My breakup this year with my Canadian ex-boyfriend left me in an emotional upheaval of sorts, understandably. I was upset and frustrated, and the timing could not have been worse. I had just returned (hours earlier, in fact) from a moderate in length trip to Iran, my first back home in nearly 12 years. This trip highlighted a very important fact about my relationship with my ex, that eventually it seems he could not deal with: I had other priorities. Everyone has their priorities in a sense of course - work, school, different friends, etc. I also had the weight of Iranian cultural expectations on my shoulders and the pressure started taking it's toll, however imperceptibly at first.

I grew up in quite a liberal family, a veritable contrast to what is stereotypically seen as an Iranian tradition of conservative values and stifling lifestyle expectations. That doesn't mean however that some sort of cultural expectation wasn't present, and one thing I was always made to understand implicitly was the importance of marrying an Iranian, preferably one whose family was known to mine. Of course, my parents never went so far as to forbid me to marry outside my culture; their influence only extended to subtle reminders as to how much certain things (like culture, background, family, etc.) help a relationship, and to the extent that I understood how comparatively successful endogamous marriages are, I agree with them. It helps of course that I'm certain I would never have to explain my anger at certain political events, the importance of attending Iranian community functions, my interest in the continuing improvement of Iranian-Canadian relations, or my need on occasion to spontaneously erupt into singing "Ey Iran", to a Persian boyfriend (but that could be because my ex was rather oblivious to things that were't about, well... him). However, I'm also quite prodigiously proud of my Iranian heritage and love the idea, for myself and my future children, of continuing in that tradition.

It's funny - I don't really know why I am thinking about this so much these days. It could be any number of things. I recently turned 22 and all around me, marginally older cousins and friends are getting engaged and I feel my relatives subliminal questions as to the occasion of my own future marriage (or not so subliminal really: leaving a family gathering last night, my uncle expressed his wish that we would next meet at my wedding); having recently come out of a long relationship I am thinking hard about the kind of relationship I want to get into next. I picked up the book "Marriage: A History" this week by Stephanie Coontz, and she talks a lot about the changing face of marriage, one in which cultural background doesn't mean as much. I remember thinking "it does to me". So, on that note, I suppose all that's left to say is if there are any eligible Iranian men in Toronto...

n.b. That last bit was a joke. Thanks.

"...a strong version of anxiety of influence"... can be detected in her work, says the Harvard English professor, discussing the plagiarism accusations levelled at "How Opal Mehta..." author Kaavya Viswanathan. He seems to be discussing a young girl allowing herself to be unintentionally influenced by another work in her desperate attempt not to be left behind. The psychoanalytic take on plain, fat, cheating.

I say that, but I have still not fully decided where I come down on this. There are many passages that are strikingly similar and also similar enough in context to be strong indications of plagiarism from a book called "Sloppy Firsts". There are others though, which are somewhat more ambiguous:

Opal Mehta, p14
The other thing about Marcus is that crackheaded girls who don't know any better think he's sexy. I don't see it. He's got dusty reddish dreads that a girl could never run her hands through. His eyes are always half-shut. His lips are usually curled into a semi-smile, like he's in on a big joke that's being played on you but you don't know it yet.

Sloppy Firsts, p23
Just about every girl, from the A list HBz to the stoner hoochies, thought he was sexy. The weird thing was, I didn't see it. He had too-long shaggy brown hair that fell into his eyes, which were always half-shut. His mouth was always curled into a half smile, like he knew about some big joke that was about to be played on you.

True they are undeniably similar. But consider for a second the fact that every chicklit teen book from here to eternity has the character "Hot Cocky Boy who you don't like yet, but will". Every one of these characters is described in the same way - list their physical traits, the fact that you don't see it (yet, but probably will, because all your friends do), and the fact that they are arrogant and smirky. Because in the teen world, that is actually a turn-on in itself. This is the archetypical introduction to this character, and many will find similarities. There's only so many ways to write this, when the entire idea and genre is unoriginal and repeating. Think about all the teen OC-like melodramas on TV - how many of them have a character almost exactly like Dylan from Beverly Hills, down to dialogue and storyline examples?

Like I said, I'm not sure whether I want to draw and quarter the poor girl yet. Because I do think of her as a "poor girl", and I'll tell you why. This book is another in a line of Alloy projects, and I knew even last year that there would be problems with it. Alloy, let's not forget, is the consumer-driven marketing genius which owns just about any youth-related venture you can think of, even to social networking sites like Sconex (a facebook or myspace like server, for high school students). They also own 17th Street, the book-packager behind Gossip Girl, A-List and a host of other ditto projects. These companies live and die for product placement opportunities, and when an aspiring teenage author happened to stumble into their laps, they snatched her up and began grooming her to be their next megaphone into the teen life. Alex Beam of the Globe actually hit this on the head, and noticed that the copyright is shared with Alloy, who helped "flesh out" the concept of the book. Someone connected with the publisher has already said that Viswanathan's work was not edited prior to Alloy buying the rights to the work - looks like there is a good chance Alloy might come out being blamed for the lifts.

On a forum discussing the Opal Mehta controversy - "Huh. But what's going on here? What makes a book like this come to "life"? What do packagers actually do? More to come."

What do book packagers actually do? There's many things - one of them being pitching ideas for books to publishers designed to reach an agenda. Take Gossip Girl for example. The idea was to find a new way to get into the teen market, and the suggestion was to combine "gossip" plus "blogs" plus "sex and drugs" to create a new literary craze. Where did they find Cecily Van Zeigesar, the author? Well she worked for them in the marketing field, as did Lisi Harrison, who writes "The Clique". "Zoey Dean", the author of "The A-List" is actually a pseudonym for a writing team whose identities are still being disputed, although I suspect, as do many, that the team is composed of Cherie Bennet and her husband. Ann Brashares, writer of the Pants series (and I am loathe to bring her into this, because I secretly love those books) was until quite recently the Co-President of 17th Street. Too many threads. Now, after the merger with Allow, the two comphanies together have a finger in just about every pot, with the idea of making money off teenagers. An excellent business strategy, since this demographic, with their constant preoccupation with fitting in, are always ready to drop dimes on the next it thing.

And in her own way, I think Viswanathan's embroilment in this fiasco is another example of the lengths people will go to fit in and become known for something special. Big bad wolf Alloy comes along with its half a million dollars and promise to be famous... well the rest is history.

The topic was religion, or something to that effect, and came about in the car, on our way home from a family dinner. My dad brought up the movie "Bruce Almighty" and how surprised he was that no one protested a film in which a pretentious comic played God, when just months earlier thousands protested a cartoon which presented an image of a religious prophet. I had to think about that for a minute - on some level I suppose it isn't improbable for people to have protested Jim Carrey's performance as blasphemous, but that would never have occured to me. Yet I was as offended as many by the Danish cartoons that made headlines awhile back. Well first of all, there were some protests to this movie. It was banned in Egypt and Malaysia for portraying God as a human being. There were some other mumblings from other small groups as well, but nothing to the extent that occurred recently. Why?

The first thing that came to mind was intent. Clearly, there was nothing in Bruce Almighty that was intended to offend people on any essential level. They stayed away from heavy theological questions, or even any concrete elements that might make it overtly denominational. It was interesting premise with some cute ideas, and was in it for a bit of a laugh. Contrast that to the cartoons that were not only meant to offend, and gravely, but were clearly targeted to Islam. Two significant differences. The non-denominational aspect of the movie struck a chord for my father. He said that it didn't matter what denomination was represented as there is only one God, and everyone knows that. I find that difficult to accept. Perhaps the religious teachings tells us that there is only one God, but do we really believe that? Who among us doesn't secretly think their God is best? Why else would people be so careful to differentiate between "God" or "Allah", and find other ways of making sure people know which religion's being one is talking about? Perhaps that can also explain the lack of emotional outpouring to Bruce Almighty - no one felt there was a finger of disdain pointed at them, at their beliefs, and their religious identity.

My father also made the point that the people who protested the cartoons were doing so from the stance of idolization, representing God or his prophets in human form. While that may be the case to some extent, it is not sufficient to explain the anger that arose which was almost personal in nature. To me it seems that they were protesting the content, the political nature of the drawing that suggested an Islam-terrorist link that many Muslims have had to contend with over the course of the past several years.

It is really difficult for me to take my father's arguments seriously on this matter. Truly, I don't even know what he was arguing. He was surprised there was no protest to Bruce Almighty because it was clearly idolatory, despite the fact it was a relatively neutral piece of art. He was surprised at the protests to the cartoons, and found them ridiculous, because it was a piece of art arising from "the imagination of the cartoonist". Yet, last year he and I got into a very heated debate about the assasination of Theo van Gogh, who was killed for putting in one of his movies a scene where script from the Koran wrapped around the naked body of a woman. My father nearly justified it, saying he should have known what he was up against before making that movie, which was inherently offensive to Islam, and not excusable by it's artistic status. Someone drawing a cartoon is depicting something from his imagination to express a meaning. Someone putting the real script of the religious writing on the body of a naked woman (!), that is sacrilege and intolerable; there is no interpretation there, no meaning. His implication after all this was that van Gogh essentially asked for it. I can't accept that, and I don't really understand the three different reactions to what I feel is essentially the same argument.

The recent protests throughout the Islamic world of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that appeared in a Danish newspaper have left me reeling, and with mixed feelings. In a recent trip to Iran I would watch every day repeated mocking of certain figures and nations, most prominently American President George Bush, shown at times in animated music videos confessing all his sins while doing a belly-dance. In light of that, I found the exaggerated reactions to the caricatures hypocritical.

At the same time I can understand that on some levels the situations are not comparable. The caricatures not only mocked the Prophet Mohammad, but did so in a way that perpetuates and re-emphasizes a prominent and damaging stereotype about Muslims: the relationship between Islam and terrorism. That, combined with situations such as the war on Iraq; the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and, no doubt, other prisons; the disproportionate lack of attention to Palestinian victimizations; the mounds of literature and media attention insisting that acts of terror and violence are things that occur inherently within Islam, create a very volatile atmosphere and a people who constantly feel frustrated and demoralized. In this context, the caricatures were a sort of provocation that is unique and distasteful. It seems that there is a lack of empathy and foresight that is truly disturbing - certainly, the newspapers knew that such a provocation would occur, since these particular cartoons were reprinted many times. It may have behooved the editors of this paper to consider that this action was probably not the most helpful in an already unstable situation.

Therefore, I can understand the emotive nature of the protests - although I will say that the burning of the two embassies was inappropriate and unjustifiable (as well as appearing ironic to other parties - is a violent reaction on the part of Muslim groups really the way to repair our socially-constructed reputation?). As well, the recent renaming of Danish pastries in Iran to "pastries of the roses of the Prophet Mohammad" is frankly ridiculous.

I can say that I found the cartoons distasteful, personally. But I absolutely do not believe the editors should retract and apologize, and I feel the protestors should not expect one. It may not have been the most sensitive publication, but in no way was it illegitimate.