Cole, Juan. "“Argo” as Orientalism and Why It Upsets Iranians." Informed Comment. N.p., 26 Feb. 2013. Web. 09 Mar. 2014.
This article begins with Cole recognizing that what was done to the American hostages during the 1979 hostage crisis was illegal. He tells the reader that he even knows some of the people that were kept hostage personally and sympathizes with them. After that though, he says that the film Argo is nothing more than “American propaganda.” According to Cole, the main problem lies that the film is based on a memoir of the incident by a former CIA operative. These types of memoirs are going to be biased so in order to create a historically correct film the production crew must work to eliminate those biases, and Argo did not do that. Cole sees that Argo could have been a film that worked to set aside those racist feelings Americans have towards Iranians, but instead it chose to back them through the way it shows the Iranians. Yes, Argo shows what terrible things the Iranians did to the American hostages, but it does not show what America did to upset these people, and that is a shame.
This article will be a great contributor to my Inquiry 2 paper because it again focuses on the political side of this film, as did the last source. The more I read about this side of the film the more interesting it becomes. Being the typical American movie watcher that I am, I was uninformed about the events leading up to the hostage situation. I, like Cole, am not justifying the Iranians actions in any way, but the events leading up to the situation are instrumental in understanding this piece of history. As a few articles have stated, the film does attempt to recap what has happened up until this point, but it is very hasty and does not attempt to connect with the audiences emotions. For this reason the introduction is often overlooked.