دانشگاه سوره رهپویه هنرهای نمایشی 2821-2096 6 20 2026 06 22 The Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real in the Representation of Domination: A Lacanian Reading of the Film the Old Bachelor ساحت‌های خیالی، نمادین و واقعی در بازنمایی سلطه: خوانش لاکانی از فیلم‌سینمایی «پیرپسر» 51 63 734340 10.22034/rpa.2026.2079852.1208 FA سجاد محمودی دکتری تخصصی رشتۀ علوم سیاسی ـ مسائل ایران، دانشکدۀ علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه آزاد تهران مرکزی، تهران، ایران 0009-0003-1827-3832 Journal Article 2025 12 03 This article examines the representation of domination and the intellectual’s relation to power structures in the film Pir-Pesar (The Old Bachelor) (2023), directed by Oktay Baraheni, through a psychoanalytic and critical sociological framework. The study is motivated by the film’s dense engagement with patriarchal authority, the reproduction of coercive power, and the recurring failure of the intellectual subject to achieve emancipatory agency. Rather than treating the film merely as a narrative of family conflict or personal tragedy, the article reads it as a multilayered cultural text in which psychic formations, symbolic orders, and social hierarchies intersect. The central premise is that domination in the film does not operate solely through overt violence or explicit repression; instead, it is sustained through desire, identification, dependency, symbolic legitimacy, and the internalization of authority. In this sense, the film offers a compelling site for investigating how power persists not only through institutions and laws, but also through affective and unconscious investments that bind subjects to the very structures that constrain them. Methodologically, the article adopts a qualitative interpretive-discursive approach. The film is analyzed as a text whose meanings emerge from the interaction of visual form, character relations, dialogic structures, and symbolic patterns. The theoretical framework is primarily informed by Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, especially the concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real, along with the notions of the Big Other, the Name-of-the-Father, lack, desire, and jouissance. To complement this psychoanalytic perspective, the article draws on Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence. This interdisciplinary configuration makes it possible to explain domination as a phenomenon that is simultaneously psychic, symbolic, and social. In other words, the film is not interpreted as a simple reflection of external power relations; rather, it is understood as a narrative in which social domination becomes psychically lived, symbolically reproduced, and emotionally justified. Within the Lacanian framework, the article argues that the film stages the intellectual subject as fundamentally, or trapped, within the Imaginary order. In this domain, the subject is shaped by an idealized self-image and by rivalrous relations grounded in narcissism, misrecognition, and comparison. The intellectual figure in the film appears to be caught between self-perception and social recognition, unable to establish a stable or autonomous position. Instead of functioning as a critical agent capable of exposing domination, the intellectual becomes attached to fantasies of mastery, distinction, and symbolic superiority. This attachment reveals the vulnerability of the intellectual subject, whose desire for recognition may lead to complicity rather than resistance. The film thus critiques an intellectual posture that is more concerned with preserving the coherence of the self-image than with confronting material and symbolic structures of oppression. The result is a subjectivity that remains internally divided and politically ineffective. At the level of the Symbolic, the article shows that law, norms, and social rules in Pir-Pesar do not operate as neutral mechanisms of justice. Rather, they are embedded in a patriarchal order that legitimizes authority and reproduces hierarchy. The father-function, in Lacanian terms, is not simply a family principle but an organizing logic that extends into broader social relations. In the film, symbolic law serves to stabilize domination by converting power into legitimacy and hierarchy into common sense. The Name-of-the-Father is therefore not presented as a liberating structuring principle but as a vehicle for the continuation of oppressive order. This symbolic configuration intertwines with Weber’s notion of patrimonialism, where authority is personalized, traditional, and deeply fused with kinship and inheritance. Such an arrangement allows power to appear natural and enduring while masking its arbitrary and exclusionary character. The article demonstrates that the film’s world is one in which authority is reproduced less through overt coercion than through inherited legitimacy, familial dependency, and the normalization of unequal relations. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence further clarifies the mechanisms through which domination is sustained. The film depicts forms of power that do not rely exclusively on physical force; instead, they operate by shaping perception, habit, and expectation. Symbolic violence works through recognition and misrecognition, causing subjects to accept the terms of their own subordination as legitimate or inevitable. In this regard, the intellectual’s position is especially paradoxical. On one hand, the intellectual might be expected to possess critical awareness and discursive tools for challenging domination. On the other hand, the film suggests that intellectual capital does not automatically translate into emancipatory action. The intellectual may remain bound to the same symbolic networks, economic dependencies, and emotional attachments that sustain domination. This contradiction is central to the article’s argument: knowledge without structural rupture can become another form of accommodation. The film therefore problematizes the romantic assumption that the intellectual is inherently oppositional or progressive. The article also pays close attention to the role of the Real in the film. In Lacanian terms, the Real is not simply reality as such but that which resists symbolization and exposes the fragility of the dominant order. In Pir-Pesar, moments of violence, crisis, rupture, and breakdown function as encounters with the Real. These moments reveal that the symbolic order is incomplete and that its apparent stability depends on suppressing unresolved conflict. However, the article emphasizes that such encounters with the Real do not automatically produce liberation or transformation. Instead, they may intensify confusion, anxiety, and reactive repetition. The breakdown of authority does not necessarily lead to a new ethical or political horizon; it can equally produce renewed submission, defensive adaptation, or destructive stagnation. This insight is crucial to the article’s conclusion, which resists any simplistic redemptive reading of crisis. A major finding of the study is that the film presents the failure of the intellectual not merely as a personal or moral deficiency but as a structural problem rooted in overlapping systems of symbolic, economic, and emotional dependence. The intellectual is unable to act decisively against domination because the conditions of action are themselves compromised. This means that the obstacle to emancipation is not merely a lack of awareness. Indeed, the film implies that subjects may understand domination intellectually while still remaining practically immobilized. Such paralysis arises from the dense entanglement of desire, fear, belonging, obligation, and privilege. In this sense, the film offers a critical meditation on the gap between critique and action. It suggests that ideological insight alone is insufficient when the subject remains embedded in the very order that requires critique. The article concludes that Pir-Pesar portrays domination as a recursive and self-reproducing structure that survives through the participation of those who are subordinated within it. The intellectual, far from standing outside the system, becomes implicated in its continuation. This implication is not simply a matter of hypocrisy or weakness; rather, it reveals how domination secures itself by generating subjects who internalize its logic and help reproduce its legitimacy. The film therefore unsettles any straightforward opposition between ruler and ruled, agent and victim, critic and power. Instead, it reveals a more troubling dynamic in which emancipation is blocked by the structural organization of subjectivity itself. From this perspective, the film’s significance lies in its insistence that critique must address not only institutions and overt structures of power, but also the unconscious attachments and symbolic identifications that make domination durable. Overall, the article argues that Pir-Pesar provides a rich cinematic meditation on the persistence of patriarchal domination, the fragility of the intellectual subject, and the complex entanglement of desire and authority. By combining Lacanian psychoanalysis with Weberian and Bourdieusian social theory, the study demonstrates that domination is reproduced at multiple levels: in psychic identification, in symbolic law, in social hierarchy, and in the internalized acceptance of unequal relations. The film thereby becomes a critical text through which one can examine the failures of emancipation in contemporary social life. Its portrait of the intellectual is especially significant because it reveals a figure who is neither fully external to power nor capable of transcending it. Instead, the intellectual is shown to inhabit a contradictory position, simultaneously aware of domination and entangled in its reproduction. This contradiction, the article suggests, is one of the central political and philosophical problems of the modern subject. پژوهش حاضر به تحلیل بازنمایی سلطه و نسبت روشنفکر با ساختارهای قدرت در فیلم پیرپسر، ساخته اکتای براهانی، می‎پردازد. مسئله اصلی پژوهش، تبیین سازوکارهایی است که فیلم از خلال آنها ناکامی سوژه روشنفکر، استمرار مناسبات پدرسالارانه و بازتولید نظم پاتریمونیال را در بستر روابط خانوادگی، طبقاتی و اجتماعی بازنمایی می‎کند. اهمیت این موضوع ازآن‎روست که فیلم پیرپسر صرفاً روایتی خانوادگی یا روان‎شناختی نیست، بلکه ساختاری نمادین از سلطه را به نمایش می‎گذارد که در آن میل، قانون، خشونت و وابستگی مادی درهم تنیده می‎شوند. هدف پژوهش، تحلیل لایه‎های روانی و گفتمانی فیلم و نشان دادن نسبت میان سه ساحت خیالی، نمادین و واقعی در شکل‎گیری و تداوم قدرت است. پرسش اصلی این است که فیلم‎ساز چگونه از طریق این سه ساحت، شکست کنش روشنفکرانه، اقتدار پدرسالارانه و منطق بازتولید سلطه را صورت‎بندی می‎کند؟ چارچوب نظری پژوهش بر مفاهیم ژاک لاکان1، ازجمله «دیگری بزرگ»، «نامِ پدر»، «میل»، «فقدان» و «ژوئیسانس» استوار است و برای گسترش ظرفیت تحلیلی، با مفهوم پاتریمونیالیسم2 ماکس وبر3 و خشونت نمادین پیر بوردیو4 پیوند داده می‎شود. روش پژوهش کیفی و مبتنی بر تحلیل گفتمانی ـ تفسیری است؛ بدین معنا که فیلم همچون متنی چندلایه خوانده می‎شود که مناسبات سلطه را نه‎فقط در سطح روایت، بلکه در سطح تصویر، شخصیت‎پردازی، روابط خانوادگی و منطق میل بازنمایی می‎کند. در این خوانش، فیلم نه‎تنها به مثابه یک روایت خانوادگی، بلکه به عنوان متنی فرهنگی بررسی می‎شود که در آن نشانه‎ها و جزئیات بصری نیز سازوکار سلطه را آشکار می‎کنند. یافته‎ها نشان می‎دهد در ساحت خیالی، سوژه روشنفکر گرفتار تصویر ایدئال از خویشتن و رقابت‎های نارسیستی است و توان کنش انتقادی او به سطح تعارض‎های فردی تقلیل می‎یابد. در ساحت نمادین، قانون و هنجارها نه به مثابه سازوکار عدالت، بلکه به عنوان ابزار تثبیت اقتدار پدرسالارانه و امتیازهای طبقاتی عمل می‎کنند. در ساحت واقعی، با بروز خشونت، فروپاشی روایت و آشکار شدن شکاف‎های نظم مسلط، امر سرکوب‎شده بازمی‎گردد، اما این بازگشت الزاماً به رهایی منتهی نمی‎شود. نتیجه پژوهش نشان می‎دهد مسئله اصلی در فیلم، فقدان آگاهی نیست، بلکه انسداد ساختاری امکان کنش رهایی‎بخش است. پیرپسر نشان می‎دهد روشنفکر، هنگامی که در شبکه وابستگی‎های نمادین، اقتصادی و عاطفی گرفتار می‎شود، به‎جای گسست از نظم سلطه، ناخواسته در بازتولید آن مشارکت می‎کند.

https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_734340_1d974e3d1744554a0e3327e8b78498cd.pdf