My Name is Khan

I really enjoyed this movie. It was an overall feel-good movie. I think it captured the religious stereotyping quite well. The situations weren't too extreme in my opinion. I'm sure a lot worse has happened, but viewers will find this plot more realistic. There were only a couple of things I had problems with. First of all, the cheesy Bollywood music. I know it's necessary, and it was a great background support for the happy moments of the film. However, there were some questionable times when it was playing. An upbeat tune is not a very good accompanying piece when Mandira starts meeting with people to bring justice to Sameer's death, but there it was! Also, I was kind of surprised that people who encountered him did not at all address the fact he has Asperger's. Yeah, it'd be great if they were treated like normal citizens, but they aren't a lot of the time. And a lot of the time they need to be treated differently (mainly in developmental stages and such).

I still am fascinated by how much religion is a part of countries. The United States has separation of church and state, but in other countries that is not the case. Often the laws of the country are made from the laws of the religion. I read Reading Lolita in Tehran my junior year of high school. I loved the book. A lot of the reason was because I love books and the idea of book clubs, but also I loved learning about the lifestyle of women in Tehran. I didn't know much about it at all. I won't write a lot about it here because some of you have read it and I don't want to rewrite my Scholars application paper in this blog (unless you all are dying  to read it), yet there are some things I find interesting now after seeing "My Name is Khan."

There was a woman that wore a head scarf and was a professor or something. She said the scarf was a part of who she was. In the book, the women resent the head scarf much of the time. They don't like what it stands for. The participants of the book club didn't wear it while in the home of Azar Nafisi, the author of the book. I suppose it's all about personal experiences though. The professor in the movie stopped wearing it for a while, but it was because of the stereotyping that happened in America, whereas the book is more about the put-down of women in Tehran.

Everyone has their own experiences with their religions. Sometimes we love it, sometimes we hate it, and often times we question it.