STRATEGY FOR CULTURE
Year:2017 | Volume:10 | Issue:39 |Papers Count:7

As an art-media, cinema is a reflection of the realities of the society and at the same time it can play a role in creation of currents leaving social impacts. On the other hand, the issue of legitimacy is an important subject in political sociology and studies of power. Cinema is capable of acting in line with the augmentation of the legitimacy of the ruling system or causing the delegitimation of the established power. Attempts have been made in this paper to identify the categories and concepts in the said two approaches of legitimation and deligitimation in the Iranian cinema to identify the dominant approach. The problem has been studied, based on qualitative content analysis, within the framework of the theories about authority in the field of legitimacy particularly the ideas of David Beetham. Thirteen films have been analyzed in this study: three bestselling and two selected films in the Fajr Film Festivals in 2011 and 2013. The elements of the legitimation approach are as follows: rightfulness of the system, national unity, Sacred Defense, familyism and confrontation with the global arrogance. Some of the elements of delegitimation approach are: inefficiency, corruption of the system, judicial injustice, lack of freedom, weakness of civil society, the lack of protection of women’s rights, immigration, opposition to war, nihilism and secularistic ethic. Overall, the legitimation approach was the dominant in only two films and hence it may be concluded that the dominant approach in contemporary Iranian cinema is the delegitimation one.

Today, TV series are one of the popular genres in the media world that have attracted many audiences. The Tulip Age Series aired by GEM TV in Persian language is one of the important series that has drawn the attention and occupied time of viewers, particularly the women. The main question of the present study is: How women, as main audience of this series, decode it? Do they accept the dominant discourse of this series, or reject it, or interact with it? Therefore, the main objective of this research is to study the way of reading of women of this series. Hence, Hall’s theory and reception analysis approach were employed and the data were collected and analyzed through narration analysis. The findings indicate that women decode the series under study through four methods, namely, hegemonic-dominant position, confrontationist, moderated and meta-hegemonic.

Yuri Lotman, the founder of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School, through introducing a cultural theory around the concept of semiosphere tries to describe and explain the mechanism of culture’s semiotic function in a semiospheric position. Cultural semiotics, which is the theory and methodology of this school, was formed to study the interaction, correlation or separation and contradiction between semiotic systems. According to Lotman, semiosphere is not only the sum total of semiotic systems, but also it is the necessary condition for the occurrence of any kind of connection and existence of any kind of language and text. The presupposition of this article is the interaction between religion and cinema, as two semiotic systems, in the form of representation of religion in cinema. However, the problem is the way of this representation by applying Lotman’s semiological method. The interaction between select semiospheres is analyzed by studying the Every Night Loneliness, directed by Rasul Sadrameli, 2007, selected from amongst movies attributed to religious cinema, as a case study.

The present research aims to study the probable differences between confrontation with ethical situations in the cyberspace and in the real world. The statistical population of this research included all adult users of cyberspace in Iran. The sample included 365 users who were selected through available sampling method. 16 short story scenarios (4 gender couples and 4 common couples) were developed by the researcher in a manner that each couple assessed a specific subject in the field of ethics once in the cyberspace and once in the real world. The findings of the research indicate that in most proposed ethical cases – for instance betrayal, theft, privacy, etc. – there is a significant difference in type of confrontation and ethical judgement of users in the virtual and real worlds. The level of this difference varies depending on the nature of ethical subject, but except in minor cases, it is not affected by individual variables. Due to specific characteristics of the virtual world, such as anonymity, being out of control and other features, people in the cyberspace are more liberal regarding ethical issues and behave below their usual ethical standards.

Preliminary studies show that there are certain identity developments among the youth of the Islamic Revolution, some of which are not assessed positively. Since historical, cultural and social factors leave a considerable impact on the identification of the youth, and given the weaknesses in offering a jihadi role-model, the present paper is an attempt to study the impacts of such patterns on the identification of the youth. In the first place, after conducting 80 interviews with the key figures of the Construction Jihad, who were active during the war, the combat-engineering creativities of the Construction Jihad of the said period were extracted. In the next step, 110 students were asked to offer their evaluation of the Construction Jihad. Then, about 200 images of the combat-engineering creative achievements of the Construction Jihad were presented to the students and they were asked again to offer their evaluation of the Construction Jihad members. Thematic analysis conducted in order to compare the group with himself, shows that the awareness of the youth of the achievements of Construction Jihad members had considerable impacts on the process of their identification. In the next step, by converting the garnered qualitative data to quantitative ones, the significant differences of the results were specified. Hence, it seems that through extracting different jihadi role-models and their palpable and tangible presentation to the youth, it is possible to leave a positive impact on their identity development.

The main objective of this paper is to study the damages stemming from consumption of Persian-language satellite series among the Iranian audience and also attempts have been made to classify them. Meta-synthesis method has been used which is one of the methods for meta-research. In the first place, different keywords were searched in the main databanks of the country, research papers and articles and 55 related research works were identified. In the next step, the said studies were primarily investigated and 27 studies which were directly related to damages stemming from watching satellite series were selected on the basis of certain indexes. In the following, qualitative coding technique based on the meta-synthesis method was used to extract 140 primary codes from the selected studies and were classified under 33 pivotal concepts. In the last step, the 33 pivotal concepts were categorized to 6 main categories. The findings of the research indicate that consumption of Persian-language satellite series causes social-cultural damages such as being affected by Western culture, undermining of the institution of family, psychological ailments, increase in the number of social abnormalities and weakening of Islamic-Iranian culture.

The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of studying spiritual-epical books on middle school girl's Islamic-Iranian values and moral behavior. The single-subject and multiple baselines project of experimental method were employed for the purpose of this study. In the first step, without any intervention, the moral behavior and Islamic-Iranian values of the subjects were examined and then in twenty-day intervals and in five stages, the selected books were given to the subjects and the possible changes in their behaviors and values were examined. The sample included four girl students of a middle school in the city of Mashhad who were selected through targeted sampling method. The tools to evaluate the variables under study included a checklist for observation of any change in their moral behavior and a questionnaire for assessment of their attitude towards Islamic-Iranian values. The findings of the research indicate that studying the biographies of spiritual-epical figures strengthened the positive attitude of the subjects towards Islamic-Iranian values and considerably decreased their immoral behaviors. The recommendations of this study included introduction of programs to study such books and encouragement of the youth to study the life and manners of the martyrs and the heroes of the Islamic Revolution and the Sacred Defense which is compatible with the introduction of role-models and epitomes in principles of the Islamic education.