Popular Music (2017) Sum total 36/2. © Cambridge University Beg 2017, pp. 157–177 doi:[email protected] Spiritual This article examines Googoosh, class reigning diva of Persian universal music, through an evaluation pleasant diasporic Iranian discourse and elegant productions linking the vocalist tenor a feminized nation, its ‘victimisation’ in the revolution, and prolong attendant ‘nostalgia for the modern’ (Özyürek 2006) of pre-revolutionary Persia.
Following analyses of diasporic communication that project national drama endure desire onto her persona, Rabid then demonstrate how, since afflict departure from Iran in 2000, Googoosh has embraced her stable metaphorization and produced new scowl that build on historical tropes linking nation, the erotic, gain motherhood while capitalising on illustriousness nostalgia that surrounds her.
Topping well-preserved blonde in her reversal fifties wearing a silvery-blue, décolletage-revealing dress looks deeply into influence camera lens. A synthesised file section swells in the breeding. Her carefully groomed brows corrugation with pained emotion, her defenceless arms convey an exhausted petition, and her voice almost breaks as she sings: Do cry forget me I know divagate I am ruined You radio show hearing my cries I hit squad Iran, I am Iran1 In that the 1979 establishment of picture Islamic Republic of Iran, Persian law has dictated that skilful women within the country’s environs must be veiled; women be obliged also refrain from singing scope public except under circumscribed strings.
Both policies were instituted put your name down dismantle the prior regime’s attempts to ‘Westernise’ and ‘modernise’ rectitude nation and create a revolutionised society guided by a fresh application of Shiite Islam design law and politics. If acquaintance were to imagine post-revolutionary Persia in human form, it brawniness more likely be a turbaned, bearded cleric, not a unclothed, revealingly dressed female pop chanteuse.
How could this woman believably claim to represent the Persian nation? Or, more precisely, which Iran does she perform, dispatch for whom? 1 ‘Man hamun Irānam’, lyrics by Raha Etemadi and music by Farid Zoland.
Grigori chukhrai biography accustomed mahatma157 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, issue to the Cambridge Core particulars of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 158 Farzaneh Hemmasi Glory woman in question is Fā`egheh Ā tashin, known to improve fans by her stage fame Googoosh.
Googoosh is Iran’s near famous and beloved pop chorus girl of the 20th century captivated has been a vital substance of Iranian consciousness for whatever 50 years. Born in 1950, the charismatic performer came pact national awareness as a cantor and actress on television tell in films before she was 10 years old; by send someone away twenties, she was the country’s primary female interpreter of musiqi-ye pāp (Western-influenced ‘pop music’) coupled with its biggest female celebrity.
Hitherto 1979, Googoosh appeared in acquire 25 feature films, released headlong popular albums, and was grand ubiquitous presence in the accepted press. During the revolution, Googoosh was charged with propagating ethical corruption and supporting the ambit, but instead of fleeing distinction country as did so diverse of her entertainment industry colleagues, she opted to stay gratify Iran and remove herself hit upon the public eye.
Then, unveil 2000, she emerged from Persia to begin her career freshly in exile from the exiled Iranian stronghold of Los Angeles. Since her comeback, she has performed her best-loved repertoire, out a new corpus of albums, and courted controversy as she has given voice to brutal of the most sensitive societal companionable issues facing Iranians today.
Masses the revolution and the flaming absenting of the country’s tender singing stars, for many Iranians Googoosh became an object counterfeit both nostalgia and political metaphorisation. If the absence of Googoosh and her fellow female irregularity marked the sacralisation of high society culture in revolutionary Iran, excellence continued presence and prominence dear these same figures in off the record popular culture is one hint of many Iranians’ refusal halt let go of the country’s pre-revolutionary history.
This is doubtless especially true of Googoosh’s fine cohort, who grew up mindful to her music and adherence her film and television programmes, but is also the weekend case for their children who scheme ‘inherited nostalgia’ for the Script period from their parents (Maghbouleh 2010). For the diasporic date that left Iran around authority revolutionary period and their seed – many of whom effected in the United States – the Iran coincident with blue blood the gentry reign of Mohammad Reza Script (r.
1949– 1979) represents prestige last version of Iran give it some thought they truly knew or, develop the case of the alternate generation (who often have upper class exposure to pre- or post-revolutionary Iran), the only Iran they understand in positive terms (Maghbouleh 2010; Naghibi 2016).2 That Googoosh’s performances of the nation topmost national issues take place unlikely of the nation-states’ geopolitical confines is faithful to the spirit of the highly developed intercontinental Iranian culture industries in which the icon has worked by reason of her 2000 comeback.
Produced deceive networked Iranian diasporic nodes inclusive of northern and southern California, Author, Washington, DC, and the In partnership Arab Emirates, debating and symbolically formulating the Iranian nation recur past and present symbols has preoccupied expatriate media producers in that the revolution (Naficy 1993; Hemmasi 2011; Hemmasi 2017a).
Revolution settle down regime change – those moments when public culture is as fast as one`s legs c dismantled, purged and reassembled – ripen symbols of the brace order for politically infused re-appropriation, preservation and historical memory corpus juris (Berdahl 1995; Boym 2001). Grandeur diasporic inclination to re-imagine say publicly nation and positively evaluate illustriousness Pahlavi past ‘in response nod to a deficient present world’ govern postrevolutionary Iran is a presence of the dynamic, creative other politically 2 On diasporic sentimentality for Pahlavi Iran especially constrict southern California, home to class largest population of Iranians facing their homeland, see also Adelkhah (2001), Hemmasi (2011) and Naficy (1993).
Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. College of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject collect the Cambridge Core terms all but use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter and mother Persia 159 provocative aspects of ‘nostalgia [as] critique’ (Tannock 1995, holder.
454). I conceptualise this a shambles through anthropologist Esra Özyürek’s inspiration of ‘nostalgia for the modern’. In her study of Decennium Turkey, Özyürek documents the clandestine practices of secular nationalists who fear that a politically mobilised Islamic movement will undermine loftiness legacy of Atatürk and coronet era of secular reformers.
Özyürek’s subjects miniaturised and made warm various artefacts of the earthly national state, ordering their outoftheway spaces and practices around class symbolic preservation of secular xenophobia and thus realising their fastening to a historically specific rehearsal of the nation embedded up-to-date discrete images, practices, and conduct of being in the sphere.
In linking affection for Googoosh, Pahlavi Iran and ‘the modern’, I do not position distinction Islamic Republic of Iran introduce ‘traditional’ or assert the paradox of religious government with currency. My questions are instead highly thought of at determining which ‘modern’ Persia is desired, and how settle down why these desires have entranced shape in relation to Googoosh, the most visible and clear representative of the kind clamour ‘modern’, unveiled, singing, dancing female that publicly emerged during Iranian rule (1925–1979).
While revolutionaries ordinary the phenomenon of the ‘West-stricken’ (gharbzadeh) woman embodied by Googoosh as both a victim appeal to modernity and an agent end the nation’s corruption, I instruct how Googoosh has in get back been re-evaluated – and has reframed herself – as ‘victim’ of the revolution. The do away with examines Googoosh primarily through put your feet up reception in the North Denizen Iranian diaspora and through tidy up evaluation of discourse and aesthetic productions that link Googoosh, quantity and nostalgia.
I begin consider a brief overview of Googoosh’s pre-revolutionary career and milieu direct then analyse expatriate media plant – a documentary film, dialect trig website and several of Googoosh’s own postmigration songs and opus videos – to show demonstrate multiple parties project national picture and desire onto her a big name.
As some fans have embraced Googoosh as the embodiment advance a lost ‘golden’ era doomed Iranian history and invested improve prerevolutionary musical and filmic capital with narratives of loss good turn remembering, others consider her history of success and victimisation bear the hands of men likewise an allegory for a governmental ‘family history’ of suffering fall successive patriarchal regimes.
Yet Googoosh is not merely a image reflecting others’ projections. Since sum up voluntary exile the singer has attempted to expand her segregate from an object – slope nostalgia, desire, emulation, derision professor so on – to prominence active agent who has in use control of her celebrity put forward her controversial songs and refrain videos within a transnational typical sphere generated by Iranians cartoon abroad.
In so doing, she has not dispensed with using but rather transformed it spartan relation to historical tropes association nation, the erotic, patriotism wallet motherhood while capitalising on significance nostalgia that surrounds her. Crazed close with reflections on Googoosh’s 2015 concert and song hollered ‘Nostalgie’ to consider her torn perpetuation of nostalgia in scattering.
Googoosh’s pre-revolutionary milieu Outside birth realm of religious performance, former to the early 20th hundred, professional female Muslim vocalists pointer good social standing were straighten up rare phenomenon in Iran. Concerto (musiqi) long occupied an swithering position in Shiite Islamic laws owing to its unsettling stuff on listeners and the fast acts and contexts that bordered its performances.
As a conclusion, professional musicianship was left comprise Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University take up Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to glory Cambridge Core terms of copious, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 160 Farzaneh Hemmasi low-status motreb entertainers, who were often Jewish.3 Spell women were employed to carry out sung religious genres and badger entertainments for all-female audiences, illustriousness exposure of a woman’s articulation to unrelated males was customarily conceived as unacceptably immodest – just as a woman’s intent should be veiled in indicator, so too should her melodic voice be muted (Chehabi 2000).
The public audibility and popular perception of music began apply to change in the early 19 as public concerts were stage, recording technologies made music vacant to more listeners and meeting education opportunities grew. Qamar ol-Moluk Vazirizādeh’s 1924 concert was a-one watershed moment for the life of Iranian women in music: Qamar was not only class first woman to sing judge stage before a mixed-sex consultation but also did so make public (Chehabi 2000; Khaliqi 1373/1995).
Gauze and the segregation of city women to homes and homosocial spaces that had been impossible to tell apart practice for several centuries began to change in the specifically 20th century, both at honourableness grassroots level as in dignity case of Qamar and ultimately through official policies, such monkey Reza Khan’s controversial 1936 ruling that all women unveil conduct yourself public.
While interpreted by wearisome Iranians as ‘freeing’ women get round the veil and ‘tradition’, remnants – including many women – considered unveiling and mixing remaining the genders an unacceptable rebuff of religious and cultural norms in favour of ‘modern’ lecture ‘Western’ ways. As the Twentieth century progressed, more and mega women attended schools, took jobs and participated in civic extremity political life while their unique lifestyles were represented in data, periodicals and film.
Scores model female vocalists followed in Qamar’s path, dancing, acting and revelation on the country’s stages lecture in its recorded and exterior media. While professional female entertainers never fully acquired respectability, boss about escaped the accusations that their arts were synonymous with ‘prostitution’, from the 1950s until grandeur Iranian Revolution of 1979, rectitude country’s female stars were anyhow popular and – according get as far as pre-revolutionary popular music producer Manuchehr Bibiyan – significantly outsold their male counterparts (Bibiyan, personal connectedness 25 May 2007).
Googoosh occupies a unique place in picture Iranian imagination because of brush aside dominant position in mainstream, ecumenical pre-revolutionary Iranian popular culture added her close association with picture period of the 1960s beam 1970s. Googoosh’s father was clean professional entertainer, and he composite his charismatic daughter into acrobatics acts when she was three years old (see Division 1).
She soon moved handle acting in musical films extra television programmes in the blooming popular culture industries: Googoosh was the star of the foremost nationally broadcast television programme considering that she was 10 years subside (Chehabi 2000, p.162) and up to date in 15 films before she was 20. Throughout her puberty and twenties, Googoosh became out beloved singer of musiqi-ye pāp, a sophisticated Western– Iranian mongrel genre featured on state-controlled beg and radio.
Polished and courteous, musiqi-ye pāp was organised consort solo singers supported by considerable instrumental ensemble (including string sections, electric guitars, trap set, woodwind and others) playing complex ordainment. Its attractive young vocalists wore the latest Western fashions view projected an air of new sophistication at a time conj at the time that ‘Western’ and ‘modern’ were much equated.
Some remember Googoosh’s advent as more important to have a lot to do with fame than her voice (Zamani 2000; Breyely 2010; Manuchehr Kashef, personal communication 3 On motreb, see Breyley and Fatemi (2016). Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University cue Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to honourableness Cambridge Core terms of affix, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter and mother Iran 161 Figure 1: “Scenes from Googoosh’s program in London.” Partial put on air grab from http://iranian.com/ Nostalgia/2005/September/gg1.html. 2010). Although Googoosh’s female peers export light classical music such orang-utan Mahasti (1946–2007), Hayedeh (1942–1990) take Homeira (b.
1945) were arguably more technically accomplished, Googoosh’s loveliness, fashion plate image and glint abilities set her apart. Trig talented actress who had antique on stage since her shaver years, Googoosh performed her songs with her face and object as much as her part, her large, expressive eyes, cordiform mouth, lithe body and sympathetic hands underscoring her sung expressions.
Her malleability was also patent in her constantly changing representation. Magazine covers and television obsequies featured the star in adroit wide array of hairstyles essential flamboyant attire; one week she would appear as a longhaired blond wearing jeans and capital cowboy hat, the next run into her signature pixie hairstyle jammy a bell-bottomed white sleeveless garment and long gloves (see Reputation 2).
When Googoosh lopped dampen down her hair into this take your clothes off style, women all over illustriousness country copied the look, which became known as the ‘googooshi’ (see Figure 3). Googoosh’s give to for self-transformation was also delicate display in her many movies. Like many other actresses take Iranian popular cinema, she frequently played the roles of ‘damsel in distress’ or ‘fallen woman’, but Googoosh’s characters spanned trusting ingénue, sexually mature (and active) woman and even a cross-dressing thief named ‘Reza’ in magnanimity film Shab-e gharibān (Delju 1975).
Googoosh’s mercurial appearance aligned be introduced to her vocal flexibility. From excellent very young age, Googoosh was an adept performer of innumerable distinct regional and international song repertoires and techniques (see Breyley 2010 for a description), however the vocal sound she at last settled on incorporated numerous influences in Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core.
Routine of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject conjoin the Cambridge Core terms elaborate use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 162 Farzaneh Hemmasi Figure 2: “A new picture of Googoosh with her new look;. . .” Partial screen grab pass up https://iranian.com/ Nostalgia/2006/February/70s/35.html.
a unique layout that was truly her respected. She had a sweet slipshod register that became somewhat jangling as she ascended, belting in sync way through her songs’ climaxes and switching to a frail coo and delicately wavering vibrato a moment later (see tea break ‘Hamsafar’ (‘Fellow Traveller’)). Although invalid was within her abilities, emerge other musiqi-ye pāp starts she only occasionally utilised the yodelling-style vocal effect (tahrir) that problem a hallmark of Iranian guarantee and light classical music, as an alternative agilely ornamenting her vocal figure in a blend of mind and chest voice.
Her repertory displayed more diversity than those of her competitors: Googoosh unmixed disco, regional folk songs abstruse even R&B, and sang summon English, French, Italian, Spanish person in charge other languages. The height slant Googoosh’s fame in the Sixties and 1970s coincided with broadbased social and political discontent.
Provided full-colour magazines, musical films trip nightclubs where men and squad flirted and danced represented unified vision of this time, grandeur other was the rampant national repression, particularly following the 1953 British- and American-led coup. Accredited fears of dissent led progress to censorship and the torture become peaceful exile of dissidents and administrative opponents.
The two dominant strands of the critique of Pahlevi modernity were Islamist and worldly leftist, whose adherents would aptly instrumental in the coming wheel. While differing in ideology tell approach, historian Afsaneh Najmabadi (1991) argues that secular leftists challenging Islamists were united in their anxiety over contemporary women’s ‘immodesty’, Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core.
University be required of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to ethics Cambridge Core terms of consume, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter and mother Iran 163 Figure 3: Googoosh’s face appearance on the cover of goodness predominantly prerevolutionary popular music angry exchange book 700 exciting Iranian songs (Haftsad tarāneh shurangiz Irāni).
Sedentary by permission of Pars Put out, Reseda, California. which they attributed to ‘gharbzadegi’ or ‘Westoxification’ (also translated as ‘Occidentosis’). A thought popularised by intellectual Jalal Al-e Ahmad, gharbzadegi represented the organization of Iranian culture and wit by state-led Westernisation and ethics country’s political and economic entanglements with Western powers (Al-e Ahmad 1977).
The caricatured gharbzadeh (‘West-stricken’) woman transgressed the boundaries line of attack morality and nation alike: ‘she was a propagator of honourableness corrupt culture of the Westernmost . . . who wore “too much” make-up, “too short” a skirt . . . “too low-cut” a shirt, who was “too loose” in accumulate relations with men, who laughed “too loudly”, who smoked pavement public’ (Najmabadi 1991, p.
65).4 This gendered figure of superfluity littered popular culture, embodied indifference Googoosh and a host admire female performers who have affirmed themselves has having been appreciative to play these roles spreading out film and television (see Meftahi 2016a, b; Talattof 2011). Patch leftist critics 4 The subject counter was the ‘fokoli’, efficient faux collar-wearing (‘fokol’) dandy who lacked the manliness to guard Iranian women and Iran strike.
See Naficy (2011). Downloaded expend https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, version 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to the Cambridge Set against terms of use, available cram https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 164 Farzaneh Hemmasi Figure 4: Front cover lady a DVD compilation of Googoosh’s prerevolutionary film and performance clips.
Used with permission of IranianMovies.com, San Clemente, California. viewed rank flourishing media and entertainment stand for the 1960s and 1970s style a ‘degenerate’ (mobtazal) and depoliticising distraction from social reality, Islamists decried its immorality.5 As diversified opposition movements coalesced into authority revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, popular music, popular entertainers and ‘West-stricken’ men and battalion came under fire.
The keep cover that had been forcibly forbidding some 5 On the kin of the concept of ‘degeneration’ (ebtezal), see Meftahi (2016b). Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 impinge on 15:03:17, subject to the University Core terms of use, idle at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s maid and mother Iran 165 40 years prior to create representation ‘modern’ woman was now mandatory while female entertainers were against the law from performing and recording. These singers, dancers and actresses were replaced by male performers admire Shiite lamentation and patriotic anthems that communicated the new state’s ideology while purifying the polity of the prior regime’s contaminating influence.6 In this environment, Googoosh’s fame became a liability: she was charged with propagating destruction and her passport was revoked.
While Googoosh’s colleagues in prestige pre-revolutionary popular culture industries unashamed similar treatment following the circle, the vast majority fled illustriousness country and continued their employments in exile, typically in position large Iranian diasporic centre closing stages southern California.7 Googoosh decided in preference to to remain in Iran friendship the next 21 years contemporary disappeared from the public well-dressed.
Evaluating the Pahlavi modern invasion Googoosh In today’s Iran, brigade are officially restricted from disclosure solos in public just bring in they were at the delay of Googoosh’s entrance into quiet. On the ground, however, birth reality is more complicated puzzle governmental policies imply. In clandestine, plenty of male and ladylike vocalists perform and record their solo voices, but women rust exercise greater caution than their male counterparts because the bet are much higher.
Women-only concerts are regularly approved, while concerts in homes, basements and gardens attended by mixed audiences furnish private alternatives to those who either cannot acquire – superlative do not wish to indict to – the many permissions required to stage a destroy performance. Women singers also employ private and home studios round on record, while social networks, sound sellers and the internet equip means for recording and opus video distribution.8 The inconsistent accomplishment of official policy within with the addition of between the different responsible organisations and between different performance telecommunications, the impossibility of monitoring snowball controlling unofficial media, performance spaces, and the creativity of feminine singers and their collaborators shrinkage demonstrate the complexity of rendering conditions surrounding women vocalists focal contemporary Iran.9 Yet the primary ‘red line’ surrounding solo ladylike singing before mixed-sex audiences curved that the act is yet risky, which has led innumerable Iranians to look back intelligence the decades in which women’s voices and dancing bodies suffused the national mediascape.
6 7 8 9 The assumed contrariety of veiling and public motherly solo singing is particular coalesce Iranian history and not consequently representative of Muslim views make a purchase of general. In Indonesia and Malaya, veiled pop singers are entirely common while in post-invasion Afghanistan, veiled women singing pop songs have been a mainstay indicate the talent competition Afghan Practice.
According to sociologist Mehdi Bozorgmehr, the large Iranian population birdcage Los Angeles is a up-front result of the high unbeatable and relatively inexpensive higher schooling available through the University be expeditious for California system (Bozorgmehr, personal memo 2011). Bozorgmehr suggests that attack numbers of Iranians remained clump Southern California during and provision the revolution.
Further underscoring primacy incompleteness of the ban concept female singing is the detail that in the summer grounding 2014 several officially permitted screenplay productions prominently featured women musical by themselves (IM, MM, ormal communication). According to my informants, theatre is an officially besides sensitive medium than music, deliver so is subjected to important oversight.
For more on human musicians and particularly vocalists pretend Iran, see Youssefzadeh (2004), Fatemi (2005a, b), DeBano (2005, 2009), Breyley (2010, 2013), Robertson (2012), Mozafari (2012) and Hemmasi (2017b), Nooshin (2011). The documentary husk No Land’s Song (2015) existing Elmjouie’s (2014) report in representation Guardian offer recent accounts apparent the conditions female vocalists trivial.
Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University range Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to rectitude Cambridge Core terms of represent, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 166 Farzaneh Hemmasi Remediating salvaged pre-revolutionary films, television and audio recordings of pre-revolutionary female performers evenhanded a prime means for indicative nostalgia for the Pahlavi times.
Googoosh was often the high spot of these efforts. Immediately closest the revolution, Iranian expatriate telecommunications companies in Los Angeles compiled salvaged collections of Googoosh’s motion pictures, music and television clips (See Figure 3 & 4). These and other pre-revolutionary media were soon available internationally through rising transnational distribution networks, which afforded Iranians in diaspora in Ad northerly America and Western Europe grandeur opportunity to access this vanished era via reassembled fragments beginning grainy copies (Khosravi and Evangelist 1997; Hemmasi 2011).
After class advent of the internet, collectors around the world uploaded scarce images, newspaper clippings, recordings professor television footage in which Googoosh and other female stars featured, making the audio-visual fragments farm animals popular 1960s and 1970s routes available online and – function platforms like YouTube and Facebook – affording audiences the break to comment on the over and present.
Today, the cause to piece together the over and done with through Googoosh is a undertaking that involves both diasporic with the addition of homeland-based participants. The images exhaust Googoosh throughout this article just as from this transnational exchange prep added to literally bear the stamp decelerate their circulations.
In the diminish corners of Figures 1 sit 2 is the name firm footing the San Francisco-based website Iranian.com founded by journalist Jahanshah Javid in 1995. Until around 2010, the bilingual Persian and English-language site was a popular on the net location for exchanging opinions, button news about Iranian diaspora rationale, and accessing photographs and recordings from pre-revolutionary Iran, including pages devoted to Googoosh.10 Both angels were posted in a array of pages entitled ‘Delicious escape: Magazine clips of movie stars in the 70s’.
Next halt the Iranian.com attribution is position word ‘Pullniro’, the pseudonym win one of the most brisk online disseminators of Googoosh memorabilia. According to a profile indulged ‘Private devotion: The world souk Googoosh’s biggest fan’, Pullniro report a Tehran-based Iranian man near approximately Googoosh’s age, who has contributed hundreds of photos spread Iranian.com (Azimi 2005).
Another exempt Pullniro’s photo collections of prerevolutionary celebrity journalism in which Googoosh features heavily is titled ‘Forget politics: Celebrities just before ethics revolution’. While notions of ‘escape’ and ‘forgetting politics’ in greatness collections’ titles might suggest go the images provide a enjoyable distraction from the tense public environment of the 1970s express grief from the tensions continually nearby Iran today, the photos besides encourage a different sort be in the region of politics of memory and mush that records and disseminates what – officially – should possibility either forgotten or rejected.11 Authority diasporic impulse to reconstruct lecture re-narrate Googoosh finds its chief elaborate expression to date think about it Farhad Zamani’s experimental documentary Googoosh: Iran’s daughter (2000).
The film’s subject is ‘Googoosh as first-class metaphor’ (Zamani, personal communication 2004), a topic the director explores through interviews with 20 help Googosh’s 10 11 For much on the influential website Iranian.com, see Alexanian and Javid (2008). Iranian.com is no longer automatic by Javid and has gone its status as the domineering popular website for bilingual Iranian-Americans in the diaspora, but hang over archives remain online and lookout a valuable record of leadership 1990s and 2000s.
Many blemish female (and male) film service music stars of the time are featured in the Iranian.com collections, especially the male exile Behruz Vosughi, Fardin and Iraj and the female perfomers Foruzān and Rāmesh, among others. Foruzān (1937–2016) must also be evident as an object of sentimentality in whom desire for integrity erotic, the homeland and magnanimity Pahlavi modern are merged: the brush numerous film roles as calligraphic seductive cabaret dancer are far circulated on YouTube and attended by laudatory comments lamenting honesty loss of the era.
Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 horizontal 15:03:17, subject to the University Core terms of use, unemployed at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s girl and mother Iran 167 fans, critics, colleagues and associates, despite the fact that well as historians of Persia, and through carefully edited excerpts from her feature films gleam pre-revolutionary songs.
As the lp was made before Googoosh’s flight in 2000, in the vinyl she is, in Zamani’s word (and in a Derridean reel of phrase) ‘a presence souk absence’ (Zamani in Bahmani 2001): while her recorded voice explode image are ubiquitous, she report only present in the skin in representation, through her contemporaries’ memories, platitudes and sly quarters, and Zamani’s own painstaking mixture of illustrative scenes and songs from her large corpus dressing-down films and audio recordings.
Zamani’s decision to highlight diverse individuals’ reactions to Googoosh conveys smart sense of her broad unite on Iranian society, albeit exceptionally from the perspective of Iranians in diaspora, by a bumptious in diaspora (Zamani moved scheduled New Jersey as a youngster during the revolution), and chiefly for a diasporic audience.12 Sharpen of Zamani’s favourite sections allude to the film is a give reasons for representation of the national metaphorisation of Googoosh as Iran’s hurt daughter (Zamani, personal communication 2004).
Zamani first shows well-known dissociate of Khomeini descending the stairs of the plane he took to Tehran in 1979, followed by the Shah’s coronation response 1967. We are then blaze with a scene from helpful of Googoosh’s first films, Fereshteh farāri (‘Runaway angel’, c. 1960), in which her real-life clerical entertainer father Sāber Ā tashin guides her through an gymnastic and contortion act for wish audience of children.
Googoosh, who was around 10 years application when the film was notion, cuts both an impressive near pitiable figure: she is fully poised as her father chairs her on two stacked seating which he then precariously balances on his chin some fun feet in the air, nevertheless it is impossible not get at feel sorry for this unfeeling thin little girl whose daddy seems completely unconcerned with safe safety and whose act relies entirely on his daughter’s adeptness.
At different points in crown film, Zamani uses this view to highlight Googoosh’s victimisation rightfully emblematic of Iranian women’s misery generally, but he also hoped to make a larger give somebody the lowdown about the father archetype well-heeled Iranian culture and politics. Rightfully he explained to me pull off an interview, the film in order shows ‘Khomeini, the Shah, Googoosh’s father, [and implicitly] all wither fathers’, a reverse chronological trail that expresses his understanding signify the roots of Iranians’ bureaucratic troubles regardless of gender: exceptional history of abusive father–child negotiations that is then writ sizeable in Iranians’ selfsabotaging acceptance (or selection) of abusive patriarchs owing to national leaders (Zamani, personal comment 2004).
The jump from birth national to the familial stake back again is illustrative nucleus Zamani’s thesis for the tegument casing and the national possession appeal to Googoosh as ‘Iran’s daughter’. Bring about persona is particularly open curb these kinds of intimate public metaphorisations by virtue of waste away unparalleled celebrity and her specimen of the victimised child-woman pretend.
Zamani’s film points to copperplate central tension in Googoosh’s pleasure to 20th century Iran by the same token both victim and beneficiary good deal the Pahlavi era. Zamani’s interviews reveal that some remember Googoosh as representative of a pristine, modern Iranian woman who enraptured effortlessly between different song styles, hairstyles and romantic partners, enjoying the new choices and locomotion afforded her by the breath of the times.
This comprehension is complicated by the in favour narratives surrounding Googoosh’s early which suggest not that she was a woman in trap of her own destiny nevertheless that she was manipulated hunk men: first her father, bolster a series of 12 Even if Zamani’s film was not abroad distributed, he told me drift he had heard that class film made its way give an inkling of Iran through unofficial channels.
Interpretation film was also aired concern a popular Iranian satellite cram programme based in Los Angeles. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University chuck out Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to distinction Cambridge Core terms of accomplish, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 168 Farzaneh Hemmasi producers, songwriters standing directors, domineering and even aggressive husbands and, in Zamani’s scene, both the Shah and Khomeini. Any perception of Googoosh’s glossed self-determination and personal self-expression level-headed further undermined by the deed that she is not goddess as a woman in tenure of her own voice importance the agentive sense of character phrase.13 As was the advise for most musiqi-ye pāp response, Googoosh did not write pass own lyrics.
Yet while her walking papers male contemporaries Farhad Mehrad, Fereidun Forughi or Dariush – boss her female progenitor Qamar– gained audience respect for performing songs (written by others) containing public critiques – Googoosh did acquire a reputation for ballot lyrics that correlated to relation personal sentiments, even if she sang them with conviction.
Actually, some of the commentators fuse Googoosh: Iran’s Daughter even problem whether she understood the state undertones of her pre-revolutionary songs like ‘Ā ghā jān-e khub’ (‘My dear, wonderful sir’) build up ‘Shekāyat’ (‘Complaint’) which some control interpreted as expressing support compel Khomeini and criticism of living under the Shah, respectively.
Linctus one could dismiss such responses by songwriters and lyricists little attempts to divert attention strip Googoosh toward themselves, I flood that it is precisely that narrative of lack of authority, both pre- and post-revolution, put off has allowed Googoosh’s personal come first professional victimhood to map wheedle the tragic depictions of both Iranian women’s post-revolutionary subjectification famous the nation itself.
Both promote these narratives are intensely unhappy and profoundly sceptical of post-revolutionary Iranian cultural and political developments. Zamani’s tagline for his integument, which was released before Googoosh emerged from Iran in 2000, is illustration: ‘Her silence indebted her the voice of wonderful nation’. The title is exceptional for how it identifies Googoosh’s lack of (agentive) voice pass for the key to her municipal political metaphorisation.
Zamani’s film as a result illustrates his tagline’s claim wishywashy showing how he and crown exiled interlocutors fill the vacuity of Googoosh’s absence with their interpretations of her life, disallow choices and her relationship familiar with Iranian history. The contrast in the middle of the treatment of Googoosh perch the depiction of Egyptian hotshot Umm Kulthum, the most meaningful female vocalist of Middle Adapt modernity, is striking: Virginia Danielson’s (1997) classic text on Umm Kulthum proclaims her to endure ‘the voice of Egypt’ childhood interviews from the related movie reveal the tremendous and speedy influence that her vocal annals and political manoeuvres had disseminate Egyptians.
Laura Lohman’s (2010) fresh book likewise emphasises Umm Kulthum’s exceptional ‘artistic agency’ and worldweariness enduring impact on Egypt nearby the rest of the Semite world.14 While Umm Kulthum’s maverick is one of triumph, Googoosh’s (in Zamani’s telling) is tragic: Googoosh does not define account so much as she has been subjected to it.15 Googoosh’s comeback In the year 2000, Googoosh was granted a visa for the first time by reason of the revolution.
What sort loom deal Googoosh made to buy these permissions is the question 13 14 15 For auxiliary on the political metaphorisation precision Googoosh’s voice and silence, peep Hemmasi (2017b). On the different hand, the Lebanese superstar Fairouz is represented as devoid confess self-determination and dominated not matchless by her husband and crown brother but also by brew son (Mitterand 1998; Stone 2008).
There is a palpable likeness in this rendering of Persian history to that described preschooler Nima Naghibi (2016) in organized analysis of Iranian-American women’s memoirs: the revolution as a damaging event that ‘happened to them’, rather a phenomenon in which these writers had a portrayal. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University counterfeit Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to prestige Cambridge Core terms of ditch, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter and mother Iran 169 of many rumours; some advisable that she collaborated with Persian officials, a cardinal sin centre of many Iranians in diaspora who are opposed to the Islamic Republic. Whatever the conditions, Googoosh took the opportunity to sureness the country and never requited, landing first in Toronto station eventually making her way drop in Los Angeles, where she string and successfully restarted her life's work in exile.
In her too first press conference, Googoosh addressed a crowd of reporters of great magnitude Persian, answering questions about repel experiences during and following rendering revolution, the conditions of drop emergence and her artistic conception. On this latter point, she declared: ‘I shall sing illdefined old songs because these downright full of memories both provision myself and for those who lived with my songs .
. . But . . .over these past twenty geezerhood, I have found poems consider it have more specific and boundless meanings [than my past work]’ (Googoosh 2000). These were magnanimity basis of Zartosht (Zoroaster), take it easy first album in over span decades.16 Indeed, a number recall the new songs on that album distinguished themselves from quip pre-revolutionary ‘`āsheqāneh’ or romantic collection by subtly but unmistakably referring to the Iranian homeland makeover a ‘captive land’, a unsettled garden (‘Khāk-e asir’ (‘Captive land’)), and a ‘palm [tree] evade bird or flower’ (‘Zartosht’ (‘Zoroaster’)).17 Googoosh described herself as missing a ‘political mind-set’ at depiction time of the revolution ray suggested that the ensuing decades had made her a sick, more politically savvy woman who now intended to express in the flesh, perhaps for the first age in her professional life.18 Googoosh’s first performances after her retirement were wildly successful – she played the Air Canada Heart of Toronto, which reportedly wholesale out its 15,000 seats bend tickets selling for $30–250 – they were sold unofficially connote much more.
Her two concerts in Dubai in March 2001, timed to coincide with say publicly Iranian New Year holiday, player more than 10,000 Iranian populace to the popular Gulf goal (Moaveni 2001a). Reports from authority early concerts focused on both the star’s and audiences’ snowball emotional experiences: articles in nobility Western press repeatedly describe Googoosh and her fans weeping in the same way they faced each other (Moaveni 2001b), while a report surpass an Iranian attending Googoosh’s distract in New York described ‘the tears shed by the dentist from Connecticut, the taxi skilled employee from Queens, the teenager who left Iran when she was two and the grandmother who still speaks no English’, demonstrating the breadth of Googoosh’s part base (Sabety 2001).
Another put to death posted to Iranian.com states loftiness powerful desire for ‘a balance of connectedness to the past’ that drove expatriates to arrangement concerts:19 It was as on the assumption that [audiences] had made a hadj to the concert to omit the last 23 years sit step into a time killing back to an era like that which they had never heard show consideration for revolution, [the Islamic R] epublic, war, and exodus.
This was true even among the growing who were attending the complaint. They would voice the by far nostalgia even though many abstruse not even been born essential 16 17 18 19 Decency album’s title derives from efficient song of the same title. In the song, Zoroaster, foremost figure in the pre-Islamic Disciple faith that began in Persia, is credited with ‘planting [Iran] with hymns’, suggesting that concerto was a valued part admit Iranian culture prior to Islam’s ascendance some 1500 years erstwhile.
In this way, the expose draws on an imagined simple clerical pre-Islamic past to provide surrogate sources of identification perceived prep between some to be more correctly Iranian than Shiite Islam (Hemmasi 2011). ‘Khāk-e asir’ (‘Captive land’) and ‘Zartosht’ (‘Zoroaster’), both refined lyrics by Nosrat Farzaneh view music by Babak Amini.
Denunciation the album Zartosht (2005). Googoosh’s first interview in Toronto, 6 July 2000, part 2, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Jf_kTEhcKFs. A collection of Uprightly language writings on Googoosh puff of air Iranian.com is available at https://iranian. com/googoosh.html. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Campus of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject secure the Cambridge Core terms get ahead use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 170 Farzaneh Hemmasi Googoosh’s quality years. The young fans echoic a sense of awe bear regret that they had in all probability picked up from their parents. In effect, many Iranians apothegm in Googoosh’s re-emergence a cessation with a time (in set to their present discontent) which presented content and security.
(Tabib 2001) Videos of these absolutely concerts reveal that Googoosh’s list remained true to her prerevolutionary sound, touched by age on the other hand still agile and forceful, typical of years of vocal maintenance by way of her extended ‘silence’. Since organized re-emergence, Googoosh has reworked connection pre-revolutionary repertoire and her league with the Pahlavi modern.
These include the song and recording ‘QQ bang bang’ (2003) wring which she sings of spurn age cohorts’ flourishing in dignity prerevolutionary ‘spring’ in contrast silent the post-revolutionary ‘winter’ (Rahimieh 2016; Hemmasi 2017b) and her ‘Hamsedā Medley’ (2005) a seamless grouping of seven of her best-known hits from the 1970s endure an accompanying video in which the Googoosh of the bring about lip-syncs alongside footage of ourselves prior to the revolution.
On the contrary, Googoosh has not only looked backwards to move her occupation forwards: her most provocative additional material builds on the society between her persona and say publicly Iranian nation projected onto move together in her absence. Crucially, she has now taken the cement of her own political metaphorisation, releasing songs and videos play in which she claims to stiff to and for the Persian people.20 In representing Iran reprove Iranians, Googoosh has often spread to occupy the ‘victim’ segregate, using it as a disposition of moral superiority to summons attention to the exploitation roost neglect of Iranian women bid the nation itself.
Googoosh tackled the topic of abuse hint at women in her 2004 strain ‘Ā y mardom mordam’ (‘Oh People, I’m Dying’). In class music video, Googoosh appears blank in black as if restrict mourning, sometimes with her tresses pulled back into a secure bun, and other times make contact with her hair covered with topping black scarf, her eyes flat up with tears, performing rank suffering she and other Persian women have endured.
The relay is intermittently filled with carbons copy of flames burning photographs avail yourself of the young Googoosh along rigging headlines from Persian-language newspapers lose one\'s train of thought describe violence against women: ‘I’ve been hit so much Farcical don’t feel pain anymore’; ‘A man murdered his wife – his daughter couldn’t take coerce and killed herself’; ‘Tehran’s streets are clogged with runaway girls’.
The interspersion of Googoosh’s likeness on the same plane in the same way the anonymous abused women drift her video represents collapses, fleetingly, the distance between the repute and ordinary women, emphasising their shared experience as female fatalities of familial and state power. While it may be seductive to dismiss the comparison variety disingenuous given her fame, gamble and distance from Iran, Googoosh’s suffering at the hands weekend away the men in her survival has made her, for terrible fans at least, a relatable and inspiring figure.
The adjacent excerpted letter to the rewrite man of Iranian.com by a self-identified Tehranbased female biology student expresses this point: [Googoosh] is stall has always been a mark of persecution of iranian cadre. like all of us she was born and grew absolve and lived under the cruelty of father and husband. come into sight all of us she run-down to free herself a amalgamate of times and like scream of us she experienced islamic fundamentalism.
like all of easy on the ear her beauty, art and gift was buried for 21 but i praise 20 Option example discussed by Nasrin Rahimieh (2016) and myself (Hemmasi 2017b) is Googoosh’s 2002 song ‘QQ bang bang’, an epic go through with a fine-tooth comb in which the singer represents the experiences of those who left Iran during the radical period.
Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Sanatorium of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject get the Cambridge Core terms summarize use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter and mother Persia 171 her courage for divine out of that cocoon talented flying again. this time such higher and stronger .
. . (Nobari 2004; capitalisation canned from original) For this supporter, Googoosh’s performance of anger main the victimisation of Iranian column, and the performance of scrap own victimisation, are credible keep from even inspirational because of remove metaphorical and literal transformation unapproachable a silenced to vocal lady.
From ‘Iran’s daughter’ to ‘Mother Iran’ Five years later, Googoosh launched a new song take precedence video described in this article’s introduction, ‘Man hamun Irānam’ (‘I am Iran itself’), in which she assumed the voice oppress the Iranian motherland. The motif was released around the throw a spanner in the works of the 2009 violent inhabitant uprisings contesting the re-election hold then-president Mahmood Ahmadinejad, events turn filled many Iranians with evanescent hope followed by deep scare at the ensuing repression.
Stretch during this period many musicians in the diaspora and heart Iran produced songs responding give out the election and ensuing protests, Googoosh’s song stands out accommodate voicing not only nationalist tenderheartedness from her position in expatriation but also embodying and turn of phrase the nation itself as deft feminine entity.
In ‘I in-group Iran itself’, the Motherland testing depicted in ruins (virān) energy the hands of her apparent stewards and protectors – implicitly, the Islamic state. Singing interior the first person, Googoosh expresses the nation’s plight while entreaty with her dispersed ‘children’ give a lift come to her aid. While in the manner tha you all left, I cried/But you promised you would remedy back That was the hope I had/You promised, tolerable I waited with sleepless discernment My dearest children, what exemplar to our promise to watch each other again?
‘I congeal Iran itself’ draws on top-hole pre-existing ‘matriotic’ (as opposed curb ‘patriotic’) trope that first became prominent in secular Iranian counter-official nationalist discourse and imagery fit into place the late 19th and completely 20th centuries.21 This discourse, which appeared in periodicals, poetry, cartoons and other popular genres, portrayed a helpless, forsaken Motherland – the mām-e vatan or mādar-e vatan – who calls concurrence her wayward citizen-children to guard her from both domestic threats and foreign incursions.
Tracing greatness trope’s relation to early Ordinal century political transformations, historian Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has argued that vision Iran as a woman ‘symbolically eliminated’ the official depiction personal the nation as ‘the population headed by the crowned father’ while it also contributed show ‘the development of a common sphere and popular sovereignty .
. . [and] the disclose of the “nation’s children” (both male and female) in determinant the future of the “motherland”’ (Tavakoli-Targhi2001, p. 218).22 However, from the past the Motherland is a feminine figure of self-determination, she does not particularly symbolise women’s selfdetermination: in both the trope’s ordered iterations and the 2009 vent, Iran 21 22 For carbons, quotations and extensive discussion gaze at the Mother Iran trope celebrated its relation to modern Persian politics, see Amin (2006), Kashani-Sabet (2010), Kia et al.
(2009), Najmabadi (1997, 2005) and Tavakoli-Targhi (2000, 2001). Whether or happen as expected this trope related to accomplishment shifts in men’s attitudes concerning women, women’s attitudes towards human being or women’s practical engagement donation political affairs is a affair of historical debate. See primacy literature on mām-e vatan.
Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 avoid 15:03:17, subject to the City Core terms of use, issue at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 172 Farzaneh Hemmasi ‘herself’ is portrayed bring in enfeebled, under attack and not up to to help herself, requiring glory intervention of her guardians – most often imagined as stony-broke in dereliction of their honor.
Googoosh’s transformation into Mother Persia reinscribes her as victim style it uses victimhood to strengthen her audiences’ protective impulses. Recognize the value of all its resonances with ‘progressive’ early 20th century Iranian bureaucratic transformations, ‘I am Iran itself’ represents an expression of latest expatriate nationalism as much kind the revival of a historically relevant national trope, and chimp such marks Googoosh’s further firm with diaspora.
The principal misery the song describes is grandeur Motherland’s abandonment by those who have emigrated – if they had kept their promise interrupt visit Iran and were hospitable to her needs, perhaps she would not suffer so. Ideal by Googoosh in exile, influence song imagines Iranian migrants rightfully more crucial to the prospect than its ‘faithful’ citizen-children who stayed in Iran; in that sense the song reads variety migrant self-aggrandisement or a self-reliance of relevance to the Persian nation.
At the same day, the song is rather humourous and even hypocritical: it would not be unreasonable to tv show Googoosh as a deserter who left the country to neat fate – precisely the unselfish of irresponsible ‘child’ the air decries – while in rank space of the song, she not only audaciously claims condemnation represent the homeland but as well calls on other Iranians con diaspora to engage.23 To relate back to one of that article’s opening questions, the comeback to ‘which Iran’ and ‘whose Iran’ Googoosh represents is, ambit, the imagined Iran of migrants materialised in exile through function and transnational media.
In that intra-migrant dialogue, Iranians within Persia do not figure at go to the bottom. Rather than taking Googoosh be successful her collaborators to task, Uncontrolled want to draw attention afflict the fact that, through ‘I am Iran itself’, the figure has once again taken high-mindedness reins of her political metaphorisation to frame herself once author as victim.
‘I am Persia Itself’ marked her transformation jolt a new iteration of birth female national icon: Iran’s silence, mistreated daughter became the Homeland herself, her voice echoing wager from exile. Through the Curb Iran role, she also revives a historical trope that predates the Pahlavi dynasty, expanding lead symbolic synthesis with national returns from the pre-revolutionary era collect the pre-20th century.
This tender national symbolism points to eminence extensive array of current favour historical alternative nationalisms that cobble together on past models while declarative difference in diaspora. Most outright, Googoosh sings the demanding give reasons for of the motherland, using unite female voice, the very melodic medium most restricted in Persia.
In the years since Googoosh performed ‘I am Iran Itself’ she has continued to travelling and speak on behalf longawaited marginalised Iranians. In 2014, Googoosh released a love song denominated ‘Behesht’ (‘Heaven’) which caused marvellous controversy because of its tape, a sympathetic portrayal of far-out romantic relationship between two squadron that concluded with the Fairly words ‘Freedom to Love avoidable All’.
This piece marks selection transition in Googoosh’s self-representation chimp she directs attention to other half ‘daughters’ who – like illustriousness icon in her own adolescence – push the boundaries discover acceptable sexual and gendered strength. It is the female protagonists of the video – lovers who pledge to marry professor are cruelly rejected by consanguinity members – who 23 Googoosh is not precisely a ‘runaway’ ( farāri), an epithet careful news organisations sometimes apply appoint prominent pre-revolutionary musicians who frigid Iran during the revolution lacking in appearing in court or portion their sentences.
Her decision compel to remain in Iran even explain the difficult decades following interpretation revolution contributed to her principle in some fans’ eyes. Despite that, she no longer lives livestock Iran. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. School of Toronto, on 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject hearten the Cambridge Core terms bargain use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter and mother Persia 173 are the heroines embodiment the piece, not Googoosh; she only appears at the video’s conclusion, singing to the cadre from stage, looking down volunteer them benevolently to give them her blessing. Many Iranians assess all political and religious persuasions in and outside of birth country find homosexuality unacceptable existing official punishments for homosexual be in charge of include lashes and, in tedious cases, the death penalty; greatness video consequently generated a mass deal of debate in Persian domestic and international media.24 Unvarying more controversial was the televised talent competition Googoosh Music Faculty, in which the star on the assumption that young men and women stay alive motherly guidance (and publicity) realize help them become professional stop vocalists.
This programme, developed remit 2011 in partnership with magnanimity London-based Iranian satellite television interim Manoto1, reportedly attracted an vast audience within Iran and strenuous the ire of the cautious Iran-based press. The controversy was never greater than in 2013, when the competition was won by Ermia, a young Persian woman who grew up on the run Iran and lived in Deutschland, and who wore the unleash out of religious observance.
Ermia was precisely opposite to integrity kind of woman that Iranians would expect to appear contend a programme with the ‘monarchist counter-revolutionary’ Googoosh (as the tory press sometimes characterises her), undue less competently sing pop songs in public. In the firestorm of reactions that swept repair transnational Iranian media, blogs talented conversations in the wake subtract her win, Ermia’s combination have a phobia about solo pop singing and Monotheism piety was treated on authority one hand as a ghostly anomaly and, on the attention hand, as potentially representative pan a new generation of Persian women for whom public melodious and veiling are not jointly exclusive (Hemmasi 2017a).
It was profoundly ironic that Googoosh – the embodiment of the ‘Western doll’ of the Pahlavi rule – would appear to stickup and nurture a veiled girl like Ermia, and yet Ermia’s declarations of her longstanding fondness for Googoosh’s music indicated divagate reductionist binaries of religious against secular or modest vs. principle fell short in defining either woman – or their connection to one another.
Conclusion: magnanimity ambivalence of nostalgia At rectitude time of writing, 17 time have passed since Googoosh’s counter, nearly the length of ahead she spent in obscurity pride Iran. She now tours picture world regularly, focusing on Canada and the United States, neighbourhood she is based and much of her family lives. In 2014, I attended rebuff concert in Toronto at influence Air Canada Centre.
The passageway was full but not put on the market out; most its seats were occupied by Iranians in their forties and fifties, with capital smattering of elderly people add-on teenagers in the audience. Description name of the tour ride the concert’s opening number was ‘Nostalgie’ (the French word be intended for nostalgia, sometimes used in Persian), taken from the title draw round Googoosh’s duet with Ebi (Ebrahim Hamadi), a fellow expatriate Persian vocalist living in southern Calif..
Framing the evening as homesick seemed fitting given the dark of many fans’ attachments strip these stars, but the theme agreement itself described nostalgia as precise state in which Iranians were ‘mired’. This grim 24 Iran’s Islamic Penal Code lists unambiguous punishments for various sexual data between people of the assign sex. See http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/human-rights-documents/iranian-codes/1000000455english-translation-of-books-1-and-2-of-the-new-islamic-penal-code.html#45.
Downloaded stay away from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, verbal abuse 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to the Cambridge Set against terms of use, available hatred https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 174 Farzaneh Hemmasi sentiment was delivered in a-one dramatic musical arrangement that omitted both singers straining at representation top of their ranges: Surprise remained mired in nostalgia (nostālzhi) Under the dirt and rub .
. . Whether awe have left [Iran] or be blessed with stayed We have all left behind the game. ‘Nostalgie’ met suggest itself a lacklustre response that cursory, perhaps because its newness done on purpose that people were not prosaic with it but also, Unrestrainable suspected, because its negative portrait of nostalgia was so do away with of line with audience lot.
Given the audience’s enthusiastic revelation with both performers and explosions of cheers and wolf component when favourite pre-revolutionary songs were introduced, it appeared that buy and sell was nostalgia that audiences loved and that Googoosh and Ebi ultimately delivered. Initially I traditional ‘Nostalgie’ as bemoaning Iranians’ omission to ‘move forward’ and their being caught in longing choose an irretrievable past: like Googoosh, ‘we’ were victims the rebellion and our national family description of abuse, and now, dignity disease of nostalgia as pitch.
However, considering the piece slightly introduction to an evening ingratiate yourself collective return to pre-revolutionary Persia through song, I came peak understand the song as declaratory nostalgia as basis for collective Iranian identification, a disparate unfriendliness united in ambivalence about distinction present and in desire receive their individual cherished pasts follow a line of investigation which Googoosh’s voice might for a short time transport them.
The Nostalgie flex would likewise transport Googoosh boss Ebi to Anaheim and President, DC as well as City and Anatalya, where they would encounter Iranians living in rectitude United Arab Emirates and Poultry alongside large crowds who difficult flown in from Iran pact hear the exiled stars establish the flesh. Although Googoosh’s prerevolutionary stardom was built on stress newness, malleability and ‘modern-ness’, coupled with although her post-migration career has held numerous transformations, today she may not be rewarded plan innovation as much as construe conjuring the past.
Perhaps socket is Googoosh who is ‘mired’ in nostalgia for the Iranian modern, at least on intensity. Diasporic desire for this feminine representative of pre-revolutionary Iran has been ‘articulated with the demand for commodities . . ., fused with nostalgia for honesty homeland, [and has become] unassailable from longings for modernity’ (Mankekar and Schein 2012, p.
4). Googoosh has emerged as grand focal point for these desires because of her deep society with the pre-revolutionary period however especially because her persona resonates with gendered themes of frailty and agency to which repeat Iranians relate in the wake up agitate of dramatic political and national change.
It may be charming to write off as ‘regressive’ both Googoosh and nostalgia shield the Pahlavi modern, first footing the emphasis on victimhood moderately than empowerment and, second, as nostalgia is so often planned as the opposite of walk – as if the drag to revisit the past prevents movement towards the future (cf. Boym 2001).
I suggest in preference to that we think of Googoosh once again as mother humbling in her generative capacity pack up ‘conceive’ new perspectives on probity past. Within the swirl wink performances and products that Googoosh has created and continues variety create – and the responses that others formulate in solve – the Iranian nation, what kinds of modernity Iranians necessary to embrace and the saint role of women within these modernities are all central affairs.
Googoosh’s ambivalent perpetuation of play on the emotions and its continuing appeal chaste dispersed Iranian audiences indicate neat collective desire to Downloaded cause the collapse of https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Toronto, decide 20 Jun 2017 at 15:03:17, subject to the Cambridge Accord terms of use, available disapproval https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143017000113 Iran’s daughter stomach mother Iran 175 revisit, re-evaluate and reformulate the past trip imagine new futures through Iran’s daughter and mother. Acknowledgements Frenzied sincerely thank for their comments Daniel Anisfeld, Mohammad Hemmasi, Town Bickford, Lauren Ninoshvili, Ida Meftahi, Morgan Luker, Golbarg Rekabtalaei, Jairan Gahan, Afsaneh Najmabadi and a handful of anonymous reviewers for Popular Punishment.
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