Gender in Iran’s Cinema through an Investigation in the Works of Seven Iranian filmmakers )With Focus on Sexual Anti-Stereotype)

In Iranian society, just as any other society, gender-related challenging issues have been brought into the field of art and gender representation in cinematic works has become controversial. In the present research, an attempt was made to study the newly-emerged concerns in this field in order to examine new problem-solving points from an academic point of view and identify anti-cliché themes in cinematic compositions. The necessity of the present study is that cinema, as a prominent cultural tool, is able to provide a wide action space through increasing awareness of the status of women. On the other hand, although many works have been composed on various issues of women in recent years, their portrayal of their fight against stereotypes has always had many ambiguities. This research’s prior concern is to analyze the strategies that filmmakers have applied in the depiction of resistances and understanding the success of these visualizations via scrutinizing films. This is because, the findings of such researches with this approach, make it possible for the movies, as cultural products relevant to the general audience, to take steps beyond the subordinate field and enter into transformational reflections. In an effort to fulfill the two main purposes of the research, namely “extracting feministic themes from the Iranian films made during the recent decades (focusing on seven movies mostly relatable to the issue including Killing Mad Dogs, Café Transit, Migraine, a Minor Leap Down, The Snow on the Pines, Pay Back and Subdued),” and “investigating different strategies by which the gender themes are depicted”, the data harvested from the aforementioned movies were analyzed in the context of theories of power, resistance, stereotyping, representation, ideology, feminist cinema and studying the subordinates. In consistence with the findings, the audience first becomes involved in the issue by displaying the conventional companionship of women, voicing dissatisfaction with silence and their gradual discovering. Then, the narrations explicitly show the contradictions. With the presumption that representation of anti-cliché leads to sexual resistance when by the end of the narrative, the subject who has exited the passive status, does not return to stereotypes, in most of the examined works, the main extracted theme was “rebellion and protest”. However, forming sexual resistance ended in a deadlock due to the return to the stereotypes.