Hollywood is all but silent on Iran

It was the Golden Globes last night in Tinseltown and as per usual Hollywood’s finest strutted and peacocked on the red carpet to the click and flash of the massed paparazzi cameras. Images of their 1000-watt smiles and 10,000-dollar couture outfits were beamed around the world to a million Instagram and X feeds. Yet, something was missing. These days a celebrity glamfest is not complete without a healthy dose of woke posturing on the issue du jour, whether it be underrepresentation of black people (‘OscarsSoWhite’ or Black Lives Matter), women’s empowerment, climate change, or most recently of course, the plight of the Palestinians. This time, not so much.

This absence is strange as there is surely no cause screaming out for recognition and support as the unfolding repression of anti-regime dissent in Iran. Save for a brief mention in connection with the nominated film of dissident director Jafar Panahi, a section of the event which few will have watched, the subject was all but absent from the podium speeches (anti ICE badges were worn with pride, though).

This feels wrong. As the glitterati glittered in Beverly Hills, Iranians are fighting for their freedom at the cost of their lives. How many lives, we don’t know as the regime in Iran has cut the internet, meaning only scraps of information can leak out. But the number of deaths could be in the 1,000s. The contrast between the lack of a spotlight on something so profoundly serious with the excessive coverage of the essentially trivial is faintly grotesque.

That imbalance is not the fault of the stars, of course, but there is nothing stopping them exploiting their exposure and speaking out more. Let’s face it, they don’t normally need much prompting. Susan Sarandon, Angelina Jolie, Emma Watson and Ken Loach have been particularly vocal in speaking up for Palestine. Most recently, Hugh Bonneville joined the fray voicing his opposition to the cancellation of the accreditation of NGO groups in Gaza by Israel.

But with Iran, save for a few honourable exceptions such as JK Rowling, or the French actresses including Juliette Binoche who, in 2022 spoke out after the murder of young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini), a wholly uncharacteristic reticence seems to take hold.

Why is this? There has been speculation of a ‘gag order’ imposed on celebrities who put their name to the wrong (i.e. not approved by progressive consensus) causes. Graham Linehan – who had to perform a gig outside the Scottish parliament building as no venue in Edinburgh would platform someone with gender-heretical views – is the prime example of this in the UK.

But the Iranian uprising is surely far less contentious. People are being killed as we speak for protesting a brutal regime with a track record of violent suppression, not to mention the sponsorship of terrorism in the region and beyond. Women have particular cause to feel empathy. Just last March, Amnesty International reported that Iran was ‘escalating’ its ‘crackdown’ on women’s rights protesters with ‘arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution, flogging and even the death penalty’. You might suppose that student Rubina Aminian, shot in the head on Thursday for joining a protest in Tehran might have proved an inspiration and been worth a comment from the podium. Apparently not.

There are two possibilities. The first is that the silence of the hams is a symptom of the chronic Trump Derangement System that is still endemic in Hollywood. Reports of Iranians naming streets after the US president and seeing him as their best hope of liberation may have given the red-carpet brigade pause. Anything that would involve being seen to be on the same side as the Donald is, at the very least, problematic.

The other reason may be the sheer banality and vacuousness of celebrity activism, which is founded on a simplistic overdog/underdog paradigm. Events in Iran have never quite aligned with this worldview.

But when it comes to Israel, things are simpler. The Jewish State is an ally of the US. It has money, weapons, power. It tends to win its battles. The people of Gaza appear at least to be helpless and defenceless, demoralised and destitute. Siding with the Palestinians, if you ignore all the inconvenient details and nuance, feels emotionally satisfying, and comes without cost. Iran is more complicated. The mullahs can draw on a narrative of Western oppression and exploitation that disarms or at least confuses, the standard celebrity activist. After all, they did overthrow the Shah and he was a brutal Western-backed dictator, wasn’t he? And didn’t we steal their oil for decades?

Even when Hollywood has portrayed the Iranian regime at its brutal worst, such as in the 2012 film Argo, the producers felt the need to offer an explanatory and partially exculpatory prologue outlining the west’s abuse of the country (the 1953 coup). It was as if they were slightly embarrassed to be taking on the subject at all.

The Iranian regime has seen to it that the revolution, or restoration, if such it is, currently underway will not be neither televised or livestreamed. The atrocities have been, at least so far, unconfirmed and unrecorded. One suspects some of our most politically engaged celebrities may be somewhat relieved by that.