It has made headlines in Iran for the large number of copies sold so as to be the more distributed DVD this summer: we are talking about "Ashenayeh Mahboub" (Beloved companion) the documentary on sex education approved by the Ministries of Health and of the Islamic Culture.
The DVD has had the government permission and thanks to the
wide availability (it is on sale in video stores, flea markets and
especially in pharmacies) had a boom in sales.
The movie didn't have easy life: the producer, Mohammed Reza Alizadeh had to check the video
for two long years before being able to get approval, but the number of
sales shows that the Iranian society is going in a different direction
compared with the government thoughts.
The only real
limit to the video tape (which costs about three euro) is the legal
age, 18 years, needed to buy the video through a website.
A boom quite unexpected for a country that considers sex one of the
greatest taboos and where the law and customs impose a dress full of
modesty, so as to have a large number of Revolutionary
Guards who go up and down the city on motorcycles to ensure that
there is no contact between unmarried men and women.
The green light to the video from the government is likely to be
reached after careful consideration of the pros and cons of such
marketing. Iran is still a Muslim country where Islam has a great importance in everyday life but globalization has somehow arrived here, too. So trying to stop the
high number of divorces in the country, as well as to
discourage banned but popular costumes such as the use of alcohol and
drugs, the government gave the green light to the videotape, that somehow tries
to show the bad Western habits. So here comes the request not to use alcohol and drugs because they would be harmful even on sexual activity.
The video starts with the poetic image of two flowers that are courting until one wraps the other and by their meeting the screen is flooded with
hundreds of sperm movement. And as suggested by CNN, you don't have to necessarily speak Persian to understand the first few minutes
of the DVD that has chosen as background the Richard Strauss' music Thus Spake Zarathustra.
During the video is Dr. Mohammad Majd, a psychiatrist and professor of
medical sciences at the University of Tehran, to give advice to couples
and explanations which follow the dictates of religion.
The beloved companion to whom the title refers is the husband
and how could it be otherwise in a society where women must always
think of the satisfaction and obedience of their husband?
Dr. Majd, however, doesn't forget to give advice to women to have a satisfactory relationship, because the video wants to help women, too. So here a list of three clues to figure out if the woman was very pleased.
The promotional
campaign of the video was far more chaste than the video may seem,
merely using the slogan "A great gift for the bride and the groom". Especially for older couples, because as the New York Times wrote, in the last decade the number of divorces has tripled from 50 thousand in 2000 to over 150 thousand in 2010. Pharmacists tell about the many ladies not young anymore who buy the video because "the husband was no longer satisfied, he wanted to take a second wife and the official one had no intention of losing him."
The producer, given the success already achieved, has announced
that there must be a sequel but did not advance the content. And this time, too, he will need to pass under the regime censorship.
Marianna Lepore
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