Farewell to the Minister of Minority
Farewell to the Minister of Minority of ministries, among which the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is notable, and like other ministries, there are many news circulating about it these days. On one hand, the Culture and Islamic Guidance Committee of the Fourteenth Government Transition Steering Council, without naming any specific candidate, announced that 10 people have been nominated for this ministry.
On the other hand, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of the Thirteenth Government, expressed that he didn’t think it would end so soon and mentioned his return to the university.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Salari, Deputy Minister of Artistic Affairs of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, appeared on the Saf-e Avval program of the News Network and described the activities of the Thirteenth Government in the field of culture and art.
However, if we look from the artists’ perspective, there is no shortage of sharp criticisms of what happened during the 2 years, 9 months, and 19 days of the Thirteenth Government’s tenure and Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili’s time as Minister.
The Sword Was Drawn
Before Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili was elected as the fourteenth Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of the Thirteenth Government with 181 votes in favor, 77 against, and 28 abstentions, he had made headlines with his 83-page proposed program.
A sharp program in which the current state of performing arts, music, cinema, books, press, and public culture was described as very disordered and deplorable, and the solutions to organize it were communicated to the parliament members.
He considered the works of some performing arts people as promoting secularism, instilling hopelessness, encouraging lawlessness, and promoting a non-Islamic lifestyle.
He also described many films as presenting a positive image of what he called an immodest woman, promoting national humiliation and instilling religious and national divergence. Furthermore, he labeled the House of Cinema as lacking legal standing and the House of Music as the most important center of crisis production.
This 83-page program sparked a widespread wave of criticism at the time, leading to a standoff between cultural and artistic communities, cinema guilds, and members of the Theater House against one of the most controversial cabinet nominees proposed by the president of the Thirteenth Government.
Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili took the helm of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance under these circumstances.
He officially started his work at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on Thursday, September 4, 2020.
In a meeting with Seyyed Abbas Salehi, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Hassan Rouhani’s government, Esmaeili announced that addressing the consequences of COVID-19 was the ministry’s priority.
Although it might be said that the first major challenge he faced occurred a year later, coinciding with his presence in the ministry during the September 2021 protests.
Two Different Narratives of One Event
Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili’s narrative, who believes that 2023 was the most prosperous period for culture and art in the country, is close to the account of a part of the artistic community and far from another part’s account of what happened during and after the September 2021 protests.
On August 1, 2023, in a meeting of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s board of directors, he referred to this event as the 2021 cultural sedition and described its leaders as mainly cultural and sports figures.
Esmaeili added that one of the most important actions of my colleagues in various sections of the ministry was to prevent the shutdown of the culture and art sector. The fourteenth Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of the Islamic Republic of Iran did not mention the months-long closure of all artistic activities and did not say that some preferred to leave the scene in protest, leaving galleries, theater halls, cinemas, and concert venues witnessing silent days.
Esmaeili did not mention the days he pleaded with artists to return to the stage and did not recall the days he said security institutions were encouraging and pursuing the start of cultural and artistic programs.
He also did not refer to the numerous legal problems that arose for artists.
According to legal experts, we know that addressing these issues is outside the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s jurisdiction and falls within the competence of judicial authorities. However, at least coordinated working groups with judicial authorities could have been formed in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to reduce the consequences of the legal problems that arose through mutual interaction.
The Difference Between Written Words and Events That Occurred
On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 2, 2023, Mahmoud Salari, Deputy Minister of Arts of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, mentioned in the News Network achievements such as supporting artists through the Art Fund, reviving regional festivals, reducing the audience’s distance from performing arts, writing the music document and its issuance, and reviving regional music as achievements of the Thirteenth Government’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
Each of these items can be discussed and questioned.
For example, regarding the writing and issuance of the music document, it was reminded that many artists in this field believe that a document cannot be written for musical art and emphasize that the current document remains silent on many topics and focuses on phrases like ‘noble music,’ which are like pitfalls.
Documents and resolutions that continue to make headlines until the last days of Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili’s presence in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, including the resolution on the verge of approval by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution regarding the production and display of films, which also faced a strong reaction from the House of Cinema, but Esmaeili considered filmmakers’ concerns about it unnecessary.
Alongside all this, it should be reminded that both the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance and his Deputy for Arts deliberately overlook a part.
A part that has been formed by an unofficial movement and by artists who no longer feel obliged to obtain permits, including unlicensed films, performances, and books that could forever change the path of Iran’s culture and art.
In the end, although Mohammad Mehdi Esmaeili always considered himself the minister of all cultural and artistic communities, in practice, he showed that he was only the minister of a few and those close to his beliefs and interests.
