Actress Zendaya has been on the receiving end of some, ahem, piercing criticism after wearing ancient Iranian earrings to a London event promoting the new Christopher Nolan epic The Odyssey, in which she plays the Greek goddess Athena. The film hits US and UK theaters July 17 and has already been the subject of intense debate.
Zendaya got the earrings, believed to date from the first millennium BCE, from London dealer Charlie Barron, and then had them remounted with diamonds and 18-karat yellow gold, reports the London-based New Arab, which earlier reported on the criticisms. Barron’s website touts a collection that “spans centuries, from antique and estate pieces to contemporary works by leading designers.”
“I find Western celebrities … to be largely deaf to questions of ethics and history when it comes to the Global South,” Zirrar Ali, a London-based writer and expert on Islamic history, art, and architecture, told the New Arab. Wearing such items, he adds, “can in fact constitute a display of power and domination: one culture asserting ownership over the heritage of another.” Co-author of Ghazi and the Garden: Poetry of Muhammad Iqbal, Ali describes his work as seeking to “revive and illuminate a vision of Islamic cultural and spiritual renewal.”
