scholarly journals Media Post-coloniality and the Ethereal Persian ‘Empress’: How Hollywood Weaponized the Nostalgia of Exile

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Sarah Boroujerdi
Keyword(s):  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Imaginary Power ◽  
Representations Of Women

The osmosis between Iranian exile, Oriental repertoires, and the commodification of nostalgia in film and contemporary1 culture alludes to the Disney reproduction of the East that is capitalized by Hollywood’s invisible hand. The commodification of Orientalist logic via nostalgia of old civilization and Achaemenid grandeur is conveyed by Hamid Naficy’s (1991) reference to Edward Said’s (1978) ‘imaginary2 geography’—the inventive tool of narration that augments tales and anecdotes of exilic narratives, while heightening essentialism of the East. The European modeling of coronation, bejeweled scepters of royalty under the Pahlavi period (1941-1979), and cinematic repertoires of Iranians in film are perpetuated for viewers via fetishization, lust, and enchantment. The televised 1967 coronation of Queen Farah (b. 1938) solidified the trope of the Persian ‘Empress’ through picturesque markers of Achaemenid rulership (550-330 BCE). Media3 propagations of nostalgia in the paradisiacal Pahlavi coronation can be paralleled to current illusions of the Orient presented in the film Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016), starring exiled Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani. I refer to the Pahlavi coronation to expand on the spectacle of ‘nostalgia’, and the desire for a distant homeland. Naficy’s (1991) interpretation of ‘nostalgia’—a factor of exile, expounds how relics and objects induce a longing for the distant and ahistorical. Objects of nostalgia are inexplicably weaponized in Hollywood inventions of Near Eastern characters and serve as palpable symbols of the East via skewed representations of women, sexuality, and the exotic4 (Ahmed, 2006). Poetry, nostalgia, and fictional tales of the Orient in Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016) allude to Said’s (1978) vision of the imperialist project in Orientalism. The inventive and imaginary power of color media in the televised Pahlavi coronation and the fashioning of a politically permanent subject of interest—Iranians and the East, augured a pertinent era of media post-coloniality5 via the preservation of orientalism, rather than the Orient. 

The Social Construction of a Perfect Market: The Strawberry Auction at Fontaines-en-Sologne

2010 ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
M.-F. Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se

The article examines social conditions and mechanisms of the emergence in 1982 of a «Dutch» strawberry auction in Fontaines-en-Sologne, France. Empirical study of this case shows that perfect market does not arise per se due to an «invisible hand». It is a social construction, which could only be put into effect by a hard struggle between stakeholders and large investments of different forms of capital. Ordinary practices of the market dont differ from the predictions of economic theory, which is explained by the fact that economic theory served as a frame of reference for the designers of the auction. Technological and spatial organization as well as principal rules of trade was elaborated in line with economic views of perfect market resulting in the correspondence between theory and reality.

Disruptions of the Local, Eruptions of the Feminine: Local Reportage and National Anxieties in Egypt’s 1890s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Booth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Images ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Advocacy Role ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Gendered Expectations

This chapter demonstrates that inscriptions of female images in Cairo’s late nineteenth-century nationalist press were part of a discursive economy shaping debates on how gender roles and gendered expectations should shift as Egyptians struggled for independence. The chapter investigates content and placement of ‘news from the street’ in al-Mu’ayyad in the 1890s, examining how these terse local reports – equivalent to faits divers in the French press – contributed to the construction of an ideal national political trajectory with representations of women serving as the primary example in shaping a politics of newspaper intervention on the national scene. In this, an emerging advocacy role of newspaper correspondents makes the newspaper a mediator in the construction of activist reader-citizens.

“Tongues as Ready as Men’s”: Erasmus’ Representations of Women and their Discourse

Moreana ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (Number 201- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 299-331
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McCutcheon
Keyword(s):  
Representations Of Women

Did David Murder Saul's Successors in 2 Samuel 21:1-14 and Does It Matter?

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Deken
Keyword(s):  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Law ◽  
2 Samuel

A semantic reading of this text alters the structure of the episode as a whole to reveal a story-within-a-story: the death of the seven Saulides and the expiation performed by Rizpah. The purpose of this sub-plot is to point to the perpetrator of the initial crime causing a famine, by presenting an analogous circumstance. By analogy we are directed to the conclusion that David is responsible for the famine after engineering the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. David’s exploitation of the differences between Ancient Near Eastern and Israelite law resulting in seven dead claimants to the throne of Israel, suggests that the episode has been compiled as a rejection of kingship; the centralization of worship, and the promulgation of the law-code. Fundamental to all these, is the rejection of the popular sovereign practice of murdering any potential successors to the throne.

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