4B - Thursday, October 18, 2007
UMMA
From page 1B
images of religious piety. But reviews and
the gallery's own materials combine care-
ful arguments for a reevaluation of the
"familiar" meanings of this imagery with
instances of all too familiar and easy evalu-
ation of it.
While it would seem that such an exhibit
would be a tough sell to a country with laws
against nudity and works critical of the rul-
ing regime, it's the U.S. side of the exchange
thathas had toevade official judgment. The
United States has a sanction against official
cultural exchange with Iran. The 60-some
images simply could not have been curated
and shipped out of Iran without each work
getting the OK from the appropriate minis-
try in Iran. The American equivalent will
not lend its authority to the exhibit.
Babaie, a small and commanding woman
with gray- and black-streaked hair in a
pert, asymmetrical cut, called for attention
to the subtleties of the arrangement and of
the exhibit itself.
"One needs to be aware of the par-
ticulars of the culture one is looking at,"
Babaie said. "What is important is to see
the nuances in this location as we see it in
other ones."
Babaie said such nuances might get lost
if viewers approach these images with the
Euro-American-centric mindset many are
inclined to. There's much talk in the writ-
ings on the exhibit of modernity, of that
what may and may not be shown, of an
awakening to Western influence.
UMMA's own pamphlet, which heavily
cites Babaie's ideas, says "subtle threads" in

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
context, on its own terms and in mind of its
own goals.
"This assumption of the influence of the
West removes any agency of the artist,"
Babaie said. "It ignores an artist's capacity
to discard what they don't want for their
visual language."
The Metro Times article, for instance,
claims that censorship against nudity and
criticism ofthe regime in imagery "explains
the engaging, elusive character of many
works on view." When Alidousi, in her self-
portraits, pulls her chador across herself,
the crescent sliver of her rouged lips in the
corner of the frame and the snapshot she
holds up in front of her bright against it, is
she brazenly pushing her art to the limits
of censorship?
The aesthetic choices of her photograph
seem to have little to do with avoiding
nudity. Certainly her chador is a dramatic
presence, but rather than getting in her
way, it enables the whole graphic aesthetic.
And as Babaie pointed out, her lipstick was
hardly rebellious in 2003, before President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime.
"We tend to think of these things, 'Well,
if they were free, they would have done
something else,' " Babaie said.
While the veil for many is solely oppres-
sive, and while the policyleaving women no
choice but to wear it is certainly oppressive,
the presence of a chador in a contemporary
Iranian photograph is not automatically a
cry for help.
"Breakingallthat isboundaryis assumed
to be an expression of modernity," Babaie
said. "Maybe many Iranians don't think
that way.
"No one has a monopoly over what it
means to be modern."

Yahya Dehghanpoor's "Untitled," now on display at UMMA's Off/Site. The blank square is a mirror.

the exhibition "suggest that their makers
are quite self-consciously engaging Ameri-
can viewers." Although the exhibition was
curated for American viewing (in a collab-
oration between art centers at the Univer-
sity of Tehran in Iran and the University of
Minnesota), such a claim can't be made for
these disparate photographs.
At the moment, Babaie is teaching a His-
tory of Artcourse on contemporary Iranian
art. She has offered the course before, and
took advantage of the Off/Site exhibition to
offer it again this fall.
Babaie pointed to a recent article in the

Metro Times, a weekly newspaper based
in Detroit, that she said demonstrated self-
referential Western pandering. The review
infers repeatedly that the photographers
are intentional influenced by Western cul-
ture, and that their use of modern visual
technology is evidence of an outcry direct-
ed at the West. Although such things have
surely happened, it's not clear those goals
are present in "Visions."
But having this kind of explanation for
the works at the ready is a typical way to
miss the logic of the image, Babaie said.
"To see these all in reaction to and under

the influence of the West misses the point,"
she said, gesturing at Shokoufeh Alidousi's
series of black-and-white photographs that
have become the show's most recognizable
images.
"We must look at art from a local point
of view, rather than thinking 'Oh, they're
doing this in opposition, and they're trying
to say look at how Western and modern we
are,' "she said.
The local point of view Babaie speaks
of is what critical viewers hope to use for
every piece of art they see. It seems only
fair to look at creative work within its local

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jump
on the opportunity to see the
world from a unique perspective

ANDERSON
From page 1B
women in tropical fruit-colored
saris. The children are adorably
dusty. The marketplaces are just
dirty enough to be "quaint." Ander-
son filmed "Darjeeling" in the
region of Rajasthan - it's not as if
he could have "faked" India. But
what he chooses for his film's lush
backdrop suggests a more romantic
interpretation of the real.
At Monday's interview (which
also included Schwartzman and
Waris Ahluwalia, who plays the
Darjeeling's surly head steward),
Anderson admitted he's "never
felt more foreign" as a visitor than
in India, but he also said that he's
never felt more welcomed. It's a
strange sense he feels is common
among people who have traveled
there.
"I feel like people who've vis-
ited India, if they like it, they prob-
ably really love it," Anderson said.
"And they probably go back, and it
becomes something big. I feel peo-
ple who spend time there, if they
meet someone else who'sgone there
as a visitor they feel like they've got
somethingthatithey share that they
can't quite even express."
Punjab-born, New York-raised
Ahluwalia understands Anderson's
cinematic treatment. Ahluwa-
lia, a jewelry designer who also
appeared in the Anderson-penned
"The Life Aquatic with Steve Zis-
sou," was born in India but grew up
in New York.
"As an insider and an outsider,
because I was born there but raised
here, I think Wes and the writers,
Jason and Roman, handled India in
a beautiful nature," he said. "They
made it a character in the film."
(He joked, "I speak officially for
India.")
Perhaps the best explanation for
a film that some bloggers and writ-
ers have attacked as misogynistic,
racist and, at the very least, mildly
Orientalist (see Jonah Weiner's
painfully titled response, "Unbear-
able Whiteness," on Slate.com), is
that the filmmakers intentionally
made "Darjeeling" from the point
of view of a blindly off-color West-

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ern tourist.
"The movie is very much about
these brothers who are not even
really tuned into listening to each
other or paying attention to each
other, much less learning about this
place where they've gone and are
meant to discover themselves in,"
Anderson said. "These brothers are
perhaps more close-minded, more
self-absorbed than even we are, I
think."
Oldest brother Francis, Wilson's
character, for example, refers to
the train attendant Schwartzman's
character fancies as "Sweet Lime."
Early on in the film, Schwartz-
man's Jack seduces Rita (a.k.a.
"Sweet Lime") in the train bath-
room. There's a Gayatri Spivak
quote about imperialism - "the
whitemansavingthebrownwoman
from the brown man." And if you're
familiar with Spivak, you can't help
but think of that during Jack and
Rita's on-train fling. The film tells
us that Rita is using him as a rea-
son to leave her relationship with
Ahluwalia's character, and that he's
pursuing her in an effort to forget
his ex-girlfriend. "Thanks for using
me," Jack says as he leaves her, but
it's hard to believe it wasn't mostly
the other way around.
A reporter at the roundtable
asked about the correlation of Jack's
mustache (an impressive, adult-
film-star worthy decoration) and
the character's sexual appetite.
"I can't answer your question
head-on, but I'll give you a side
thing," Schwartzman said, "which
is that if you're going to have a mus-
tache, India's the place to have it."
People in the village where
they were filming would go up to
Schwartzman and tell him he had
"a mustache like the maharajah";
the children called him "India
Jack."
"I liked having no shoes and a
mustache, because it kind of felt
like I was blending in a little bit,"
he said.
There's a danger of accidental
exoticization there. India, it seems,
has a certain effect on people; it's
this bare-foot embodiment of the
exotic, of the spiritual. What makes
Francis's frequent, awkward proc-
lamations not just silly but uncom-
fortable to watch is that a lot of
Westerners do see India the way
the Whitmans do.
In the film, India is simply the
vehicle for which the brothers
can "find themselves." Francis's
encouragement of a made-up rit-
ual involving peacock feathers and
enforcementofprayerat"oneofthe
most spiritual places in the world,"
among other things, comes off
equal parts offensive and embar-
rassingly endearing. When Adrien
Brody's character, middle brother
Peter, talks about how the coun-
try smells ("It's ... spicy"), it seems
more OK, maybe a little backward,
if adorably so. But that may reflect
more on Brody the actor - a new
addition to the Wes Anderson film
family - than Peter the character.
Perhaps the key is not to see
"India" as real-world India in "The
Darjeeling Limited," but to see it as
another character, to paraphrase
Ahluwalia. Anderson plays with
the setting just as he does other
filmic devices, but in doing so, he
risks turning his rosy view of India
into nothing more than a carica-
ture of the real thing. Certainly,
Anderson is smart enough to have
recognized the potential criticism
from the likes of Slate and Shame-

less magazines as he was making
the film. But with "Darjeeling," he
only achieves his desired result by
sacrificing sensitivity for style.

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