Bart is out of luck in Iran, joins long list of banned 'intoxicating Western' products

The Simpsons are a corrosive influence on Iranian youth, Tehran’s morality police declared; Bart and his family are banned from the airwaves and shops.

The Simpsons are a corrosive influence on Iranian youth, Tehran’s morality police declared; Bart and his family are banned from the airwaves and shops.

OK, we get it: Barbie is out, and some of us might even agree. Her ridiculous, anorexic-with-a-boob job proportions and her decadent wardrobe perhaps send the wrong message to both boys and girls. But Bart Simpson? Bart??? Aw, c’mon.

Yet here he is, joining the ranks of the banned in Iran, due to his allegedly corrupt morals. "The Simpsons dolls are merchandise from an animated series, of which some episodes are even banned in Europe and America," said Mohammad Hossein Farjoo, whose agency oversees what Iranian children can play with. "We do not want to promote this cartoon by importing the toys." Farjoo, whose exact title is Secretary for Policy-making at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, did not indicate what episodes might have been censored elsewhere.

Not that banned products such as Barbie cannot be obtained in Iran. The market for both genuine and counterfeit Western decadence-inducing products is brisk, and merchants even display them in their shop windows. But new efforts to implement the bans have shopkeepers and wholesalers flying under the radar lately.

Iran’s morality police has gone on a drive against the Barbie last month amid increasingly hostile talks with the West over nuclear technology. The Barbie is a particularly sore sticking point for the ruling imams, who decree that all women must be fully covered in loose-fitting clothes in public. "Imports of all kinds of dolls that display full adult figures are banned because they promote Western culture," Farjoo said.

Farjoo was not clear in what regard the irreverent Simpsons family had offended Iranian regulations, since most versions of the cartoon dolls are anatomically vague at best. The females of the household can hardly be characterized as immodest. But the ban probably addresses Homer’s “immoral,” crude, incompetent, clumsy and borderline alcoholic personality, which embodies a character stripped of all virtue and "completely ruled by his impulses,” as his creator Matt Groenig describes him. It probably doesn’t help that he works at a (gasp!) American nuclear plant. A comic strip about American nuclear prowess? Oh no, no, no.

All-American superheroes like Superman and Spiderman who stay away from nuclear power plants and who embody virtue, virility and valor are still welcome on the streets of Iranian cities.

source
Source

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.