Red Dawn, 1984 (Remember when American Movies fantasized about Russian Invasions?)

March 1, 2011 By 3 Comments

Word on the street is that there is a possible release of the remake of Red Dawn in late summer of this year. If you grew up Cold War America then there is a high chance you were screaming “Wolverines!” as Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell drank moose blood in the mountains of Montana.

Image from http://wwww.threeimaginarygirls.com/files/uploaded-images/wolverines.jpg

Image from http://www.bigchicosmovieblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/red-dawn.jpg

Quite possibly the best mix of Patrick Swayze Jennifer Grey mix pre-Dirty Dancing, Red Dawn was actually the stuff of my nightmares! Imagine getting to Brooklyn all the way from Kabul and seeing this movie — it opens with paratroopers landing by the high school just as the teacher finishes up a lecture on the invading Mongol hordes!

This 1984 teen film was released right around the time that the Soviet-Afghan war was at its thickest and Afghans were winning popular American support. You can see the connection in these two photos I’ve juxtaposed — the first, the Wolverines (brave rebels fighting Nicuaraguans, Cubans and Russians who were invading the U.S.) and then the Mujahideen (brave warriors fighting the Soviets and given their own Afghanistan Day by Reagan in 1987)

Image from http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/6100000/Red-Dawn-1984-80s-films-6130207-1024-768.jpg

It’s like the cast of The Outsiders and St. Elmo’s Fire merged and were given military weapons.

Photo by Jonas Dovydenas

See the similarities… okay so the Afghan Mujahideen are not wearing letterman jackets and posing on bleachers, but you get it! In this photo, the Mujahideen are photographed in the Kunar Province, 1985.

Image from http://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/reddawn.jpg

This one is in the mountains — come on way too similar to 80s photos of the Mujahideen!

Image from http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/reza_p57%5B1%5D.jpg

One of the most famous Mujahideen glory era photos of Ahmad Shah Masood by the famous international photographer, Reza.

Image from http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4asx7ilAA1qzzh6g.jpg

Not sure if die-hard Red Dawn fans will buy this connection. I’ve already had one facebook comment war with a friend from high school who was vehement that Red Dawn had nothing to do with the Mujahideen. But… you and I know better.

Image from http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2009/02/10/reddawn120704.jpg

It’s all fun and games till the commies conquer the McDonalds! What could happen next? Silver Spoons in Russian?!!

Red Dawn (1984)

Now onto the remake, which has its own issues of being Sinophobic. Honestly, I thought the easiest step would be to make invading Turbanismo Warriors. But apparently, they decided to have the Chinese invading America. Some have said that it’s anti-Asian sentiment may have even canceled it. Hmmm… maybe it would have been better to invest in a remake of Robocop?

Filed Under: Media, Politics

Afghanistan in American Ads: The Treasures I Found while Moving

September 20, 2010 By 3 Comments

Last month, I moved out of my childhood home of Sheepshead Bay to another section of lovely Brooklyn. In the process of moving, I found these beautiful vintage ads. I am not sure how I got these — some were eBay discoveries and others were things my father had collected. Framed and set in my living room, they had become so ordinary that I had forgotten my ambitious goals to write about these and weave them into my dissertation. Sharing them here is a great opportunity to chat about my favorite pieces.


The Great Game is not everyone’s cup of tea, but Arbuckles Coffee Co. in NYC printed these limited edition cards in 1889 that came with their teas. Afghanistan made up card No. 100 and depicted The Great Game. The round image, although seems like an Arab outfit, may be Shah Shujah, the king that wanted to reclaim his throne in Afghanistan (the one the British were sponsoring). It seems to be the entrance of the British into Afghanistan via The Khyber Pass.

I can’t imagine cigarettes coming with anything other than skull&bone images or warnings of cancer — but back in the early 20th c. they came with fun cards.

This one, part of a series of Great Battles by Wills Cigarette Company, depicts the Retreat of Cabul. The sole survivor of the British attack into Afghanistan returns to the British India.

In 1958, Ford went around the world to prove itself to American drivers. Here a Ford car drives through the unpaved streets of Herat (it began somewhere in Greece and traveled through Turkey, to Iran, to Afghanistan). The contrast is clear. If any car can make it in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, well it’s a car you can trust.

The Girls Scout is not just an American thing, you know. Afghanistan had their own girls scout. Perhaps it was influenced by the presence of the American Peace Corps but these Afghan stamps are my favorite. They are dedicated to Afghan girls scouts called: Sarandoy (applies to either gender)

There is a lot more… but I’ll save that for my ahem… brilliant… to be written… soon to maybe appear… writer’s block resistant essay on all of my American-Afghanistan postcards/stamps/money/ads… (fingers crossed, two ear tugs and open-palm prayer hands… inshallah)

Filed Under: Art, Asides, Language

“Can you believe he just called me an Oriental?” @$%#!

September 30, 2009 By 5 Comments

mandarin-oriental-washington-dcWe’ve all heard it before, its tough being brown/yellow/olive/black in the nooks and crannies of America, but I will repeat this first-gen immi (my nickname for immigrants) refrain!

*sigh*

It was tough growing up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn as one of the first Asians (not Asian families since my family could pass as White or as AmerIndian depending on which side of the Eur-Asian the gene pool favored when it came to our face — and my face came out all yellow olive skin and jet black hair). I was the first in line and until Linda Tam happily rescued me, and stood in line in front of me, in second grade. I remember the “ching chong” jokes and the buck teeth gestures. Things I did not understand until one day, Mrs Teacher made me stand in front of class and pointed to me and said, “Zohra is oriental and I will not tolerate anyone making fun of orientals in my classroom!”  Thanks, I thought, I think… for some reason that word, even at that age had an odd feel when it was used. But I didn’t know where I was from myself to be able to correct it (I also did not know enough English to counter anyone at that point).

Fast forward to age 19. I am at my first student protest and we are angry at tuition hikes, fare hikes, and whatever other hikes Guiliani was proposing at the time.  I was called “oriental” again. This time all the rage I channeled into activism surfaced and I yelled for this well-meaning woman to never call me an “oriental”. A Korean American project coordinator chimed in “Yeah, don’t you know that’s just wrong lady!” We were so self-righteous that we could even be bothered with the rest of what she had to say. Calling us oriental shut down our ability to communicate with her. It created a rift between us even if our cause was the same. We bullied this lady back into a corner. Then afterwards, I remember both of us “don’t call us orientals” drinking coffee and wondering why exactly we were offended by the term when Asian was just as vague and nondescript as the term Oriental.

Well, it wasn’t until much later that I learned from the Asian American Sociologist, Setsuko Nishi, (who had been put into the Japanese American internment camps during WWII) that using the term Oriental meant that we would be forever foreign. There is no hyphenation to express the American side. It was also offensive because of the history that had permeated that term and how vague it was — everyone from North Africa to the Pacific Islands were considered “oriental”.  Although, I suppose oriental is better than the police officer forms my friend filled out that asked if she was: Mongoloid, Negroid or Caucasoid. She was confused since she was Pakistani American!

September 8, 2009, Governor Paterson banned the use of the term “Oriental” when it came to describing Asian Americans.

The term “Oriental” is widely considered to be a disparaging term, but has been used in some forms and preprinted documents issued by state government and municipalities.

WROC TV

Hell yeah, it’s a disparaging term! Finally, I don’t have to write anymore polite (but cold) emails to colleagues who think that saying Oriental meant East Asians and Asian meant browner Asians.  Finally, I can stop hissing, “Oriental is for carpets!” And I can stop cramming Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, down my students’ throats each year in my obsession with terms, respect terms in addressing the brown, the yellow, the olive and the angry! (Well, no, I won’t stop cramming Said down my students’ throats!)

Finally, a legal recognition to ban an obsolete word that shut down communication between some very well-meaning people. Thanks Governor Paterson!

Filed Under: Language, Politics

Storytellers

August 17, 2009 By 2 Comments

There is a difference between a Qisakhaan (storyteller) and Nawisenda (writer) among Afghans.  The qisakhani (storytelling) is an old time honored tradition; a skill every Afghan is trained in whether these are fairy tales, religious lessons, family legends or neighborhood gossip.  The nawisenda, the fiction writer, is a new kind of literary profession, that gained respectability after Modernist fiction was translated into Farsi for Afghans in the 1930s by the intellectual visionary Mahmud Tarzi.  Translations of James Joyce inspired a new genre of Afghan literature, the novel, which hoped to cut ties to the qisa, (stories), and build a narrative style that was based more on the psychology of the characters rather than the fantastical adventures in fairy tales.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 created a break in this budding style of story writing.  In 1990s, when the children of Afghan refugees began writing in English, the rift between storyteller and writer was ignored.  The careful path that Tarzi had started for a new literary form was lost on a generation raised (and many born) abroad, who could not read these novels.  The new genre, the Afghan American literary genre returned to the qisa and braided these rich myths into their own life histories.  Suddenly fairy tales of journeys began ways to tell their own stories of migration and survival.  The mute princess became the young woman who had lost her ability to speak in her native tongue.

Why this post on Afghanistan’s literary tradition?  Well, it is all to celebrate the completion of the first anthology of Afghan American literature.  My friend and co-editor, Sahar Muradi and I just completed editing the manuscript.  The title is still awaiting approval.  The project began 8 years ago, months before 9/11 and was meant to be a self-published anthology that would entertain ourselves.   However, the September 11th Attacks transformed this small project and gave it international attention.  With this attention came submissions that took 8 years to complete!   Yes, it took this long to create a robust and varied collection of perspectives and literary styles.  More than thirty writers have been part of this groundbreaking collection.  And the qisa tradition makes up the heart of many of these pieces whether the it is memoir, poetry or fiction.

Perhaps it is not surprising, in order to mark our migration from there to here, we lean back, back, back to the poetry and myths of our grandparents, who whether they were from villages or from cities, had set to memory entire libraries of Afghan literature.  It is in the space between storytellers and story-listeners that Afghan American literature was born.

Stay tuned for an update on other details of the anthology…

Filed Under: Cross-Cultural Communication, Language, literature, Uncategorized

The TED Commandments: Rules Every Speaker Should Know

May 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The Ted Commandments

The Ted Commandments (click to see larger version of the image)

I wish I had this for my students earlier this semester!  These Ten Commandments of public speaking are written on actual stone tablets.   TED records their speakers and anyone can download the talks from their website here.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

Filed Under: Powerpoint and Presentations

Hijab Punk

May 14, 2009 By 8 Comments

princesshijab

Hijab: (Arabic) Veil.

A philosophy that has originated in urban centers.  A transnational movement of modesty and subversiveness.  A response to misconceptions that Muslim women, and especially Muslim women who veil (or who hijab), are submissive, passive, victimized and the worth of two bearded goats (on a good day).  A response to Oprah pulling the burqa off of a brown woman on stage at Madison Square Garden circa 2002.

Burqa: (Pashto) A full-body veil that covers the face.  Seen in Queens during celebrations at Flushing Meadow Park.  Seen lifted up during the post-Taliban years in Afghanistan.  Seen torn off by American women (and in one comic book, by Wonder Woman as well).

cihanclassvisit2Hijab Punk styles… too numerous to count. But some examples are: Hijab combined with green nails, pink sneakers and an affinity with Rainbow Brite; Goth hijab girls who thrive on their mother’s kajal collection; Hijab with safety pins and Sid Vicious references on their t-shirt… the list goes on.

Ultimate Hijab Punk story to read: “Misli Midhib, Punk Rock Hijabi” by Cihan Kaan about a girl named Misli who is dropped down to the earth via a meteor and who covers her cosmic skin with a full hijab and performs Sufi whirls to disrupt the narratives of Muslim women.  One of the stories in the forthcoming short story collection titled: Halal Pork. Here is an excerpt from the story:

A nameless lightning bolt hit a magical Afghan carpet from a distant star,  carrying on it a wandering babushka caught in a world between the skies.  Drifting space rocks, a homeland memory that dropped her through our atmosphere onto the Central Asian steppe of Coney Island, New York. She walked the rustic shores, lived in broken amusement parks and worked silently inside sideshows.

Ultimate Hijab Punk artist to follow: Princess Hijab, a young woman based on the streets of Paris, who interweaves the philosophy of Adbusters and the Hijab.  (See photo above from Princess Hijab website). She describes herself as:

This is the story of a young woman fighting every day for a noble cause: she wants to “hijabize” advertising. Princess Hijab knows that L’Oréal and Dark&Lovely have been killing her little by little… When she was a teen, she heard about movements such as Adbuster; but since 9/11, things have changed… Princess Hijab will go on, veiled and alone, forever asserting her physical and mental integrity. By day, she wears a white veil, symbol of purity. By night, her black veil is the expression of her vengeful fight for a cause (custom ad). With her spray paint and black marker pen, she is out to hijabize advertising. Even Kate Moss is targeted

Cihan Kaan author of Halal Pork, forthcoming 2009, Up-Set Press Inc

Cihan Kaan author of Halal Pork (forthcoming, Up-Set Press)

Incorporating this concept of Hijab Punk, or the more popular (and more macho) Muslim Punk (which draws origins from punk garage bands and from the writer Hanif Kureish, the Pakistani/British novelist) into a standard Muslim Diaspora course at a college was the best thing I ever did as an academic. Not only was it “snooze proof” because Punk aesthetics is always so confrontational, brutally honest, and anti-establishment (which is what makes the term Muslim Punk so controversial), but it introduced a discussion of fashion, music, and film in the construction of one’s hybrid and sometimes transnational identity.  Its the fluidity of Hijab Punk or Muslim Punk that appealed to my students and myself.

cihanclassvisit6

Students listening to Kaan read.

Filed Under: Fun, literature, Media