Just another dent in the damage…

.And The Economist learns a few lessons:

Remember Ahmad Batebi?

Baktay, die and you will be free!

The Buddha Collapsed out of Shame is a beautifully shot film by the younger Makhmalbaf film-maker, Hana. It tells the story of a young Afghan girl wanting to learn how to read and the struggle she undertakes to purchase a notebook by selling eggs. On her way to school she encounters a group of boys playing a game of war, in which they play the Taliban. They capture Baktay and set the scene for her stoning before she is carried away and imprisoned within the caves. It’s not particularly easy viewing when you know that such horrific acts still take place in certain parts of the world, but in casting children much of the politics seems somewhat far removed.

By showing today’s picture of Afghanistan, I tried to depict the effects of the recent years’ violence on the country. So that the adults could see how their behavior affects the younger generation. Children are the future adults. If they get used to violence, the future of the world will be in great danger. A teenage boy in the film says: ”When I grow up I will kill you”. Because as a child he has been through lots of violence so it has become part of his usual life. I think that children’s real school is observing and copying their parent’ behavior or other adults around them – Hana.

During both the opening and closing of the film the viewer witnesses real footage of the Buddha’s ‘collapse‘ in March 2001, which becomes the film’s back drop. In setting the film here Hana attempts to explore Moshen Makhmalbaf’s metaphor that ‘even a statue can be ashamed of witnessing the violence and harshness happening to these innocent people and therefore, collapse’.

I worry that I leave it too long between posts here. It’s just that you know when you really want to be creative and write something really interesting but because you’ve been really busy having a real life and not one of these ‘virtual lives’ it gets harder and harder to come back and write something worth reading.

Maybe it has something to do with not spending days locked away in my little ’study’ writing in order to justify the stupid amount of money I spent on tuition fees last year. Maybe it has something to do with my new found ignorance of current affairs in favour of Heat World. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of excitement that erupts in me when another moron finds out all that lies beyond the veil?

It’s funny because although there is nothing more I love than reading about ‘Iran’s young women’ finding ‘private paths to freedom’ I seem to get really irritated by the way people write about the ’separation between public and private spaces’ as though it’s a news flash. Reality check Peter: We all make a degree of separation between our public and private spaces. It is an ‘important issue’ for all of us called ‘getting on with life’. It’s that judgement we all make about what is appropriate in our different circumstances and surroundings, whether restricted by law, culture, tradition, habit or whatever. But credit where credits due and all that – it makes for a good read and I’m glad that such topics are being written about and as a result I hope that people can get a better understanding not just about Iranian youth culture but about the expression of youth culture more generally.

Which brings me on to the ubiquity of social networking in young lives. I got talking today about the benefits of social networking in business and it’s really got me thinking more about how people use social networking and for what purpose. If I’m completely honest I’d say that 95% of the time I use both Facebook and Myspace to lurk and the other 5% making my profile look interesting, adding photos or messaging old friends. As a rule I much prefer email but you know when you’ve completely lost touch with someone and then they pop up for a chat and you’re not too keen about giving them too many contact details? It’s like the perfect compromise!

So how can businesses benefit from using social network sites? Well in my opinion I’m not really sure they can. Most businesses have some form of software to set up collaborative forums, bulletin boards or news feeds and I don’t think it’s necessarily important for businesses to have a photo tagging option or ‘never-ending quiz’ feature. Portals on the other hand along with blogs and wikis – well that’s another story altogether.

I’ve waited so long to be able to write this… Last night I went to see Persepolis. Its film premiere took place at London’s BFI cinema complex, which is about 200 miles from home. A long way to travel just to go the cinema hey? And we were half an hour late. No matter, the hour and fifteen minutes that we did manage to see was amazing. Much much better than I ever expected in fact.

As a humanist interpretation of the Islamic Revolution it seems to put a face on the realities of war for those lucky ones, like me, that have never experienced such tragedy and find it difficult to relate to life under an Islamic government, no matter how much is read or absorbed during a two-week holiday. The film was one of the few films I’ve ever seen that brought a tear to my eye. It’s not like I have a heart of stone or anything – I just don’t cry at films very often. But then a second later I’d be in fits of laughter. Also of note is the awesome soundtrack used. It was so fitting and helped propel the narrative flow much better than dialogue alone. Below is a short trailer that includes my favourite bit (the leg waxing). The quality is pretty bad but you get the picture :)

One more thing – I heard Sean Penn is to voice Anoosh in the English version. Does anyone have anymore info on this adaptation? I’m happy enough with the French version though to be honest.

Iran as a Nation of Nose-jobs is another one of those repetitive cliches that, putting it politely, really gets on my nerves. Since beginning my research into Iranian blogging I have collected a mass of editorials that, like Hitchens, although seemingly attempt to depict ‘Iran’s Other Face‘ or ‘Lift the Veil‘ do little more than mislead its readers into thinking that the only aspirations of young Iranians is western simulation – to listen to western music, to dress in western fashion, to experience western romance (like you find in the movies) or simply to up sticks and seek new opportunities in the west.

Often such editorials only scratch the surface of Iran’s rich cultural heritage, offering us typical accounts of ‘when I told my friends and family I was going to Tehran, they looked at me as if I were taking a short break in Mordor’ and ‘nothing quite prepared me for the dust, noise and being swathed in fabric head to toe’. Don’t get me wrong, when I told my friends and family I was off to Iran for two weeks I, obviously like many others, was confronted with dumb-founded expressions and grew tired of comforting their fears that I might be taken hostage and paraded on Al Jazeera. However I don’t think I was unprepared to be ’swathed in fabric’ – I think that’s just ignorant. I lost count of the number of times I had to explain to people that wearing hejab is the law in Iran and of course I would need to wear hejab to abide by the law. The only way I felt I could describe this to others, with little knowledge about Iran, was by making a poor comparison between state law in the US. For example whilst the legal age of consuming alcohol may be 18 in one state it is quite possible that it may be 21 in another and just because you are old enough to drink in your home state it doesn’t mean you’re old enough to drink it in another state and must therefore stick to soft drinks unless willing to break the law. Tenuous or what!! but you get the point.

I thought that after visiting Iran I might write up my own experiences of life in a ‘closed society’ but to be honest every attempt I made followed a similar route – ‘it’s not what you’d think’, ‘that’s not what it’s like’, ‘it’s so different to how you imagine’. But the final nail in the coffin came as I read Rachel Cooke’s poor ‘Persian Pilgrim’ in the Observer (which I can’t seem to find an online link to). I think just about every third sentence riled me in some way and consequently I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how sincere you try to be in writing about your experience in Iran as a westerner usually you just end up sounding like a complete moron.

I haven’t seen a woman’s forearms, or even a wrist, for so long that my vision has adjusted; it’s like getting used to a black and white television, after colour all over again.

Repeating stereotypical notions of ‘chador-clad Islamists’ or ‘Down with America Friday prayers’ is something I wanted to move away from but in attempting to depict a ‘truer picture of Iran’ these always seem to end up being the starting point of conversation. In attempts to educate people about Iran it seems that we always need to address the media’s misrepresentation of Iranian culture and exaggerated stereotypes, which shape the public image of Iran in people’s mindsets. If I felt like being harsh I’d say that mostly people here are ignorant but that isn’t true. We are just bombarded by terrorist theories and images of brutality to instill fear and subsequently justify supposed preemptive strikes against Iran. In my opinion an attack on Iran is highly unlikely’ it’s just too infeasible. For a start there’s too many paykans in the way, but that’s another story’.

My time in Iran was spent making some wonderful friends, re-acquainting myself with an ex-colleague and inspirational information studies researcher, hunting down traditional Persian cuisine for the less traditional (i.e. veganised chelo kebabs, tadique and khoreshes), frequenting coffee shops, shopping in the bazaars and generally having the time of my life, rather than fantasising about ‘orange blossom and the sound of the muezzin dancing faintly on the breeze’ or ‘camels padding elegantly across sand, crowded but authentic bazaars, and caravanserai with vaulted ceilings and twirling grilles over their windows’. And I certainly didn’t spend as much time as this Cooke woman moaning about my ‘wretched scarf’.