Paramount Vantage, distributors of the silver screen adaptation of the bestselling book “The Kite Runner,” are delaying the film’s release due to a fear that a handful of the Afghan child actors appearing in it will suffer retribution because of their portrayal of rape and other unsavory behaviors in the movie.

Warnings have come from American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara. And evidently, although Khaled Hosseini’s book is admired in Afghanistan by many in the elite, its
narrative remains unfamiliar to the broader population, for whom oral
storytelling and rumor communication carry far greater weight.

So what I see happening here is that despite our current administration’s attempt at nation building and the spread of democracy to oppressed peoples, what is actually going to be more successful is the cultural liberation through the arts, importing change through books and movies (What the Middle East needs is Manga!)

It is our grand American mechanism of communication, our apparatus of entertainment that will rule the world over. We don’t win with wars Mr. Bush, we win by opening McDonald’s. And if we can close a few McDonald’s and open a few bookstores and movie theaters, then all the better.

Let’s not import our diabetes and heart disease.

Filed under: Books, Movies
No Comments »