CULTURAL STUDIES & COMMUNICATION
Year:2008 | Volume:4 | Issue:12|Papers Count:7

Indian popular films, as a global popular culture, are consumed vastly in Iranian society. This is not a new phenomenon and can be traced back to the 1330s. But there has been no investigation about the way these films are consumed and how the spectators communicate with them. The present research employs the approach of cultural studies, explaining and interpreting the readings of Indian popular film among Zahedani spectators. In doing so, we have used a qualitative- synthetic method. This method includes: 1) interpreting the social, ideological and technical codes of Indian popular films, 2) analyzing the sociocultural contexts of spectators, and 3) explaining the reading of spectators. The findings of this research indicate that Indian popular films, as a global popular culture, create some structures and power relations in the world of narrative, which naturalize and are influenced by structures and power relations in the Indian social world. Whenever, due to globalizing processes, global popular culture is consumed locally, its discursive formation will change according to the discursive identity of local consumers and their concerns. The texts of global popular culture can provide a context in which local consumers are able to transcend the framework of space and time and overcome their social, cultural and political limitations.

Our main goal in this paper is to analyze three movies by Bahman Farmanara, the Iranian filmmaker, and to examine their relationship to society in Iran. For this reason, and using Lucien Goldmann’s theory about great art and great artist, these three movies are analyzed from the sociology of cinema point of view. In order to study these movies, we have used two methods of internal and external criticism:; the former being based on technical semiotics and the latter conceived as an instrument for examining the relationship between movies and society. Studying the movies and examining each separately showed that these three movies have established a meaningful relationship with society in depicting the concept of death on the individual, class, and social levels. The movies represent ideas of those artists who have started their artistic career before the Revolution and have their own ethical and social ideas who have not been dissolved entirely in the current ideological system. In two of the movies, problems of two groups of people, artists and writers, along with their whishes and aspirations are explicitly presented and portrayed in the light of the concept of death. In these movies the problem of death is examined from an alternative viewpoint and not only is it not a hated concept, it is actually conceived as a factor which emancipates them from the undesirable society surrounding them. In the third movie social problems are portrayed in a way that is itself an expression of death, though this time on the level of society. The common aspect in these movies, however, is their hopeful vision towards rescue and freedom which is signified in the end of each story in relation to individuals, artists and the society in general.

This paper undertakes an examination of cinematic narratives of common generational experiences in regard to the 8-year war of Iran. Through a structuralist approach, this paper aims to analyze representations of dichotomies relating to generational relations (including inter- and intragenerational relations) in Hatamikia's cinema:idealism/pragmatism, duty-boundness/outcome-boundness, love-focusedness/reasonfocusedness, introversion/extroversion, and preterism/futurism. The logic employed for analyzing the oppositions is that of Parson’s action models. Here five films of Hatamikia are looked at which are part of the war genre and also dwell on generational relations: Mohajer (1990), Az Karkheh ta Rhein (1993), Ajans-e Shishei (1997), Moj-e Mordeh (2001), Be Nam-e Pedar (2006). In the course of representing generational relations, from Mohajer to Be Nam-e Pedar, the director has gone from the first part of the abovementioned oppositions to the second part. This may point to the formation of an independent social sphere which has gradually been formed after the War, and influenced by which, the director has leaned toward the second part in his preferred reading.

Movies in Iran can be an appropriate mediates to understand urban modernity. In this paper, movies produced three decades before the Revolution (1979) are studied. Our inquiry reveals how these films represent problems stemmed from urban renovation and the process of modernity. Moreover, they had a critical perspective toward the renovation trend so that they challenged their leaders’ political claims and promises in the authoritarian society. Arousing contrast between city and village as well modern life’s paradoxes are part of existing social and economic gaps which cinema has highlighted. Besides, the films produced in the decade to 1979 predicted the possibility of the occurrence of a revolution. The present study suggests that these films frequently gave a kind of political representation of Iranian modernity.

The production of historical films and television series about a particular historical period does not just indicate the importance of that period to the film- and cultural policymakers of a society, but is generally a representation of the current or ideal state of that society. In fact, a historical period is used as an excuse for depicting what wants to be said about current circumstances. This paper tries to analyze the cinematic productions made about the Safavid era (three films produced before the Revolution and two television series made after) from the perspective of visual anthropology. This has been done through Levi Strauss and Barthes’ theories on mythology. The Safavid era is depicted as having been glorious and splendid, functioning as a "golden age" myth. This myth is used to resolve the incongruity between our current identity and the pride we feel in regard to our past.

Today's media is saturated with various genres of media content. Traditionally considered a masculine realm, the science-fiction genre is dominated by scientific and technological facts and imaginations. Thus, women are deprived from this realm due to the historical definition of gender identity;, despite that, science-fiction is considered a resourceful space for the study of socio-cultural understanding of gender and definition of masculinity and femininity (James & Mandelson, 2003). This paper focuses on the gendered reception of science-fiction films by Tehrani youth. Using a qualitative methodology, we have conducted in-depth interviews with 28 Tehrani male and female participants. The findings reveal that consumption, reception and impacts of sciencefiction movies are highly influenced by Iranian concepts and values concerning gender, and members of two genders correspond to and interpret the genre (signs, latent meaning, and ideology) according to their expressed values corresponding to social definitions of, as well as expectation from, masculine and feminine roles.

Semiotics is a method of textual analysis. The semiotic approach seeks to discover the mechanisms of production through language and representation. This paper aims to investigate semiotics and its application based on the analysis of a movie. For this purpose, initially, epistemological status of semiotics, known as social constructionism, and its philosophical implications, and theoretical consequences are explained. Then, the main themes of methodology of semiotics will be explained in the framework of social, cultural, and technical codes and language functions. In the concrete analysis of Turtles Can Fly, the epistemological explanation and themes of the first section are employed. Film semiotics does not consider art as mere reflection of reality and thus helps us avoid the approach of raw realism.