![]() ![]() ![]() You can’t hang with them unless you have a BMW.” What a point for the team, I thought!īy then I knew Beverly Hills High was filled with “Tehrangelenos” - denizens of Westwood and Beverly Hills colonized by Iranian culture - but to have Hollywood say this, well, take that, Gidget! Iran had gone from the land of blood and bombs, prayers and veils, to Iranian-America, a haven of big hair, bling, allah-who-alla-wha-ing, material girls and boys. I still remember doing a mental happy dance when Cher, pointing to a cloud of Cartier, Armani and Aqua Net, declared, “And that’s the Persian mafia. The next time I caught mention of Iran in any cinematic sense was four years later, when “Clueless” came out, about the life and times of a spoiled 90210 Valley Girl, Cher. I went to school the next day filled with shame, as if everyone would be thinking I was a Gidget killer. He lied.” Apparently Gidget’s “crime of being an American” was being met with the horrific punishment of living in Iran forever! On the screen were suddenly bombs, women in veils screaming. I still remember my family’s naïve moment of rejoicing at the trailer - Gidget had married an Iranian! But after 45 seconds the voiceover’s tune changed: “He swore they would be safe. In 1991, when I was 13, “Not Without My Daughter” came out - the true story of American Betty Mahmoody (played by Sally Field) who was essentially kidnapped by her abusive Iranian husband while on a visit to Iran. ![]() ![]() But as a teenager, I knew my reality, one far from hostage crises and contra trials, was never going to make it pop culturally in fact, I would have bet my little hyphenated life against the very moment of pop cultural breakthrough we’re finally reaching now.īack then, every time a bit of Iran broke through, it was an event. Of course, there was Iran itself, hardly invisible. If pop culture is a measure of cultural visibility, then Iranian Americans have been invisible for decades. ![]()
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