“When the Sun Goes Down: Sex, Desire, and Cinema in 1970s Tehran,” Asian Cinema 27. 2 (October 2016) (original) (raw)
Negotiating the Forbidden: On Women and Sexual Love in Iranian Cinema
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2007
6 7 3 C o m p a r a t i v e S t u d i e s o f S o u t h A s i a , A f r i c a a n d t h e M i d d l e E a s t V o l . 2 7 , N o . 3 , 2 0 0 7 d o i 1 0 .1 2 1 5 / 1 0 8 9 2 0 1 x -2 0 0 7 -0 4 2 © 2 0 0 7 b y D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s omen and sexual love are time-honored -but problematic -themes in Iranian cinema. Soon after the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran, these themes were forced into the straitjacket of Islamist ideology and Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh ), which allowed little room for representations of current social realities. The authorities imposed hejab (a dress code) and sexual segregation, and the public presence of women and the expression of sexual love became highly restricted. For almost a decade, Iranian filmgoers would look in vain for screen depictions of women and love. Gradually, however, both came out of the shadows; and by the late 1990s, they were once again leading -if highly controversial -themes in the Iranian cinema.
Leiden: Brill, 2013
Some aspects of sexuality have been allowed to be expressed in Iranian popular culture, albeit in limited forms. As limited and suppressed as they may be, however, representations, or even hints, of any issues related to sexuality, whether scientific or derogatory, play a role in the way cultural change unfolds. As recently as the last few months, there have been many controversies about the censoring of Nezfuni Ganjavi's poems in instances where the 12th-century poet refers to the female body, physical contact with men, and dance. 1 Yet, despite the limited room for and the permissi-bility of sexual references, even the legal authorities and ruling elite do not shy away from using sexual obscenity to counter their opponents. Hadadian, a Muslim preacher recently compared a member of the Islamic Republic of Iran cabinet to a penis 2 Another, this time a devoted Muslim film director by the name of Salahsure, referred to cinema as a whore-house3 These incidents indicate that despite the legal, political, and cultural restrictions on the expression of sexuality, people may continue to use sexual realities or fantasies as their mode of expression, however archaic and distorted they might be. Such exchanges become part of the discursive field where tensions between modern sexuality and the fundamentalist discourse on sexuality play out. The controversy was even louder when the Iran Journal published one of its special supplementary issues entitled Khiitun on the question of the hejdb and veiling, insinuating that efforts to enforce the hejdb have backfired. Most of the objections against it claimed that pro-Ahmadinjad authors of the articles were attempting to score against the other ruling fundamentalist factions. However, most of the uproar was actually directed against the somewhat lax format of the articles, the photos, and the cartoons in which one could see women's exposed hair. 4 Everyone, from the grand ayatollahs to members of the government and from the armed forces to the members of the parliament, felt obliged to participate in this much ado about nothing. Indeed, the whole nation was obsessed for a time with the topic. Historically too, the expression Of sexuality has always been determina-tive and yet highly problematic and destructive. Such contradictory.... in Conflict and Development in Iranian Film, ed. A. S. Gohrab and K. Talattof.
Ucla Center For the Study of Women, 2009
Three decades after the political revolution of 1978, the figure of the woman remains a pivotal point in the Iranian public discourse. Furthermore, with the persistent "fight for democracy" squeezing down on the geopolitical body of Iran (in Afghanistan and Iraq), "the war against terror" has once again put the condition of Iranian women firmly on the global agenda. Against this background, the emerging image of Iranian women in film has been particularly an important mediating tool for socialization of a diverse audience to contemporary gender issues, as well as creation of a spectacular model for limitations and articulations of the feminine body in Islamic Iran. This paper aims to offer an anthropological analysis of the figure of the woman as it appears in the contemporary Iranian cinema, with intended audiences both domestically and in the global market. As a critical exploration of the Iranian visual culture, this writing is enhanced by several core questions, including: How does the figure of Iranian woman resurface in cinematic productions, as a sign of social and epistemological change during the era of political reform? What idealized models of femininity and masculinity are constructed through these diverse film productions of the last decade? How does the new wave cinema in post-revolution Iran address the seemingly tenuous relationship between religiosity and piety with articulations of gender? What roles have the revitalization of women's social movement of the past decade had on the representation of the image of Iranian women?
International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2025
Following the Iran Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the subsequent formation of a theocratic regime, the new regime implemented stringent regulations and a complicated censorship system in the film industry. Thereupon, the screening of films showing the relationships between males and females encountered numerous limitations. Not only did these limits encompass the physical portrayal of the relationship between males and females, but also the dialogues containing explicit sexual or even passionate romantic themes, resulting in a film being permanently consigned to archival storage. However, despite these limitations, Iranian filmmakers persevered in creating their interesting cinematic works. Throughout the years after the revolution, Iranian directors have navigated a series of challenges and obstacles, employing innovative and unconventional methods to bypass the rigorous censorship system imposed by the government, ensuring the screening of their films. This study aims to analyze the creative approaches employed by Iranian filmmakers to circumvent governmental censorship regulations.
Iranian Movies and Gender Display
The present treatise aims at analyzing1 the scene pictured by Iran's post-revolution cinema for its audience. How the gender inequalities would arise as actors and actresses interact in post-revolution cinema is the body of the main question. The theoretical frame of this research is greatly indebted to Goffman's theoretical approach to the gender display in visual media. The research findings depict the ritualized gender displays in post-revolution cinema and reproduction of traditional gender patterns and norms in Iranian cinema. Ritualizing the subordination, the films produced thereafter confirm and demonstrate the traditional gender values and norms.
The Pleasure of the Violent Touch in Iranian Narrative Cinema
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2023
Before the Islamic revolution of Iran, a mainstream genre called filmfarsi, over-sexualized female characters. Naturally, for clergies and Muslims of Iran, this phenomenon was intolerable. Grasping the power of cinema, the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, did not reject it entirely, nevertheless, the amoral and obscene features of cinematic representation had to be annihilated. Therefore, a series of rules and regulations to produce films known as “modesty rules” were conducted. Under the supervision of modesty rules, male and female characters could not touch each other. However, the no-touching rule was violated in an incredibly significant film of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema: Hamoon (Mehrjuie, 1989) in which Hamoon slaps his wife. Since then, filmmakers have been able to portray inflicting violence by male characters on female characters and vice versa. Consequently, the question arises of how this “violent touch” falls into the modesty rules of Iranian censorship. Drawing on Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze and Freud’s psychoanalytical notions, this paper finds two grounds for the imposition of the violent touch in Iranian cinema, first the absence of fetishizing women and second the sadomasochist position of males in Iranian society.
Films about ‘women’s issues’ and their importance in Iran have not been paid in-depth attention in scholarly works. These films are labeled as political as they challenge the institutions and values of patriarchy in Iranian society. In recent years, Iranian women filmmakers have produced an impressive body of work and they have won a number of international awards. These filmmakers carved a niche despite all the restrictions imposed by patriarchal strictures. However, these filmmakers are still facing difficulties in making their films as the political fortunes of the conservatives and reformers continue to ebb and flow. TahmineMilani is one of the Iranian women filmmakers whose films directly address women’s problems in a patriarchal society. By providing an overview of the role of women in Iranian cinema and by examining TahmineMilani’s Fifth Reaction (2003), this paper sheds light on the role of Iranian women filmmakers and the status of women in Iran. We argue although it has been repeatedly said that Iranian women filmmakers can easily make films about women’s issues, there is still a tough hold on women’s cinema. We also argue that Iranian cinema has taken a form of neopatriarchy in which women filmmakers are still restricted and at times are not allowed to present women’s related issues such as political and social problems of women. In spite of all these vicissitudes, these women filmmakers still have a powerful presence in Iranian cinema.