24
A friend of mine called the other day to tell me to tune into Fox TV channel and watch an episode of “24”. Not because he thought I liked spy movies, but because an Iranian-born actress, Shohreh Aghdashloo, was starring in it. She was nominated for an Oscar last year for best supporting role. With that nomination, after a long career in theatre and cinema, she finally got a foothold in mainstream media in the US and the recognition she deserved.
So, I started watching with such an anticipation and pride; but after watching a few scenes, I was sadly disappointed. It seemed that even an Oscar nomination was not enough to land her a “non-stereotypical” role; she was playing the role of a terrorist. She worked so hard for so many years to get to play a terrorist?! And she was not just playing any generic terrorist; from the names of the characters, she was playing an Iranian terrorist; the stereotype that the Iranian regime has worked so hard to create and Iranian people around the world are trying so hard to dispel.
The episode was more than just a typical good-guy-kills-terrorist movie. Aghdashloo’s character was a part of a family of terrorists, mom, dad, and even the teenage son; a sleeper cell living, working, and blending in the American society. It was telling the American audience to beware of the dark-hair people living next door who speak English with a weird accent and whose names you can’t pronounce! Those people across the street whose kids go to school with your kids, whose son is dating your daughter or whom you just had tea with the other day. It seems like the cloud of suspicion that is cast over our lives because of where we were born, the way we look or the way we talk is not enough and TV shows like this should come along and reinforce these suspicions ten fold. And Aghdashloo goes along with it. I felt betrayed. Is fame and fortune so important that one has to sink that low?
There are more reasons to dislike this movie beside the way it portrays a middle-eastern family. It has a sinister ideological propaganda content. The nature of that so-called anti-terrorist unit with its super hi-tech surveillance gadgets that seems to have access to every corner of everyone’s lives and makes the Patriot Act or the Torture-gate pale in comparison, reinforcing the idea that that is what we need to stay safe, to name one; but I leave that to you to ponder…
ps. see my follow up to this post here
So, I started watching with such an anticipation and pride; but after watching a few scenes, I was sadly disappointed. It seemed that even an Oscar nomination was not enough to land her a “non-stereotypical” role; she was playing the role of a terrorist. She worked so hard for so many years to get to play a terrorist?! And she was not just playing any generic terrorist; from the names of the characters, she was playing an Iranian terrorist; the stereotype that the Iranian regime has worked so hard to create and Iranian people around the world are trying so hard to dispel.
The episode was more than just a typical good-guy-kills-terrorist movie. Aghdashloo’s character was a part of a family of terrorists, mom, dad, and even the teenage son; a sleeper cell living, working, and blending in the American society. It was telling the American audience to beware of the dark-hair people living next door who speak English with a weird accent and whose names you can’t pronounce! Those people across the street whose kids go to school with your kids, whose son is dating your daughter or whom you just had tea with the other day. It seems like the cloud of suspicion that is cast over our lives because of where we were born, the way we look or the way we talk is not enough and TV shows like this should come along and reinforce these suspicions ten fold. And Aghdashloo goes along with it. I felt betrayed. Is fame and fortune so important that one has to sink that low?
There are more reasons to dislike this movie beside the way it portrays a middle-eastern family. It has a sinister ideological propaganda content. The nature of that so-called anti-terrorist unit with its super hi-tech surveillance gadgets that seems to have access to every corner of everyone’s lives and makes the Patriot Act or the Torture-gate pale in comparison, reinforcing the idea that that is what we need to stay safe, to name one; but I leave that to you to ponder…
ps. see my follow up to this post here
posted by Mehrdad at
9:41 PM
2 Comments:
You might want to read this - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1018068,00.html - written by Shohreh Aghdashloo herself in Time Magazine. It's good to see her own thoughts on the matter in her own words.
By
Anonymous, at 6:21 PM
Anonymous (1),
Thanks for your comment and the link to Aghdashloo’s interview. She says that her character in 24 has a sophisticated and mutli-dimensional character, and as an actor she likes to play such a role. In other words, her motivation was an artistic one, not a materialistic one. Well, another dimension of any art form is what it communicates to the spectators. She basically fails to consider what this movie and her role project in the US public opinion about her fellow Iranian-Americans.
She was more forth-coming in an interview with Radio Farda, a Persian language radio program. It is published on their website. If you know Persian, you may want to read that as well. In that interview she basically offers two other opinions in her defense (which are kind of contradictory as well). (1) not all Middle-easterners are terrorist, but all terrorists are Middle-eastern!! So, 24 is just an exaggerated version of reality! (2) 24 is just a movie, and a cartoon-ish kind at that, and no one should make any parity to real life!
Well, I leave it to you to decide if these assertions make sense. I may write something on these later on my blog (I have heard these opinions from others as well).
In the Time’s piece, she also mentioned she has a project coming up, playing a role in a movie adaptation of the book “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. I’ve read that book, and I think this kind of roles is what she needs to show her art and at the same time have something worthwhile to say to the audience. I hope to see her in such roles than a terrorist role, sophisticated or not.
By
Mehrdad, at 7:23 PM
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