yazadjal.com

Continuing on the issue of Oliver Stone’s film Alexander and whether or not Stone misused the Zoroastrian symbol farohar, here is something that Marazban Sarkari, my best friend, wrote in a couple of emails. I’m presenting it as a guest post. Marazban lives and works in the US. My comments are in italics. The rest is from Marazban.

Nothing we do today can change what happened in the past. Let us start at the beginning–after reading all reports on the net regarding the movie Alexander, I have not found one picture/publicity release showing the Farohar. I have seen the trailer 3 times and not found it there either. So my question is–where exactly did Zubin Mehta see the Farohar ? It is important to question this since everything is based on what he has said.

Next, every battle and war has winners and losers, our ancestors lost in this instance, nothing we do today can change that fact. Parsis sneered at the local governments in India when British names were removed and replaced by local names. It was an attempt by the local govenments to change history or at least block out the unpleasant parts. What is happening with the “Alexander episode” is not every different. To quote, ‘the Moving Finger writ, and having writ, moved on …’. We should move on too.

Assuming that the Farohar appears in the movie and / or its publicity releases, I feel it is a wonderful opportunity to educate others about our religion. We could point out to it and explain its significance and how it relates to our community. It would be a good way to introduce our history and culture as now the Western people would have a familiar link to it.

Protesting and picketing, assuming it is successful, will mean that one of the first introductions Americans (and others) will have to our community will be in a negative light.

An earlier email has a longer exposition.

I still have not seen the trailer. Given that a number of people have and feel that it is not a ‘fair’ use of the farohar, I have been giving this some thought.

First, since assumptions are generally the basis of most screw-ups, let me list mine.

1) Oliver Stone while making the movie had no intention of insulting the Parsi community/Zoroastrian faith in any way. (Never assume malice when stupidity and / or ignorance could be the cause).

2) The goal of this entire exercise is to have the symbol removed from the movie (one I feel is very hard to achieve–though it is always worth taking up a challenge).

3) The Jewish community controls a lot of Hollywood’s finances.

4) Zubin Mehta through his links with the Israeli Philharmonic still maintains very good relations with the Israeli nation and the Jewish community.

5) A very important part of deals and contracts in the Middle East is saving face for all parties involved, while this is not so in the formal American business environment, it is still important for all high level deals.

You might have detected a thread in the above assumptions and probably know what is coming.

Given that there are less than two months to the release of the movie, it would be in an advanced state of production, probably going through final touches. It is also probably too late to re-shoot those scenes. Not knowing how extensive those scenes are it is difficult to judge how easy it would be to use computer graphics to re-touch those scenes to remove the farohar. This leaves only one choice–to completely delete those scenes. We do not know how important those scenes are to the film but if they are being used for publicity, they must be important. Now to tell a director at this stage to remove any scene, especially important ones, is asking for a lot. What do we offer in recompense ?There has to be a very strong justification to do this, correct depiction of history or the indignant protests of a small community, are probably not enough justification. Neither would the typical American resort of law suits. (There is probably fine print somewhere in the movie stating this this is not meant to be a correct depiction of history and any resembelance to persons real or imaginary is purely coincidental).

Given these issues it is going to be very difficult to approach Oliver Stone let alone get him to make any changes in the movie. Further, let us remember Oliver Stone’s main claim to fame is the movie Platoon, which means he is not a stranger to controversy nor is he afraid to face it or deal with it.

Money can lend volume to any voice howsoever small. Hollywood’s purse strings are still governed by the Jewish community. Since this whole issue is about the past and emotions, let us try and use both of those to our advantage. Thankfully for us, Cyrus and Darius, both Persian kings and staunch followers of the Zorostrian religion, have very strong positive references in the Jewish Holy Books. Freeing the Jews, helping them rebuild their temple in Jerusalem and allowing them to freely practise their religion are acts for which they are remembered.

So here is our long-shot. Zubin Mehta feels passionately about this issue and seems ready to take a stand and use his good graces to help in this matter. If he, through his connections with Israel and the Jewish community, could gently explain to Hollywood financiers what the farohar is, what it means, why it is so important to the Zorastrian faith–a faith that has strong positive links to the Jewish faith, that would MAYBE get him a face-to-face meeting with Oliver Stone. Then it is possible that he could get him to agree to add some lines of text to the opening credits that explain the significance of the farohar and its use in the movie.

I fully realise that this is not really what the original demand was nor is this a very straight forward solution, but it is all about saving face. Also this is something that needs immense effort and diplomacy on the part of our community leaders. An outright blunt protest will only be an indignant one without any helpful results. Even if every single Zorastrian in USA AND their neighbours and friends boycotted the movie it is not going to make a dent on the bottomline of this movie. We are too small and do not have enough money. This is a task for which we should look to inspiration at the high priests who landed at Sanjan. They added sugar to the bowl full of milk. They did not chop off the heads of the messengers who came with the milk. They used subtle symbolic language–a brilliant stroke of diplomacy. We need tact and smooth-talking diplomats right now, not blunt vocal protesters.

The Parsi community is well-known for each individual having his/her own opinion–this is just one of them.

Disclaimer: I am an atheist, though Marazban obviously is not. I find his perspective on the issue refreshing and a departure from the tired Parsi orthodoxy.