Not your sad, sad refugee: Ali Samadi Ahadi’s comedic rejection of the forced migrant’s identity crisis

Abstract

ABSTRACTIt appears to have become customary amongst many centrist European and conservative American leaders in the new century to present Muslim refugees’ stories as tales of dangerous Others. These stories are alarmist, post-9/11 scare tactics, which an overwhelming number of statistics have debunked as factually untrue. Against this backdrop, a new wave of Muslim refugee artists has begun to reclaim agency over their narratives of forced migration and political asylum. This paper details how Ali Samadi Ahadi’s 2009 comedy film, Salami Aleikum, offers one of those counter-narratives. The film is a wry riff on the expectation that every Muslim refugee story contain a tragedy. It explores the personal journeys of its characters’ experiences of displacement and their life as cultural hybrids. I argue here that a crucial factor in the impact of such comedic narratives is their creative versatility. The director of Salami Aleikum, an unattended refugee minor from Iran himself, demonstrates it by mixing culture clash, Bollywood, and inter-ethnic wedding film comedy elements. With these elements, the film conveys a post-colonial critique of Western capitalism and its dogmatic prescription of identity. It is a strategic decision on part of Samadi Ahadi to deliver a warm-hearted riposte to token declarations of multicultural tolerance, which leave nonconforming communities behind.