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Identity Politics and Iranian Exile Music Videos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hamid Naficy
Hamid Naficy*
Affiliation:
Department of Art and Art History, Rice University
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Extract

All Cultures are Located in Place and Time. Exile culture is located at the intersection and in the interstices of other cultures. Physically placed outside its original homeland, it is mentally and emotionally both here and there, and, as a result, it is both local and global. Exile culture is not just physically, mentally, and emotionally [dis]located; it is also discursively and sociopolitically situated in a foreign land. Exile discourse, therefore, must be able to deal not only with the problem of location but also with the continuing problematic of multiple locations. Traditionally, mass media are considered as homogenizing agents that inculcate the dominant values. One of the key themes of my work in recent years, however, has been to describe and theorize about the manner in which these very media may also serve the opposite purpose by consolidating alternative values–which may be driven by differences in ethnicity, race, gender, class, nationality, religion, or politics.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1: Iranians in America , Winter 1998 , pp. 51 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

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References

1. Iranians in the U.S. have produced many specialized videos for home consumption. These range from M.R. Ghanoonparvar's Persian Cuisine tapes containing how-to cooking lessons, to Persian Nights in L.A., a hard-core pornography tape with a dubbed Persian soundtrack.

2. Grocery stores and ethnic music shops are other sources of ethnic music and music videos.

3. Non-Iranian Middle Eastern ethnic TV is a small but growing industry in the U.S. See Hamid Naficy, Narrowcasting and Diaspora: Middle Eastern Television in Los Angeles,” in Torres, Sasha, ed., Living Color: Race and Television in the United States, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), 82–96Google Scholar.

4. For more on Iranian exile TV in the USA, see Naficy, Hamid, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

5. On the high social status of Iranian exiles, see Bozorgmehr, Mehdi and Sabagh, Georges, “High Status Immigrants: A Statistical Profile of Iranians in the United States,” Iranian Studies 21 (1988): 5–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. For example, according to my calculations, Iranian TV producers in the early 1990s earned close to $4 million annually from advertising and spent over $2 million annually for air time.

7. An early report by a major recording company, Pars Video, claimed that although its production of audiocassettes did not typically go beyond 6,000 copies, its audience worldwide exceeded one million (Jam-e Jam [June 1987]: 28–29). This figure cannot include listeners inside Iran, where pirated copies of exile-produced cassettes are sold by local entrepreneurs.

8. As part of the cross-cultural war between the U.S. and Iran, Voice of America radio not only has devoted some of its Persian language broadcast time to playing exile pop music, but also featured live, call-in shows with U.S.-based entertainers. Fans from Iran have called to talk with them, to the chagrin of the official press in Iran. In 1996, Voice of America Television began broadcasting Persian language shows that included exile-produced music videos and call-in segments with entertainers.

9. Jac Zinder, “Other Musics: An Access Guide to the International Sounds of Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Reader (6/14/1991): 7.

10. Jewish Iranians appear to use music more than any other subgroup as a vehicle for preserving both their internal ethnicity and Iranian national identity. As major producers, promoters, and consumers they are particularly powerful in setting musical trends. This type of dominance can aid a marginal, subcultural music, but it can also squelch creativity by limiting diversity.

11. On mimicry and imitation, see Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures, chapter

12. Likewise, in Leila Forouhar's video, Helheleh (Cry of Exultation), she and her female dancers dress like tough guys and dance in a manner that parodies their macho dancing style. Jaklyn's Mafia and Foz-e's Baba Karam also play with the tough guy musical, visual, and dancerly attributes.

13. The Mafia video is also over six minutes long.