August 23, 2007Violent Femmes: The Taliban's Secret PhotosFrom Slate:
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Comments
Remember Kite Runner? The fearsome Talib with the little Hazara boy with kohl in his eyes and bells around his ankles?
Mullah Omar may have publicly opposed music, art and homosexuality but the walls of his own mansion, after he fled, were found to be painted like a veritable Garden of Eden with blues and pinks dominating the scenery. All this may seem a bit odd to the western eye. I didn't find the images particularly jarring. The show of machismo and flowers often go together in that part of the world. Anyone who's seen the fearsome trucks on the streets of India or Pakistan decked out like a bride will understand.
I liked the guy with the woman's sandals though. Obviously he wasn't expecting to have to run away from a mortal enemy any time soon. Do note also his machine gun - jazzed up with fluroscent tape of pink and blue.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Aug 24, 2007 1:20:34 AM
That should read : fluorescent.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Aug 24, 2007 2:07:15 AM
This is wild! It's the flowers that get me...Guns & Roses? (I know they mostly look like daisies but the juxtaposition is enough to make me reach for my Freud). Some of the pictures are pure Warhol.
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Aug 24, 2007 3:15:09 AM
I don't quite understand the motive of that piece. It reveals nothing surprising. These are men who are separated from women living in a war-torn and hard world. Classic prison scenario. I've seen pictures involving US military personnel that involve cross dressing, if not blatant acts of simulated homosexuality. In addition those photographs are stylistically in touch with much of east Asian culture. Take a look at Bollywood posters.
Perhaps you should put up a video of Frenchmen kissing each other next.
Posted by: N Miller | Aug 24, 2007 6:13:24 AM
I must say, for a blog I nearly worship, this is a poor piece of social manipulation. Kohl is ubiquitous in the (mid)east. Many cultures allow men to hold hands or kiss; to make that necessarily homosexual is small-minded. MachoAmerica is way repressed on these issues and OUR take on such things is the more suspect. The images appear to be "hand tinted" as were old images in pre-colorized America and were certainly not "at the hand" of the sitters, however much they may have approved of the final form. If we are to abhor the Taliban because they "are effeminate," we need to ask why effeminacy is abhorent to us. A litte cultural relativism, please. This is muddle-headed freudian agitprop that conflates flowers and tenderness and color and grooming with terrorism and torture and homosexuality and is, in the final analysism actually deeply homophobic.
Posted by: Samson vanOverwater | Aug 24, 2007 12:41:24 PM
that should read:
is, in the final analysis, homophobic.
Posted by: Samson vanOverwater | Aug 24, 2007 12:49:55 PM
hear, hear! thank you samson!
Posted by: Diamond Mike | Aug 24, 2007 1:28:47 PM
First of all, these are not effeminate posses, guns in hands and what not give me a break. I just can not stop laughing on author's ignorance, these pictures are taken by ancient camera where the photographer insert his head in the camera through a long black cloth to avoid the exposure and once the film is developed then he touches the pictures with colors afterwards to make look beautiful(his way of making it pretty), what ever cheap colors are available to him.
THESE FOLKS ARE NOT WEARING MAKE-UP.
Please grow up and learn the culture and do some more DD.
I still have my old family pictures taken from these old cameras everyone looks extremely rosy, everyone has pink cheeks, because coloring the pics afterwards. Even deads have rosy cheeks LOL. You can still go to Lahore or Peshawar and have these picture taken by the road-side photographers.
It is extremely common to wear "Surma" in the eyes to make it dark for the obvious reason Ahmed Rashid described, the whole sub-continent wear “Surma” LOL.
Now on boy-lover aka "NAADA", it is extremely uncommon to have it, if someone has it then he will not make it public for his and his lovers safety. Please remember only in sub-continent the Gay-culture have been protected remember "Khawja Saras" and "Khusras".
Oh BTW, the joke is wrong, it is pigeon not crow and the place is Peshawar not Khandahar.
LOL, how wrong one can be on minor things, what is this investigative journalism? LOL.
Peace
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 24, 2007 4:34:42 PM
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