Growing Up with Sally Field's 'Not Without My Daughter'

In 1991, America’s sweetheart Sally Field starred in a movie about an American woman’s desperate escape from her abusive Iranian husband. For Susie, and a generation of other Iranian-American kids, this was the only representation they saw of themselves in pop culture – and it was not great. It was essentially a horror film – and the horror was Iran. In this episode, best-selling author (and fellow Iranian-American) Porochista Khakpour joins Susie to talk about what it was like growing up in the shadow of ‘Not Without My Daughter’ and its comically dark view of their homeland.  GUESTS:   Porochista Khakpour, best-selling author  FOR MORE: The Not Without My Daughter Problem: How a Sally Field Movie Became an Iranian-American Headache (New York Magazine) Iranians Moving Past Negative Depictions In Pop Culture (by Porochista Khakpour, LA Times)  Order Porochista’s book Tehrangeles See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Is there a cultural moment from your past that looks different in retrospect? Maybe it’s a scandalous tabloid story seared into your teenage brain or a political punchline that just feels wrong now. It might be a very specific red swimsuit that inspired a decade of plastic surgery (see: “Baywatch”) or the inescapable smell of an entire generation of prepubescent boys (Axe body spray, anyone?). Each week on IN RETROSPECT, Emmy-winning journalist Susie Banikarim and New York Times editor Jessica Bennett revisit a pop culture moment from the 80s and 90s that shaped them — to try to understand what it taught us about the world, and a woman’s place in it. Talk to us at @inretropod, @susiebnyc and @jessicabennett on Instagram. New episodes each Friday.