Rick Steves: Iran, Yesterday And Today

On the whole I enjoyed this video, Rick Steves's "Iran, Yesterday And Today." It does much to discuss misconceptions about Iran and it touches on some of Iran's history. I know there was some talk in class about the frequent comparison between what Steves expects and what he finds ("Though most people think this, in reality, Iran is like this"), but I think that that commentary was done consciously and purposefully. To a person who knows nothing about Iran or its customs, a person who may have a relatively stereotypical view of Iran (of the Middle East), having those contrasts between reality and perception specifically pointed out can do some good. I think this may be Steves's way of pointing out and shedding misconceptions while offering new facts to replace the misconceptions. It sounds like something we do with students, but when you're trying to reach a mass audience and you're not able to go terribly in depth with your topic I think you need to be more explicit.

One particular issue I had arose in part 5 when Steves was discussing with his guide the differences and strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. At one point, Steves asks why the two groups have been fighting for so long. He asks about the Iraqi Sunnis and the Iranian Shiites and their battles. After the guide explains that those conflicts are national ones (Iraq vs. Iran) and not religious ones (Sunni vs. Shiite), implying (I think) that Sunni and Shiite are just terms reporters use (somewhat improperly) to differentiate between two groups (perhaps to imply a religious conflict that is not an issue, perhaps out of ignorance of the meaning of the words) but that news editorialization does not represent the conflict, Steves still, in his narration, compares the Sunni and Shiite "conflict" to the Protestant and Catholic conflict in the West. While the guide says that a good way to describe the issue is to look at relations between England and Ireland, Steves lends his own spin. I feel as if he wasn't really listening to the guide.

I wish Steves had been able to go more in depth, but for what it is and how long it is, I think the video is a good introduction to Iran. Additionally, we must remember while watching that, as mentioned in the beginning of the video, Steves traveled with a guide. His questions were censored, what his crew was allowed to film was censored, even where he was allowed to go was up to his guide (a government employee in charge of enforcing the provisions that allow Steves and his crew to film in Iran at all). So perhaps some of our questions or the problems we see derive from censorship and not totally from bad "reporting."

In Related News...

Turkey.

Pro-government Iran.

Military as a vehicle for Orientalism in Iraq?

Religion, veiling, Iraq.

Iraqi displacement and refugees (from 2007).

Iraqi refugee camp now.

Palestine.

Israel.

The Complete Persepolis

Given everyone else's feelings, it seems a bit redundant to say this, but I loved reading Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis.

The graphic novel does a wonderful job illustrating (literally and figuratively) the complexities of Iran throughout its history. While the story centers on events just before to just after the revolution, it takes into account and addresses other parts of Iran's history, parts that led the country to have certain relationships with certain countries, parts that defined how Iranians felt about their own country and its leadership. It also showcases primarily positive characters, both female and male. Those who are "villains," enforcers of the rules of the new government, or are disrespectful are only bit characters that come and go, serving as reminders to the reader that it is an outside force which compels the strife of Persepolis's characters. Additionally, readers are presented with a picture of how the new, religion-based laws have a negative affect on both men and women.

This coming of age novel is well written and beautifully illustrated. Teachers can rest assured that the novel's illustrations lend themselves to a critical reading and understanding of the novel. At times expository, joyful, and beyond sad, Persepolis is always engaging and honest. The book shows the best and worst in its author (the protagonist in this memoir-ish novel) and always the best in those closest to her, her family.

We get to see what war does to a family - any family, anywhere in the world.

Persepolis gets at hypocrisy by directing a critical eye toward those secular characters who embraced (or seemingly did so) Muslim rule of law. It examines and makes clear, so importantly, that Iran needed a revolution, but the one it got was not what many had hoped for. Before the revolution, the shah had people investigated, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by his (not so) secret police, the SAVAK. He was brutal. Iranian people were united in their desire for a revolution. But the revolution that occurred brought with it new problems and new oppressions and losses of freedom. An important part of the book is reconciling what the desired post-revolutionary government was with what the implemented government was.

The Complete Persepolis is definitely suitable for secondary classrooms (9th - 12th grades; the first half of the book, sold as Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, perhaps for middle schoolers). It can be used as a study of oppression in conjunction with other books, it can be used as part of a unit on Middle Eastern studies, it can be used alone to explore a genre or as a platform to discuss many current issues.

You can watch the movie here.

Two Women

Marie and I both watched Two Women for our upcoming presentation on Iran. I'll be viewing another video as well, but I watched this movie so Marie and I could discuss it and because I thought it looked good and because we think some of you may watch it!

Two Women was released in 1998 and was written and directed by Tahmineh Milani, who is also responsible for several other films. The movie takes place in the late 1970s and 1980s (a 13 year span is covered).

Two Women has several important characters:

1). Fereshteh (main character)

2). Roya

3). Hassan

4). Fereshteh's uncle and male cousin

5). Fereshteh's father

6). Ahmad (Fereshteh's husband)

7). Roya's husband

At the film's outset we see Roya, a woman who owns an architecture firm with her husband. Roya is confident and has the respect of her workers. Her relationship with her husband is shown to be one of mutual respect, one that represents a partnership in life.

We then flash back to Roya's university days in Tehran. She meets a classmate named Fereshteh, who is very smart and tutors Roya. The two women become very good friends. While both women are independent (think for themselves, live alone, attend university, come and go as they please), we begin to see Fereshteh as the more bold of the friends. When something dangerous happens at the university she wants to stop and see what it is. When she is confronted by Hassan, her stalker, she goes up to him and yells at him even though she is scared and knows he is dangerous. She refuses to stay in her apartment and hide from Hassan.

This is where Milani's portrayal of men begins to play a larger role. Hassan follows Fereshteh everywhere she goes and gets on the bus with her multiple times. In Tehran, when Fereshteh and Roya (who are on the bus together) tell the driver they are being harassed, the driver and other men help them. The driver throws Hassan off the bus, calls him names, and tells him to leave the girls alone. As Fereshteh looks out the window, she sees Hassan holding a knife and looking at her. Hassan's terrorization of Fereshteh continues in Tehran until he disfigures her male cousin with acid. (See Marie's post for more details.)

In the hospital (after the acid), Fereshteh's uncle and father (brothers) are both present. Fereshteh's father blames her and says that she has dishonored her family. Fereshteh's uncle tries to tell his brother that it is not Fereshteh's fault and that she needs help and comfort. This exchange highlights how two different regions in Iran may be predisposed to thinking of women. These two brothers, presumably raised together, have different views. Fereshteh's uncle, living in Tehran, allows his son to be tutored by a woman and understands, even through his grief, that she is not to blame for the tragedy that befell his son. Fereshteh's father, who still lives in a small town, blames his daughter as if she threw the acid herself, he feels that she is directly responsible for this, that she has dishonored and embarrassed her family, and that she has had too much freedom and must come home.

Back home, Fereshteh is sad but feels safe. Until she uses a public phone and sees Hassan watching her. She gets in her car and a chase ensues in which a little boy dies. Fereshteh's father is again upset and blames her. At the trial, Hassan blames Fereshteh for everything he's being charged with (stalking, acid throwing, killing the little boy). He says it's all her fault because she didn't love him and she made him feel foolish for being in love with her, that he still loves her (you didn't miss anything, these two never date, he just sees her and wants her) and that she mocks him by denying him. He is sentenced to 13 years in prison. He says, as he being hauled away, that he'll find Fereshteh.

Fereshteh, too was on trial. A man named Ahmad paid her expenses in exchange for her hand in marriage (for more details see Marie's post on this). Though her family tried to guilt her into marriage, though she felt she owed Ahmad, Fereshteh chose to marry Ahmad. No one forced her to do so.

After their marriage, we see Ahmad become controlling and jealous of Fereshteh. He won't let anyone see her, he locks up the phone, he forbids her to leave the house, he will not allow her to go back to university. Fereshteh tries to deal with this at first, tries to reason with Ahmad. But the treatment escalates to the point that Fereshteh's father even gets upset with Ahmad, telling him "I gave you a wife, not a slave."

This is the beginning of the real development of Fereshteh's father. He is seeing first hand the psychological ramifications this marriage is having on his daughter. He is beginning to understand that there are things occurring around Fereshteh for which she is not responsible.
Fereshteh convinces her father to help her get a divorce, which is not granted. That he even agreed, though, shows monumental growth on the part of Fereshteh's father.

Years later, when Hassan gets out of prison, he finds Fereshteh. When she is fleeing Ahmad, Hassan catches up with her and she begs for death. Ahmad catches up to Fereshteh and tries to stop Hassan, then Hassan stabs Ahmad.

We are then brought back to a scene with Roya and her husband. Again, we see the loving, respectful couple. When Fereshteh questions how she'll live if Ahmad dies, it is Roya's husband who tells her "you'll live."

These male characters are all representations of stereotypes and of the progression of women's lives in Iran.

Hassan, the man who would have complete control, who would disfigure and kill a woman who disobeyed him, who is psychotic and obsessive.

Ahmad, the man who does not respect his wife, who needs control and is suspicious and wears away a woman's self esteem, tries to take away the freedom she had and wants back, but never physically abuses her.

Fereshteh's uncle, who shows progress from the old way of thinking (which he probably shared with his brother) to a more liberated view where smart, independent women are not intimidating and unnatural.

Fereshteh's father, who shows that a man can change. His character's progression toward a point of view that values Fereshteh from one that blames her shows that progress does not have to happen from generation to generation, it can occur within a person.

Roya's husband, who epitomizes what is lacking in the life of the repressed who have no recourse because laws are created to keep them "in their places": mutual respect, genuine love, no contest to independence, partnership.

Milani sets this movie in the late 1970s and 1980s for a very specific reason. Not only does Milani show that there many kinds of men in Iran, just as there here in the U.S. and around the world, she shows that there are men who do not treat women poorly just because laws allow them to. She shows that there is a progression taking place (Fereshteh's father, uncle, cousin, Roya's husband). If that progression was occurring in the 1970s and continued after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, what kind of men and relationships must there now exist in Iran?

While both main female characters are strong, independent, and smart, the point of Two Women is largely about showing Iranian men, the Iranian society, as something that is not barbaric and void of respect for women. By using characters like Hassan and Ahmad, Milani shows her awareness that some change is needed, that women are not treated as equals. She makes a stellar case against the mistreatment of women. But she also does a stellar job at devillainizing Iranian men by showing that they are not all like Hassan and Ahmad and that even those who share some characteristics with them can change.