Word: shows
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...past two years, the U.S. TV series has dominated the underground DVD market in Tehran; almost nowhere in the world is the sixth and final season of Lost anticipated more than in Iran. Initially discovered in October 2008 by a few Iranians with access to high-speed Internet, the show has become Tehran's "gotta have it" DVD item. (Certainly, nothing compares to it on Iranian state television, with its cooking shows and documentaries.) Today it is next to impossible to find a young person in the capital - be it in the affluent north of the city or the working...
Back before protests erupted last June, if you were to see a crowd gathered on the streets in Tehran, odds were that people were buying up the latest U.S. hit movie or television show from a black-market vendor. Customers flip through piles of plastic sleeves, looking for an unseen classic or the latest that the Americans have to offer: Avatar, District 9, Invictus, the second Night at the Museum, the first Godfather. One can find Desperate Housewives and 24. At about one toman each (approximately $1), the DVDs are affordable as an occasional indulgence for most residents...
...arrived in Iran in early 2009, still mired in the wilds of Season 2, which had ended some three years earlier. My cousins berated me mercilessly. "What, you don't know about Jughead? Tricia Tanaka or the Man from Tallahassee?" And this was from people who followed the show's dialogue by way of subtitles (bootleg fare is subtitled by college students pursuing degrees in English who toil away in anonymity). For my cousins, it was inconceivable that someone living in the U.S., with direct access to the show, would not be up to date on what was happening with...
...tropical-island setting is an important part of the show's appeal. "People here tend to live in their own fantasies, or any world but the real one," says Ghazaleh, a young graduate student from northern Tehran. If escape is not possible - as appears to be the case for Jack, Hurley and Kate - then at least our trapped heroes can live in paradise, even if a smoke monster or the occasional polar bear threatens their existence. "If this story had taken place in Siberia, then nobody would have watched," says Masoud, a 28-year-old engineer from Tehran. The point...
Could the show be a paradigm for the country's general, if not pathological, sense of social and political captivity? The closest rival Lost has in Iran is Prison Break, a TV series that had only a moderate following in the U.S. Before that, there was Jewel in the Castle, a melodrama from South Korea about a young girl working as an indentured cook in the royal kitchen of an ancient monarch who manages to free herself after a lifetime of struggle. But Lost and its mysteries appeal even more strongly to Iranians. "In Iran, people are drawn to stories...