Weinstein Deletes Honor Killing in Movie, But Bias Runs Deep

December is when Hollywood brings out its "quality" films. These products, in the industry’s own arcane mind, are opposite to releases in the summer, when Hollywood believes the populace desires and deserves no end of patent junk. One of the supposedly better offerings for the winter of 2007 is "Crossing Over," starring Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and Ashley Judd. It will not, by a combination of luck and diligence, include a horrifying, completely false characterization of Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles, as was intended in the original screenplay and initially filmed.

This small, rare and heroic victory, however, is the exception to the rule as a cynical, rudderless and artistically spent industry sinks deeper into a morass of clichés, stereotypes and other hazards of thoughtlessness.

"Crossing Over" is a film about the strains among various Los Angeles immigrant communities, who must struggle with complex, unevenly enforced immigration laws. It is an obvious rip-off of "Crash." It was to feature an "honor killing" in an Iranian-American family. When this term gained media currency, I, as a native of Iran, had to do research to discover its exact meaning. It is a practice - principally in Muslim-dominated countries - of a male relative murdering a woman whom he finds morally and sexually “corrupt.” That it would be practiced among the Westernized denizens of Tehrangeles is the creation of a particularly inept, cliché-ridden Hollywood mentality.

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