Beyond the headscarf and the blood on Neda's face

[eumelia]

Over the past two weeks I've been mainly following the situation in Iran because, well, everyone else is following it.

I have no qualms about the fact of being a part of the sheeple.

From my own little prism here, I can look at the Israeli and the feminist connection. Not much is being said about the former except with Israel itself which has been a notorious sabre rattler towards Iran for the past, I can't rightly say, but ever since 2006 and Benjamin Netanyahu's reference to Iran=Germany, Year=1938 and Ahmadenijad=Hitler, Iran has been a fairly regular Starman Boogie Man in my perception of current Israeli conciousness.

Israel has been used the same way in Ahmadenijad's rhetoric.

Peas in a pod.

I'll move on to what I actually want to talk about.

This very interesting article breaks down the dynamics of the mainstream media, what is covered, what isn't a why.

Who decides whether or not a particular issue is "newsworthy?" One would think that this is the role of the media, to cover issues like conflict or rights abuses as they happen around the world. Although, it seems this isn't the case. Most Western media appear to follow their government's lead when focusing on different issues and then cover them in a way fitting with the government's position, hence the complete domination of events in Iran in nearly every single Western media outlet and the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the protestors and the opposition as just. The current case of Iran makes it clear that it is governments who are directing the media's coverage, instead of the actual news organizations themselves.
[...]
Also in accordance with that narrative, there was scant footage broadcast in the Western media from inside Gaza. Similar to what Iran is doing now, Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza during the attacks. Despite this, there were large Arabic-language satellite stations like Al-Jazeera reporting from the ground with footage of nearly everything that was happening there.

When images were shown by CNN or its competitors, it was generally not true to the real horror faced by Palestinians in Gaza. I can't recall seeing one video of one of the hundreds of children killed in Gaza shown in the US media. In contrast, two days ago CNN broadcasted footage of a woman who was shot and bleeding to death on a Tehran street. Most of these viral videos are taken on citizens' mobile phones, and they even have a special logo that CNN has created for the "unverified material."

Emphasis mine.

Neda has become the Iranian woman who is ALL Iranian Women.

The role and portrayal of women in Iran over the past 10 (now more) days has been covered extensively.
Because it took me a couple of days to join the online "amateur" media brouhaha the first article on the subject about the portrayal of Iranian women in the protests and demonstrations was the Racialicious article So You Think You Want A Revolution (In a Loose Headscarf - I think since Christiane Amanpour the West's perception of Iranian women has been that of modern women in a heinous situation - most likely before Amanpour, but she is certainly a huge figure and symbol of Westernised Iranian woman, which is obviously a plus.
Not to mention Marjane Satrapi, Azar Nafisi and of course Zahra Rahnavard, all of whom are inspirational and modern and less-than-overtly-traditional (some of them outright secular).

And that's what we like to see.

Beautiful women fighting for their right to be free from religious oppression and tyranny.

It's also a romanticism of the violence that is going on there.
Yes, they are taking the punches and they are fierce and they are equal to the men out there in the street.

But it feels like there's an exotification game going on here.
The deaths and violence are tragic and we, watching the News, view them as a form of entertainment.

These women are being looked at. Gazed upon.

Mousavi may be a Reformer, but back in the 80's he wasn't so progressive, could he have changed perhaps, but the Ayatollah regime persists and will probably not be taken down in the near future (though no one suspected the protests and riots to go on for this long).

The mainstream media's obsession with the images of women, I think, beyond making the whole damn thing romantic, makes it beautiful. The image of Neda bloody and bruised and so beautifully mourned and grieved over is the way we should view Iran itself: bloody and beautiful.
Exotic.

That isn't to say I don't admire the women who are going out there everyday, fighting tooth and nail to be heard over the mayhem of their situation.
I do.
I can only hope I have an ounce of their courage.

I'm just saying, be wary of how they are being seen.
Because there is something beyond the headscarf and the blood on Neda's face.

More articles on the subject:
CNN: Iranian women stand up in defiance.
Slate: Woman Power; Regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable..
Feministing: The Women Protesting in Iran.

Comments

[cbr-paul.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered about the media's fixation on the appearance of female victims of crime: so many times in the UK we read of stories such as "model murdered" or "former beauty queen still missing", as if the death of a more attractive woman is somehow more important or poignant than that of other women (or men for that matter).

Also, kudos on spotting a wonderful misprint!