MovieChat Forums > Baran (2001) Discussion > Pre-9/11 naivete ?

Pre-9/11 naivete ?

posted 11 years ago by JustMammal
3 replies | jump to latest

I wonder how before 9/11 a lot of movies portray Mujahideen and ultra-religious Afgani as heroic, good people who were displaced by the war, and who fought back and heroically died for the freedom. Even wearing burka isn't portrayed as female oppression, but a sign of modesty.

And then after 9/11 we have movies like Kite Runner, where Taliban aren't freedom-fighting heroes anymore, but religious zealots who oppress women and molest children.

Yet these are the same people. If you read Charlie Wilson's War you understand how Americans funded people who for example jailed a blind 10-year old raped girl for "adultery", because there was only two witnesses to attest her rape, not four as required by Sharia. And American public held the Ruassian-Afgan war, as the good war, with the largest support of American involvement in it since WWII.

I am not saying Afgani Mujahideen weren't heroic and decent people in some respects, they were. They could have been monsters in other respects too. Yet somehow most movies portray them as either fundamentally decent, peace-loving, pious people, or fundamentally rotten, primitive, dogmatic terrorists.

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[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Noelitede 9 years ago

I don't know what you're talking about, the movie doesn't portray Mujahideen, and from what I could understand, Baran's uncle actually fought them.
And about the use of burka... well, it's just that Iranians are more familiar to the concept of Afghan women using it, so they don't portray it dramatically as something horrible as a Western movie would.

[–] rarmst0202 9 years ago

I'm not sure what 9/11 has to do with this movie. Whatever changes 9/11 brought into how people view Afghans were localized to the west. It might make sense to compare how western movies portray Afghans pre- and post- 9/11.

But this is a movie from an Iranian director. Nothing changed in their view of Afghanistan with 9/11. In the earlier days, Afghans were refugees from the Soviet occupation, and in later days from the American occupation. In either case, they were just refugees from an Iranian perspective, no different from before.

If you consider how Afghanistan's neighbors - Iran, Pakistan, India view Afghan people, I don't believe there is any difference before or after 9/11.