The Bare Feet Shoe Store

It has been fun blogging about my adventures in Iran as part of the Academy's international Outreach Committee, and I am sure I will have occasion to write more about the trip in the future. We are looking forward to the follow up, as one of the measures of the success of our mission is how we can extend the dialogue and relationship engendered by this cultural exchange.

Your comments have been great, as always, and it has also been gratifying to get emails from Iranians in and out of the country, who have enjoyed my stories and recognized themselves or some reflection of their country here.

A few parting words on the subject:

Driving down the madhouse streets of Tehran one day we passed a sign for an establishment called The Bare Feet Shoe Store. Hilarious. I wish I had had time to stop and take a picture of it as something about the oxymoronic title of the shop seemed to evoke for me all of the contradictions and paradoxes of contemporary Iran.

If ever there was a place in which Winston Churchill's famous line about Russia in 1939  - "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma" - would apply today, it is surely this very sophisticated, culturally rich, modern yet theocratic state.

Although we had been led to expect a hospitable reception, it was impossible to imagine the pro-American feelings so openly expressed by almost every person on the street. And yet we were roundly criticized and publicly attacked in the media for our presence there in a manner that was so aggressive it bordered on caricature at times.

On the one hand, filmmakers in Iran face hurdles of lack of funding and resources (the average mid-level budget film is made for @ $500,000 there I was told) as well as quixotic government censorship (films can be approved by the ministry at the script stage there and yet the finished version might be banned from local release) that we would find insurmountable or intolerable here. And yet these very pressures and lack of freedom might be said in some way to have fostered the subtlety and artistry of their internationally recognized and award-winning cinema, as the creativity born of great constraints has shaped their response to the world around them.

The stern face of the revolution as embodied by the glaring visage of Ayatollah Khomeini that stares down from ten story tall murals all around the city would seem to reinforce our Western view of Iran as a humor-less culture of intolerance, and yet one of the dvd's we were given to watch was a recent Iranian film called "The Lizard", about as high-concept a comedy as you would find being pitched in "The Player", about a young guy who dresses up and pretends to be an Iman in order to pick up chicks.

Before we left for the trip we were briefed by a gentleman here in Los Angeles who was an American political scientist who happened to live in Tehran during the revolution and has spent almost 30 years of his life studying Iran. He was witty and informative and helpful in giving us a better understanding of the place, and of the history and issues and attitudes that have bedeviled the relationship between our countries. (As one board member of the House of Cinema joked sardonically in our first meeting with them "One thing we can certainly agree that we have in common is that we both think that we are the greatest nation on Earth").

At the end of his lecture he grew a bit wistful as he told us that for all of his life's effort to study and understand Iran, in 30 years he felt he had barely scratched the surface. So you can imagine our own humble place after only 10 days there.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the simple notion of "the bare feet shoe store"!!

:)

william

Comments

[Elizabeth]

The store did achieve with the name what is suppose to do. Getting noticed. It is a hilarious name for a shoestore but may put a smile on your face whenever you see a shoestore. So much fun in one name.

[margaret Oomen]

This made me smile and I couldn't help but think the a shop called " The Bare Naked Clothing Store" would probably cause quite a wrinkle in the fabric of our small community.
Have a wonderful week Bill.

[Patricia]

I would shop at the Bare Feet Shoe Store. I would love to wear a pair of shoes that made me feel as if I were walking barefoot.

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These shoes look really good. Like this style shoe. They remind me of the way I used to draw shoes on women when I was little. Nevertheless, I'd just say they're ok, but only for the show.

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