Month: June 2013

A Pakistani version of Glee, titled Taan – the Urdu word for “musical note” – is on the verge of becoming a reality:

The show revolves around the fictional Hayaat Haveli musical academy in Lahore. At its heart is a tension between a traditional music teacher and his younger rival, who trains budding pop stars, representing different faces of Pakistan. Among their pupils are the offspring of well-heeled bureaucrats and a talentless wannabe who dreams of becoming a Bollywood actress.

Some plotlines that differentiate it from its American counterpart:

One of the characters, Annie Masih is described as losing all her family in the 2009 attack on a Christian enclave in the town on Gojra, a real episode in which seven people were burned alive. Another storyline involves Fariduddin, a member of the Pakistan Taliban intent on blowing up the academy before he is eventually seduced by music.

Marya Hannun notes how the show plans on dealing with materials that might offend the country’s censors:

[A] love affair “between a Taliban extremist and a beautiful Christian girl” promises to give Rachel and Finn’s tortured romance a run for its money. And even more controversial is a planned storyline depicting a gay relationship.

The show’s creators have come up with creative ways to avoid angering authorities. Take the aforementioned plotline of two male lovers. “Let’s say in a certain scene, there are two boys talking to each other, they are not allowed to show their physical attachment to each other,” explains director Samar Raza, particularly since homosexuality is illegal in Pakistan. “So I bring a third character who says: ‘God designed Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.'” This third conservative character will theoretically enable Raza to discuss homosexuality while evading censorship.

Cameron Abadi studies the outgoing president and his legacy in Iranian politics:

Ahmadinejad, canny populist that he is, soon began to privilege secular Iranian nationalism over fealty to Islam, and thumbed his nose at the Islamic establishment throughout his second term. He began calling explicitly for an “Iranian Islam,” a culture unembarrassed by Iran’s pre-Islamic grandeur. Rather than endorse the Islamic Republic’s traditional neglect of Nowruz—Iran’s traditional pre-Islamic New Year celebration, which was openly reviled by Ayatollah Khomeini—Ahmadinejad invited other heads of state to celebrate the occasion in Tehran. (Ayatollah Khamenei left town during the festivities.) He has offered repeated praise of Iran’s most celebrated pre-Islamic ruler, Cyrus the Great; suggested that men and women be allowed to attend soccer matches together; and openly attacked prominent clerics for their illicit accumulation of massive wealth. Meanwhile, Mashaei, his closest advisor, twice declared that Iran was not enemies with the Israeli people (forcing Khamenei to clarify that Iran and Israel are not “friends”).

All of this had an effect on the current elections:

Khamenei loyalists have labeled Mashaei a practitioner of “black magic” and attacked Ahmadinejad for “sinful” conduct (the latter for the crime of hugging Hugo Chavez’s mother at his funeral) and both Ahmadinejad and Mashaei have essentially been excommunicated from the political elite. The coming election seems certain to result in a president who has little inclination of challenging the primacy of the religious establishment. By the same measure, it seems unlikely to produce a president with any real connection to the Iranian people. Khamenei has even speculated that he might eventually abolish the presidency entirely. Having abandoned years ago any pretense to democracy, Iran’s regime may now be beginning to abandon any remaining claims to popular sovereignty.

(Photo: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks to the media during a press conference at the Al Ahzar headquarters on February 5, 2013, in Cairo, Egypt. President Ahmadinejad arrived in the Egyptian capital, becoming the first Iranian President to visit Egypt since the Iranian revolution in 1979. By Ed Giles/Getty Images)

The Believer has posted his 1945 essay “The Freedom of The Press,” originally composed as the preface to Animal Farm, with footnotes by John Reed. An excerpt from Orwell with Reed’s comment:

Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time). But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI [Ministry of Information] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face.

That people were willing to live in a state of denial—ignoring war, ignoring injustice, ignoring tremendous threats to themselves and even the planet—continually amazed Orwell, and he struggled with the cartography of complacency. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “In the face of terrifying dangers and golden political opportunities, people just keep on keeping on, in a sort of twilight sleep in which they are conscious of nothing except the daily round of work, family life, darts at the pub, exercising the dog, mowing the lawn, bringing home the beer, etc.” In “Notes on Nationalism,” Orwell marveled at “the lunatic habit of identifying oneself with large power units.”

And therein lies the answer to our twenty-first century state of denial. Our identities are under siege: advertising, education, the arts. We are built up and destroyed by lifestyles and categories (of race, of class, of culture) that exist primarily to contain, delimit, divide and exploit the human experience. If there’s anything you think you need to buy to be who you are—whether it’s curtains from Ikea or a CD or a book or liposuction or take-your-pick—you don’t own yourself.

Recent Dish on Orwell here, here, here and here. Recent Bukowski on censorship here.