The Prince Of Persia Is White With Blue Eyes?
I understand the allure of the action/adventure fantasy desert epic. After all, I always rattle off The Thief of Baghdad as one of my favorite all-time movies. I’d be all for a Prince of Persia movie…if it wasn’t starring a blue-eyed white dude. How many Iranians do you know that look like the guy pictured above?
Oh, Hollywood. Even a black president hasn’t stopped the whitewashing. You want to find a blue-eyed white Persian? Here you go. Otherwise, good luck.
Jake Gyllenhaal is just about the whitest dude in Hollywood. He was white enough to play a gay freakin’ Cowboy in Wyoming. White enough to play some whacked out whitey who saw Bugs Bunny on crack. White enough to be Peter Parker’s brother. Suddenly, we’re supposed to believe he’s a parkour-jumping Aladdin? We’re not buying what you’re selling, Bruckheimer. Actually, we probably will since your films always make $100 million opening weekend, but god dammit we shouldn’t be!
Gyllenhaal starring as Prince Dustan in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is just as crazy as Tom Cruise starring in The Last Samurai. Remember what the one and only Paul Mooney had to say about that…
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In other news, Lindsay Lohan has just landed the titular role in a movie called The Good Shrink.
At least they weren’t totally racist and put him in brown face like they did to Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit…
Actually, persians–especially persian nobility–often have light skin and blue eyes. This is because they are actually aryan in origin–in the scientific sense of the term. A good chunk of the population have ancestral ties to northern europe. It’s actually quite historically accurate of them to portray a persian prince this way.
There is always a way for a white person to explain it away, Wow! You want to know what it would be like the other way, make a historic White role Black. When the 1st Iron man was cast and the 1st role went to Terrance Howard, people were up in arm because the thought of Tony Stark being black was like Woah! Oh no! It has happened oddly enough in Daredevil, Michael Clark Dunken’s Kingpin for example, but you know it would need to be a bit player or a Villin.
The above pic reminds me of a poster of Dr. Qalibaf in Iran’s Presidential Election!
You can read about it in New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot2_061605.html (There’s another one that’s a poster in a very untraditional format. It’s in a long, horizontal strip that simply has the upper part of his face kind of staring out at you, and it’s all black and white, except they have enhanced his blue eyes.)
You asked: “How many Iranians do you know that look like the guy pictured above?”
How many Iranians do you know?! Did you know Dr. Qalibaf, the current mayor of Tehran:
http://mehrnews.ir/mehr_media/image/2005/04/125498_orig.jpg
Or did you know these ones who have all blue/green eyes and light hairs:
Mirhossein Musavi, the real president of Iran:
http://www.irna.ir/NewsMedia/Photo/Larg_Pic/2009/6/4/img633797214056718750.jpg
Ali Larijani, the chairman of the Iranian parliament:
http://www.allempires.com/Uploads/ALarijani.jpg
Mohammad-Ali Ramin, the head of the press supervisory board:
http://www.allempires.com/Uploads/MRamin.jpg
Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the former head of Judiciary System of Iran:
http://www.allempires.com/forum/Uploads/Others/Yazdi.jpg
Hasan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini:
http://www.allempires.com/forum/Uploads/Others/H_Khomeini.jpg
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Also? Aladdin was Arabic. (Or in the original tale, Chinese.) So no, we’re not supposed to take him for an Aladdin, really. While there is a significant Arab minority in Iran, Persians are not Arabs. (Nor are they Chinese.)
(And I’m not white, either. Unlike Persians.)