I’m in the middle of watching an episode of CSI: Miami called “dishonor” and as a Persian woman I’m angry at the writer(s) for this episode. This episode involves a persian family whose daughter goes against the will of her father to go through an arranged marriage and finds herself a boyfriend whom she’s in love with.

When she broke the news to her family, her dad, completely lost it and went on a rage wanting to remind her of her obligations and how she had shamed her family with running off with some random guy. Meanwhile the guy she was promised to is absolutely fine with the whole thing and basically says, she’s free of her obligations as long as she’s happy with the new guy.

But a few hours later, the father is found burnt to a crisp in the boyfriend’s home and the young couple are arrested by the cops at the bus station. After all the CSI work everyone found out the girl’s mother burnt the dad so she could protect her daughter from her father’s eventual punishment. Sigh such a sad story…

Now, I have a few problems with this episode. For one thing, the names of the Persian people were mostly non-persian. Hello, finding Persian names is so easy. Everyone pretty much know an Ali or a Reza or Maryam and Sarah.

Second issue is how they kept talking about arranged marriages. I’m sorry but I know a lot of Persian people and none of them do arrange marriages or know anyone who does. Ok, maybe somewhere in the boonies of Iran a father would promise his daughter to their neighbour’s son, and all people involved are either uneducated or have only up to the 5th grade education. No educated person in their right mind who lives anywhere in modern cities of iran or anywhere else in the world would make their daughter to go through such an agreement.

I refuse to sit in front of TV and pretend I’m cool with watching this episode without getting mad. I almost wished I knew who wrote this episode so I can kick their ass! I’m talking to you Marc Dube!!!!!! UGH! I get so mad when my culture and my people are portrait on media so wrong. It almost as bad me going out their believing that everyone is the western world is married to their cousin Billy Bob and they all live in their trailers and eat McDonald’s and KFC all the time. Oh and lets not forget about the drinking and the drugs and unprotected sex!!! GASP! Sinners!!!

Yes, sounds stupid, doesn’t it????

So please, do your research and stop making shit up and thinking people of other cultures are stupid, uneducated and they do shit that has nothing to do with their real culture!

sa

ps: I’m still mad!!! But, I wanted to add that i have nothing against arrange marriages or anyone who still practices this tradition. I’m just saying it’s not part of my culture. So don’t send me angry msges telling me how dare I judge your culture. I’m not. 🙂