I made a beeline for Ironman today. How could I not? It stars Robert Downey Jr., it promised much action, and some were raving about it. Plus, I love watching the quality of hollywood cinema.
So, we went to see it at Cinema, no less. After settling into really good seats, I almost fell out of mine within 10 minutes into the movie. The people on the screen were speaking Urdu! It’s a language I know and love. It’s the language in which I best enjoy poetry and song. It’s the tongue that has enriched Southasia’s linguistic landscape.
At first, I was reading the subtitles. Then, realizing they were distracting and hugely incorrect in their translations, I stopped. Here’s another thing that made me stop : in the film, Urdu was the language of “the bad guys.” The words were of hatred and terror. The dialogue was echoing in the theater as a cinematic technique to create dread. It carried none of the pleasure and lyricism with which I associate the language and the people whom I have heard speak it.
I was so torn. Here I was, in happy celebration of the power of Hollywood to make my Sunday. And, here I was, powerless to make the language glorious to the audience, powerless to tell them that they should also listen to it in a song sometime. So, I am not opposed to the “authenticity” of using Urdu when we are watching people from that region of the world. But how about occasionally letting people from those parts of the world play roles other than those of terrorists.
Ironman set my heart racing, but it also broke it a little.
they're too excited about the movie to see what's going on. i saw the previews of it, and realized that it's a bit anti-muslim countries. that totally turned me off. combined with mix reviews for the movie, there's a good chance i might never see the movie.
Hollywood needs a global enemy to survive. In late 60's and 70's . it was German Nazi's .. then USSR, ... China ... Irish republic army in one or two movies. Every now ands then, when their is no enemy, then Aliens become the bad guys, nowadays its middle eastern muslims ..
the phase will go away .. no need for us to take it personally
Hollywood needs a global enemy to survive. In late 60's and 70's . it was German Nazi's .. then USSR, ... China ... Irish republic army in one or two movies. Every now ands then, when their is no enemy, then Aliens become the bad guys, nowadays its middle eastern muslims ..
the phase will go away .. no need for us to take it personally
with all due respect, you may love being called middle easterner...but none of us here are. We should SHUN the stupidity and ignorance of people who try to bundle us as either "typical DURKA DURKA middle easterners or dot wearing indians."
We are pakistanis. We have a small voice in media matters, and hence are the easiest group to pick on right now. The palestinians have all kinds of wierdos on their side, the africans have their support groups, india is being paraded around as a "civilized" country, the arabs and jews have their lobbyists and money. I am trying to bring light to the matter at hand, and the least you can do is try to be correct when stating the simplest line.
Gaaah. Anyway. Syriana was worse in portraying pakistanis i thought, but this was on par a bit.
One of the movies which portrayed Pakistanis in a good way was Vertical Limit, where Kareem Nazir, played by Siddig (Dr. Bashir of Deep Space Nine) played a poor Pakistani crewman/guide to the rescue operation which involved Chris O'Donnel going in to rescue his sister stuck inside due to an avalanche during a K-2 expedition. Though hes very disciplined, conservative and prays 5 times, even in those heights, he forms a bond of friendship with one of the western rescuers, who was exactly the opposite. That movie shows the people of the northern areas in their true hospitable spirit; Kareem even risked and laid down his life for his new friends.
The funniest line in the movie was when a Pakistani Brig. posted in Siachin shouts, its 5am, time to wake up the indians, and starts the exchange of outpost firepower.
Likely used because it's not a well know language in the states thus it adds fear of the unknown. Plus with all the news coming out of the Pakistan these past few years can you blame them for making it the langage of the bad guys, it adds realism. I haven't seen the movie yet but a friend helped with the locations.
That excuse is pretty hilarious. The news coming from Pakistan and the factors involved in those news (tapes etc.) do not even converse in URDU … Very unprofessional from Hollywood if in fact they are using urdu for the reason you mentioned
i don't think its a biggie. If muslims in general can be portrayed as terrorists in every other movie on the subject, i don't think the bad guys speaking the language is any worse. Besides, there are a whole bunch of movies that have french or russian or some other language speaking bad guys.
underthedome: which regime change are you counting down to? time for the american messiah to save another people from themselves?
Oh sheesh! Get off the The-Whole-World-Is-Trying-To-Get-Us depression.
Ironman is a movie. If you had stuck around for the entire movie, you'd have realized that the movie was not meant to show-case bad boys muslims, but the hypocricy of US military establishment (and weapon manufacturers) and how they'd sell weapons to anyone to make a penny.
Five minutes into the movie, and the shalwar-kameez clad kidnapper started talking in urdu (with really bad subtitles), and I almost burst out laughing. Not because the guy was comical or trying to be funny, but because who'd have thought that terrorists/freedom-fighters/mujahideen in the middle of Afghanistan will be shown speaking urdu. Pashtu, yes. Darri, yes. Farshi, yes. Urdu --- are you kiddin' me??? I chalked it up to the generally poor world knowledge of film-makers. And its hard to believe there is a deep-rooted conspiracy theory here, because most US movie-goers don't give a frick about which foreign language the dude was speaking, as long as they can read the sub-titles. Plus no one mentioned Pakistan, even once in the movie. It was all about Afghanistan.
Its an other-wise well made movie and a lot of nice action scenes. Plus Robert Downey Jr is kinda cool sort of super hero and makes the movie really funny in parts.
Likely used because it's not a well know language in the states thus it adds fear of the unknown. Plus with all the news coming out of the Pakistan these past few years can you blame them for making it the langage of the bad guys, it adds realism. I haven't seen the movie yet but a friend helped with the locations.
underthedome: which regime change are you counting down to? time for the american messiah to save another people from themselves?
This time hopefully the american people will save themselves from themselves, The Bush regime is done on 1-20-09
Spock, I don't want to sterotype any one nationality as being terrorists, any brown person can be a terrorist no matter where they're from. (that's a joke, haha)
^
My joke is much funnier as it plays on the villain sterotype that hollywood has used for the last 2 decades, throw in some white guys with russian accents and you have 70% of your villains.
