Thursday, May 22, 2014

ATTENTION PHARRELL: Tehran's chief of police is not "Happy"

                                          YouTube

My mom just sent this video to me on Whatsapp, after getting it from our family friend that lives in Bahrain. It's the music video inspired by the award winning song "Happy" set in different countries around the world that we’ve been seeing around the interwebs lately. To be honest, I'm kind of bored already with these takes on Pharell Williams's hit.In my opinion, they just go on too long!! Quite a number of the YouTube comments weren't happy (get it?) with the number of non-Bahrainis that were featured in the video, but there are soo many expats and migrant workers that live and work in Bahrain so I think it was a good idea that the video organizers included them. The video was reflective of the people in Bahrain in 2014.

Of course the "Happy" inspired video that's making the headlines (in Western media anyways) is the one that a group of young Iranian men and women did. All involved except for the director were promptly arrested by the police then released from jail.
 
                                         YouTube

Tehran's chief of police said that the video was "vulgar." Yes, it does remind me of sex or bodily functions. I'm pretty sure that he was talking about the women and the men freely dancing together in public and the women dancing without a head covering, as both are forbidden in Iran.

I think that journalist and CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour said (typed?) it best when she tweeted out this message: "Tragic. Ordinary Iranians doing nothing wrong caught in a fight between hard-liners and moderates".

Did you watch the video? Did you think that it was vulgar, rude, offensive, boorish, coarse, crude, disgusting, filthy, impolite, indecent, nasty, naughty, obscene, off-color, profane, ribald, scatological, suggestive, tasteless, and / or tawdry? Let me know in the comments section below!

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