanger male spiritual progress and purity.Footnote ¹⁰¹ These embellished representations revive, reintroduce, and teach to new audiences ancient Christian beliefs about the demonic and licentious female who can corrupt otherwise devoted men—beliefs that, in recent decades, have become important to the construction of a modern Coptic piety.Footnote ¹⁰²

The depiction of saintly men piously yet firmly resisting female sensuality is often coupled with male resistance to political oppression. While the films circumvent references to contemporary politics and rarely depict Muslim characters, there are frequent representations of male protagonists bravely opposing political oppression in the distant past. As noted, St. George simultaneously overcomes Diocletian's persecution and thwarts Susanna's seductive attempts. Pope Shenouda's introduction of the film as a useful “teaching aid” for Coptic youth suggests a reading of George's bravery as exemplary in the face of unyielding oppression and sexual temptation.Footnote ¹⁰³ These themes are also intertwined in Qissat Hayat Filupatir Mercurius Abi Sayfayn. In one scene, the hero is portrayed as intensely uncomfortable with the sensuality of Roman festivities, which appear like a scene in a modern bar. As the empress and her lover sit adjacent to the saint and openly flirt with each other, he tries to flee. The empress then summons Luna, who attempts to seduce Filupatir. He thwarts her temptations by declaring his Christian faith, which is ultimately the cause of his death.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The films thus present a church-sanctioned masculinity that resists both the wiles of women and the oppression of Christians.

Many films depict gender flexibility among women, mirroring the ancient Christian belief that femininity in and of itself constitutes an impediment to true spiritual advancement.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The film al-Qiddisa Marina al-Rahiba initially follows the Synaxarium closely. The protagonist, Marina, disguises herself in male attire, hoping to convince her father to take her with him to a monastery, since no convents existed at the time. What comes next, however, is a most dramatic and effective scene: the actress playing Marina grabs scissors and seemingly cuts off her real hair, shouting, “Give me strength God!” (qawīnī yā rabb). Confronting her father with her new look, she defiantly casts away her long locks, signaling her toughness and bravery and proving her ability to become a monk. Then, somewhat abruptly, Marina declares that she is her father's “son and disciple” and intends to serve him for the rest of his life.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ With this newly imagined dialogue and dramatic flair, Marina's story is recast for contemporary audiences.

The gender flexibility embedded within traditional stories about cross-dressing female saints could potentially weaken modern clerical teachings on differences between men and women as constituting the “order of nature.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ On closer examination, however, the cinematic depiction of female transvestites appears to serve a very specific purpose. In certain Christian contexts, female cross-dressing was tolerated and even celebrated. As Vern Bullough has noted:

Gender-bending in Coptic hagiopics honors saintly women who adopt a masculine, and therefore purer, form of asceticism. There is no tradition of male transvestite saints in Coptic hagiographies, and the church is generally more condemnatory of men “acting as women.” Pope Shenouda once wrote that “homosexuality is against manhood. How can a person who is used as a woman be called a man? He is deprived of his manhood and is not considered to be a man any longer.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ This rhetoric encapsulates the church's gender ideals in recent decades: femininity and nonnormative masculinities are subordinated to an understanding of men as innately dominant, superior, imbued with more intellect and physical prowess, brave in resisting the temptations of fallen women, and able to serve as natural-born leaders in protecting the church from persecution.Footnote ¹¹⁰

In many of these films the fight against paganism/immorality is waged not by the generic Christian church but by the modern Coptic Church in the guise of the deacons, priests, bishops, and popes who pervade the films and advise protagonists, especially women, on how to conduct themselves in daily life. Odes and exhortations to the Coptic papacy, seemingly unrelated to the main plotline, suggest that the clerical hierarchy was central to the daily lives of lay Christians from time immemorial.Footnote ¹¹¹ Reflective of Shenouda's teachings and of the clericalizing trends that he oversaw for four decades, these films offer a legitimation of the church and specifically of its perspectives on gender roles, as they embed the trappings and theological claims of the modern papacy within older tales that often had little to do with the clerical elite.