Ok Mister I Mr Imperialism

The film Ok Mister is an Iranian comedy that explores the concept of western imperialism and the West’s interaction with people in third world countries. The film criticizes the rapid modernization of Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah’s regime and the careless spending of the wealth that the country gained from sudden increases in oil prices in the 1970s.The film also depicts Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism. The setting of the film, a remote Iranian village, depicts Orientalism. The setting provides an orientalist example for any third world country. After introducing the village, the film introduces a man named William Knox D’Arcy. D’Arcy is a British entrepreneur who gained approval to investigate and extract oil from Iran . He symbolizes
The visitors come up with a plot, in which they use the British woman’s beauty to enchant the men in the village. They depict this by capturing them with colorful nets. These men who are seduced by Cinderella’s beauty are used to unearth archeological sites to look for oil. These British visitors controlled these men and kept them under their power. This depicts western imperialism and the Weststruckness of the Iranian people. Under the idea of Weststruckness, Jalal Al-e Ahmad argues that the Iranian people lost their cultural identity by adopting Western ideas and philosophies. The film discusses the concept of Weststruckness by portraying British flags all over the village, changing the villagers’ clothes from tradional to more modern, and the villagers painting their homes and westernizing them. The British visitors also persuade the villagers to buy impractical objects. Being Western-struck, the villagers blindly follow and happily buy these useless objects. In the film, the villagers are working in agricultural fields. This depicts the peasants and landowners in the land reform project that constituted the centerpiece of the White Revolution under the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah