That’s an outrage! They are denigrating us on purpose! Have you watched it? they are showing ‘sheeps’ in Tehran! They are portraiting Iranians as fanatics, backward people, shame on them…shame on all those Iranian actors who participated in it…
Yes, these were and are some of the sentences I heard from Iranians, regarding the famous film ‘Not without my daughter’ Years ago, early in the morning my Iranian roomate woke me up by screaming: Wake up, Wake up, hurry up, you’ve got to see what they’re showing again on TV, I was half asleep and ran to TV to realize that one of the channels was broadcasting that famous film. My roomate was outraged, I simply told him what I still firmly believe: The film is showing things as they are. It goes without saying that we had a long argument style conversation without any agreement on the issue. Many years have gonne by and now, more than ever I believe that most Iranians do live in a state of denial. It’s part of our culture to ‘hide’ everything we consider shameful, by keeping it secret! The film was about a real story, a very realistic approach to what has been taking place in Iran in the last 28 years. I would like to know some of the things that were considered ‘lies’ and ‘exagerations’ of the film, by many Iranians, specially the ones living in the West. The film showed a reality, the reality many of us left behind, because we simply couldn’t live with it. It’s true that the film focused on a specific type of subjects and families in Iran, the ‘Hezbollahis’, and didn’t really show other ways of life and cultures of Iran. Nonetheless, the film was still very accurate, it showed how the ‘Hezbollahis’ (arabo-muslims) and backward religious families of Iran actually live and think. Was there any lie in that? Every single minute of the film was accurate and real and yet many Iranians got offended by it. Why? If we’re not sure we’re from Switzerland or Habashe, that’s our own problem, we shouldn’t accuse others (directors, actors and writers) of giving a bad ‘image’ of us. They usually say it the way it is and the truth hurts.
The film could have been much harsher, if other ‘realities’ of Iran had been shown, such as, hanging people in public from cranes, stonning women to death, raping and killing female ‘prisoners’ with total impunity, torturing and killing students and activists, the legal prostitution called ‘sighe’, drugs, corruption, etc…. The film didn’t really mention any of these issues and yet we are outraged by it. The good news is, that at this point in time, with Ahmadinejad and his bunch in power, with his presence and trips abroad, the ‘state of denial’ does NOT work anymore. The mediocre cultural attitude of ‘denying’ it won’t solve anything. This Iranian attitude of screwing things up and blaming it on others, won’t work anymore. The message people around the world receive is: The Iranians don’t really know whay they have done with they own country and the worse thing is that they don’t even know how to fix it, because they don’t know what the problem is. They wish for the ‘big miracle’ to take place, for others to fix they country. It has been said that the first step in order to solve a problem is to recognize and accept and understand that you actually have a problem. However, we the Iranians haven’t been able to do this, our main obstacle is and has been the state of denial, denial of our own lack of maturity as a nation. One would think that living in the West would change this attitude of denial, but no, no way, Ahmadinejad, doesn’t really exist, the IRI is there for the sake of it and we don’t even remember how or why.
Our lack of identity, our confusion as a nation, our superficial approaches and the blame attitude are now being witnessed by the world and there’re more ‘without my daughters’ coming, so get used to it!
Ghaye mooshak bazi, dige tamoom shod!
