This is Ari Siletz’s media watch on the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iran. It contains:
• Reviews of books relating to the Middle East.
• Reviews of movies relating to the Middle East.
• Commentaries on current events reportage in the media.
Also included are samples of literary works by the author.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Thursday, March 30, 2006
The Deserted Station
Directed by Alireza Raisian
from a story by Abbas Kiarostami
Like many Iranian films, The Deserted Station is vulnerable to absurd interpretations by Western reviewers because of its metaphoric nature. Writing for the BBC, Jamie Russell begins his analysis of this spiritually transcendent film with, “The sexual politics of the veil make for haunting viewing in Deserted Station.” This film, signposted with clear religious references for the Iranian viewer, is no more about sexual politics than Casablanca is about nightclub ownership. The film is actually a statement about the connection between social consciousness and worship.
The film begins with a well-to-do couple driving to the famous shrine city of Mashhad to supplicate for a child. The husband is a nonbeliever in such superstitions. He has agreed to the journey because he loves his beautiful wife and wishes to make her happy. As they debate the reality of miracles, suddenly the wife sees a deer jump across the road. She screams and the startled husband swerves the car into a ditch. As Iranians know, the deer is the symbol of Imam Reza, the saint that is buried at Mashhad, the couple’s destination. On seeing the deer the Iranian viewer is reminded of the following story:
A hunter has trapped a deer and is about to slay it when Imam Reza shows up to intercede. The deer whispers something in Imam Reza’s ear and he interprets for the hunter. “This deer is a mother,” says Imam Reza to the skeptical hunter. “Its fawns will starve if you kill her. She promises that if you release her she will return after she feeds her young and submit to be slaughtered.” The hunter is hesitant, but Imam Reza vouches for the deer and the hunter dubiously lets her go. But when the deer returns with fawns in tow, the hunter is so amazed that he forfeits his claim to her life. This is why Imam Reza is known as Imam-e-Zamen—the saint who vouches for the weak.
The viewer has been previously prepared for this pivotal metaphor with a humorous man-and-wife argument over how dense men can be when it comes to subtlety, or seen from his point of view, how paranoid women appear when they see hidden meaning in everything. Again, this is interpreted by Western reviewers as sexual politics because they are unaware of the context. Similarly these reviewers misinterpret the opening scene of the movie where it does not become apparent until later that the wife is also in the car. They see this invisibility as an allegory for a woman’s lack of importance in Iranian society. But to the Iranian viewer, the hidden presence and surprising appearance is a brilliant telegraphing of the miracle that is about to occur.
Having seen Imam Reza’s sign, we are now ready to meet him—or his avatar—in person. He comes to the rescue of the stranded couple in the form of a jack-of-all-trades mobile mechanic. His name is Faizollah (God’s generosity) and he is also the only barber, farmer, politician, vet, and school teacher in this patch of desert land. Seeing that the damaged car part needs to be taken to a town for straightening, Faizollah asks the wife to substitute at his makeshift village school.
While the men are away, the wife becomes acquainted with the inhabitants of this strange village, located in an abandoned rock-and-mud fortress built eons ago. The only connection with the outside world is the train that passes on its way to the shrine city. With one or two exceptions, the denizens are old women and children. The men go away for long periods to work, and the young women move away as soon as they are married. The children are effectively orphans. Here we encounter every form of human suffering—poverty, abandonment, illiteracy, sickness--all the ills against which an Imam is supplicated. We learn that Faizollah comes every day to teach school, farm the land, attend to the kids’ sanitation, keep the itinerant vendors from taking advantage of them, whatever he can.
Soon the wife and the children become emotionally entangled. As she and the viewer feel the depth of their sorrow, we begin to dread the inevitable disappointment when it comes time for her to leave.
The more we learn about each child, the more exhausting the tension becomes. This is not plot tension, but the much more difficult to achieve character tension. For example, among the children there’s one who has unsuccessfully tried to hop the train to see where the end of the line is. Once her car is fixed, the heroine can easily take him to the shrine city and show him, but the enormous burden of the child’s needs works against such happy resolutions. On a metaphorical level we identify with this child because we too want to know where the train goes. A nightmarish sequence in the film shows us a deserted boneyard of trains that no longer go to the shrine city. Time is a one way trip to death and dust for those of us who no longer strive for spiritual attainment.
Here, sitting in a dead train watching a live one whiz towards its destination, the heroine experiences a moment of revelation. The revelation is not played out until it is time for her and her husband to drive away. The children want her to stay, so she makes a food offering to appease them. When that doesn’t work, she offers gifts. When that also fails, she is confronted with the task of accepting her revelation or abandoning it. As a child puts his hands on her car the way a supplicant puts his hands on the shrine of Imam Reza, the message of the movie comes rushing through this single still image. Nearly 90 minutes of film have prepared us for its impact.
To be sure, among the many injustices this film supplicates the Iranian viewer to remedy, the treatment of women is not forgotten. For instance, in one scene Imam Reza’s avatar, Faizollah, cannot see a truckload of women being transported by insidious looking men. It is as though this benefactor of humanity has a blind spot. But this criticism of the Islamic regime, reproaching it in its own language of piety, is a far more relevant rebuke than the obligatory Western censure of solemn Islamic clothing. The heroine, played by the beautiful Leila Hatami, wears her outfit with all the dignity of a Supreme Court justice. Her poise and beauty absolutely stun, even though we see only her face.
Writer Abbas Kiarostami and director Alireza Raisian are not renegade artists as Western movie reviewers like to tell us. In a world that is being flattened by uniformity, they are geniuses with the imagination to create masterpieces within the framework of their own unique culture and religion.
from a story by Abbas Kiarostami
Like many Iranian films, The Deserted Station is vulnerable to absurd interpretations by Western reviewers because of its metaphoric nature. Writing for the BBC, Jamie Russell begins his analysis of this spiritually transcendent film with, “The sexual politics of the veil make for haunting viewing in Deserted Station.” This film, signposted with clear religious references for the Iranian viewer, is no more about sexual politics than Casablanca is about nightclub ownership. The film is actually a statement about the connection between social consciousness and worship.
The film begins with a well-to-do couple driving to the famous shrine city of Mashhad to supplicate for a child. The husband is a nonbeliever in such superstitions. He has agreed to the journey because he loves his beautiful wife and wishes to make her happy. As they debate the reality of miracles, suddenly the wife sees a deer jump across the road. She screams and the startled husband swerves the car into a ditch. As Iranians know, the deer is the symbol of Imam Reza, the saint that is buried at Mashhad, the couple’s destination. On seeing the deer the Iranian viewer is reminded of the following story:
A hunter has trapped a deer and is about to slay it when Imam Reza shows up to intercede. The deer whispers something in Imam Reza’s ear and he interprets for the hunter. “This deer is a mother,” says Imam Reza to the skeptical hunter. “Its fawns will starve if you kill her. She promises that if you release her she will return after she feeds her young and submit to be slaughtered.” The hunter is hesitant, but Imam Reza vouches for the deer and the hunter dubiously lets her go. But when the deer returns with fawns in tow, the hunter is so amazed that he forfeits his claim to her life. This is why Imam Reza is known as Imam-e-Zamen—the saint who vouches for the weak.
The viewer has been previously prepared for this pivotal metaphor with a humorous man-and-wife argument over how dense men can be when it comes to subtlety, or seen from his point of view, how paranoid women appear when they see hidden meaning in everything. Again, this is interpreted by Western reviewers as sexual politics because they are unaware of the context. Similarly these reviewers misinterpret the opening scene of the movie where it does not become apparent until later that the wife is also in the car. They see this invisibility as an allegory for a woman’s lack of importance in Iranian society. But to the Iranian viewer, the hidden presence and surprising appearance is a brilliant telegraphing of the miracle that is about to occur.
Having seen Imam Reza’s sign, we are now ready to meet him—or his avatar—in person. He comes to the rescue of the stranded couple in the form of a jack-of-all-trades mobile mechanic. His name is Faizollah (God’s generosity) and he is also the only barber, farmer, politician, vet, and school teacher in this patch of desert land. Seeing that the damaged car part needs to be taken to a town for straightening, Faizollah asks the wife to substitute at his makeshift village school.
While the men are away, the wife becomes acquainted with the inhabitants of this strange village, located in an abandoned rock-and-mud fortress built eons ago. The only connection with the outside world is the train that passes on its way to the shrine city. With one or two exceptions, the denizens are old women and children. The men go away for long periods to work, and the young women move away as soon as they are married. The children are effectively orphans. Here we encounter every form of human suffering—poverty, abandonment, illiteracy, sickness--all the ills against which an Imam is supplicated. We learn that Faizollah comes every day to teach school, farm the land, attend to the kids’ sanitation, keep the itinerant vendors from taking advantage of them, whatever he can.
Soon the wife and the children become emotionally entangled. As she and the viewer feel the depth of their sorrow, we begin to dread the inevitable disappointment when it comes time for her to leave.
The more we learn about each child, the more exhausting the tension becomes. This is not plot tension, but the much more difficult to achieve character tension. For example, among the children there’s one who has unsuccessfully tried to hop the train to see where the end of the line is. Once her car is fixed, the heroine can easily take him to the shrine city and show him, but the enormous burden of the child’s needs works against such happy resolutions. On a metaphorical level we identify with this child because we too want to know where the train goes. A nightmarish sequence in the film shows us a deserted boneyard of trains that no longer go to the shrine city. Time is a one way trip to death and dust for those of us who no longer strive for spiritual attainment.
Here, sitting in a dead train watching a live one whiz towards its destination, the heroine experiences a moment of revelation. The revelation is not played out until it is time for her and her husband to drive away. The children want her to stay, so she makes a food offering to appease them. When that doesn’t work, she offers gifts. When that also fails, she is confronted with the task of accepting her revelation or abandoning it. As a child puts his hands on her car the way a supplicant puts his hands on the shrine of Imam Reza, the message of the movie comes rushing through this single still image. Nearly 90 minutes of film have prepared us for its impact.
To be sure, among the many injustices this film supplicates the Iranian viewer to remedy, the treatment of women is not forgotten. For instance, in one scene Imam Reza’s avatar, Faizollah, cannot see a truckload of women being transported by insidious looking men. It is as though this benefactor of humanity has a blind spot. But this criticism of the Islamic regime, reproaching it in its own language of piety, is a far more relevant rebuke than the obligatory Western censure of solemn Islamic clothing. The heroine, played by the beautiful Leila Hatami, wears her outfit with all the dignity of a Supreme Court justice. Her poise and beauty absolutely stun, even though we see only her face.
Writer Abbas Kiarostami and director Alireza Raisian are not renegade artists as Western movie reviewers like to tell us. In a world that is being flattened by uniformity, they are geniuses with the imagination to create masterpieces within the framework of their own unique culture and religion.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Funny in Farsi
Funny in Farsi:
By Firoozeh Dumas, Random House.
In this bright and humorous thank-you note to America, Iranian émigrée Firoozeh Dumas demonstrates mastery of a traditional Persian art form, flattery. Highly developed by Iranian court poets, this skillful expression of praise, humility and gratitude is known as madh. Loosely translated as ‘panegyric,’ these flowery words came in handy when an enraged and egomaniacal sultan was about to do something rash. Dumas renders her madh of America in memoir form instead of in verse, but her techniques of appeasement are akin to those used by court poets whose wit sometimes decided between prosperity or ruin for the nation.
To make the sultan America feel warm inside, Dumas begins her tale in the upscale town of Whittier, California, where her family settled in the seventies. Tension builds when soon after their arrival she and her mother get lost in this opulent suburban setting. The tension is relieved when a resident generously invites them in to use the telephone and later drives them home. Dumas tells us, “After spending an entire day in America, surrounded by Americans I realized….the people were very, very kind.” What follows are peanut butter cookies, summer camp, Thanksgiving, Bob Hope, Disneyland, Halloween, and The Brady Bunch.
In her carefully crafted effort not to offend, Dumas recreates the cotton candy America that existed only in Hollywood in the fifties. She resurrects the uncomplicated America of The Andy Griffith Show and Father Knows Best. One can almost hear the knowing laugh track when Dumas replaces the word “hell” with the euphemism “a very bad place.” Eyeballs would roll if such material came from a contemporary American writer, but Dumas insightfully recognizes that, channeled through fresh immigrant eyes, this hackneyed treatment of America still has plenty of play.
Another technique of madh is paying homage to mundane attributes taken for granted by the sultan, revealing their deeper significance. Dumas reminds us of American affluence during a romp through Price Club. Her father and uncle ate enough free samples to feel like they had a full lunch. “In Iran people who taste something before they buy it are called shoplifters,” says Dumas. “Here a person can taste something, not buy it and still have the clerk wish him a nice day." In a wealthy consumer society where advertising budgets are huge, the giving away of food to un-needy strangers is indeed a remarkable consequence, something to boast about.
Pressing her ego boosting charm on the reader, Dumas stuffs America with opportunities. She mentions that her father was a Fulbright scholar. He even got to meet Albert Einstein and was consulted on the subject of Persian cats by the great genius. Her own education at UC Berkeley was financed through scholarships. In a very funny chapter, reminiscent of fifties era sitcoms, her father botches the opportunity to win a fortune in Bowling for Dollars. He comes home with only a pittance, the wiser for his ordeal.
Dumas is an Iranian-American Norman Rockwell. Death and tragedy are not on her palette. Everyone is wonderful--the exception being her intolerant French mother-in-law, which I assume was allowed in the book to please the freedom fries crowd.
Though politics is unwelcome in polite company, when it comes to Iran even Dumas can’t sidestep it. However, she keeps pouring on the syrup until the reader can’t tell a stack of pancakes from a cow pie. Here’s how she describes the abusive British oil policy towards Iran: “In a perfect world, the kindergarten teacher would have stood up before any documents were signed and said, ‘time out for Britain. We’ll renegotiate after a nap.’” When it comes time to confront the CIA engineered demolition of Iran’s home-made democracy, she is too genteel to use the word “America,” opting for “foreign powers” instead. The reader will have to guess for himself who this ‘foreign powers’ was that so bereaved Iranians that they are still shouting “Death to America” in the streets.
In return for her courteous flattery, Dumas invites America to see the positive side of Iranians. For instance, her memoir is soaked in paternal love, obliterating the notion that Iranian fathers do not value their daughters. As a moving example, her father’s inept swimming lessons are hilarious, particularly in the light of his irritation at the girl’s abysmal progress.
Funny in Farsi delivers exactly what the title promises, but there’s also an unfunny side to this memoir. The author’s eagerness to please and be accepted causes her to slip on a crucial point. Too often she takes the opportunity to distance herself from her ruder, more politically outspoken compatriots. This creates the impression that Iranians come in two varieties, gentle America lovers and violent America haters. Her partitioning strategy relieves the stigma on most Iranian-Americans--a great service to the community--but frankly they are not the ones who need her help. It is the other group--those living in Iran—who are threatened with a U.S. invasion. It is this other group whose essential infrastructure and national heritage are menaced by this enraged and egomaniacal sultan, America. Those Iranians are now perhaps in even greater danger because Funny in Farsi is telling Americans their country can do no wrong.
By Firoozeh Dumas, Random House.
In this bright and humorous thank-you note to America, Iranian émigrée Firoozeh Dumas demonstrates mastery of a traditional Persian art form, flattery. Highly developed by Iranian court poets, this skillful expression of praise, humility and gratitude is known as madh. Loosely translated as ‘panegyric,’ these flowery words came in handy when an enraged and egomaniacal sultan was about to do something rash. Dumas renders her madh of America in memoir form instead of in verse, but her techniques of appeasement are akin to those used by court poets whose wit sometimes decided between prosperity or ruin for the nation.
To make the sultan America feel warm inside, Dumas begins her tale in the upscale town of Whittier, California, where her family settled in the seventies. Tension builds when soon after their arrival she and her mother get lost in this opulent suburban setting. The tension is relieved when a resident generously invites them in to use the telephone and later drives them home. Dumas tells us, “After spending an entire day in America, surrounded by Americans I realized….the people were very, very kind.” What follows are peanut butter cookies, summer camp, Thanksgiving, Bob Hope, Disneyland, Halloween, and The Brady Bunch.
In her carefully crafted effort not to offend, Dumas recreates the cotton candy America that existed only in Hollywood in the fifties. She resurrects the uncomplicated America of The Andy Griffith Show and Father Knows Best. One can almost hear the knowing laugh track when Dumas replaces the word “hell” with the euphemism “a very bad place.” Eyeballs would roll if such material came from a contemporary American writer, but Dumas insightfully recognizes that, channeled through fresh immigrant eyes, this hackneyed treatment of America still has plenty of play.
Another technique of madh is paying homage to mundane attributes taken for granted by the sultan, revealing their deeper significance. Dumas reminds us of American affluence during a romp through Price Club. Her father and uncle ate enough free samples to feel like they had a full lunch. “In Iran people who taste something before they buy it are called shoplifters,” says Dumas. “Here a person can taste something, not buy it and still have the clerk wish him a nice day." In a wealthy consumer society where advertising budgets are huge, the giving away of food to un-needy strangers is indeed a remarkable consequence, something to boast about.
Pressing her ego boosting charm on the reader, Dumas stuffs America with opportunities. She mentions that her father was a Fulbright scholar. He even got to meet Albert Einstein and was consulted on the subject of Persian cats by the great genius. Her own education at UC Berkeley was financed through scholarships. In a very funny chapter, reminiscent of fifties era sitcoms, her father botches the opportunity to win a fortune in Bowling for Dollars. He comes home with only a pittance, the wiser for his ordeal.
Dumas is an Iranian-American Norman Rockwell. Death and tragedy are not on her palette. Everyone is wonderful--the exception being her intolerant French mother-in-law, which I assume was allowed in the book to please the freedom fries crowd.
Though politics is unwelcome in polite company, when it comes to Iran even Dumas can’t sidestep it. However, she keeps pouring on the syrup until the reader can’t tell a stack of pancakes from a cow pie. Here’s how she describes the abusive British oil policy towards Iran: “In a perfect world, the kindergarten teacher would have stood up before any documents were signed and said, ‘time out for Britain. We’ll renegotiate after a nap.’” When it comes time to confront the CIA engineered demolition of Iran’s home-made democracy, she is too genteel to use the word “America,” opting for “foreign powers” instead. The reader will have to guess for himself who this ‘foreign powers’ was that so bereaved Iranians that they are still shouting “Death to America” in the streets.
In return for her courteous flattery, Dumas invites America to see the positive side of Iranians. For instance, her memoir is soaked in paternal love, obliterating the notion that Iranian fathers do not value their daughters. As a moving example, her father’s inept swimming lessons are hilarious, particularly in the light of his irritation at the girl’s abysmal progress.
Funny in Farsi delivers exactly what the title promises, but there’s also an unfunny side to this memoir. The author’s eagerness to please and be accepted causes her to slip on a crucial point. Too often she takes the opportunity to distance herself from her ruder, more politically outspoken compatriots. This creates the impression that Iranians come in two varieties, gentle America lovers and violent America haters. Her partitioning strategy relieves the stigma on most Iranian-Americans--a great service to the community--but frankly they are not the ones who need her help. It is the other group--those living in Iran—who are threatened with a U.S. invasion. It is this other group whose essential infrastructure and national heritage are menaced by this enraged and egomaniacal sultan, America. Those Iranians are now perhaps in even greater danger because Funny in Farsi is telling Americans their country can do no wrong.
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