Interesting to compare the--expected, anyway--brouhaha over these young actors with the recent teddy bear fracas in the Sudan.
Elsewhere in the Fray, I have characterized the Sudanese incident as a farce of sorts. But I cannot do the same for this situation with the Afghan schoolboys.
The former arose from circumstances created and shaped by powerful adults (the Sudanese government and the townspeople it was able to pay, force, or otherwise whip up into a frenzy) to affect political ends with other adult and powerful institutions--namely, the British and U.S. diplomatic machines, and the international media. While faintly ridiculous in its very sinisterness (but certainly no fun for Ms. Gibbons or her family), this is an incident that, I think, can be discussed in a reasonably measured tone, with arguments couched in political rather than emotional stimulae.
The Afghan boys thing is altogether different, beginning with the power imbalance between schoolkids and their oblivious parents (whom no one bothered to enlighten as to the true nature of the boys' work) and the major U.S./international studios in chrage of this picture. The lives of already vulnerable children were put at risk.
I am always for more "authenticity" when it comes to movies. But authenticity is a funny word. Many anthropologists no longer even recognize it as an objective or discrete category. No matter how impoverished, how rural, how "Afghan" these kids, the very fact that they are in a Hollywood movie pretty well negates the "authenticity" factor.
To that end, I invite the filmmakers to visit one of the many large Afghan-American communities in the state of California. Take a look at all the delightful children of Pashtun and other Central Asian ancestries filling Los Angeles middle schools. They are gabbing on cell phones, hooked up to I-Pods playing th elatest episodes of "Tila Tequila's" bisexual date reality show, and likely have a parent or two with more than one graduate degree and several years of Westernized sensibilities under their belts.
Let's look also at some of Paramount's recent sacrifices of authenticity: American Angelina Jolie as British Lara Croft; Ojibwa-Anishinabe Adam Beach as a southwestern Pima Native; Aussie Nicole Kidman as annoying Yankee Margot; American (French and other European origin) Jolie as French (French and West African ancestry) Marianne Pearl, and so on and so forth.
Now look at the lives of these Afghan schoolboys and their families and see what your false quest for authenticity has wrought.
