Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Here, there and everywhere
What did you make of the regionalism in the story? We have people from Iran and People from Bahrain in the game, of course. And in the cast of characters we have a soldier from Azerbaijan, a soldier from Mashad and a soldier from Tehran. There are also plenty of rural/urban references. The whole cast could have been from Tehran. What was the purpose of varying it?
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I think one reason was to allow the characters to diffuse some cognitive dissonance. When faced with women who weren’t acting as they were “supposed to,” a soldier could just blame it on where they came from. (Wasn’t “Tehranian women!” interjected more than once?)
Well, I posted earlier that maybe the attitudes we saw that were more open-minded about the rules came from being in a big city. It would be important to note, as I overlooked, that those views were widespread even in rural or distant areas, aways from the universities.
Yeah, I think there were some important rural/urban distinctions, for sure.
And I think part of the silliness about where someone is from, the ethnic pride, is sort of being made fun of, just like the silliness regarding male/female distinctions. Much of it is simply self-serving and ridiculous and doesn't stand up under scrutiny.
Of course, we're guilt of that in the U.S., too. Ethnic pride and geographic pride. People can make gross assumptions about a Kansan, a Southerner, a New Yorker.
Yeah, and the girl immediately suspected that the soldier was lying in his report of the game, inflating the deeds of his fellow Mashadi!
I think there is always tension, whether expressed or not, in Iran about the country's Persian history. Most Iranians consider themselves Persians, not Arabs. They don't speak Arabic. The Islamic fundamentalism is part and parcel of the Arabic invasion that transformed their country, not something that's native to them as a people.
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