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The Guardian (London)
July 28, 2006 Friday
SECTION: GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGES; Pg. 28
HEADLINE: Last night's TV Nancy Banks-Smith: While Mythbusters proved intolerably jolly, the tale of a girl hanged for crimes of chastity in Iran was just intolerable
The idea of Mythbusters (BBC2) is to test the truth of urban myths. This week they checked if you can really kill someone by throwing a penny from the Empire State Building. No. Can you keep drier in the rain by running? No. Can you blow someone off a lavatory pan with petrol and a lit cigarette? No.
Hardly worth getting up in the morning, is it?
Jamie and Adam, the mythbusters in question, have a day job producing special effects for films, and could go on without makeup as the walrus and the carpenter. Jamie is an imposing inventor with a cascading moustache and Adam is an excitable ginger designer. They remind me a little of Penn and Teller. If someone is going to get shot in the butt - to test the terminal velocity of a penny, say - you can bet it is going to be Adam's butt. Adam said it hurt. Jamie said it didn't. But then, it wasn't Jamie's butt.
Jamie and Adam are, you will have spotted, American. I am always tremendously taken by the democracy of American credits. You can see where Gwyneth Paltrow gets her inspiration. Everyone is thanked effusively, either because no one has actually been paid or because they genuinely feel every living thing should have five seconds of fame. Mythbusters thanked Chuck from Deli and Liquor, Oscar's Deli and, rather disturbingly in view of the lavatory pan, Marina hospital. The commentary was almost intolerably jolly and sometimes simply incomprehensible. (What does "The sensor is squealing like a freshly greased pixie" actually mean?) The narrator was called Rufus Hound, which somehow didn't surprise me at all.
Reading TV credits is like reading the Harpic bottle in the loo. On balance, it is the more interesting option.
Execution of a Teenage Girl (BBC2) was almost intolerable. It was evidently undertaken at some risk, both to the producer/ director Monica Garnsey and to the people interviewed.
In 2004, a girl called Atefah was hanged in a public square in Iran for crimes against chastity. She was only 16. Even in Iran, this is illegal.[b]
She grew up as best she could. Her mother died in a car crash when she was only four and her devastated father turned to drugs. Nevertheless it was her father, unshaven, grizzled and disreputable, who faced the camera and denounced the death sentence. A family friend, who evidently knew Atefah intimately, was played by an actress, for safety's sake. Women, as Atefah's story shows, are more at risk in Iran than men.
Her father said: "I still owe money I borrowed to buy her the latest pair of jeans. Daddy, I want this. Daddy, I want that. She was my love, my heart." She was a pretty girl, resembling an Indian actress. On her way to the gallows, the crowd called out the actress's name, not hers.
[b]At 13 she received 100 lashes. This is not uncommon and it is not known why. Wayward girls are fair game, and she was picked up by a former revolutionary guard turned taxi driver, who was 51 and married with children. They had sex for two or three years. She had, however, a boyfriend of her own age called Hassan. They were going to a wedding together the day the morality police came for her. Her cooking pots were left bubbling on the stove.
She was tried in a revolutionary court according to Sharia law. When she realised the seriousness of her position she shouted at the judge, tore off her veil and threw a shoe at him. Her father said, "When a child is scared, who can blame her?" but no one realised she was a child. The court documents described her as 22. It was in every sense a clerical error.
After her execution her family showed her birth certificate to everyone they could. "When the judge saw it, he started to sweat. Big droplets of sweat. He pretended to cough and dried the sweat." If any good came out of this it is that, because of the outcry, a death sentence on a 13-year-old girl was reduced to life.
The taxi driver? Oh, he got 95 lashes.
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