The Importance of Being Earnest....

Despite Mr. Urban's disapproval, I purchased Episode 2 of Shah's of Sunset from Amazon and watched it on super low volume on my laptop, scandalously hunched over at the kitchen counter, while Mr. Urban and our girl played Lego after breakfast. I laughed a lot, but I assure you I felt very guilty doing so.

If you already don't have the background, bear with me for a moment....

In 1979, Iran had a revolution, the reasons for which no two people can agree on as far as I can tell.  But, there are a few things we know for certain.

Following the revolution, Iranians that could have possibly worked towards reversing it were either executed by the new regime (shot at close range), or if they were really lucky they fled the country in tragic, clandestine, heroic ways that most of us can't even fathom.

Around that time, the dreadful Iran Hostage Crisis came to unfold, when a bunch of hot-headed rogue revolutionaries stormed the US Consulate in Tehran, and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, and in the process etched an image of Iranians as thugs on the minds of the world sitting in front of their TV stations. 

Soon after, Iran and Iraq got into a long drawn out bloody war.  All boys of a certain age were conscripted to complete a mandatory two year military service, which almost certainly included time on the mine infested front lines as Human Minesweepers...

Families with teenage boys that could find any means, began fleeing the country.  If they were lucky, the whole family left together.  But often, the forbidding costs of smuggling a military aged son across borders and landing them somewhere with a decent shot of an education and life meant that the barely teenaged boys had to travel alone.

Added to all this was the fanatic ideologies and laws imposed by the new regime which opposed the moral value system of most Iranian families, making everyday life unbearable.  And as you can guess, these Iranians too opted to find safety and freedom elsewhere in the world if they could find any means to do that.

Before 1979, Iranians could travel pretty freely around this earth.  Obtaining a travel visa or a student visa, as far as I know, was not an issue for them.  But after 1979, it was as though someone had closed all doors on Iranians.  It was as tough to get a travel visa or a student visa or apply for immigration to most of the free world for Iranians, as it was for them to aboard a shuttle to Mars.

Understandably so. With Iranian currency in the gutter, and personal funds of the wealthy confiscated by the new regime, admitting Iranians was seen as a burden on the social system of the host countries.  

Some of us, made it across the ocean smug, with immigration papers at hand either thanks to sponsorships from relatives abroad or clocking hours of time at various Consulates around the world proving why we would be super elite immigrants for their Country.   The rest of us quickly ramped up on international laws and figured out ways on how to get at least one foot on a foreign land and seek asylum in counties like Germany, France, Canada, US...

Most of the immigrant families were young.  Parents in their late thirties and forties.  Many of the fathers were Doctors, Engineers, CEO's, Business Owners all at the top of their game...  Many educated in the United States and Europe in the sixties and seventies.    These immigrant or refugee families were the very same that vacationed in Rome and Paris and Disney Land every year during the 1970's, filling up suitcase after suitcase with "Made in America" or "Made in Italy" purses and clothes and toys and perfumes to take back home for their relatives.  The same people that were treated as exotic (in a good way), with "beautiful dark features" around the world...

But somehow once your country goes through this kind of a shake up, once you have to crawl your way among cattle across the borders of your country for any chance of reaching freedom, once you beg a foreign immigration officer for letting you and your family into their country while a crowd of eyes are upon you with looks that are not necessarily kind or understanding, once your Bachelor degree and your Doctorate degree or your years of experience as a masterful businessman or surgeon are downgraded as Foreign and Unworthy, somehow you lose your Cool Points and your Cachet...  You are no longer Exotic but Ethnic.

Most of us have endured.  Even Smilingly and Gracefully.  Our parents worked hard doing hard jobs that they were not trained for.  As hard as they worked, they still made sure we brushed our teeth every night, got to bed on time, never, ever stayed out after school hours and always got good grades.  We worked extra hard to over come in-explicit hurdles competing with non-ethnic pears.  And finally,  we became good citizen of our new adopted homes.  But we still struggled with that botched up PR job of 1979...

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Incoming, a new show featuring Iranian Americans called Shahs of Sunset.

Of course, we hoped that Iranian scientists doing groundbreaking work at UBC or Stanford or Harvard or Cambridge or Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley would be featured on this show.  Of course, we hoped that the tireless work of Iranian philanthropists donating millions of dollars and hours of time each year to causes in America and Canada and around the world would make it to an episode.  Of course, we hoped that some of our musical prodigies and freelance artists and writers would make it to the show...

But we must accept that these are the days of Reality TV.  These are days where we like to retire at the end of the day to drunkards and party animals puking on lavish couches in exclusive nightclubs in Las Vegas and hot-tub threesomes off of some beach in Florida...

So PR campaigns on Human Tragedies and Triumphs will have to wait.

Hopefully, people watching Shahs of Sunset realize that Humans are Humans no matter where they are from and where they live.  There will always be party animals, drunkards, addicts and gamblers in every faith and nationality but the majority will always be hard working and honest people in the socially acceptable range of ways and lifestyles.

And as far as Shahs of Sunset being a bad role model for our children, lets remember that there are plenty of worse and better role models around.  Our job is to educate.

I suppose having traveled so far for Freedom, I have learned that Freedom means allowing people to be who they are as hard as it can some times be to do that....  At the end of the day Shah's of Sunset is not a meditation on what it is to be an Iranian American.  It is a tragic comedy on what it is to be a Reality TV brat in Hollywood!


And if by any chance you have certain associations about "Ethnic" people in your neck of the woods, just remember that these people probably have endured hardships in recent history to be here.  And  their spirit has triumphed across many mountains...