On Nahid Persson’s propaganda on SVT2 August 13, 2013 By Nojan Najafi. SVT2 (Swedish television, channel 2) has broadcasted a series of Nahid Persson’s “documentaries” on Iran. These documentaries focus on certain cases of adversity, misery and misbehavior in the Iranian society. The key feature of these documentaries is their relative depth in single cases of specific problems. As the key problems are emphasized, the audience is fed by a series of side problems that add a certain level of drama to the director’s view of the problems. The continued broadcasting of these series has raised an increasing chain of reactions in the public media. This brief article takes part in this discussion and aims to open up a wound, not of the type that Mrs. Persson opens with her documentaries, but of the type that she intentionally or unintentionally wears when making them and choosing her audience. This is done by tackling ethics in Mrs. Persson’s data collection and analysis/judgment, her approach in representing a real life problem and generalizations, and SVT2’s vital role in turning an unprofessional documentary to propaganda. I would not hide the fact that much of the positioning in this article is a consequence of the frustration created in a growing number of Iranians who live in Sweden, after watching Mrs. Persson’s documentary on ‘Prostitution bakom slöjan’ on SVT2. However, the discussions are tried to be kept limited to this movie and only a few references are made to the outside. The article tries to deal with a more general problem that broadcasting such movies to the Swedish audience can bring about. 1 Ethics and collection of data An important question that Mrs. Persson’s films raise in the audience is if all of the data has been collected given the willingness of the participants or their knowledge of the filmmaker’s intentions. Being a scholar let me borrow a concept from research ethics: ‘Informed consent’. Informed consent obligates that the participants in a study must be informed of the purpose of the study, and they should have a free choice about their participation. But even a careless look at Mrs. Persson’s documentaries makes one doubt her commitment to research ethics. Here I provide but a few examples. Mrs. Persson in certain scenes of her documentary, called ‘Prostitution bakom slöjan’ (Prostitution behind the veil), deliberately lies to the participants about recording their voices or pictures. She abuses her gender and friendliness, to seduce the participants to believe that their private lives are not going to be broadcasted to the world. Surprisingly, the film is full of such private moments: a man and his wife talking in a way that I would be surprised if they would have liked it to be publicly broadcasted; a clergy is to religiously run a seemingly inappropriate marriage and clearly asks for no pictures but the camera is kept on and the clergy is lied to; a man is clearly trying to stay away from the camera, but the camera keeps moving playfully to capture his picture and voice; and many more. What is interesting is that all of these dialogues are made in Persian, and a Persian speaker would easily pick up such lies throughout the film. Now, the question is if any of these sounds like lying to Mrs. Persson, or if her mind is indifferent to lying of such “minor magnitude”?! In other parts of the film it is shown that the participants are convinced to participate given the promise that the movie is only to be displayed outside Iran. Is this possible at all?! With prostitution and drug abuse being such taboos in Iran, the brutal law enforcement against them, and the vast flow of information of this type through cellular phones (Bluetooth sharing) and the email spamming culture, I wonder if Mrs. Persson can guarantee the participants’ safety after the broadcast of this documentary. In another documentary of her, ‘Drottningen och jag’ (The queen and I), Mrs. Farah Pahlavi, the last queen of Iran, is interviewed multiple times by Mrs. Persson. Interestingly, Mrs. Persson does not see any reason to provide Mrs. Pahlavi with her intentions. She fools the ex-queen and makes her talk against herself. The process goes on until the Pahlavi family finds out about Mrs. Persson’s background, and informs her that they would not continue with the process of film making. Even then, Mrs. Persson makes new untrue claims to seduce them to continue with the process. Interestingly, a good share of this issue is proudly included in the film, which makes one wonder if Mrs. Persson’s mindset has to do anything with informed consent, or if she actually sees this way of lying and seduction as her ‘smart tricks’ in making documentaries! 2 Generalized cliams Mrs. Persson’s unprofessionalness does not only bring ethical problems to her movies; she makes such sort of generalizations that would surprise anyone with even a minor background in qualitative analysis and research quality. I admit that this is ‘just a documentary’ and not ‘a scientific study’, but would not be convinced that a documentary filmmaker is allowed to use research fraud techniques to make such false claims. I elaborate this discussion below. In the beginning of this article, when talking about what these documentaries are about, I intentionally used ‘on Iran’, rather than ‘on a specific woman, or man or family in Iran’ to express Mrs. Persson’s peculiar and unprofessional choice of unit of analysis. This is clearly implied through the type of generalizations that are made throughout these movies. The technique that Mrs. Persson uses to affect the audience with false claims is among the most basic items in a ‘research quality’ syllabus: the type of analysis must be consistent with the type of generalization. For example, imagine that in this huge world full of millions of companies there is one steel workshop that in one of its production sections there is one foreman who beats his operators if they work slowly. Imagine that I study them and with a proper analysis realize that this has made them depressed, and has reduced the section’s overall productivity. Now a proper generalization of this observation can be that I claim that ‘beating workers as a punishment of working slowly can negatively affect their productivity, through negatively affecting their moods’. Of course, even to make this claim I have to define certain concepts about their moods, productivity, punishments and encouragements, and many others. Now imagine that I generalize like this: ‘in the steel industry (or in general in production shop floors) foremen beat their operators to work harder’! I think it is needless to say why I would not be able to publish this claim in any qualified scientific journal. Now back to Mrs. Persson’s bold claims on the Iranian economy and culture. In ‘prostitution bakom slöjan’ she describes that she has left Iran after the revolution and this is her first visit to Iran after 18 years. All of a sudden, the first thing she notices is that people are poorer! The only pictures she shows of the streets in Iran are of poverty and adversity, and to make it even more dramatic she runs a couple of deeply depressive pieces of Persian music to the pictures: all to show how everything is dark and disastrous down there. I wonder if Mrs. Persson has been able to resist having a ‘Chelokabab’ or ‘Dizi’, followed by a few relaxing puffs off a double apple and mint water pipe in a fancy traditional restaurant in Iran during her very first visit after 18 years! I would be surprised if she has missed taking a pleasant walk in ‘Hafezieh’ park in her hometown, Shiraz, and if she has not enjoyed seeing multitudes of happy couples sitting around that park, having romantic moments with the deeply romantic poems of Hafez. I strongly wonder if she has missed all of the beauties of Iran, and only seen reasons in viewing the dark side of the Iranian poor. She has not even tried to display if the life of the poor in Iran has any sort of bright side too. Mrs. Persson may claim that her goal has been to display a certain problem. This takes us back to what I described about her problem of understanding what a ‘unit of analysis’ is. If she had such a goal, like most professional documentaries, she would have drawn a case and made generalizations within its limits. Essentially, ‘Prostitution bakom slöjan’ is anything but a case. It is true that Mrs. Persson provides a deep picture, but unfortunately it is not really ‘a deep picture OF something’; it is merely just ‘a deep picture’. It lacks focus; the documentary shows the poverty of two women that has forced them (or we just imagine it has forced them) to prostitution. Then it shows all other sorts of problems that any other poor family may have, and tries to frame those problems within her framework of ‘prostitution under veil’! Besides, she narrates the darkest of pieces of her purely subjective observations in her first visit to Iran after 18 years, and generalizes them to ‘what Iran has become after all these years’. This takes us back to my wonders mentioned in the previous paragraph, about how she could have missed on all those beauties, and on what grounds she bases her generalized claims about Iran. 3 SVT2 and its policies Given all the professional problems that Mrs. Persson’s documentaries have, it is her right as an artist to depict whatever she likes to represent whatever reality she chooses. She can make any claims and use any tools to make that claim. In a free world it is the critiques’ job to address her strengths and weaknesses, and it is up to the audience to judge. However, a public television channel has its own choice of what to feed to its audience and how to impact them. SVT2 is a part of the Swedish Television, the largest TV network in Sweden which is a limited company owned by a foundation[1]. In their Wikipedia page[2] they are described as a quasi-autonomous non-government organization, and they are financed by 60% of the TV license fee that is obligatory for anyone owning a TV at home in Sweden. This makes theoretically every TV audience in Sweden an SVT audience, and brings about certain possibilities and responsibilities for the network. According to the Radio Act and the charters between SVT and the Swedish state, all SVT channels are independent of all political, commercial or other types of groups[3]. Therefore, this article does not intend to question SVT’s independence. It is merely a try to initiate a discussion on their level of understanding of the impact of their broadcasting policies on their large audience, and their competencies in making policies appropriate to this huge responsibility. The documentary ‘Prostitution bakom slöjan’ aired on 9:00 P.M., Sunday, August 11, 2013; one of the most popular TV times for a typical Swedish family. As I described before, Mrs. Persson convinces the participants to participate in the documentary by promising them that the movie is only to be displayed outside Iran. Now, if the movie is only to be displayed outside Iran, what purpose does it carry?! ‘Prostitution bakom slöjan’, as described above, is a mix of purely dark moments dramatized by exaggerated side problems and depressive music. The question is what this mixture can do, and what it cannot. In my opinion, what it can do is to bring the attention of a group of people to a problem. Now, from the broadcaster’s point of view, what good comes of viewing this purely dark picture of Iran?! This problem is aggravated when one considers that the documentary is full of ethical problems and false generalizations about a whole country (as described above). I admit that displaying this movie in Iran, for the Iranian public could have brought a multitude of benefits, even given its vast shortcomings in conveying an honest message. But, would the same good come from broadcasting it for the Swedish public? What does the Swedish public learn from this and what can they do to help it? Is the outcome of this act anything but providing a (hopefully unintentionally) darkened view of Iran and Iranians to the Swedish public audience? Wouldn’t we, as Iranians who live in Sweden, be seen differently now that such a dark and false background of us is made to be easily imaginable for an uninformed Swede who has only seen this documentary or the similar about Iran? And more importantly, is this what Iran is really all about?! A few years ago, BBC Persian produced a series of documentaries to show the beauties of Iran, its people, its food, its music, and so on. But was that really attractive to the managers of SVT2? In general, is anything positive about Iran any interesting to the media policy makers here? I believe the most important question to ask here is if media productions that share Mrs. Persson’s devastatingly dark view of Iran are to be kept dominating what the Swedish audience sees of Iran, can we expect to be simply accepted in this society as equal to them, and completely regardless of stereotyping?! I can only hope that I have been too pessimistic.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 13:06:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015