Ben Affleck’s “Argo” took home the prize for Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday night. While I am pleased “Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow’s film falsely portraying torture as central to uncovering Osama bin Laden’s hideout, went home virtually empty-handed, Affleck’s film likewise comes packed with ideological baggage. Namely, “Argo” peddles in the same old Orientalist tropes long prevalent in Hollywood: bearded, wild-eyed, raging Iranians incomprehensibly attempting to inflict harm on benevolent, good-hearted Americans. Such a Manichean portrayal does no service at a time when understanding, not demonization, is required to avoid future fiascoes in the Middle East.
The movie opens with a token three-minute narration of the context of the hostage crisis, highlighting the 1953 CIA coup deposing the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in response to the nationalization of the country’s oil reserves and the Shah’s subsequent oppressive rule. However, from this point onward, the movie presents solely the American point of view, making the Iranian protesters that overrun the American Embassy seem like maniacal mobs with no possible rationale for their actions. This failure to provide a two-sided perspective reflects Affleck’s narrow view of history, as he insisted in interviews that, “There was no rhyme or reason to this action,” and that the hostage situation “wasn’t about us.”
To the contrary, the hostage crisis took place for two interconnected reasons. First of all, the U.S. gave asylum to the Shah after he fled Iran, rather than letting him face trial for the crimes committed under his despotic rule. A 1976 report from Amnesty International detailed how, under the Shah, Iran had the “highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts, and a history of torture which is beyond belief.” With anywhere between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners in custody at any time, the organization stated unequivocally that, “No country in the world has a worse record on human rights than Iran.”
All the while, the U.S. lavishly supplied the Shah with high-tech weaponry despite these blatant human rights violations, selling $20 billion worth from 1970 to 1978, making Iran the top developing world recipient of U.S. weapons. The CIA lent its own form of support, training the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, in Nazi torture techniques from World War II. Thus, any trial of the Shah would have also implicated the U.S. in the oppressive tactics undertaken during his reign. Naturally, they offered him asylum instead.
The Shah’s arrival in North America also led to the second main reason for the onset of the hostage crisis: the fear that the U.S. would plot to reinstall the Shah as head of Iran. Since the United States overthrew the last democratically elected prime minister in Iran in 1953 and gave massive aid to the Shah during his rule, we can hardly call the Iranians of the time irrational for suspecting that covert U.S. machinations had begun. After decades of living in a nightmare, the people of Iran wanted desperately to prevent his return, as would anyone under the same circumstances.
Unfortunately, 52 hostages were taken at the American Embassy in response, holding them for 444 days. President Jimmy Carter forcefully denounced the move, calling it a violation of the “moral and legal standards of the civilized world.” Of course, the hostage seizure did violate international law, but such moral grandstanding on the part of the U.S. rings hollow when the government had for decades supported a dictator in Iran who brutalized, tortured and extrajudicially executed those who dared to oppose his rule.
Affleck adopts President Carter’s viewpoint in failing to provide any of this context, instead relying on the woefully insufficient three-minute clip opening the movie. This lack of empathy for, or interest in, the Iranian perspective permeates many of his decisions in the film. In one harrowing scene, the undercover Americans get accosted by irate Iranian civilians in the Grand Bazaar while undertaking research for their fake movie, an incident that never actually happened. Additionally, Affleck does not bother to provide subtitles for the Farsi spoken by any Iranians, with the exception of the maid serving at the home of the Canadian ambassador, the lone Iranian given a sympathetic portrayal. Before the undercover Americans can board their plane, they demonstrate their savvy in fooling Revolutionary Guard members regarding the existence of their fake movie. From these scenes, Affleck paints a deeply flawed portrait of Iranians: inscrutable, irrationally angry, easily duped and not worth listening to or understanding.
I understand the need to make certain alterations for the sake of adding suspense to a movie, and I, like most others, found the movie highly entertaining. However, the trade-off comes when a movie perpetuates harmful stereotypes and context-free generalizations, especially at such a politically charged time between the U.S. and Iran. A movie dealing with such a momentous historical event has the responsibility not just to entertain, but to inform, empathize and humanize. “Argo” fails on all of these counts.
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