Watching The Lord of the Rings in Tehran
TIME / Anonymous Tehran Resident
25-Jun-2009 (one comment)

In normal times, Iranian television usually treats its viewers to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. But these are not normal times, so it's been two or three such movies a day. It's part of the push to keep people at home and off the streets, to keep us busy, to get us out of the regime's hair. The message is "Don't worry, be happy." Channel Two is putting on a Lord of the Rings marathon as part of the government's efforts to restore peace.

>>>
recommended by Darius Kadivar

Balatarin
Share/Save/Bookmark

 
Shah Ghollam

OH! Finally a mirror image of own appears!

by Shah Ghollam on Thu Jun 25, 2009 11:08 AM PDT

I could not hold myself but laugh aloud. This sentence cracked me up:

The message is "Don't worry, be happy."

 So that is what it was all about or still is! I was suddenly made aware of the reality of lives in the USA. IRI must have stolen a page from the US historical feature and paste it on Iran.

Confused? You shouldn't be.  In America it is not a new phenomena at all as far as the very message in the article implies to convey "Don't worry be happy".

You couldn't possibly miss how entertaining the US is as a country. Flashback just a little more than eight years and pay attention how the richest and acclaimed sole banner holder of Democracy managed to get into disasterous wars that its tremors will last for generations on every single of its citizens. Bush also managed to curtail the individual freedoms, establish torture as a policy, fill the pockets of his friends from the treasury, breed millions more terrorists, support Israeli crimes like no other and drop US International obligations.

The Irony was, that the population revoted him to the office after all "DA".

You ask why? A little daily attention on what interests Americans would show you the way. The American lust with entertainment be it violent or sex filled movies and unlimited sports viewing of all kinds must have helped to put the population into, if not an iernal, an asleep for a long time so much that they were more occupied with who won the game or who slept with whom among stars rather than paying attention to how their liberties and treasuries being chipped away. Yes indeed "Don't worry, be happy" slogan is deeply intrenched in American society.

HollyWood, and ESPN are not just entertainment any longer in the US, unfortunately they play a good part in a good part of american life, certainly much more than politics be it domestic or foreign.

Now, where would the IRI borrow the idea of "Don't worry, be happy" from? Hope it is clear.

 

 


  •