Iranian filmmaker lashes out at Hollywood, American ‘ego’ over Argo portrayal of Iran

Of course, making "faithful portrayals of foreign cultures" is not Hollywood's job. Hollywood's job is to tell compelling stories for an American audience. American audience's need heroes and villains and sometimes those villains are foreign and match the zeitgeist of American foreign policy. The Iranian Parliament has openly called for "death to America," over and over, yet this director thinks that our entertainment industry should be relativistic about his country. All while he is not at all relativistic about America.

Asghar Farhadi took aim at Oscar-winning American film Argo, the 2012 feature about the hostage crisis that began in 1979 when the deposed Iranian Shah was given leave to come to the United States for medical treatment. This was during the Iranian Revolution with the Shah and his Persian, Western ways were overthrown by the America-hating Ayatollah Komanei and his Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. It is a true story about how Iranian revolutionaries wanted Americans' heads on pikes.

Americans who were at the US Embassy in Tehran were taken hostage while 6 of them escaped and found refuge at the Canadian embassy. The film is about the true story of a CIA agent working with Hollywood producers to pose as a Canadian film team to scout locations for a sci-fi film called Argo. Ben Affleck plays the main guy, Tony Mendez, who goes into Iran to aid the 6 in adopting new identities and then get out of the country.

Farhadi said the film portrays Iran "like you're in hell," and objects to that. 66 Americans were captured, tortured and 52 were held as hostages by the IRGC for 444 days while a few were released. The hostage crisis is arguably one of the main reasons US President Jimmy Carter lost the election for his second term to California Governor Ronald Reagan.

"They make these movies for money; it’s a business," Farhadi said. "And in these films it’s always a white guy from the United States saving others. My question is: Why? Why does an American go to Cuba or Iran to save people? People understand they can save themselves. Who asked you to come and save us?"

"The problem with these kinds of films in Hollywood," said Farhadi, "[and] some people in the United States [is that] they look at the world from up to down. Someday you should ask them: Why do you feel you're up and we're down? I don't understand why they have this ego that they're up." He then claimed American democracy is "a lie."

He critiqued the American ethos that believes everyone in the world would like to be American and to participate in our free culture and society. "I have this problem when they feel they are up and they think, '[others] should be like us. Even if it's in a good way and they want to be kind to you, they wish 'one day you'll become like us,' and no, I don't want to."

I hadn't watched Argo until I saw this interview with Farhadi, so I watched it. And honestly it was a pretty good movie full of classic American risk-taking. It was a true story. It did make Iran during their revolution look pretty bad, for sure. Most nations are not in great shape when there are armies forming to depose long-standing leaders and people taking to the streets. Iran moved rapidly under the direction of Komanei from a secular nation to a strict religious one. Women went from being free to walk around and live their lives to being subjected to Sharia law, forcing them to wear long black robes, hijabs, modesty wear, preventing them from moving freely without male relatives.

Farhadi says the film made it look like Iran was hell, and for Americans, all of that would be hell. We are used to a bountiful, free, open society, and we like it that way. Shame on us for thinking everyone would prefer that—we're not doing that so much anymore. 9/11 shook our naiveté and now we know just how much many in the rest of the world hate us.

But to his question, "Why do you feel you're up and we're down? I don't understand why they have this ego that they're up" I answer this: we are up and you are down. And just as we are finally realizing that there's no reason we should go save people who don't want to be saved, we are becoming aware that there's no reason to grant haters access to the nation we rightfully believe is the greatest one on earth.