Most Ridiculous Censorship Stories, Iranian Style: Chicken, the Sexually Arousing White Meat

By Mohammad Tangestani and Siamak Farid

Here at IranWire we often ask our readers to participate in special reports. This time we sent the invitation through Twitter instead of Facebook. Since the number of characters that you can tweet is limited, we asked for very short stories about the most ridiculous censorships readers  have experienced. Most wrote back to say that what has been censored cannot be repeated because, well, it has been censored. A reader, however, replied that her most ridiculous self-censorship on Twitter has been the word “cucumber”. One night she yearned for a cucumber,  but did not tweet about it, nervous it would be interpreted as a sexual symbol.

So we ran back to Facebook and republished the invitation. The following four stories are the funniest we received.

 

Mir Hossein Moussavi and Baha’ism

By a Close Associate of Moussavi

 “In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful”, a phrase used by Muslims before starting most activities, is composed of 19 letters in Arabic. The number 19 has a special significance for Baha’is as well, but the reasons given are mostly different.

The Iranian Academy of Arts was established in 2000, and the architect who designed its headquarters was Mir Hossein Moussavi, the former prime minister and the future presidential candidate. He also served as its president until after the presidential elections of 2009 and the subsequent troubles which led to his house arrest and dismissal from his position.

The main hall of the building has 19 columns. The significance of the number 19 was briefly explained by a plate on the wall which also bore the name of its architect.

After replacing Moussavi as the new president of academy, Ali Moalem Damghani claimed that the inspiration for the 19 had come from Baha’i beliefs. He added that the building opposite the academy, a space for artists, was built based on Freemasonry ideas and the arrangement had been intentional. He then proceeded to have the plate removed.

The 19 columns, however, could not be censored that easily.

 

Chicken Is Sexually Arousing

By a Producer of commercials at Iranian National TV

Censorship in Iranian commercials is quite different from other kinds of censorship. It has its own special restrictions and the story of each workday can fill a book by itself. Every network within the Iranian TV empire has its own supervisory committee, composed of strange individuals. They look at every detail of content and form to avoid missing absolutely anything problematic. For example, we had made a commercial clip for a math academy. The shot showed a person who had his back to a board on which some mathematical formulas were written. The formula was something like “sin(X)² + cos(X)²=.... They ordered the formula to be removed, even though it was in the background and could not be really seen.

And then there was a teaser for a tomato paste. We had put the chicken in a pot but they objected to the thighs. They had to be removed because they were deemed sexually arousing. The whole message was that the chicken in pot would be much more delicious with that brand of tomato paste. But no, the bird had to go.

There was a time when women could not appear in commercials, back in the 1990s. If you take a look at the commercials made at that time you would see two men appearing in soap or shampoo commercials. You would think that the commercials were pitched entirely to a gay audience, or for a gay television network, because virtually every ad involved a male couple smiling or sharing some aspect of household life.

For a long time they used children in roles that needed women, something frowned upon across the world because of its negative mental impact. To advertise Gillette blades, they used a little girl. Women’s beauty and hygiene cannot be depicted in Iranian commercials, so they employ children or men, which gives the whole thing, in the case of kids, a more disturbing twist.

 

Self-Censorship, Our Second Nature

By Siamak Farid

My most ridiculous self-censorship story happened when Mohammad Khatami had just become president. At that time I was in contact with groups opposing the Islamic Republic and cooperated with them. With Khatami I felt that there was a positive change and I could return to Iran (with less risk, of course). Without consulting anybody I made preparations and went to the embassy of the Islamic Republic. They ask me to write one page, explaining why I had come to Belgium in the first place and why I wanted to go back to Iran.

On that page I censored many reasons as to why I had left my country. I wrote that I left Iran to find a job and continue my education, which was not true at all. I had a decent job in Iran and had the wherewithal to continue my education. What I did not have was safety as somebody opposed to the Islamic Republic.

Anyhow, when I was writing this page I was wiser than before. I was no longer the young man who believed he could change the world in short order, let alone the Islamic Republic. The most ridiculous section, however, was when I wanted to explain in one sentence why I wanted to return. I wrote that my reason was “my fatherland’s wind” which actually came from an ethnic joke. The joke was about a man who had spent many years in Tehran and was nostalgic for his hometown in northern Iran. He finds a truck registered at his hometown and deflates the tire to smell “his fatherland’s wind”. It even made the embassy’s official laugh.

The most ridiculous censorship, however, was when I came back. Some of the opposition figures in Belgium with whom I had cooperated before graciously told me not to tell anybody that I had travelled to Iran. My visit was a personal decision and, besides, I could not have endangered anybody outside of Iran with my trip, except myself. I could not really understand why they wanted to censor my trip to Iran. There was enough of my youth left, however, to refuse this censorship.

 

My Beloved Self-Censorship

By Mehdi

My most ridiculous self-censorship story was that I was in love with a girl, madly in love I mean, but did not utter a word about it. Until a few days ago I self-censored myself and did not tell her that I loved her. Whenever I had a date with her or talked to her on the phone, she intentionally led me to a point that I was to tell her that “I am in love with you,” but I did not and changed the subject.

Fortunately, it ended. A week before the Iranian new year, she gazed into my eyes and said “Mehdi! You are so self-censoring!” It was a done deal. When I said that I loved her, she said “I gathered as much but, no matter what, you are a self-censor.”

 

Women Photographers in the Ridiculous Censorship Zone

Most Ridiculous Censorship Stories, Iranian Style: Remove the Condom; Run the Report

Most Ridiculous Censorship Stories, Iranian Style: Lies and Sexual Identity

Most Ridiculous Censorship Stories, Iranian Style: Friend of my Youth