Speaker 1: Okay, So people to ask me, have you seen it?
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, yeah, of course, and then sometimes
Speaker 1: they would watch it and then they'd be like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is such a terrible movie. Why doesn't everyone just
Speaker 1: ignore it? Except the era made it so that we
Speaker 1: couldn't forget it.
Speaker 2: I'm Susie Bannacharam and I'm Jessica Bennett and.
Speaker 3: This is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit a
Speaker 3: cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 2: Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 3: Today, we're talking to best selling author Portista Cockpoor, who
Speaker 3: is a friend and fellow Iranian.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about the movie Not Without My Daughter.
Speaker 3: When we were growing up, this was really the only
Speaker 3: mainstream representation of Iranians and it had a.
Speaker 2: Pretty big impact on us.
Speaker 3: Purtista, thank you so much for joining us on in Retrospect.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy to get to have this conversation with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored.
Speaker 3: Well, so you and I have been talking about this
Speaker 3: movie Not Without My Daughter. I reached out to you
Speaker 3: because I was like, Hey, do you have thoughts about
Speaker 3: this movie? Because I definitely do, And you were like, Susie. Yes,
Speaker 3: and I've written about it. Then I read the thing
Speaker 3: you wrote about it for the Early Times many years ago.
Speaker 3: But this is a movie that looms very large in
Speaker 3: the Iranian experience because, as you wrote.
Speaker 2: We were pretty invisible in culture.
Speaker 3: I'd say we're probably still somewhat invisible in culture, but
Speaker 3: growing up, this was the only representation I remember seeing
Speaker 3: of Iranian people in pop culture.
Speaker 2: Is that your memory too?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was very little, because I remember the commercial
Speaker 1: the day that it aired on television. Our TV was
Speaker 1: always on, you know, we had one of those households,
Speaker 1: so the TV was always blaring, So I like vividly
Speaker 1: remember the first commercial I saw for.
Speaker 2: It, nineteen eighty four, betting Mamody's husband took her and
Speaker 2: her daughter to Iran to meet his family.
Speaker 1: I dismember in our household. We were very excited at first,
Speaker 1: like okay, wow, this is clearly something taking place in Iran.
Speaker 1: This is amazing, And then like halfway through the trailer
Speaker 1: we were like, oh yeah, the trailer is dark.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to say this to you.
Speaker 4: We're not going back with staying here.
Speaker 2: I want us to live in Iran.
Speaker 1: What are you crazy? We're Americans, your daughter's an American. Mainly,
Speaker 1: we were excited because of Sally Field, and I feel like,
Speaker 1: there's great There's like, I don't know, she must have
Speaker 1: been huge and Iran because my parents told me a
Speaker 1: lot about her. I mean, she was obviously of a
Speaker 1: different era than our era, but Sally Field just seemed
Speaker 1: like the perfect America's darling. This was shortly after she'd
Speaker 1: been in Steel Magnolias.
Speaker 2: So this was just kind of like the height great movie.
Speaker 1: Amazing movie, Like Sally Field has just had hits mainly
Speaker 1: other than not without my daughter, so it's like she
Speaker 1: was at the height of her power. And so of
Speaker 1: course we were going to pay attention first and foremost
Speaker 1: to a Sally Field movie being on television. And then
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, whoa Iran. And I remember, for
Speaker 1: a second we thought she was playing an Iranian woman.
Speaker 2: Right because you didn't know the book, right.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting because I don't think we were familiar
Speaker 3: with the book either. And I also was a huge
Speaker 3: Sally Field fan. I loved Gidget. And we should mention
Speaker 3: we both grew up in California, although you grew up
Speaker 3: in LA which is more typical of an Iranian family.
Speaker 3: My family very consciously decided to live in northern California.
Speaker 3: My parents were a little afraid that we would be
Speaker 3: subsumed by the kind of I don't even know how
Speaker 3: to describe it for people who don't know it, but
Speaker 3: there's this Iranian culture in LA that's very focused on
Speaker 3: like money and plastic surgery, which no shade book, I've dabbled, and.
Speaker 2: All those things.
Speaker 3: But they were really like afraid we would become these
Speaker 3: stereotypical Iranian girls. And so I grew up off in
Speaker 3: the wilderness, like northern California is not the wilderness, but
Speaker 3: for Iranian people, it kind of felt that way. We
Speaker 3: didn't have this huge Iranian community. We had some friends
Speaker 3: and whatever. But as a result, when the movie came out,
Speaker 3: I certainly was not aware of the book, and so
Speaker 3: I don't remember the way you do when I first
Speaker 3: became aware of.
Speaker 2: It, or when I.
Speaker 3: Saw it for the first time. Even I watched it
Speaker 3: this week just to remind myself. And I don't know
Speaker 3: that I had ever seen it from start to finish.
Speaker 2: I think I just always caught it.
Speaker 3: On rerun, right, But I was aware that it existed
Speaker 3: from a pretty young age, and I was aware that
Speaker 3: everyone was appalled by it.
Speaker 1: And not just see ronins. We should say it was
Speaker 1: a flop do well in the box office at all.
Speaker 2: It did not do well.
Speaker 3: Okay, we should describe the movie for people who don't
Speaker 3: know what we're talking about. This movie is the story
Speaker 3: of a woman named Betty Mamody who is married to
Speaker 3: a man named said Ma Moody who goes by Moody.
Speaker 3: Their last name is Mamody, but his nickname is Moody,
Speaker 3: so just fyi. And it is based on a true story.
Speaker 3: And we should say that because what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Is not whether or not the story she told was true.
Speaker 3: I don't have any way of knowing that, and I
Speaker 3: think there's some evidence that in fact, the story.
Speaker 2: She told was true.
Speaker 3: But it's the movie that really had this cultural impact
Speaker 3: on Iranians in a different way.
Speaker 2: The book was really popular, it was a bestseller.
Speaker 1: I think we were just too young, because if we
Speaker 1: were probably in our twenties or thirties, we would have
Speaker 1: probably noticed that it was an international bestseller, but instead,
Speaker 1: like kids, we noticed a movie more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 1: Huge and the book was I think pretty critically acclaimed.
Speaker 2: Even Yeah, I mean it came out in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: The movie doesn't come out until nineteen ninety one, so
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of a break in between it.
Speaker 3: And it's probably worth noting that this period in American
Speaker 3: history was really the most anti Iranian period, Like anti
Speaker 3: Iranian sentiment.
Speaker 2: Was very high for people who don't know the history.
Speaker 3: When the Iranian Revolution happens, it starts in seventy eight
Speaker 3: and ends in seventy nine, some Iranian students barricade the
Speaker 3: American embassy and take hostages, and this becomes a huge
Speaker 3: national story.
Speaker 5: The United States Marine Corps guards use tear gas to
Speaker 5: who try to disperse the mob of Islamic students, but
Speaker 5: that wasn't enough. They stormed the embassy, fought the Marine
Speaker 5: guards for three hours, overpowered.
Speaker 6: Them, and took dozens of American hostages.
Speaker 5: The hostages, men and women, were blindfolded and heard it
Speaker 5: into the embassy's basement.
Speaker 3: These hostages are kept for four hundred and forty four
Speaker 3: days while they're negotiating with American whether or not they're
Speaker 3: going to release these American embassy workers. And it was
Speaker 3: such a big story that I actually read that Walter
Speaker 3: Cronkite would end every show by saying how many days
Speaker 3: they had been in captivity.
Speaker 7: That's the word is Tuesday February nineteenth, nineteen eighty, the
Speaker 7: one hundred and eighth day of captivity, the two hundred
Speaker 7: and twenty second day of captivity, the two hundred and
Speaker 7: eighty fifth day of captivity, the three hundred and seventy
Speaker 7: seventh day of captivity for American hostages in Iraqi.
Speaker 3: And I think for a lot of Americans it was
Speaker 3: the first time they'd ever really thought about Iran.
Speaker 2: I mean, Iran was not like.
Speaker 3: In the popular culture and the way it became after
Speaker 3: the Access of Evil comments by George Bush. So it
Speaker 3: was their first exposure to Iran. And the idea was
Speaker 3: that it was this really primitive country and there was
Speaker 3: a lot of protests in America and there was a
Speaker 3: lot of anti Iranian racism that people experience. So this
Speaker 3: movie arrives on the scene when Iranians have kind of
Speaker 3: been turned into the latest boogeyman.
Speaker 2: You know, America has to have someone yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 2: Cold War was kind of waiting.
Speaker 3: I feel like they needed someone new, and the Iranians
Speaker 3: took that mantle.
Speaker 1: The timing was. I think that's a big part of this.
Speaker 1: I've noticed younger people don't even know so much of
Speaker 1: your experience of the US when you're Iranian has to
Speaker 1: do with when you arrived. Yes, there were pockets where
Speaker 1: it was a little easier, yeah, like when I came
Speaker 1: or things like that, and then there's pockets that it
Speaker 1: got worse. It always ebbs and flows. It has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the news cycle, and it has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with US foreign policy and who's
Speaker 1: our president all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I was a bit oblivious as a child.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I even really realized people didn't
Speaker 3: like I did arrive in this country right after the revolution,
Speaker 3: so it would have been at this height. But you know,
Speaker 3: we lived in this small town in northern California. There
Speaker 3: weren't a lot of us, and our parents taught us
Speaker 3: that it was cool that we were Iranian. Like they
Speaker 3: were kind of like, well, you're better than these Americans
Speaker 3: were Iranian. That's something to be proud of.
Speaker 2: And I felt really lucky about that because it took a.
Speaker 3: Long time for me to realize what I was was
Speaker 3: supposed to be bad in some way, and then to
Speaker 3: actually experience discrimination, which obviously eventually I did because I
Speaker 3: live in America.
Speaker 1: But I think I've had this experience with a lot
Speaker 1: of people who lived in Northern California, and I think
Speaker 1: Northern California really could be another state. I mean it
Speaker 1: to me always seems way more educated, way more culturally sensitive.
Speaker 1: Like I wish my parents had decided to go to
Speaker 1: northern California. First, they didn't because my aunt was there.
Speaker 1: My grandma was in Long Beach, Yeah, which I mean,
Speaker 1: we weren't in the Tarandulus part of La so I
Speaker 1: was still like one of very few Iranians in our community.
Speaker 1: We were in the San Gabriel Valley, but we were
Speaker 1: still close enough to like the real La Iranian experience.
Speaker 1: That the reason we heard so much anti iranianness is
Speaker 1: because people were very aware of Iranians.
Speaker 3: We should explain, because I feel like you and I
Speaker 3: just assume everybody knows what tarangelist is, but that's not
Speaker 3: the case.
Speaker 2: Will you tell people what that is? And then later
Speaker 2: on we're.
Speaker 3: Going to talk about your new book, which is called Tarangelis.
Speaker 1: Which mistakenly people keep thinking I invented that word, which
Speaker 1: is amazing.
Speaker 2: I'm like whoa.
Speaker 1: I can't take credit for that. It's a portmanteau for
Speaker 1: just like Tehran and Los Angeles, and it refers to
Speaker 1: a part of the West side of LA It's very specific.
Speaker 1: People would probably fight over exactly what areas, but it
Speaker 1: certainly it includes Beverly Hills, parts of bel Air, parts
Speaker 1: of Brentwood, even parts of Santa Monica.
Speaker 3: Westwood definitely going to say Westwood is what I always remember,
Speaker 3: and it's where there are a lot of Iranian shops
Speaker 3: and Iranian restaurants exactly.
Speaker 1: There's a little Persia plaque now which wasn't there when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. So it's very much this particular area.
Speaker 1: And then there's a whole culture that comes with it,
Speaker 1: and it's very much which you were describing earlier, like
Speaker 1: it is this culture of very flashy, moneied Iranians. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all like upper class or upper middle class, and
Speaker 1: people are pretending to be very upper class. Yes, I
Speaker 1: often think of it very much like this one scene
Speaker 1: and Clueless where Alicia Silverstones share a character points out
Speaker 1: to her friend she goes and that's the Persian mafia.
Speaker 1: And that's the Persian mafia. You can't hang with Emlis
Speaker 1: you own a BMW.
Speaker 3: That, actually, by the way, is the second time I
Speaker 3: remember Iranians being mentioned in.
Speaker 2: A movie was in Clueless and being like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: But it is of course that kind of thing that
Speaker 3: eventually becomes what I think a lot of people associate
Speaker 3: with Iranians now in pop culture. Shaws of Sunset, which
Speaker 3: was a reality show on Bravo for a while.
Speaker 2: This season on Shaws of Sunset.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, very flashy, lots of gold, very
Speaker 3: ostentatious is the vibe, yes, And I think in Iranian
Speaker 3: culture it's complicated because on the one hand, I don't
Speaker 3: want to like talk shit about other Iranians. But it
Speaker 3: is also true that when you grow up Iranian you
Speaker 3: have a point of view about what that vibe is,
Speaker 3: like that Persian American princess Yes sing and you and
Speaker 3: I were both really very much not of that, And
Speaker 3: I think that makes us kind of unusual, right, But
Speaker 3: it makes sense that we're.
Speaker 2: Friends totally exactly.
Speaker 1: It also makes sense that we love New York, this
Speaker 1: place and it's Iranians are so the antithesis of that
Speaker 1: energy I feel like, which is still thriving. We should
Speaker 1: mention too like there's tiktoks that are all about that.
Speaker 1: They don't always use the word taranngulus, but they're very
Speaker 1: much referring to like that kind of culture. And now
Speaker 1: they're doing like the gen Z version of that.
Speaker 8: They're Lamborghinis, and yeah, like makes so funny that that's
Speaker 8: like what's so associated with Iranian culture because in my mind,
Speaker 8: Iranian culture is so many other things that have nothing
Speaker 8: to do with money, Like not everyone from Iran is rich.
Speaker 3: That's just a wild stereotype that makes no sense to me.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to.
Speaker 3: The movie and what was happening. So this book comes out.
Speaker 3: Then the movie doesn't come out un till a bit
Speaker 3: later in ninety one, but it takes place in eighty four.
Speaker 3: It's really soon after the revolution, right, the Iran Iraq
Speaker 3: War is raging, and for people who don't know what
Speaker 3: that is, that was a conflict between Iraq and Iran
Speaker 3: that went on for many years, and the Iraqi side
Speaker 3: was very much funded by American intervention because of the
Speaker 3: hostage crisis, but also they just felt at that time
Speaker 3: that Iraq was a more friendly nation that would not
Speaker 3: go on to be the case. But when the movie
Speaker 3: comes out, is when that is shifting a bit because
Speaker 3: Iraq has just invaded Kuwait and there's about to be
Speaker 3: Operation Desert Storm, which was a short lived war when
Speaker 3: we were kids, and that is literally happening right as
Speaker 3: the movie is coming out. The movie comes out in
Speaker 3: January on January eleventh, and less than a week later
Speaker 3: the invasion begins.
Speaker 1: These guies over back then have been illuminated.
Speaker 5: We're being right, flashes going on all over the sky.
Speaker 3: So it's in that context that we are introduced to
Speaker 3: the Malmoodi family. And I'm going to just walk us
Speaker 3: through it, and you can tell me your impressions of
Speaker 3: these scenes as well. But the way the movie starts
Speaker 3: is that these two have the most idyllic marriage, like
Speaker 3: the most adorable couple with the most adorable child.
Speaker 2: Well it's my turn.
Speaker 3: You always say this beautiful, like lush, green landscape. And
Speaker 3: he's a doctor and she's a stay at home mom.
Speaker 3: And there's just one little hint that not everything is paradise,
Speaker 3: and it's that one day they show him at the
Speaker 3: hospital and other doctors are saying nasty things about Iranians
Speaker 3: in front of him. He prayed themselves right back, and
Speaker 3: the Stone.
Speaker 1: Is soldier gets wounded in the field.
Speaker 8: Just let him die.
Speaker 9: He's gonna go to paradise.
Speaker 3: Anyway, right, And he gets very upset. But even in
Speaker 3: that he's presented in this very iererdyite way, like he
Speaker 3: goes home and listens to classical music to recover from
Speaker 3: his discrimination, and she's like it's not okay, Like I
Speaker 3: stand with you.
Speaker 1: We moved here to get away from all of that. God,
Speaker 1: he's just so awful.
Speaker 4: Oh, they forget it.
Speaker 3: And then there is this scene where he's with his
Speaker 3: daughter and she tells him that she's been discriminated against.
Speaker 2: Also says, I hate Americans because you're from Iran, and
Speaker 2: he says to her in this infamous line.
Speaker 4: I've lived in America for twenty years. I'm as American
Speaker 4: as apple Pie.
Speaker 1: Show you.
Speaker 3: So that's the beginning of the movie. We are presented
Speaker 3: to this family and this man. He's American like he's Iranian,
Speaker 3: but it's almost incidental to who he is. And while
Speaker 3: he is American, he is the perfect husband.
Speaker 1: The one thing that struck me this time watching it
Speaker 1: again that kind of cracked me up is the dad
Speaker 1: is played by Alfred Molina.
Speaker 2: Yes right, because they couldn't find an Amanian actor in La.
Speaker 1: Apparently they do have other Iranian actress in the film,
Speaker 1: so it's just sort of weird. It goes to Alfred Molina,
Speaker 1: who's I think of Spanish and Italian descent. It struck
Speaker 1: me this time. It's so funny because I think of
Speaker 1: the name of the daughter, which is Matob. Matob is
Speaker 1: one of the easiest names to say. Yeah, like I've
Speaker 1: heard many many white Americans be able to say Matob
Speaker 1: very easily. Yes, But from the beginning, it struck me
Speaker 1: that they're just saying the daughter's name even weird like
Speaker 1: Matabb and I's just like they couldn't get that right.
Speaker 3: The other thing I want to say here is that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of Farsie spoken in this movie.
Speaker 2: My Farsi's not great, but it's better than this.
Speaker 3: It's the worst Farsiti you've ever heard, and it is
Speaker 3: never translated.
Speaker 2: It is just present. It is this gobbledygook going on
Speaker 2: in the background, but there's no captions on screen.
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, they speak this foreign, scary tongue.
Speaker 1: I guess they just realized it wouldn't make a difference,
Speaker 1: because it's not like they were conveying anything that shows
Speaker 1: their humanity through the Persian anyway, so they just don't
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: They clearly had Iranian people working on the film. Someone
Speaker 3: has to teach him the Farsi. He does speak, and
Speaker 3: if you're going to go through the trouble of teaching
Speaker 3: him Farsie and having him say things, I don't know
Speaker 3: why you wouldn't translate them.
Speaker 2: I mean that part's so weird to me, so weird.
Speaker 3: And they're living this idyllic life. And then he says
Speaker 3: to her, I haven't been to Iran in ten years.
Speaker 2: I would really like to go home, honey.
Speaker 4: I want to go more than anything. I miss them
Speaker 4: so much. You're always talking about how important family is.
Speaker 4: All I want to do is go for two weeks
Speaker 4: with you and NOTAP and visit my family.
Speaker 3: And she's horrified by the idea that they would go
Speaker 3: to Iran.
Speaker 2: I guess it's fair.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was a war raging there, so that
Speaker 3: does make sense. But it's just like the absolute horror
Speaker 3: with which she responds that I find kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Okay, go to Iran.
Speaker 1: Why not.
Speaker 3: I'm not about to take Matak to Iran. It's much
Speaker 3: too violent.
Speaker 4: We're not going to go sight saying to the Persian
Speaker 4: Gulf or anything crazy. We're going to spend two weeks
Speaker 4: on vacation with my family.
Speaker 2: Ody.
Speaker 1: There's too much going on over there.
Speaker 3: And he swears to her with his hand on the
Speaker 3: Holy Holdan that they will be back in two weeks.
Speaker 4: I swear to you on the sacred Koran you won't
Speaker 4: be in any danger.
Speaker 3: Which I find also right, because if you're only going
Speaker 3: for a two week vacation, why is there so much
Speaker 3: a question about whether or not you're going to come back.
Speaker 2: You own your home, you have.
Speaker 1: A job, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: But then we get into this thing that you have
Speaker 3: talked about, which is essentially this is a horror movie
Speaker 3: about Iranians.
Speaker 1: It really has that structure because Betty math Boody's nightmare
Speaker 1: and this is that she's being told that she's gonna
Speaker 1: go to Iran for two weeks right right shortly after
Speaker 1: she gets there, he turns into an absolute villain.
Speaker 4: You're in my country, now, you're my wife. You do
Speaker 4: as I say, you understand me.
Speaker 1: And we realize he's kidnapped her kidnapping, and so she's
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to go back to the US
Speaker 1: and so she's just like stuck. Now in Iran. He
Speaker 1: becomes like a demon, he's a confuser. Suddenly, what.
Speaker 4: You try anything like this again, I'll kill you.
Speaker 1: There's all these scenes of her praying with her daughter,
Speaker 1: like to the Lord, you know, because she's very Christian.
Speaker 1: She wears a cross Lord prayer, did you look for
Speaker 1: your prayer? Please help us leave Iran and get back
Speaker 1: to America.
Speaker 3: It really does follow this horror film structure like you're
Speaker 3: talking about. It starts with this ominous music. Then there's
Speaker 3: the calm before the storm, and now they're in Iran
Speaker 3: and it is the storm, even from the moment they land.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that scene?
Speaker 3: I was blown away by rewatching the scene when they
Speaker 3: get to the airport, which is represented as like a
Speaker 3: dirt field, like they're never in a structure, Like I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, why is there no airport?
Speaker 3: I've been to the airport, right, And then they're just
Speaker 3: like this huge group like a hundred people, all cloaked
Speaker 3: in black, and they're like surrounding her, and he immediately
Speaker 3: starts laughing maniacally like it's I'm like, what's happening in
Speaker 3: the scene.
Speaker 1: It's so wild that scene, because of course we know
Speaker 1: as Iranians people often come to the airport seas some
Speaker 1: family members, but it's not thirty family members or like
Speaker 1: a whole village. It's so weird, and they're like screaming
Speaker 1: and yelling. They're like mobs of family and she's like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this must be how Iranians are.
Speaker 3: At this point, they've been married for seven years, their
Speaker 3: daughter is four. Presumably they have met other Iranian people.
Speaker 3: I mean, in fact, they reference that some of this
Speaker 3: family has come to stay with them before. So it's
Speaker 3: this bizarre moment that they're like mauling this poor child
Speaker 3: who looks terri off the bat.
Speaker 2: And then there is the scene.
Speaker 3: That truly scarred me so much as a child, and
Speaker 3: I need to know how you reacted to the scene.
Speaker 2: But eventually they get in a car.
Speaker 3: And they go to where they are staying I guess
Speaker 3: where his sister lives. And when they get out of
Speaker 3: the car, someone is slitting a goat's throat and like
Speaker 3: blood is gushing. I'm like, I'm genuinely I remember as
Speaker 3: a child being like, what is happening?
Speaker 2: Do people slick goats' throats in the streets.
Speaker 3: Of tarant I remember asking my parents, is this a
Speaker 3: thing that happens? And of course Betty and her daughter
Speaker 3: are horrified by this animal being slaughtered in front of them.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't saying welcome, it's a great honor.
Speaker 1: They give the meat to the floor.
Speaker 5: Honey, honey, we had to step far right here.
Speaker 3: Is that something you've ever heard of happening in any
Speaker 3: Iranian family?
Speaker 2: Like, it's so crazy.
Speaker 1: I think they were trying so hard. There's several early
Speaker 1: scenes where it seems like they're trying to really establish
Speaker 1: the otherness of Islam in a very concrete way, and
Speaker 1: so they're really stretching. Like I kind of feel like
Speaker 1: the filmmakers got this project and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: Iran is more westernized than we realized. Shoot, let's amplify
Speaker 1: these things that will make it look really other to
Speaker 1: like regular Americans. So like, sure, and there's there are
Speaker 1: villages in Iran where they will like slaughter an animal
Speaker 1: in a sort of sacrificial thing. But this thing exists
Speaker 1: all over the world. I mean this the idea of
Speaker 1: an animal being sacrificed as a homecoming meal or something. Sure,
Speaker 1: in my family, certainly not. I'm sure, nobody thought of any.
Speaker 3: Notes when they I've been to Iran a number of times.
Speaker 2: Have you been back since the rebels?
Speaker 1: I actually haven't been back. I was only there for
Speaker 1: the first few years of my life, but I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to go back.
Speaker 3: I was eighteen when I went back the first time,
Speaker 3: and then I went back again after grad school, and
Speaker 3: then I wasn't able to go back because once I
Speaker 3: became a journalist, it became essentially impossible.
Speaker 2: But my mom lived up until recently.
Speaker 3: She had moved back when I was in college and
Speaker 3: lived there for twenty years.
Speaker 2: And it's not such a backwards country.
Speaker 3: I mean, of course, there are pockets of it that
Speaker 3: are backwards, and it is ruled by an Islamic government,
Speaker 3: so there are some things that feel very backward.
Speaker 2: When you're there.
Speaker 3: You have to wear a headscarf and you have to
Speaker 3: cover up. What's interesting is, I think, even though I
Speaker 3: lived in an Iranian family and we live nothing like
Speaker 3: these people to some degree, even when I went at eighteen,
Speaker 3: I expected the country to be this very dark, primitive,
Speaker 3: backwards place because those were the only images I had seen. Also, right,
Speaker 3: that's what media had taught me about what my country was,
Speaker 3: and I remember just being so shocked because a friend
Speaker 3: of my mom's had a daughter about my age, and
Speaker 3: she came to pick me up to drive me around,
Speaker 3: and I got in her car and she had a
Speaker 3: guns and Roses bumper sticker on the inside of her car,
Speaker 3: and I just remember being so shocked by that, Like
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, these are.
Speaker 2: Just kids like us, Like these are just normal people.
Speaker 3: And then you would go to parties and everyone takes
Speaker 3: their scarves off and everybody drinks even.
Speaker 2: Though it's not allowed.
Speaker 3: It's actually a pretty sophisticated country, and before the revolution
Speaker 3: it was actually considered this very cool place to visit.
Speaker 2: It was very urban. Like it is weird to.
Speaker 3: See it depicted in this way now having been to Iran,
Speaker 3: but I think the first time I saw it, I
Speaker 3: had never been, so I.
Speaker 2: Was like, maybe this is what happens.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So we get through this scarring scene about the goat,
Speaker 3: and then it becomes clear that they're not going back.
Speaker 3: He tells her that he's been fired actually from his job,
Speaker 3: which now that we know he's an abusive psycho, kind
Speaker 3: of makes sense. I'm a little curious about what his
Speaker 3: bedside manner might have been like he takes her in
Speaker 3: Matob's passports and they are not allowed to leave the apartment.
Speaker 3: And there are these really weird details about the family.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that they have no furniture?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Like.
Speaker 2: Why don't they have any furniture?
Speaker 3: I've never been in an Iranian house with literally no
Speaker 3: furniture of anything. He has sometimes to beat picnic style,
Speaker 3: but you don't get rid of all the furniture.
Speaker 2: They all sleep in the living room together, as far
Speaker 2: as I can tell, Like I don't. It's very weird.
Speaker 1: The word primitive comes up a lot, so so many times.
Speaker 9: It just seems so primitive.
Speaker 3: Sometimes she'd stay here.
Speaker 9: This is a backward, primitive country, to.
Speaker 3: Be clear, there are things about the way Iranians force
Speaker 3: women to live that I also think are backwards, but.
Speaker 2: It's not such a primitive country.
Speaker 3: And we're not going to go through all the back
Speaker 3: and forth with this because there's many more scenes that
Speaker 3: indicate that Iranians are terrible people and this country is.
Speaker 2: Just the cesspool.
Speaker 3: And eventually she realizes that the way she's going to
Speaker 3: be able to survive this is that she's going to
Speaker 3: have to pretend that she's bought in and that she
Speaker 3: wants to stay. And there's this whole section of the
Speaker 3: film where she's essentially convincing him that she's decided she.
Speaker 2: Is into it.
Speaker 3: He continues to be emotionally and physically abusive. There's like
Speaker 3: a particularly ugly scene where he beats her in the
Speaker 3: hallway of his dog our school, and also hits the daughter.
Speaker 3: And an important detail here is that part of the
Speaker 3: reason she cannot leave without her daughter, not without my daughter,
Speaker 3: is that in Iranian culture, in a divorce, the man
Speaker 3: gets custody. She has no rights to her own daughter
Speaker 3: in Iran. So she starts to hatch a plan. She's
Speaker 3: constantly trying to reach the Swiss embassy, where there's an
Speaker 3: American interests division, and eventually she does make friends with
Speaker 3: a couple Iranians. And that's also interesting because there are
Speaker 3: these two Iranian men in this movie that are presented
Speaker 3: as kind people, but they are both people who love America.
Speaker 2: We love America. We're not real Iranians. We love America.
Speaker 2: You are American.
Speaker 9: Yes, I like America very much. My son was with
Speaker 9: University of Texas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're supposed to be representing a minority. They're the
Speaker 1: antithesis of all the regular Iranians who are primitive. They're
Speaker 1: very well educated, they have librarries. They're talking about gardens
Speaker 1: and ancient Persia.
Speaker 7: Whenever I think of what's happening to my country, I
Speaker 7: try to remember its gardens.
Speaker 2: In fact, the word paradise is a Persian word.
Speaker 1: They're very affluent and very well dressed. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like they're Muslim or else. They don't have a
Speaker 1: good close relationship.
Speaker 2: They're certainly not outwardly Muslim in any pay.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and so they're the good westernized Iranians who
Speaker 1: are going to rescue her.
Speaker 2: And they do.
Speaker 3: They rescue her and at their own expense. Right, I
Speaker 3: can't really tell if he's a smuggler, but if he
Speaker 3: is a smuggler, he decides to give her a free ride.
Speaker 1: How much will it.
Speaker 9: Cost when you and your daughter safely back in America?
Speaker 2: Then if you can, perhaps you will reimburse me.
Speaker 3: He arranges for her to leave the country, and then
Speaker 3: she makes this really treacherous trip over the hills into Turkey,
Speaker 3: which I just want to say, is actually pretty insane
Speaker 3: that she does this with what is At that point,
Speaker 3: I think like a five or six year old child, like,
Speaker 3: it is remarkable that they got out of there safely.
Speaker 3: That is an incredibly dangerous and it is true. You
Speaker 3: know that the people who are smuggling people out of
Speaker 3: Iran are not often good characters.
Speaker 2: They're not good people, so it.
Speaker 3: Is actually remarkable that they make it out safely. And
Speaker 3: then the final scene of the movie is she is
Speaker 3: in Turkey, but she sees the American embassy and there
Speaker 3: is literally an American flag like waving in the wind,
Speaker 3: and she's like, oh my god, Usa us like we're here,
Speaker 3: We're Hoby, and that's how the movie ends.
Speaker 2: I should mention here.
Speaker 3: I don't think you know this about me, but my
Speaker 3: dad went back to Iran in eighty five. And my
Speaker 3: dad had been the president of Chase Tehran when the
Speaker 3: revolution happened. He had been blacklisted and his best friend
Speaker 3: had become the Minister of Economics for this short period,
Speaker 3: so he was put under house arrest. And when my
Speaker 3: parents left Iran, they made it out through the airport,
Speaker 3: but it was because there just wasn't any organization yet.
Speaker 3: And so when I was ten years old, he decided
Speaker 3: he wanted to go.
Speaker 2: Back to Iran.
Speaker 3: Really in a way that's similar to this story, which
Speaker 3: is he hadn't been home for a long time, he
Speaker 3: missed his family, He felt some draw I mean, in
Speaker 3: the end, this idea that you can leave your country behind,
Speaker 3: like if I said to you, you have to leave
Speaker 3: New York today and never come back, like you do
Speaker 3: feel sure this poll and in the movie that poll
Speaker 3: is presented as insane, but it really made sense to me.
Speaker 3: I mean, my dad really wanted to go home and
Speaker 3: see his mom and see his family, and I was
Speaker 3: very scared as a child. I was ten when he went.
Speaker 3: I was really really scared. And when it came time
Speaker 3: to leave, he had a perfectly good experience while he
Speaker 3: was there, but when it came time to leave, they
Speaker 3: wouldn't let him.
Speaker 2: Leave through the airport.
Speaker 3: They were basically like, you have to stay here, and
Speaker 3: he ultimately decided to make the trek out of Iran
Speaker 3: by foot into Pakistan.
Speaker 7: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: There have been.
Speaker 3: Times when people have doubted her story, and I just
Speaker 3: know that that is a real thing that happens pretty
Speaker 3: regularly because my dad did it. And it's why I
Speaker 3: know how dangerous it is. Like he kept notes through
Speaker 3: the trip he had to sew his money into his
Speaker 3: clothes so that if they searched him they couldn't find it,
Speaker 3: so that he would have some money when he arrived
Speaker 3: in Pakistan, and he was not a citizen. We were citizens,
Speaker 3: but my dad had always kept his green card because
Speaker 3: he was concerned he wouldn't be able to go back
Speaker 3: if he was a citizen. And he got to the
Speaker 3: American embassy in Pakistan, and we were living in England
Speaker 3: at the time, and he was not allowed to come
Speaker 3: see us because anti Iranian sentiment was so great. They
Speaker 3: were not giving visas to Iranian citizens even if they
Speaker 3: had a green card because of all the hijackings.
Speaker 2: So we actually had to meet him in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So in many ways this movie mirrors aspects of my
Speaker 3: own life, but in a weird, twisted, funhouse mirror kind
Speaker 3: of way, like we were on the other side of this,
Speaker 3: which is he was Iranian, but he was trapped and
Speaker 3: he was experiencing the anti Iranian sentiment that Moody talks
Speaker 3: about in the film. And so it is so odd
Speaker 3: for me to watch it. It's not that I don't
Speaker 3: believe that there's truth in this version of events, it's
Speaker 3: just presented in a way that's so objectionable to me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think wouldn't matter so much if it wasn't
Speaker 3: the only representation, right, Like, if there was lots of
Speaker 3: art about Iran, if there was lots of films and
Speaker 3: TV shows, and then there was this one in the mix,
Speaker 3: I'd be like, Okay, well that's one woman's experience whatever.
Speaker 3: But it's like for most Americans, that's the only representation
Speaker 3: they saw of Iranians their whole life until Charles of
Speaker 3: Sunset came on TV.
Speaker 1: Yes, Tank, Yeah, I think that's the thing is no
Speaker 1: one is questioning like the validity of the story or
Speaker 1: or I guess some people are, but not not a
Speaker 1: lot of people. But I'm rooting for her on some level.
Speaker 1: To get away from your abusive husband, that's great. Like
Speaker 1: maybe if this was made in a different era. I
Speaker 1: always wonder it could have been good, because they've done
Speaker 1: a good job of it. You know, I've watched it
Speaker 1: a few times now, and every time I watch it,
Speaker 1: I just have a lot of questions about her own
Speaker 1: character because we don't actually learn that much about her.
Speaker 1: It is only in the aftermath of watching it. At
Speaker 1: some point I realized that she became like evangelical, I mean,
Speaker 1: for Christianity is a very big part of her identity.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder if the movie entirely from her
Speaker 1: pov where she is even more fanatical than a lot
Speaker 1: of the Iranians that she's pointing to here. And so
Speaker 1: maybe that's why she sees them as primitive savages, perhaps
Speaker 1: because we know that that is part of a type
Speaker 1: of Christian rhetoric. So maybe if she had felt like
Speaker 1: she could save these Iranians and convert them to Christianity,
Speaker 1: could they have had potential in her eyes.
Speaker 3: So there are a couple things that happen in the
Speaker 3: aftermath of this movie that I looked into, and I
Speaker 3: am curious if you know about.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: One is mattob the daughter actually wrote her own book
Speaker 3: many years later. She wrote her own book in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: and she is also very Christian. She talks a lot
Speaker 3: about her faith. I didn't read the book, but in
Speaker 3: the book and in her interviews around that time, she
Speaker 3: talks a lot about how her faith saved her, how
Speaker 3: it made it possible for her to forgive her father,
Speaker 3: although they never had contact again. And again, I don't
Speaker 3: want to be seen in any way, like I am
Speaker 3: doubting the veracity of the events here. But one thing
Speaker 3: that's odd is she writes about her time in Iran
Speaker 3: like she remembers it clearly. Oh and she was five
Speaker 3: years old, right, So I do find that weird. Like
Speaker 3: I left Iran when I was three and then lived
Speaker 3: in Paris and came to America when I.
Speaker 2: Was four or five.
Speaker 3: I have very few memories of that time in my life,
Speaker 3: like glimpses kind of, right. So there's a weird thing
Speaker 3: about that book where it's like she writes again based
Speaker 3: on interviews because I didn't read the book, she writes
Speaker 3: sort of extensively about what happened did Iroan, like seeing
Speaker 3: her dad hit her mom about intervening, very detailed descriptions
Speaker 3: of their time there.
Speaker 2: So I thought that was a bit odd.
Speaker 3: But the crazier thing I have to tell you is
Speaker 3: that there was a documentary made about the father, about Moody.
Speaker 3: Oh I did not know this, Yes, okay, So there's
Speaker 3: a documentary that was made in two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: made by an Iranian finish director, and it's called Without
Speaker 3: My Daughter. All right, So okay, perfect, And so it's
Speaker 3: actually quite hard to find. But I did find some
Speaker 3: links to it on YouTube, and I was like, I'll
Speaker 3: just watch like a couple minutes of this, right, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to watch this whole documentary that clearly has
Speaker 3: some weird agenda, and I ended up watching the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing, Like the whole thing in parts.
Speaker 9: In all six parts, I have been portrayed as a liar,
Speaker 9: a woman beat her, and a kidnap her. I have
Speaker 9: been denied the right to see my daughter for fifteen years,
Speaker 9: or even to talk to her. My sin, my only sin,
Speaker 9: was that I love my only child, my daughter Macadi.
Speaker 2: It was deranged.
Speaker 3: It is based on extensive interviews with him, but the
Speaker 3: action of this documentary is him essentially stalking his daughter.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 3: The premise of the movie is that he is trying
Speaker 3: to get in touch with Mattob, who he has not
Speaker 3: seen since they left Iran, and.
Speaker 2: He is calling her over and over again.
Speaker 3: So there's multiple scenes of him being like, pick up,
Speaker 3: pick up, Mattob is your father, I want to talk
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 2: Pick up.
Speaker 3: There's one scene where someone answers and he gets off
Speaker 3: and he's like, that was Betty.
Speaker 2: I know that was Betty.
Speaker 3: Like it is literally you're watching this very uncomfortable person.
Speaker 3: I will say that this movie did not persuade me
Speaker 3: of his innocence. He does not come off well in
Speaker 3: this movie, and he is repeatedly like reaching out to them.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine how terrifying this must have been
Speaker 3: for Betty and her daughter to get these messages. There's
Speaker 3: a bananas scene where he screens the movie, not his
Speaker 3: own movie, but not without my daughter to like a
Speaker 3: class of people. And when that scene comes up of
Speaker 3: him beating his wife in the hallway, he makes a
Speaker 3: joke about it and laughs, again, not persuading me that
Speaker 3: these things did not happen. You are making me feel
Speaker 3: like you are a monster. Oh, it is the strangest
Speaker 3: movie you will ever see.
Speaker 2: Of course, he does not get in touch with her.
Speaker 2: Oh there's another crazy thing I cannot fail to tell.
Speaker 3: You, which is there is a scene where the filmmaker
Speaker 3: goes to her university where she is currently enrolled, and
Speaker 3: asks someone at that university to give her a videotape
Speaker 3: of her father there, besieging her.
Speaker 2: To make contact with him. They are literally stocking this
Speaker 2: girl on camera. Oh my god, it is wil actually
Speaker 2: pretty upsetting.
Speaker 3: He was like, who made this movie and why did
Speaker 3: they think this was a good idea. The only thing
Speaker 3: in this movie that's actually a little bit upsetting from
Speaker 3: a more normal standpoint is that they interview the judge
Speaker 3: that gave Betty custody and granted her divorce with him
Speaker 3: in absentia, like he was not a party to his
Speaker 3: own divorce, And that judge turns out to be a
Speaker 3: virulent racist and anti Semite who says that if he
Speaker 3: was in charge of the country, there'd be a lot
Speaker 3: fewer Iranians on earth, like he would basically kill them all,
Speaker 3: and then said something really anti semitic, So like, that's
Speaker 3: not great.
Speaker 2: But so I don't know that he would have gotten.
Speaker 3: A fair shake even if he hadn't been a troubled person.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, that does not actually persuade me in
Speaker 3: the context of the fact that this is a movie
Speaker 3: made entirely about harassing your child who's made it pretty
Speaker 3: clear she doesn't want to have contact with you.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, So that's bad. See it is the
Speaker 2: aftermath this movie.
Speaker 1: Would it just would have been better off that no
Speaker 1: one talked about it. But I even remember the twenty
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary of the film. There was all these articles
Speaker 1: quoting Iranian Americans. Yea, and it might have been even
Speaker 1: around when Mathop's book came out. But there were these
Speaker 1: attempts to revive interest in this film, and so occasionally
Speaker 1: people to ask me, have you seen it? I'd be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, and then sometimes they would watch it and
Speaker 1: then they'd be like, wow, this is such a terrible movie.
Speaker 1: Why doesn't everyone just ignore it? Which is a question
Speaker 1: that makes sense in a way, but except what we're saying,
Speaker 1: it's like the era made it so that we couldn't
Speaker 1: forget it. Yeah, Like this badly made film ended up
Speaker 1: having a much bigger position in the psyche of our
Speaker 1: culture than people think because it was the only one.
Speaker 3: Really honestly, this should have been a lifetime movie, like
Speaker 3: that's what it would be now. But yes, it just
Speaker 3: ended up being this significant cultural moment for Iranians. I
Speaker 3: don't know that it was this larger significant cultural moment.
Speaker 3: The movie did flop, and it was critically panned and
Speaker 3: it didn't make much.
Speaker 1: Money, thank goodness.
Speaker 3: Luckily for all of us it was a flop because
Speaker 3: I don't know if I would have been able to
Speaker 3: take it if it was an Oscar movie on top
Speaker 3: of everything else.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, for Jesse, I feel like we have really
Speaker 3: had a moment here about this movie.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for talking to me about it.
Speaker 3: But before you go, I want to spend some time
Speaker 3: talking about your new book, which I just finished reading
Speaker 3: last night.
Speaker 2: It is amazing. It's so funny and clever, and it's this.
Speaker 3: Really sharp satire about a family of Iranian Americans living
Speaker 3: in where else but Tarandelis, which is the name of
Speaker 3: the book. The book comes out in June, but it's
Speaker 3: available for pre order. Now, tell people a little bit
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I have been working on this book for
Speaker 1: a really long time. It sort of sat with me
Speaker 1: for a while. When I started it, there wasn't Shaws
Speaker 1: of Sunset. It was actually right before. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: in my head about an Iranian American family, the first
Speaker 1: Iranian American reality TV family, at a time of war
Speaker 1: with Iran, which has always been my big nightmare and
Speaker 1: continues to be. It's just a thing that goes in
Speaker 1: and out of our psyche every few years, with geopolitical
Speaker 1: landscape always being so unstable in regards to Middle East,
Speaker 1: so that was all I had at at one point,
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to be my second novel. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was having trouble selling my second novel, and all
Speaker 1: these editors were like telling me what they wanted my
Speaker 1: book to be, and they wanted it to be more
Speaker 1: like these essays I was just churning out at a
Speaker 1: rapid point at that period, like between like two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight twenty twelve, I was writing a lot of
Speaker 1: essays about like Iranian American experience, but the New York
Speaker 1: Times and things like that.
Speaker 3: It was like during the personal essay industrial complex.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was just hoping it would help my first
Speaker 1: books book sales. I was much more interested in journalism
Speaker 1: and then fiction, but not this other thing. So I
Speaker 1: started writing just for myself, a parody of some of
Speaker 1: the requests the publishers were making, which was just like
Speaker 1: we just want lots of women, just making about Iranian
Speaker 1: American women. But I also didn't want to write the
Speaker 1: trauma porn that is not without my daughter, you know,
Speaker 1: I was very allergic to that. So I thought, what
Speaker 1: about writing about something that I've never been able to
Speaker 1: escape as an la based Iranian. I thought, why don't
Speaker 1: I write about Taranngelis, and so I did write this
Speaker 1: book with an all female cast and just like a
Speaker 1: dad and like a cat and like a boyfriend that's
Speaker 1: kind of hovers. And then I started getting interested in it,
Speaker 1: like it became this satire, but I was kind of
Speaker 1: approaching it like a weird experiment for myself. And so
Speaker 1: then my second novel got published, and then I wrote
Speaker 1: a was these nonfiction books, and so it's been something
Speaker 1: I've worked on for years, but it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: pandemic where I felt like, oh wait, this is actually
Speaker 1: a pandemic story. If I said it during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I have a really good structure for it, especially because
Speaker 1: just before the pandemic, Iranian's always remember this, January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty looked very likely that we were going to go
Speaker 1: to war with Iran, and it almost felt like the
Speaker 1: pandemic provided a pause on that plan.
Speaker 2: It did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that was like, to me, a very perfect
Speaker 1: setting for it. And during the early pandemic, I was
Speaker 1: also reading Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asian series. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I really want this to be like a Crazy Rich
Speaker 1: West Asians, because what I liked about those books was
Speaker 1: the satire, and I felt like some people would miss
Speaker 1: the satire and just think like it's an advertisement for wild,
Speaker 1: rich people.
Speaker 3: No, it definitely comes through that it's satire. I want
Speaker 3: to say this because I feel like some people have
Speaker 3: this too. I'm not someone who's dying to read a
Speaker 3: lot of pandemic stuff just because I feel like I
Speaker 3: just lived it. But this felt very relatable to me.
Speaker 3: The pandemic stuff felt very natural to the story. I
Speaker 3: didn't feel like I was reliving it in this terrible way.
Speaker 3: It was a really important plot device. So I can't
Speaker 3: recommend the book enough. I also want to say that
Speaker 3: for people who haven't read your other books, your nonfiction
Speaker 3: books are amazing. I think the thing that you do
Speaker 3: really well in this book is that, even though it's
Speaker 3: satire and the characters are in some ways awful, I
Speaker 3: found myself rooting for them. I sort of loved to
Speaker 3: these girls and I related to them. And a thing
Speaker 3: that I think really comes out in the book is
Speaker 3: that even in these families where they try so hard
Speaker 3: to escape their iranian ness, yes, there is a generational
Speaker 3: trauma that is just a current in the family and
Speaker 3: handed down to each of them, and that is a
Speaker 3: reality that I think doesn't get expressed in this way
Speaker 3: because it is so often either trauma, porn or modlin
Speaker 3: and to do it in this very comedic way, I.
Speaker 2: Felt like it was really effective and really thank good.
Speaker 2: I read this book so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, because I had to have really
Speaker 1: come to like the characters. That was really important for me.
Speaker 1: So that was when I really felt like it was
Speaker 1: finally done, like where I started to have some affection
Speaker 1: for them, even when they did some of the most
Speaker 1: horrible things imaginable. That was the challenge, and I feel
Speaker 1: like it brought to me a sense of peace about
Speaker 1: some of the aspects of a diaspora that drive me nuts. Yes,
Speaker 1: I didn't want it to just be like another book
Speaker 1: making fun of Iranians or hating on Iranians. I just
Speaker 1: wanted it to be like, let's talk about this thing
Speaker 1: that we all feel weird about a little bit. It
Speaker 1: also helped me to like imagine it like a film
Speaker 1: or a TV series.
Speaker 3: I really feel like it could be by the way.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things I was thinking when I
Speaker 3: was reading it. It's really cinematic in the way you presented.
Speaker 3: I feel like it could be a really good like
Speaker 3: HBO series, so.
Speaker 1: It would be really fun.
Speaker 3: So if anyone's listening who is looking to pick up
Speaker 3: a series, I really think it's great and I should
Speaker 3: mention I didn't mention this at the top, that it
Speaker 3: is one of the time most anticipated books, like it's
Speaker 3: getting rave early attention, so everybody should go out and
Speaker 3: get it. And thank you so much for doing this
Speaker 3: with me today.
Speaker 2: I love this so fun.
Speaker 3: Any time, Jess, I want to set up our next episode,
Speaker 3: and I must admit I learned something about you when
Speaker 3: we were recording this, which is that you in fact
Speaker 3: attended a Miss America had.
Speaker 1: Yes, attended, to be clear, not competed in.
Speaker 6: But this episode is actually about Vanessa Williams, who made
Speaker 6: history in the nineteen eighties as the first black Miss America.
Speaker 1: And we'll look at everything that came after that. I
Speaker 1: hope to do the best I can.
Speaker 7: You up to get every person in Mars, no matter
Speaker 7: what rate is.
Speaker 5: Seen, to cover all.
Speaker 2: This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 3: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 3: Email us at in retropod at gmail dot com. Or
Speaker 3: find us on Instagram at in Retropod.
Speaker 6: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 6: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 6: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 6: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 3: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 3: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 3: Feminist Fight Club and.
Speaker 2: This Is eighteen.
Speaker 6: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Speaker 6: Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 6: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Jaran
Speaker 6: Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 3: Our executive producer from the media is sin Levy. Our
Speaker 3: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump.
Speaker 2: And Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 3: Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Speaker 3: Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
Speaker 3: your hosts Susie Bannacarum.
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Speaker 1: See you next week.