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Abbas Naaseri / I had heard that if we think about something too much, whether good or bad, we will eventually experience it; or if we see or live with someone or something frequently, we will become like them. In Iran, and probably elsewhere in the world, we spent our childhood watching the “Pinocchio” animation hundreds of times. Maybe because we watched Pinocchio so much, our lives today have become like his, with the difference that Pinocchio was redeemed in the end, while our future remains shrouded in uncertainty.
These days, we hear about festivals that not only fail to fulfill their commitments and are unaccountable but also block the selected artists. Perhaps these “Festival secretaries”, are the same “Honest John” who promote their flashy calls for submissions, much like the promise of planting Pinocchio’s coins in the ground or the dream amusement park for him. And maybe we, the owners of news sites and media outlets who publish their calls without investigation or fact-checking, are like “Gideon,” complicit in these lies. (Although we, the site owners, are mostly cartoonists ourselves and participate in these festivals, so we suffer the same fate and share the same pain.)
But unlike Pinocchio who, in that Italian tale, was deceived by Honest John and Gideon, he had the fortune of having the “Blue Fairy” and “Geppetto” by his side, leading to his eventual redemption.
However, we, as cartoonist Pinocchio, don’t even have the power to claim our rights against these unethical and unfair actions. I wish, as children, we had paid less attention to Pinocchio and more to the Blue Fairy and Geppetto, they might have been present in our destiny today. Or at least, if we had watched more of Bruce Lee’s films, we might have developed a fighting spirit to claim our rights.
In the end, we must unite, stop being Pinocchio, and awaken the Bruce Lee within us to stand against these lies and injustices.
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NO:15 , Saturday, 17 August 2024
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