This new PBS quasi-documentary on Iranian Americans comes across as a more serious version of the Bravo reality show “Shahs of Sunset.â€
It visits the familiar trials of assimilation as immigrants strive to keep a balance between adjusting to a new home and not losing the traditions that make a family what it is.
That turns out to be especially critical with Iranians, explain numerous interviewees, because family matters more than anything else.
Immigrants recall coming to the U.S. and living in four-bedroom homes with four different branches of the family.
One man says that in this precise scenario he ended up on the living room couch, where he learned English from late-night movies and early-morning Looney Toons cartoons.
“Iranian Americans†paints a flattering portrait of an immigrant community that has increasingly become part of its new land’s fabric. Because that’s the story for almost everyone else in America, if you go back enough generations, it’s a reassuring portrait of how our country works.
Still, it leaves some holes, most notably by largely ignoring the particular burden Iranians carried to America â€" their link to a country Americans have seen for more than three decades as dangerously hostile.
Has this caused issues? If so, what? If not, that would also be interesting to know.
In some ways, “Iranian Americans†plays like the home movies of a large, loving extended family. Since it was underwritten by Iranian groups, that makes sense.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just doesn’t offer a lot of insight to those outside.
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