Just in case it was unclear that the Islamic Republic of Iran is striving to defeat the “Zionist Entity,” its leaders decided to let us know by winning an Oscar–or, at least, that’s what they’re claiming now, in one of the most outrageous examples of post-Oscar spin doctoring ever conceived.
Sunday night at the Academy Awards, director Asghar Farhadi beat out the Israeli film “Footnote” for the best foreign language film with “A Separation.” Farhadi’s film tells the story of a troubled marriage and depicts many Iranians’ desires to flee the country in order to avoid turmoil – not exactly a film that makes one want to live in Iran. But this didn’t stop Iranian state TV from chalking one up for the jihad.
USA Today reports that the state TV broadcast said “the award succeeded in ‘leaving behind’ a film from the ‘Zionist regime,'” and the head of Iran’s Cinematic Agency, one Javad Shamaghdari, “portrayed the Oscar decision as the ‘beginning of the collapse’ of Israeli influence that ‘beats the drum of war’ in the U.S.”
And this spin doctoring leads us to the mother of all post-Oscar ironies: the Academy Awards, with all their western decadent wealth and glamor (not to mention cleavage, and did you see Angelina Jolie’s leg cut up to HERE)… well, they weren’t even broadcast in Iran – the Iranians who watched the show primarily did so via illegal satellite dishes.
And more irony: Iran isn’t exactly known for its artistic expression or encouragement of the art of filmmaking, especially for movies that reflect poorly on the regime. You know, the ones that tell the truth.
Just this past December, Iran decided that the House of Cinema, which was the largest professional organization for artists and filmmakers in the country for 20 years, was now illegal. This was due to “cooperation” with the BBC. Since then, six filmmakers have been imprisoned for “collaborating with the BBC.” And just last year, award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to a six-year house arrest and a 20-year ban on filmmaking after he was convicted of making propaganda against the government.
The people who subscribe to this “school of filmmaking” have of course criticized Farhadi’s film for perhaps suggesting that emigrating to the West in the solution. Nevertheless, one surmises now that the film could have been about the burning of Korans, but as long as it beat an Israeli film, Iran’s government would be hailing it as an artistic victory.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.