Veiling and Vampirism: Imperialism and Resistance in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Many young women are warned to never walk alone, especially at night, for fear that a monster will grab them and condemn them to a life of depravity and abuse. More so, societies have constructed these monsters, e.g. the ‘stranger in the dark alley,’ in order to create a physical enemy that can be vanquished, all in the pursuit of preserving women’s purity. However, women resist these narratives and constraints that society imposes upon them in favor of agency and personhood, defined as freely choosing one’s own course of life This paper will focus on resistance through film, looking at one film in particular—an “American film set in Iran” entitled A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (VICE). The director, Ana Lily Amirpour, an Iranian-American filmmaker, uses this film, lauded as the first Middle Eastern Vampire Western, to critique the ‘women of Islam’ stereotypes that are propagated within U.S. and often Iranian culture, and reverses these stereotypes to make them sites of resistance.

by Ashley Begley

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