My Name Is Khan is yet another film that will put the Indian film industry on the map. And this is a new phenomenon that America will have to get used to, foreign film countries shooting in the USA and examining our society. For better or worse this is how we seem to many foreigners.
Shakrukh Khan creates a character in Rizwan Khan that many Americans will recognize if they've seen Being There, Rainman, and Forrest Gump. Bits from all those films will be found in My Name Is Khan. Khan is a Moslem citizen of India who emigrates to the USA and finds love and happiness when he weds a mother with a son from a previous marriage the wife played by Kajol and the stepson by Yurgon Makaar. She's Hindu, but the different faiths don't seem to matter. Khan suffers from Asperger's syndrome and its challenge enough for him to make his way in the world without picking up on the subtle nuances of the differences of religions and why one group has to hate all the others.
All this changes on September 11, 2001 when some fanatical Moslems hijack some airlines and change the course of history forever crashing them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killing a lot of innocent people, including a few hundred Moslems by all counts of the victims. As in the past here and other places bad behavior by some inflicted a stigma on the group.
Young Mr. Makaar is killed in a hate crime incident which changes Khan's relationship with his mother and Khan himself through a combination of circumstances gets on a terrorist watch list. Khan conceives a mission to tell the President of the United States be it George W. Bush or Barack Obama that he is not a terrorist.
Both in my professional and family heritage I've got some history with these kind of events. In my former job with Crime Victims Board I had a claim involving a bias attack against a young Arab American boy the same age as Mr. Makaar. It was only when I questioned the young man and his parents I learned of the bias nature of the events. Together with the GLBT liaison with the Kings County District Attorney we went to the Bias Unit of the NYPD and got the case reclassified as a bias attack. Sad though that no one was ever arrested for the crime, but it wasn't for lack of trying here. This was during the years immediately following the first Iraqi War and there was an upswing of attacks on Moslem Americans then as well.
After World War I, we had the Palmer Raids in which the Bill of Rights was torn up and under the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer many suspected radicals of Jewish or Slavic origins were deported in wholesale lots. I had a grand uncle on my mother's side who had such radical politics and he missed being deported by a hair. This was after the Russian Revolution and a number of anarchist bombings including the Morgan Bank on Wall Street and a mail bomb sent to the Attorney General himself. Duly elected Socialist members of the New York State Legislature were expelled at this time. It was not a good era.
In the tradition of Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Hanks, Shahrukh Khan might have an Oscar or nomination at least in his future. Two Magic Kingdom regulars from their teen shows have parts in this, Shane Harper of Good Luck Charlie plays one of the bashers and and Kenton Duty of Shake It Up playing the best friend who turns on Yurgon Makaar show far more acting chops in this than on the Disney Channel.
There is no excuse or reason, no justification at all to make war on children. If you want to fight terrorists there's a war now in Afghanistan and probably future wars for the USA unless both we get it right and certain Moslems realize they are not taking the world over for Allah. Ditto the Christians who want to win the world for Jesus. We all have to live together and secular humanism may yet save us all.
And this review is dedicated to the late Liz Garro of the Kings County District Attorney's office, the late John Lucyshyn my grand uncle who lived in the USA until his 90s, and to Ziad Abdel-Dayem of Brooklyn who last I heard is a married man. All three of you made the world a better place.
Shakrukh Khan creates a character in Rizwan Khan that many Americans will recognize if they've seen Being There, Rainman, and Forrest Gump. Bits from all those films will be found in My Name Is Khan. Khan is a Moslem citizen of India who emigrates to the USA and finds love and happiness when he weds a mother with a son from a previous marriage the wife played by Kajol and the stepson by Yurgon Makaar. She's Hindu, but the different faiths don't seem to matter. Khan suffers from Asperger's syndrome and its challenge enough for him to make his way in the world without picking up on the subtle nuances of the differences of religions and why one group has to hate all the others.
All this changes on September 11, 2001 when some fanatical Moslems hijack some airlines and change the course of history forever crashing them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killing a lot of innocent people, including a few hundred Moslems by all counts of the victims. As in the past here and other places bad behavior by some inflicted a stigma on the group.
Young Mr. Makaar is killed in a hate crime incident which changes Khan's relationship with his mother and Khan himself through a combination of circumstances gets on a terrorist watch list. Khan conceives a mission to tell the President of the United States be it George W. Bush or Barack Obama that he is not a terrorist.
Both in my professional and family heritage I've got some history with these kind of events. In my former job with Crime Victims Board I had a claim involving a bias attack against a young Arab American boy the same age as Mr. Makaar. It was only when I questioned the young man and his parents I learned of the bias nature of the events. Together with the GLBT liaison with the Kings County District Attorney we went to the Bias Unit of the NYPD and got the case reclassified as a bias attack. Sad though that no one was ever arrested for the crime, but it wasn't for lack of trying here. This was during the years immediately following the first Iraqi War and there was an upswing of attacks on Moslem Americans then as well.
After World War I, we had the Palmer Raids in which the Bill of Rights was torn up and under the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer many suspected radicals of Jewish or Slavic origins were deported in wholesale lots. I had a grand uncle on my mother's side who had such radical politics and he missed being deported by a hair. This was after the Russian Revolution and a number of anarchist bombings including the Morgan Bank on Wall Street and a mail bomb sent to the Attorney General himself. Duly elected Socialist members of the New York State Legislature were expelled at this time. It was not a good era.
In the tradition of Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Hanks, Shahrukh Khan might have an Oscar or nomination at least in his future. Two Magic Kingdom regulars from their teen shows have parts in this, Shane Harper of Good Luck Charlie plays one of the bashers and and Kenton Duty of Shake It Up playing the best friend who turns on Yurgon Makaar show far more acting chops in this than on the Disney Channel.
There is no excuse or reason, no justification at all to make war on children. If you want to fight terrorists there's a war now in Afghanistan and probably future wars for the USA unless both we get it right and certain Moslems realize they are not taking the world over for Allah. Ditto the Christians who want to win the world for Jesus. We all have to live together and secular humanism may yet save us all.
And this review is dedicated to the late Liz Garro of the Kings County District Attorney's office, the late John Lucyshyn my grand uncle who lived in the USA until his 90s, and to Ziad Abdel-Dayem of Brooklyn who last I heard is a married man. All three of you made the world a better place.