Inresponseto last years Oscar-winning filmArgo, based on the real-life rescue of a handful of American citizens during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Tehran plansto sue Hollywood filmmakers who participate in the production of such anti-Iran propaganda films.In the movie, in which director Ben Affleck also plays the lead role, Iranian officials are shown being outwitted by an elaborate CIA plan to camouflage the U.S. diplomats fleeing the country as part of a team scouting locations for an outlandish science-fiction film.
Iranian authorities have labeledArgoa propaganda attack against their nation and humanity. The countrys state-run broadcaster Press TV complains that the film is a far cry from a balanced narration and is replete with historical inaccuracies and distortions. The film was banned from the general public not that this accomplished anything, since an estimated several hundred thousand copies have been sold by DVD bootleggers whosayits their biggest seller in years. As an additional measure, Iranian officialshelda private screening ofArgoas part of a conference called The Hoax of Hollywood and called it a violation of international cultural norms, whatever those are.
Press TV detailed its objections to the film in an online article: The Iranophobic American movie attempts to describe Iranians as overemotional, irrational, insane, and diabolical while at the same time, the CIA agents are represented as heroically patriotic. At the risk of speaking for Ben Affleck, I would respond that the movie does not depict all Iranians this way, only the murderous Islamic fundamentalists who took over the country, and who already do a great job living up to the description irrational and diabolical.
Nonetheless, Press TV reports that offended Iranian officials have talked to an internationally-renowned French lawyer about filing a lawsuit. I will defend Iran against the films likeArgo, which are produced in Hollywood to distort the countrys image, said attorney Isabelle Coutant-Peyre. In a curious, Hollywood-worthy twist, Coutant-Peyre just happens to be the wife of mega-terrorist Carlos the Jackal, currently imprisoned in France where heconverted to Islam.
IsArgofaithful to every historical detail? Of course not (its deviations from reality have beendocumentedhere) no historical dramatization on film is unfailingly accurate, nor can it be, otherwise it would be a documentary (and even documentaries bear the points of view of their filmmakers, who are necessarily selective about the facts they include). Movies need to tell stories, and they tell them in ways that meet certain structural requirements of good storytelling. But of course the Iranian authorities are not interested in what Press TV called a balanced narration anyway; they want to sanitize their reputation with theirowninaccuracies and distortions.
And it looks like they intend to do just that. To counterArgo, Iran plans to fund a movie entitledThe General Staff, about twenty American hostages who were handed over to the United States by Iranian revolutionaries (Iranian screenwriter Farhad Tohidi has alsoannouncedplans for a TV series,The Broken Paw, about the seizure of the U.S. Embassy). This film, saidThe General Staffs director Ataollah Salmanian, which will be a big production, should be an appropriate response to the ahistoric filmArgo. He said he hoped to secure funding from the Art Bureau wing of the propagandists at the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization.
The General Staff, which will begin shooting next year, will be based on eyewitness accounts, Salmanian said. Press TV cited him as saying that his film would depict the historical event, unlike the American version which lacks a proper view of the story. And by proper, of course, he means Iran-centric. Kenneth Taylor, the Canadian ambassador portrayed in the film,toldThe New York Times, It will be amusing to see what they take issue with.
Affleck toorespondedto Irans plans:
You have to understand, this is a sort of Stalinist regime in this place that is extremely repressive. Its governing a nation full of millions of wonderful, amazing people, so to be part of this movieArgothat seems to have kids up and paying attention so this Stalinist regime feels the need to sort of push back somehow, I think is a tremendous badge of honor.
It is, and good for him for not sucking up to the Iranian regime like some other Hollywood luminaries have. Four years ago an unofficial delegation from Hollywoods Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciencesset out to visit Iranas part of a cultural exchange that might soothe tensions between our countries.Iranian cultural advisor Javad Shamaghdarilaid outfor the Hollywood representatives exactly what Iran wanted out of the meeting: If Hollywood wants tocorrect its behaviortowards Iranian people and Islamic culture then they have toofficially apologize, he said.
D. Parvaz, an Iranian journalist for Al Jazeera, recentlywrotea defense of Irans sensitivity toArgo(and to other less-than-flattering portrayals of Iran as in films like300andNot Without My Daughter) for the reliably pro-IslamicHuffington Post, in which she expressed her and her countrymens weariness at the treatment of her fatherland in the media: Its allnuclear this, human rights that she complained. [Emphasis in original]
Yes, how terribly unfair that the media dwell on Irans stated intention to wipe Israel from the map or to bring the Great Satan America to its knees with the nuclear weapons it is acquiring in the face of international condemnation. How biased of the media to shine a light on the fact that Iran publicly hangs teenage gays from cranes, stones adulterers to death, rapes and tortures female protesters, and publicly assaults women for wearing western jeans and hairstyles.
If Parvaz wants her fatherland to quit producing such public relationsfaux pas, perhaps she could speak to the regime there about reining in their medieval insanity and hatred. Perhaps she could recommend to the mullahs that they disband their terrorist minions in Hezbollah, stop exporting IEDs, and enter the 21stcentury. That will go a long way toward rehabilitating Irans image problem.
By Front Page Magazine
The Iran Project is not responsible for the content of quoted articles.
