Parviz Khatibi was a prolific journalist, writer, director, playwright, songwriter, satirist and social and political critic. At age 13, his first poem was published in the only satire newspaper of that time, Towfigh. At age 17 he became Towfigh’s youngest editor in chief and at 21, he began publishing his own weekly political satire paper called Bahram, and later Ali Baba. The papers were characteristically bold in their criticisms of Iranian social situations; Ali Baba was banned from publication by the government numerous times until it was finally forced to discontinue completely. At that time Khatibi began to publish yet another paper: Haji Baba. After the coup of 1953 and its subsequent suffocation of free press, Haji Baba was banned by law, and Parviz Khatibi was imprisoned and banned from working for any Iranian government entity for many years to come. In the wake of the revolution of 1979, Khatibi once again began producing Haji Baba but the post-revolutionary freedom of press was short lived and Haji Baba was soon re-banned and Khatibi forced into exile. Khatibi first settled in New York where he resumed the publishing of Haji Baba. Khatibi continued to produce work for theatre, radio and film until his death in 1993 in Los Angeles.
It is difficult to chart Khatibi’s career as he was active and iconoclastic across many media. He was a successful playwright, a key player in the golden years of Radio Iran (he hosted a popular 4 hour morning show amongst other roles), an accomplished film directer (over 20 pictures under his belt) and on top of all this, he happened to have penned the lyrics to Bordi Az Yadam, one of the most iconic songs of Persian pop history.
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“The poster borrows its design from the “nuclear power? No thanks” badge and logo which was a famous symbol for the anti nuclear movement in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was designed by a girl in Denmark in 1975 as part of a contest to make a new logo for Denmark’s Organization for Information on Atomic Energy (OOA). At that time the Danish were very upset about the Swedish power plant Barsebäck situated only 20 km from Copenhagen, the Danish capital. The symbol was then adopted by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) in the late 1970’s. The design became incredibly popular and the badge was translated into 47 languages. For its first five years, WISE was entirely funded by sales of the badge.
In 1979 Khomeini was the leader of the Iranian revolution and became the supreme leader of Iran, which also meant that he came in control of one of the worlds largest oil reserves. The badge was used against nuclear power but this poster is “all for it”. The text has been changed to “Oil power no thanks” and “Use Nuclear power”. The designer simply replaced the happy red sun in the original image with the serious red face of then Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Fria moderata studentförbundet (The free moderate student organization), who commissioned the poster for the “Campaign on Iran”. They are a group of different liberal and conservative student organizations. Moderates in Sweden are traditionally pro nuclear power and the design of the poster is meant to convince people that Sweden should use nuclear power in favor of oil. Not because Burning oil is bad for the environment but because Ayatollah Khomeini was a dictator that should not have any power over Sweden’s energy supply. Of course we still need oil for our cars which can not run on plutonium. Its interesting that the conservatives here became the antagonist as they use a very beloved left-wing symbol in their very right-wing agenda. It is common for political parties or organizations to use this kind of cynical and ironic methods. Ridiculing a symbol from other opposing parties and changing the meaning of it. The layout of the poster the head and beard of Khomeini being stencils and the facial features is just a highly contrasted image. The phototypesetting is rushed and the overall feel is that of necessity. The poster is a racist attempt with a angry red Arab (really Persian) who will get richer and more powerful if we continue to buy oil.” — Rustan Soderling
Covers from 1962 (left) and 1950-51 (right)
Indo-Iranica is a quarterly journal published by the Iran Society in India since 1946.
Neat advertising mechanism on the cover of a yearbook for Ettela’at newspaper from 1967. Some great spreads below:
