Sunday, April 19, 2009

A cruel opinion, I know...


Nothing gets the West so riled up than when beautiful people get locked up by hardline, ugly and unfashionable religious types. On another note, I was walking around in a shopping centre today and wandered into an HMV store. To my surprise, one of the books on sale there was Che Guevara's book Guerrilla Warfare. I mean do the people selling it even realise that this book, which any capitalist society should actually ban, aims to destroy everything they stand for? On another counter, I also saw the comic version of Waltz with Bashir and next to it Persepolis. I still don't care what anybody says, I don't understand why I have to watch this Bashir film..I might watch it one day, but I honestly don't care to hear what an Israeli has to say about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. I also haven't seen Persepolis, but I saw enough of it to make me know that the "good guys" in it were the hard faced women in chadors who were rebuking people for listening to rock and roll, and not the naive caricature victims presented by the stupid girl who was narrating the story. So two opinions on films that I haven't seen, how is that for impartiality? 


Anyhow, reading the story of the former "Miss Dakota" reminded me of this episode today. If Miss Saberi actually serves out her sentence, she will be 39 when she leaves prison and a lot worse for wear. In fact we should rephrase what we said earlier, what riles the West more than beautiful people being locked up by stern puritanical  types is unfulfilled Oriental beauty that could otherwise have been on display or fondled...by a Western man (or woman) of course .

3 comments:

sasa said...

There is an incredible amount of unreconstructed sexism - and orientalist sexism at that - guiding this story. And you point that out well. I mean, references to the former Miss Dakota etc...

Would the American media care if it was an Iranian-American man? Yes, I think they would. I just don't think there would be any mention of how handsome he is, or how liberated.

Wael Abbas anyone?

Maysaloon said...

Thanks Sasa,
For once we agree! :)

Jillian said...

For once we ALL agree. How many times are they going to mention that she's half-Japanese, as if that makes her somehow more "western" (despite the fact that she was, ahem, raised in the westest of the west and is thus western regardless)