By Rukhshona
Anora isn’t a Russian name. It’s not just rare, it’s nonexistent in Russia.
Instead it’s a Tajik/Uzbek name meaning pomegranate or indeed an archaic Latin variation of Honor. – Audrey (screenrant)
I often get weird looks for my name or when I say what country I’m from. I’ve had to even change the spelling of my name when I immigrated to America in order to make it easier for people here to pronounce it. My name is difficult to pronounce just like my place of origin which is Uzbekistan.
The Uzbek population in America itself isn’t huge since “there are a little more than 120,000 Central Asian immigrants in the United States, primarily residing in New York, California, and Pennsylvania states,” (iir). Lack of representation of my country within American media was never a shock for me until recently when a movie used an Uzbek name for the main character and even as the title of the movie while not acknowledging the Uzbek culture at all.
“Anora” is an oscar winning movie about a stripper who lives in Brighton Beach. The main character, Anora, marries a Russian oligarch’s son, Vanya, after a few days of knowing each other. After all the fun was done, Vanya used her for entertainment and left. It was a Cinderella story because she went from living in Brighton Beach where mostly working class people live and working as a stripper to traveling to places on a private jet and living in a mansion, until that fairytale was over. Throughout the movie, Anora and Vanya’s parents’ helpers spend days trying to find him after Vanya runs away trying to avoid getting sent back to Russia. We learn that Vanya married Anora in the first place to acquire a visato stay. Eventually he is found, they get divorced and he goes back to Russia.
I personally loved this movie and the depth that the character Anora had. Her trouble with separating her personal life and job was unfortunate to see. As a stripper she had grown to think that men are only kind in a transactional manner, her absent father probably had an impact on that too. The ending of the movie was open to interpretation and the other main character Igor’s kindness towards her led to her thinking he wanted to sleep with her because that’s what men always seemed to want, but not him it seemed.
The main character’s full name is Anora Mikheeva, the name Anora is derived from the Persian language but commonly used in Uzbekistan. Throughout the movie there’s Russian and Armenian dialect used by the characters. Anora’s ethnicity is never spoken about in the movie, the fact that she spoke Russian made other characters and the viewers to assume she was Russian. There’s a misunderstanding that just because a person speaks Russian they must be Russian when in reality Uzbekistan was a part of the Soviet Union until 1991, which wasn’t that long ago. The president at the time who won the 1991 election in Uzbekistan died in 2016 which puts things into perspective on how recently everything happened. Russia forced their culture on to people who lived in Uzbekistan while attempting to erase theirs. It’s expected that people there won’t just stop speaking Russian, especially since people in Uzbekistan speak at least more than one language as it is. To add on to that, the character always preferred to go by “Ani” (pronounced as Annie, making her sound American) rather than “Anora” which could’ve led to more false assumptions about her ethnicity.
The director, Shawn Baker spoke about always wanting to film in Brooklyn specifically in Brighton Beach because he was fascinated by the Russian Americans who reside there. In an interview with NPR he told the interviewer “you understand that she is first-generation. She is ethnic Russian, so she’s from one of the post-Soviet countries.” The fact that earlier in the interview Baker said “it just took us about 15 to almost 20 years to figure out what the plot would be. But now we’re here” indicates that he and his collaborators chose to be ignorant of the culture of the people whom he was “fascinated” by and exploit a culture he did no research on by using an Uzbek name for a character while claiming she’s Russian even though they had a decade to do otherwise.
It’s so imbecilic of Baker to claim “she’s from one of the post-Soviet countries” as if Uzbekistan and every other country that was colonized by the USSR isn’t a country itself today that deserves recognition and respect. If you’re going to use a full name from a specific ethnic background in a movie that ends up offending that community, at least have the decency to bring proper representation to it. People from Uzbekistan primarily identify as Muslim and a movie that uses an Uzbek name featuring a stripper can understandably upset those people especially when that seems to be the only representation we have ever got in the Western media.
I interviewed a relative of mine on his opinion about “Anora” Even though studies in the UK, he holds a close connection with Uzbekistan’s values and beliefs. He shared that although he hasn’t watched the movie, he has heard about it and its impact on Uzbek culture. He stated “as I have not watched the movie on my own but relying on what I have heard, the movie has been taken without any Uzbek information or cultural representation and people say the movie is mostly based on the girl from Uzbekistan who is born or lives in America.”
He brought up an important point about the younger generation who migrates to a different country and tends to lose connection with their culture. He said “as you know the young generations learn from what they see and hear from their childhood and will not care about their family’s culture. Uzbekistan is a Muslim country and has so many cultural restrictions which are not represented in the movie which may poison their understanding of Uzbek culture.”
I thought it was interesting that although he hasn’t watched the movie himself but heard about it from others he can still see the importance that a movie can play on representing a whole culture just by using a name. Uzbek people like my relative who may not have watched it because of what it represents going against their religion have every right to be offended. While these people are refusing to watch the movie because of it using an Uzbek name where in the region most people are Muslim because it involves many of what they deem as inappropriate scenes.
There are critiques and articles upon articles reviewing this movie while paying no attention to the name or the place it was set. Many articles gloss over the fact that this movie took place in Brighton Beach and the importance of that due to how conservative people who live there are. Not just Uzbek people but Russians as well. Also, it’s so uncommon for a place that deep in Brooklyn to be shown in such huge movies making it that much more important to properly represent it.
All of the reviews assume Anora is Russian while the articles focus on the actress and the director’s choices.
It’s disappointing that a movie, I for one was so excited to watch because it used a name that is familiar to me from my ethnic background even if it is about sex work because that happens in every culture regardless of their beliefs didn’t speak on Anora’s background at all. It was up for interpretation and a place like Central Asia that rarely ever gets representation and is ignored as “one of the post-soviet countries” was forgotten even though the title of the movie was literally a Central Asian name.