https://arab.news/6p3aj
- Sasy Mannequin accuses country’s officials of hypocrisy
- Popularity highlights growing generational divide, says writer
LONDON: A satirical music video lampooning Iran’s leaders has gone viral on the internet, igniting a nationwide debate.
The teaser of the video, expected to be fully released by exiled Los Angeles-based singer Sasy Mannequin in the coming days, has attracted tens of millions of views in Iran, where it has been banned.
Mannequin’s video, “Leila’s Brothers,” which is named after the 2022 Cannes-selected banned Iranian film, satirizes a children’s program on Iran’s state television and sharply criticizes Iranian officials and their primary propaganda outlet, state TV, for their perceived hypocrisy.
The video, which has become an instant sensation in the country, has circulated widely on Soroush, the government-sponsored social media platform established to counter the “cultural onslaught” from foreign platforms.
It has triggered an immediate response from censors and clerical judges who, on Dec. 3, issued an arrest order for Farhad Moradi, the managing director of the homegrown social network.
Iran International reported on Tuesday that Moradi had been released earlier in the week on bail.
However, according to the London-based Farsi channel, critics of the singer’s hit song have called for the closure of the platform, with some urging Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to have the singer arrested, and one wanting him targeted by Iranian intelligence agencies.
Aired on Radio Javan, a US-based, MTV-style channel that broadcasts Persian music around the clock, the full original audio song of the video can be found on YouTube, along with the teaser clip.
Widely known as Sasy, the singer is no stranger to controversy. Despite regime censorship, schoolchildren across Iran sing and dance to his songs, and young Iranians frequently play them, defying the ban.
One of his previous videos, “Gentleman,” provoked anger in Iranian officials, leading to the dismissal of several teachers after it was revealed that students enthusiastically danced and sang to the catchy melody during school events.
Farhad Farzad, the editor of Rouydad24 website in Tehran, attributed the video’s popularity to its “color, rhythm, and sex appeal,” elements absent in Iran’s entertainment industry, particularly on state TV.
Behrouz Turani, a British-Iranian writer and journalist, said: “Sasy’s simple songs often become controversial in Iran only because what viewers see and hear in them are in sharp contrast to the extremely conservative and traditional modes of behavior approved by the fundamentalist Islamic Republic.”
He added that this incident is not isolated but symptomatic of the growing divide between Iran’s elderly clerics and the Generation Z subculture, which is both “prevalent and simultaneously strange to traditional minds.”
He said: “This is the generation that was behind the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests; a generation that has refused to accept the Islamic Republic’s propaganda and insists that nothing is sacred.”