Photo:
http://tinyurl.com/445hw
25 Years Later, a Different Type of Revolution
Western Culture Is Seeping Into Iranian Society, Despite Lingering
Restrictions
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A20
TEHRAN -- Victoria's Secret has arrived in Tehran. So have the Gap, Diesel,
Benetton and Black & Decker. A quarter-century after a mass movement inspired
by Islam ended 2,500 years of monarchy, Iran's revolutionary society is
moving on.
Yet, still trapped in transition, the Islamic republic is full of telling and
sometimes bizarre contradictions.
American films such as "Fahrenheit 9/11" have found their way into theaters
in Tehran, the Iranian capital.
At demonstrations marking the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover
last month, participants handed out cards listing companies to boycott,
including Calvin Klein, because they do business with Israel. But all over
Tehran, billboards that once would have been reserved for revolutionary
slogans and portraits of Iranians killed in the war with Iraq now advertise
Calvin Klein.
Victoria's Secret is not a legal franchise. U.S. economic sanctions ban
American businesses from doing business with Iran. So Iranian entrepreneurs
buy brand-name goods abroad and resell them in their own shops -- often with
the brand replacing the shop name on storefront signs. Some shopping sections
of Tehran -- and the teenagers who frequent them -- are beginning to look
like what one would find at shopping malls in suburban America.
The shop with sexy lingerie is a bit more discreet -- marked only by a
trademark pink-and-white-striped Victoria's Secret bag in the window.
"Iran is now doing pretty much the same things as during the shah's era,
except for symbols like women's scarves and 'Death to America' -- and most
people don't mean that anymore, either," said a prominent banker in Iran, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he does business with the government.
The modest clothing rules for girls and women have relaxed a great deal, too.
Especially among the young, coats called roupoushes are now so short they end
high on the thigh -- with slits going even higher -- and so tight that they
accentuate rather than conceal the most specific attributes of the female
anatomy.
"Every year, they go up a couple of inches," a young woman said with a
chuckle as she picnicked with friends in a park. To complete the ensemble,
tight jeans exposing bare ankles have replaced black stockings and baggy
trousers. "Pretty soon you won't be able to tell the difference between you
and us," she told a Western reporter.
The transformation of Iran's most cosmopolitan city is reflected even in its
traffic. In the early years of the revolution, checkpoints manned by morality
squads often popped up at night to ensure that women riding in cars with men
were either blood relatives or spouses.
Now, Tehran is flooded with a new breed of law enforcement: traffic cops and
meter men. They represent an attempt to control the capital's chaotic
streets, where free-for-all rules account for one of the highest accident
rates in the world.
Dressed in snappy white broad-brimmed military hats and dark green uniforms
with gold emblems on their epaulets, the new traffic police look more like a
brigade of generals let loose on Tehran's streets. And sometimes they act
like one. Daringly deployed even in the middle of exit and entry ramps to
freeways, they don't hesitate to order drivers to pull over for not obeying
the dictate displayed on other new billboards, in Farsi and English,
throughout the capital: "Fastening the seat belt is mandatory."
After 9 p.m., the generals retreat, leaving motorists to follow Tehran's
widely accepted rules of the road. To turn left, get in the right lane -- and
vice versa. If you've passed your exit on a busy freeway, just back up. And
if you need to make an illegal U-turn, wait until oncoming traffic is roaring
toward you.
On Thursday night, Africa Boulevard and other main thoroughfares are jammed
with Iran's young trying to meet and impress the opposite sex. The idea is to
clog the streets so cars filled with males in their teens and twenties can
chat up or get the cell phone numbers of girls in cars going the opposite
direction. Sometimes they end up meeting outside Tehran's growing number of
pizza parlors.
Taboos on dating in public have largely ceased to matter -- except for
parents' restrictions. In the early days of the revolution, the only couples
holding hands in public were married. Attendants in theaters checked during
movies -- in which women had to be depicted in Islamic dress -- to ensure
couples behaved. And well over half of marriages were arranged by families.
Today, the assumption is that people holding hands are not married, Iranians
say. A growing number of teenagers of both genders insist they will marry
only for love. And no one monitors behavior in theaters, where one of the
most popular twin features this month was "Kill Bill" and "Fahrenheit 9/11."
The government still sends mixed and confusing messages. After a decade of
warnings about "Westoxication," or poisoning by Western cultural values,
music stores can now legally sell CDs that were once available only on the
black market. But a recent concert by a popular local Iranian band, Arian,
was canceled, and public concerts at the Swiss, French, German and Turkish
embassies have been banned or disrupted. After a musical performance by the
Turkish ambassador's wife, co-hosted by the wife of Iran's foreign minister,
several women who attended were hassled or briefly detained after they left,
foreign envoys here say.
Yet Tehran is filled with signs -- from the canned pork on sale at a
supermarket to the "Jingle Bells" ringtone on the cell phone of a staffer at
Reselaat, one of Iran's conservative newspapers -- that the rigidity of the
early era is steadily eroding.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58281-2004Dec11.html
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| User: "Henning Larsen" |
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| Title: Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 and other goodies in Iran |
12 Dec 2004 05:54:54 AM |
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"MonsieurStat" <Monsieurstat@yahoo.com>, wrote in
alt.prophecies.nostradamus, sų, 12 des 2004 07:43:56 GMT:
Photo:
http://tinyurl.com/445hw
25 Years Later, a Different Type of Revolution
Western Culture Is Seeping Into Iranian Society, Despite Lingering
Restrictions
The best way for the US administration to destroy the religious leadership
in Iran is not boycott, but the opposite: flooding the Iranian market with
american products.
--
Henning
.
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| User: "R. Foreman" |
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| Title: Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 and other goodies in Iran |
12 Dec 2004 09:11:51 AM |
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Henning Larsen <NONEXISTANT@NONEXISTANT.XXX> Spat the Words
"MonsieurStat" <Monsieurstat@yahoo.com>, wrote in
alt.prophecies.nostradamus, sų, 12 des 2004 07:43:56 GMT:
Photo:
http://tinyurl.com/445hw
25 Years Later, a Different Type of Revolution
Western Culture Is Seeping Into Iranian Society, Despite Lingering
Restrictions
The best way for the US administration to destroy the religious leadership
in Iran is not boycott, but the opposite: flooding the Iranian market with
american products.
That's close to what happened in the old Soviet Bloc. People
there became hungry for what the west had to offer, and a
peaceful revolution took place which brought down the wall.
--
Henning
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| User: "Tadapope" |
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| Title: Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 and other goodies in Iran |
12 Dec 2004 03:13:54 PM |
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I like to watch the screen flash and strobe then totally crash--- when I log
onto AOL using Windows XP revision 2.2!
Tangents are infinite in all of nature in
all universes constantly and at random.
* D OUOSVAVV M *
Oh Joy!
Tom
The Psychedelic Pope
Patron Saint of the Internet
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
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| User: "Tadapope" |
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| Title: Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 and other goodies in Iran |
12 Dec 2004 03:14:39 PM |
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Where there is sand there are always
sand fleas lurking about.
Tangents are infinite in all of nature in
all universes constantly and at random.
* D OUOSVAVV M *
Oh Joy!
Tom
The Psychedelic Pope
Patron Saint of the Internet
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
.
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