TEHRAN, Iran — Taking pictures with celebrities is gaining popularity in Iran. For fans of the selfie, it makes no difference what the person they're posing next to is actually famous for: whether artists, athletes, actors or even politicians, those with a big name are caught up in the trend. For those on a hunt for selfies, the only thing that matters is to be pictured with someone famous. The extent of this growing trend has gone to the level of not even leaving celebrities be during funeral ceremonies.
Indeed, the frenzy has become so intense that both actors and athletes have made pleas through their social media pages for people to refrain from taking selfies during funerals. The latest in a chain of awkward incidents took place at the funeral of prominent Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. The 76-year-old died of cancer in Paris on July 4 and was laid to rest in Iran on July 10. Before his funeral, the public was repeatedly asked to not take any photos with celebrities at the burial, but appeals to respect common sensibilities were for naught. All sorts of selfies with celebrities spilled out on the internet the day of Kiarostami's funeral.
The selfie trend is not limited to ordinary Iranians and cinema fans. Veteran football coach and former actor Mansour Pourheidari passed away Nov. 4 after being hospitalized several times due to cancer in the past year. While in the hospital, many public figures came to visit Pourheidari, including Abbas Jadidi, who won a silver medal in freestyle wrestling in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Jadidi visited Pourheidari in the days before he passed away, when the former football coach was lying unconscious on a bed in Tehran's Iranmehr Hospital.
The visit stirred major controversy on social media as a photo emerged of Jadidi standing next to Pourheidari's half-dead body, staring straight into the camera. Amid the outcry, photoshopped images of Jadidi began to flood social media networks in raw mockery of the situation, showing the former wrestler standing next to the burning Twin Towers amid the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the body of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and next to Greek philosopher Socrates as he drank the cup of poison hemlock.
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