Kamangir (Archer)

Titanic and Islamic Republic: How Hollywood will help a Candidate

Kamangir | July 18, 2007 | Category Humour, Iran, Islam, Islamic Republic

It is no mystery that the Islamic Republic Islamizes movies before they are shown in the national television. That includes censoring “bad cloths” as well as turning prostitutes into bears. In another instance, the state-run Visual Media Institute, which is responsible for movies legally distributed in Iran, both Iranian and foreign, renamed “French Kiss” to “French Friendship”. This is not however how far they go with movies.

When Titanic came out, it reached the Iranian viewers even before many North Americans had the chance to watch the masterpiece of James Cameron. In those days, Khatami’s reformist government had just established and there was a new blood in the veins of the country. That however did not stop his Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister to announce that Titanic will not be shown in Iran. That was too much for the conservative Ayatollahs, at least then.

After Ahmadinejad took over the power, weird things started to happen, one of which is the preparation of Titanic for the national television. The state-run news agency Mehr asks why this movie is to be aired, after ten years, while “unlike what the administration claims, there are a few Iranians who have not actually seen it”.

While Mehr speculates that, after the censor, the movie will not be more than 90 minutes long (out of the original 194 minutes), the piece goes on by asking what the relationship between Jack and Rose can be. “They can not be brother and sister, neither can they be any other family members”, Mehr adds. This rather weired sentence refers to the fact that “lover” is not a legitimate role in movies shown in the national television. Thus, Jack and Rose have to be a couple or siblings. Their passion makes both options impossible. Mehr lists other impossible concepts of the movie as “the scene on the deck, the drawing scene, dances and parties”. “The card-playing scene might however survive”, Mehr adds.

If you have the obvious question in your mind, “why are they doing this?”, well, that’s when politics come to the scene. According to Qods, an ultra-right website, the leader-assigned head of the national television, Zarqami, is seeking popularity out of this. He has announced recently, in a statement to his deputies, that movies banned from the national television can be reconsidered for show. Qods bashes Zarqami for criticizing the newspapers in his days in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, if they even published pictures from Titanic. Reportedly, Zarqami is thinking about the next elections and, well, who will not vote for “the guy who legalized Titanic”?

Finally, Mehr asks what the censor-guys will do to Rose’s outfit. That is what I have a solution for. Click on the image to see the whole image.