https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/ Rahpooye Honar/Performing Arts en daily 1 Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0330 Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0330 https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_729384.html The study of plot as a central narrative mechanism has long occupied a significant place in literary and cinematic theory. In the realm of cinematic adaptation—where verbal, psychological, and culturally embedded narratives are transposed into the sensorial and temporal language of film—the role of plot becomes even more decisive. Plot functions as the underlying structure through which events are selected, shaped, and arranged in a meaningful order; consequently, it serves as the principal framework that enables an adaptation not merely to transfer content but to reconstruct the meaning of the literary work within the grammar of cinema. The present research investigates this crucial narrative element by examining two well-known Iranian film adaptations by Dariush Mehrjui, Leila (1997) and Mum’s Guest (2004), both of which are rooted in contemporary Persian literature yet reimagined through a sophisticated cinematic lens. Drawing upon Ronald B. Tobias’s widely referenced taxonomy of twenty master plots, the study focuses specifically on the archetypes of “Sacrifice” and “Wretched Excess” as the analytical foundation for investigating narrative transformation in the selected films. In Leila, adapted from Mahnaz Ansarian’s novel, the plot of “Sacrifice” forms the emotional and structural backbone of the story. Leila’s gradual psychological dissolution in the face of infertility and social pressure exemplifies a culturally nuanced interpretation of sacrifice—one that is neither heroic nor ostentatious, but rooted in silence, emotional repression, and self-effacement. In Mum’s Guest, adapted from Houshang Moradi-Kermani’s novella, the plot of “Wretched Excess” structures the narrative around the intensification of socio-economic hardship, emotional strain, and the collapse of domestic order. A seemingly simple family visit evolves into a sequence of escalating crises that combine social critique with bitter humor. This research adopts a descriptive–analytical methodology with a comparative approach. Primary data were gathered through close readings of the original literary texts and systematic viewing and analysis of the corresponding films. Secondary data were collected through library research, focusing on adaptation theory, narrative theory, and critical sources related to the works of Mehrjui. The three-act structure—setup, confrontation, and resolution—was used as a structural lens to examine how Tobias’s archetypal patterns manifest across both literary and cinematic versions. By comparing key narrative moments in each film with their literary counterparts, the study aims to identify how plot functions as both a structural guide and a meaning-producing force in adaptation. The theoretical framework integrates classic narrative theory (informed by figures such as Vladimir Propp, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gérard Genette) with contemporary adaptation studies. Tobias’s archetypal approach is particularly relevant, as it offers a cross-cultural lens for understanding narrative patterns that persist across media. Additionally, insights from Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation and Roland Barthes’s structural analysis provide further grounding, enabling a nuanced examination of how literary narrative functions undergo transformation when re-encoded into filmic form. The findings reveal that Leila exemplifies a structurally coherent and psychologically resonant interpretation of the “Sacrifice” archetype. Mehrjui maintains fidelity to the core emotional trajectory of the source text, yet he reconstructs this trajectory through visual minimalism, pregnant silences, and a subdued dramatic rhythm. The plot progresses not through action but through the incremental intensification of internal conflict. Leila’s infertility operates as both a narrative catalyst and a psychological rupture; the pressure imposed by her mother-in-law becomes a symbolic mechanism that exposes tensions between modern individualism and traditional expectations. By using close-up shots, muted color palettes, and temporally stretched scenes of contemplation, Mehrjui translates the interior monologue of the novel into a visual language that amplifies the emotional weight of sacrifice. The narrative arc culminates in Leila’s self-effacing withdrawal from her marital life—a resolution that preserves the tragic dignity of her choice while emphasizing the cultural structures that shape it. In contrast, Mum’s Guest shows how the “Wretched Excess” archetype can be used to create a humorous, chaotic, and poignant narrative. The plot progresses through the cumulative intensification of everyday hardships. The arrival of unexpected guests destabilizes the household’s fragile equilibrium and triggers a chain of escalating problems, including financial limitations, social anxieties, and domestic tensions. Through cramped interior spaces, overlapping dialogue, handheld camerawork, and the portrayal of a collective struggle in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, Mehrjui creates a cinematic world in which each event propels the characters toward emotional and situational excess. Nonetheless, the film retains the signature warmth of Moradi-Kermani’s writing: humor emerges organically from hardship, and dignity is preserved even amid chaos. The resolution, marked by the mother’s collapse and subsequent recovery, reflects a bittersweet acceptance rather than a triumphant restoration of order. The plot’s return to a fragile stability mirrors the cyclical nature of hardship in everyday life. Comparative analysis indicates that Mehrjui’s adaptations do not merely replicate literary narratives but actively reinterpret them through the affordances of cinema. In both films, plot functions not simply as a sequence of events but as a cultural and psychological matrix that shapes characters, governs emotional logic, and frames moral dilemmas. The plot archetype in each film serves as a structural spine and a thematic engine: sacrifice in Leila foregrounds issues of gender, agency, and traditional authority; excess in Mum’s Guest foregrounds poverty, social solidarity, and the tension between appearance and reality. Through these archetypes, Mehrjui engages with broader questions: How does an individual negotiate identity within restrictive cultural frameworks? How does a community preserve human dignity in the face of economic precarity? The research concludes that the success of Mehrjui’s adaptations lies in his ability to preserve the narrative integrity of the literary sources while reshaping their structures to suit cinematic expression. The archetypal approach not only enhances the coherence of the film narratives but also deepens their emotional resonance. The study demonstrates that Tobias’s master plots offer a powerful tool for understanding how narrative patterns traverse media and cultures. Crucially, the findings suggest that applying a plot-archetype lens can illuminate the mechanics of narrative adaptation in Iranian cinema more broadly. As such, this research provides a methodological model for future studies of adaptation, encouraging analyses that foreground structural and cultural dimensions of narrative alongside thematic and visual considerations. The implications of this study extend beyond the two films examined. They highlight the value of integrating narratological analysis with cultural contextualization in adaptation studies. Plot archetypes, though universal in structure, gain specificity through cultural embodiment. The way Leila mobilizes sacrifice reflects Iranian social norms surrounding marriage, fertility, and female agency. The way Mum’s Guest mobilizes wretched excess reflects communal values of hospitality, collective struggle, and the symbolic weight of social appearance. In both cases, Mehrjui’s cinema demonstrates how adaptation involves negotiation between universality and locality, between narrative form and cultural meaning. The study also underscores the importance of silence, gesture, and visual metaphor in cinematic transpositions of psychologically dense literary texts. While novels articulate interiority through verbal description, films must rely on stylistic strategies—composition, rhythm, and performance—to evoke inner worlds. In Leila, the predominance of close framing, repetitive domestic rituals, and wordless contemplation creates a cinematic equivalent of psychological monologue. In Mum’s Guest, the dynamic ensemble performance, rapid editing, and spatial clutter externalize emotional overwhelm. Thus, plot in cinematic adaptation is inseparable from film style; narrative archetype shapes not only the story but also its audiovisual expression. Overall, this extended abstract demonstrates that the study of plot archetypes provides a meaningful theoretical and analytical framework for understanding how adaptations negotiate fidelity, creativity, and cultural specificity. Mehrjui’s Leila and Mum’s Guest exemplify two distinct but equally rich modalities of adaptation: one inward, psychological, and tragically restrained; the other outward, communal, and dynamically chaotic. In both cases, the films reveal how Iranian filmmakers can use archetypal plot structures to reinterpret literary works in ways that speak to contemporary social realities. Future research may extend this approach to other adaptations in Iranian cinema, thereby contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of narrative transformation in the cultural and cinematic landscape of Iran. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_729897.html Improvisation, as one of the most vital epistemological indicators within the realm of the arts, represents not merely a performative practice but a profound manifestation of human cognition and creativity. Beyond the realm of objective entities, improvisation is inherently tied to the subjective consciousness of the creator. It symbolizes the transformation of perception into artistic expression—a reflection of the artist’s inner process rather than an external replication of the world. Historically, improvisation has occupied a central role in numerous artistic traditions, serving as a bridge between learned structures and spontaneous creation. Within the Azerbaijani Ashiq art, this tradition emerges as both a performative methodology and a cognitive act that embodies generations of cultural wisdom, oral heritage, and performative adaptability. The tradition of Ashiq art in Azerbaijan—a synthesis of music, poetry, and performance—has long been recognized as an organic art form deeply intertwined with folkloric narrative, communal expression, and spiritual creativity. Within this tradition, improvisation acts as the axis around which the performer’s identity, emotional intelligence, and communicative competence revolve. It is both a method of creation and a philosophy of performance, reflecting the artist’s capacity to respond to the dynamics of the audience, the fluidity of emotion, and the ever-changing context of the performance event. The Ashiq does not merely reproduce learned forms; rather, he reinterprets them in real time, merging memory, intuition, and technical mastery. The present research centers on examining the phenomenon of improvisation as an ancient performative tradition specifically within Azerbaijani Ashiq practices, employing Richard Schechner’s theory of performance art as the theoretical lens. Schechner’s model identifies six learnable and trainable performer skills: restoration of behavior, transportation and transformation, training of concentration, management of physical energy, relationship to the audience, and interplay between ritual and play. This model provides a robust framework for viewing improvisation as a structured cognitive and embodied process, rather than a random or accidental act, cultivated through practice and education. The research question, therefore, seeks to explore how does the tradition of improvisation, when examined through Schechner’s performance theory, become crystallized within Ashiq art as practiced in Azerbaijani folklore. This study employs a qualitative methodology with an applied purpose, adopting a descriptive-analytical approach while drawing upon extensive library resources, including scholarly articles, ethnographic records, and academic theses. The analysis proceeds in two stages: first, it identifies the ways in which improvisation manifests and operates in Ashiq performance; second, it interprets these occurrences in light of Schechner’s theoretical framework. Through this dual approach, the research elucidates both the structural and the phenomenological dimensions of improvisation, presenting it as a performative model that integrates technical skill, spiritual awareness, and social interaction. Findings reveal that the practice of improvisation among Azerbaijani Ashiqs cannot be confined to a single artistic dimension. It rather represents a multifaceted synthesis of music, performance, dance, and literature, functioning as an adaptive mechanism that allows the artist to navigate between fixed forms and spontaneous innovation. Ashiqs begin their performances with learned repertoires derived from the Dastan (epic poetry) tradition, yet within the moment of enactment they continuously adjust the tone, rhythm, and verbal content of their performance according to the audience’s emotional response, the spatial atmosphere of the gathering, and the interpersonal energies that unfold during the event. This dynamic responsiveness constitutes the essence of improvisation—an embodiment of creativity that is both learned and lived. From Schechner’s perspective, the Ashiq’s improvisation reveals the interplay between training and transformation. The performer’s training provides a foundational grammar of behavior—mastery over narrative structures, musical modes (makams), prosody, and gestural expression. However, in real-time performance, this grounded knowledge transforms into a living and adaptive behavior, modulated by intuition and emotional resonance. The Ashiq thus becomes both a transmitter and a transformer of cultural memory, performing what Schechner terms the ‘restored behavior,’ where learned patterns are revived, reinterpreted, and reactivated in the immediate present. The research also elucidates the educational and cognitive layers underlying improvisation. Ashiqs undergo a long-term apprenticeship that involves not only musical skill but also moral, emotional, and intellectual formation. This holistic process cultivates key performative dispositions such as trust in one’s inner impulses, release from overcontrol, acceptance of uncertainty, attunement to audience feedback, and the courage to explore creative deviations. These dimensions, which correspond to psychological preparedness as much as technical readiness, align strongly with Schechner’s six performative skills—particularly those concerning spontaneity, concentration, and nonverbal communication. Improvisation here becomes a reflection of what Schechner calls a ‘double consciousness’—the ability of the performer to remain simultaneously within the flow of the act and aware of its formal control. Further findings demonstrate that improvisation in Ashiq performance operates within a context of communicative reciprocity. The Ashiq gauges the emotional temperature of the assembly (majlis), interpreting subtle nonverbal signals from listeners while adapting tone and tempo to maintain engagement. This constant feedback loop between performer and audience transforms each performance into a co-creative process. Moreover, improvisation acts as a narrative mechanism where story, melody, and gesture merge into a unified expressive act, allowing folkloric narratives to remain alive, fluid, and responsive to contemporary social experiences. The study highlights several key components that characterize Ashiqs’ improvisational technique: 1. Trust and Release: The performer cultivates a state of psychological openness, trusting instinct and allowing spontaneous expression to emerge. 2. Acceptance and Adaptation: Improvisation thrives on the ability to embrace unplanned circumstances, including audience reactions or instrumental variations. 3. Active Listening and Attention: The Ashiq listens not only to the audience but also to his own rhythmic and emotional flow, practicing deep auditory awareness. 4. Narrative Fluency: Storytelling becomes an elastic form where lyrical and musical invention interact dynamically. 5. Nonverbal Communication: Gestural nuances, body movement, and eye contact play a crucial role in synchronizing the poetic and emotional layers of performance. By aligning these components with Schechner’s theoretical skills, the study concludes that improvisation in Ashiq art should be understood as a disciplined spontaneity—not a break from structure but a sophisticated engagement with it. Improvisation functions as a meta-skill that synthesizes learned technique and creative intuition, mediating between the personal agency of the performer and the collective memory embedded in the art form. The implications of this research extend beyond the specific domain of Azerbaijani folklore. Given its composite nature, improvisation as practiced by Ashiqs can serve as a pedagogical model for performance education, encouraging adaptability, emotional intelligence, and embodied awareness in various artistic disciplines. Its potential applications encompass performance training, artistic production, and comparative cultural studies, especially in contexts where oral traditions intersect with contemporary performative practices. The study thereby contributes to understanding improvisation not as mere ornamentation or contingency but as a fundamental epistemology of art-making—one that merges intellect, emotion, and body into a unified creative experience. In conclusion, the tradition of improvisation in Azerbaijani Ashiq art, when analyzed through Schechner’s performance theory, embodies the living continuity of art as a process rather than a product. It exemplifies how performative knowledge is transmitted through experiential learning and situational responsiveness. The Ashiq becomes a living archive of social and aesthetic consciousness, transforming inherited structures into immediate acts of creation. Therefore, improvisation—blending trust, release, acceptance, attentiveness, storytelling, and nonverbal dialogue—can be conceptualized as both a model and a methodology for the education, production, and performance of the arts in broader cultural contexts. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_728989.html This study attempts to clarify the place of painting in Sergei Parajanov’s cinema. He is one of the influential directors in the world of cinema who, influenced by religious ideas as well as intellectual and cognitive perceptions of Armenian culture, language, and history, has created works of art in the field of cinema. One of these works is the film ‘The Color of the Pomegranate,’ which is the subject of this study. This film, like other world cinema circles, is also particularly famous in Iran. The present study has been conducted with a descriptive-analytical approach in accordance with the requirements of its subject. By referring to various domestic sources, it can be seen that unfortunately little research has been done on this subject, or it has not been addressed independently; the research that has been done has been either solely in the field of cinema art or solely in the field of Sergei Parajanov’s artistry as a painter. In this study, while introducing Parajanov’s personality in various artistic dimensions such as painting, poetry, and cinema, Armenian history, culture, and civilization have also been introduced. Although the film ‘The Color of Pomegranate’ is specifically introduced in this study, we also get to know his other artistic and cinematic works, especially from the perspective of visual values, which is the main goal of this article. By studying and considering all of Parajanov’s works, we realize a single spirit and an integrated whole, all of which show a deep meaning influenced by the aforementioned history and culture. In addition, in the process of conducting this research, by utilizing the diverse and rich sources of Armenian folk and visual culture in the film ‘The Color of Pomegranate,’ we further understand the connection between the visual values ​​of painting and cinema in Parajanov’s works. Considering the small number of sources on the subject of the research and by carefully examining and analyzing the works of Sergei Parajanov—both his paintings and his cinematic works—results were obtained that show the importance of the connection between the art of painting and cinema even more than before. The main question of the research is, what kind of relationships exist between Parajanov’s paintings and cinematic works? In answering this question, most attention has been paid to his outstanding work, ‘The Color of Pomegranate.’ Sergei Parajanov is a film director who has a valuable class and position in the world. To accurately and correctly address his artistic personality, one must look at both his production works and his other works, such as paintings. Various studies have shown that there is a close and defined connection between his paintings and his cinematic works, which has given both of his works distinctive characteristics and status. It should be noted that without paying attention to one of the two aspects mentioned, it may not be possible to achieve a correct and acceptable analysis. Therefore, in the present research, an attempt has been made to examine all the fields and areas related to this issue. In addition to the considerations and studies of all of his visual, literary, and written works, the views and published writings of others in this regard have also been addressed. In this article, we will get acquainted with all of his arts, including painting and cinema, and especially the film ‘The Color of Pomegranate.’ Sergei Parajanov, an Armenian director, holds a prominent place in the history of world cinema. His works, including ‘The Color of the Pomegranate,’ were produced with the benefit of Armenian popular and visual culture. This film was clearly influenced by the visual values ​​of painting and its schools. This film has strong visual symbolic support. It should be noted that the art of painting and the art of cinema have much in common in various aspects of aesthetics and visual language. Certainly, addressing it will strengthen both artistic fields. In addition to cinematography, Parajanov is known for his graphic and visual works, especially visual and volumetric collages. Since childhood, he was fascinated by ethnic affiliations such as dance, music, and painting. “Sergey’s completed films, unfinished films, and even unrealized projects testify to his respect for myths, ancient traditions, legends, and his penchant for the supernatural” (Galastyan, 82: 1400). Parajanov has four feature films and nine short films in his filmography; among his documentaries, two have received the most attention; they are about two painters. The first one, made in Armenia and named ‘Hakob Honatanian,’ is about an Armenian painter living in Tbilisi in the 19th century, and the second one, made in Georgia and named ‘Arabesques of Pirosmani,’ is about a Georgian painter of Armenian descent. In his article titled “An Artist Determined to Save Beauty,” Siranush Galestian introduces Parajanov’s four feature films as follows: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964), Sayat-Nava or the Color of Pomegranates (1969), Suram Castle (1985), and Strange Lover (1988). The elements of aesthetics in cinema have similarities with the elements of aesthetics in painting. Alain Rabegri believes that cinematic forms and shapes can create a reality or perceive content from within it; this makes cinema an art. In this context, there are important common elements between cinema and painting that make cinema of particular importance. On the other hand, cinema is a language that is understood through signs and images, and the concept of cinema aesthetics begins from the point where the breaking of time and space is achieved through technique. By examining and analyzing mise-en-scène in the expressive meaning of the image, we finally arrive at a clear and lucid understanding of the film. Therefore, the importance of mise-en-scène is that it makes us understand the phenomena behind it through images. The research theory is related to Clive Bell’s ‘aesthetic hypothesis’ in the first chapter of his book Art, where he writes, “The common attribute of all works of art is meaningful form” (Bakhtiarian, 2014: 111). He goes on to clarify that in pure aesthetics, there is no need to “peek into the mental state of its creator” (Bakhtiarian, 2014: 113). From Bell’s perspective, meaningful form is the only characteristic feature of art that also stimulates and evokes a certain ‘aesthetic emotion’ in the audience. Clive Bell considered Cézanne’s works to be the supreme example of painting and believed that his works contained meaningful form. According to Bell, Post-Impressionist painters largely ignored realistic representation and copying in their works, and therefore, Bell had found meaningful form in their art. According to Clive Bell, the beginning of all aesthetic systems is based on a personal experience of a specific feeling, and objects that generate aesthetic feelings are considered works of art. From Bell’s perspective, although all works of art cause a specific feeling in the audience, different works of art do not create the same feeling in the audience. According to him, all aesthetic feelings are of the same type. Of course, Bell has limited this type of aesthetic feeling to works of visual arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture, and the like. According to Bell, finding the common feature of objects that generate aesthetic feelings is the main problem of aesthetics. This feature is the distinguishing feature of works of art from other non-artistic objects. Bell considers the reason for classifying works of art and distinguishing them from other classes of objects to be the existence of a special and unique attribute and characteristic that belongs to the class of works of art. He considers this unique and special attribute to be an inherent rather than a contingent attribute. According to Bell, a work of art without such a unique and special attribute is worthless and cannot be considered a work of art. Bell introduces this common attribute as ‘meaningful form,’ and he explains this meaningful form as the combination and relationships between forms, colors, and lines that stimulate the aesthetic feelings of the audience. According to Bell, who largely limits his definition of meaningful form to the visual arts, the relationships and combinations between forms in works of art (meaningful form) are the unique and common characteristic and attribute of works of art. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_729078.html Female playwrights have often attempted to reflect less-discussed social issues and the psychological complexities of women in their works, serving as a mirror to these concerns. The study and examination of women’s works reveal aspects of their personalities and lives that may have been overlooked or neglected by male critics and authors. This article aims to analyze the feminine contradictions in the first play written by an English woman, Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, highlighting the female archetypes presented in the play. Elizabeth Cary, considering the background of female images in the history of drama and the Renaissance period, created several female characters in The Tragedy of Mariam whose actions and dialogues are unprecedented in comparison to contemporary works. The study uses Leslie Ferris’s feminine archetypes to classify the female contradictions and examine the female characters in the dramatic world. Ferris identifies five female archetypes: the patient prostitute, the silenced heroine, the headstrong woman, the golden girl, and the woman playing male roles. This research finds that Cary resolves the conflicts and contradictions among these female archetypes only through death and annihilation. The play is set in the Renaissance period, when patriarchal structures became more systematic through religion. The characters of Salome and Alexandra embody the headstrong and masculine woman, while Graphina represents the patient prostitute, Doris the golden girl, and Mariam the silenced heroine and headstrong woman. Elaine Beilin, in her article “Elizabeth Cary and The Tragedy of Mariam,” suggests that Cary, influenced by her religious beliefs and studies, aims to create a Christian figure in Mariam. Mariam’s dignified death is akin to Christ’s crucifixion, sorrowful yet redemptive. Considering the time period in which Cary lived, it’s not surprising that she may have identified with male authors, scholars, and prophets, or at least subscribed to the notion of women as inherently flawed. The husband’s dominance over the woman, a concern of the author, is evident in Herod’s abandonment of his first wife and his remarriage, contrasted with Salome’s lack of right to divorce. At first glance, Salome’s character in The Tragedy of Mariam appears to be a stereotypical femme fatale, responsible for the downfall of the play’s hero, Mariam. However, upon closer examination, particularly considering the author’s personal life, it becomes clear that Salome represents a facet of the author’s own inner conflict. Salome embodies the author’s desire to challenge patriarchal dominance, as evident in her own struggles with her husband and family. The author’s daughter notes that her father was a strict patriarch, and although her mother was strong-willed, she had learned to acquiesce to his demands. The need to appease her father often took precedence, and the author’s own experiences as an intellectual woman, mother, and caregiver to eleven children led to feelings of stress, depression, and a reliance on sleep as an escape.  As we know, Christianity, like Judaism and other Abrahamic religions, although promoting monogamy as the ideal family structure, citing Adam and Eve as a model, and criticizing polygamy in the Hebrew Bible, allows men to remarry if they can provide financially and justly. Similarly, the Torah and Talmud grant this right to Jewish men. In the play, there are several references to the Ten Commandments, highlighting the biblical context. The female author’s dissatisfaction with this issue is expressed through Doris’s words, where she accuses Mariam of complicity in betrayal, and Mariam defends herself by citing the law. In this context, Mariam can be seen as a figure who takes upon herself the burden of women’s sins, much like Christ, and is thus sacrificed. Cary’s struggles with her faith are well-documented, and her eventual conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism is significant. The Catholic tradition places greater emphasis on the Virgin Mary, and it’s possible that Cary sought to reclaim and reimagine the feminine divine. Mariam’s rejection of Herod’s love and her defiance in the second half of the play can be seen as a form of rebellion, a deliberate attempt by Cary to subvert the traditional portrayal of women as submissive and obedient. This reinterpretation of the female protagonist is a testament to Cary’s innovative and bold storytelling. The play portrays women as enemies of each other, reflecting the society of Cary’s time. The fluidity of the main character, Mariam, among these female archetypes highlights the complexity of female contradictions. This study introduces Elizabeth Cary and highlights the significance of her work, offering insights into the feminine perspective in drama and theater, valuable for researchers in literature, theater, women’s studies, and sociology. The Renaissance period provided an opportunity for upper-class women to pursue education and knowledge alongside men. Many institutions and families collected books and created personal libraries, allowing women to access new ideas and experiences. As a result, women began to create and write about their inner and outer worlds in various forms, such as stories, plays, and travelogues. However, for centuries, even the few women who managed to write and be active in the literary world were overshadowed by male writers and scholars. With the emergence of women’s studies, particularly from the mid-1970s, a revisionist historiography sought to rediscover and introduce these women writers, reviving their works and bringing them out of obscurity. Elizabeth Cary’s works, including The Tragedy of Mariam, were among those rediscovered and studied for the first time. This play was translated into Persian in 2020, introducing Cary to Iranian scholars and artists. Our study analyzes the female characters in Cary’s play, using Leslie Ferris’s theories to examine the conflicts and contradictions among women in the play. Before delving into the analysis, it is essential to introduce Elizabeth Cary and Leslie Ferris’s theories, providing a foundation for understanding their contributions to the dramatic discourse in Iran. The Tragedy of Mariam begins with the false news of Herod’s death, which triggers a series of illicit relationships and betrayals among those around him. Mariam, Herod’s second wife, confesses that she never loved him, despite his obsessive love for her. When Herod returns, his sister Salome, who is promiscuous and treacherous, plots against Mariam and spreads rumors about her infidelity. The play explores the complexities of female relationships and the societal expectations placed upon women during the Renaissance period. The play’s portrayal of female relationships is complex, with women often pitting themselves against each other. The character of Mariam is particularly noteworthy, as she navigates the societal expectations placed upon her and struggles to assert her agency. The play ultimately ends with Mariam’s death, which is orchestrated by Salome. The play suggests that the societal constraints placed upon women during this period lead to their downfall and that women’s agency is often suppressed. The analysis highlights the ways in which the play portrays the tensions and contradictions faced by women during the Renaissance period and how these tensions ultimately lead to tragic consequences. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_730650.html This study aims to explore how the socio‑cultural conditions of the 2010s—the 1390s in the Iranian calendar—shaped the thematic, narrative, and symbolic structures of contemporary Iranian short screenplays. The research is founded on the assumption that the short screenplay, as an autonomous yet understudied narrative form, reflects the hidden layers of cultural experience and the creative consciousness of a new generation of Iranian filmmakers. Rather than merely recording reality, these short scripts function as interpretive constructs through which social anxieties, generational disillusionment, and transformations in everyday life are encoded into symbolic cinematic language. The significance of the study stems from the short screenplay’s position as both a cultural product and a vehicle of critical expression. During the 2010s, Iranian society witnessed a period of intensified economic strain, digital expansion, and ideological fragmentation following the political unrest of the previous decade. These rapid changes fostered new sensibilities among young artists who grappled with constraints of censorship, unemployment, and shifting values. In this context, the short screenplay evolved into a hybrid arena where aesthetic experimentation collided with socio‑political awareness. Its concise form, reliance on visual signifiers, and openness to metaphor made it an ideal site to capture the tensions between hope and despair, conformity and dissent, silence and expression. While much scholarship on Iranian cinema has concentrated on feature films or auteur figures, the short screenplay offers distinct insights into the micro‑politics of culture. Its production is typically independent, low‑budget, and festival‑oriented; yet precisely such marginality enables writers to articulate new voices outside institutional structures. These works reveal how a generation trained in digital literacy and social media platforms reimagines storytelling through condensed and elliptical narratives. They translate collective unease into brief but resonant vignettes that mirror the fragmentation of social space and the dispersal of meaning in urban life. The short screenplay, therefore, becomes a unique archive of contemporary cultural imagination. Methodologically, the research follows a qualitative content analysis approach within an interpretive constructivist paradigm. A purposive sample of five notable short fiction screenplays from the 2010s—Hayvan (The Animal), Sorahi (The Ewer), Ghomarbaz (The Gambler), Retouch, and Korsoo—was selected. These works were chosen based on their festival recognition, critical reception, and thematic diversity, representing varied artistic reactions to similar socio‑cultural contexts. Data gathering relied on documentary and library‑based sources, complemented by textual analysis. The collected data were coded and classified into analytical tables focusing on narrative structure, characterization, symbolism, and ideological subtext. The theoretical framework integrates three complementary perspectives: 1- Saussure’s structuralism, emphasizing the relational nature of signifiers and the system of meaning; 2- Bourdieu’s post‑structural sociology, particularly his notions of field and cultural capital; and 3- Marcuse’s theory of critical individualism, which positions imagination as a force of resistance against one‑dimensional rationality. This interdisciplinary model enables the study to read short screenplays not as isolated artistic artifacts but as nodes within a network of cultural production and negotiation. The findings highlight recurring thematic patterns: family disintegration, migration, moral decay, routine monotony, and identity crisis. However, it is not only the content but also the form that embodies these conditions. Narrative brevity, fragmented chronology, detached tone, and open endings represent a symbolic mode through which uncertainty and constraint are dramatized. Characters are often trapped between external authority and internal paralysis, revealing a consciousness shaped by conflicting values. Everyday objects—a pair of glasses, an animal mask, an empty room, or a wilting plant—function as visual motifs through which authors communicate silence, loss, and aspiration. The “economy of metaphor” that governs such scripts allows meaning to circulate through gestures, colors, and pauses rather than dialogue, producing an aesthetics of suggestion and ambiguity. The research also demonstrates that these screenwriters employ indirect discourse and elliptical storytelling as strategies of survival under institutional surveillance. Their use of minimal dialogue, spatial limitation, and symbolic framing transforms restriction into creativity. The visual landscapes—urban apartments, small shops, rooftops, border zones—echo the characters’ psychological confinement and the fragmented geography of modern Iran. In line with Bourdieu’s field theory, the short screenplay exists in a semi‑autonomous space between state‑regulated production and global festival circulation, reflecting both dependency and subversion. The act of writing itself becomes a negotiation of power where young authors struggle to maintain authenticity while achieving visibility. From the lens of critical individualism, the study interprets these works as expressions of both alienation and agency. Although despair, fatigue, and resignation permeate their atmosphere, moments of ethical choice or aesthetic clarity mark possibilities of emancipation. For instance, the portrayal of a quiet moral gesture—the return of an object, an unspoken refusal, a hesitant act of compassion—operates as a counter‑narrative to social cynicism. Here imagination acquires a redemptive function: it challenges the status quo not through overt confrontation but through subtle re‑humanization of experience. The symbolic register of these screenplays thus serves as an implicit social critique, proposing sensibility and empathy as forms of cultural resistance. Furthermore, the analysis reveals the intricate relation between form, ideology, and audience. The open‑ended structures invite viewers to participate in meaning‑making, transforming spectators into co‑interpreters rather than passive consumers. This dialogic quality, reinforced by the frequent use of silence and visual understatement, aligns with post‑structural principles that emphasize plurality and interpretive freedom. The ambiguity sustained throughout these narratives does not signal confusion but an intentional strategy to reflect the instability of truth in a society where official discourse often suppresses complexity. In discussing the socio‑historical impact, the research observes how the aftermath of economic sanctions, the rise of informal labor markets, and the digital reconfiguration of public space all find symbolic resonance in character portrayals. The weary workers, disoriented youth, religious novices, and aging loners populate these scripts as embodiments of a collective psychosocial fatigue. Yet, rather than surrendering to despair, the short form’s imaginative condensation turns limitation into lucidity—the capacity to distill large realities into small, precise moments of significance. This artistic minimalism resonates with Marcuse’s belief that true freedom emerges in moments when art detaches from functionality and reclaims its utopian tension. The study concludes that the Iranian short screenplay of the 2010s occupies a crucial intersection between cultural determinism and creative autonomy. It encapsulates the dialectic of adaptation and resistance: how young writers internalize social crisis yet transform it into reflective art. By mobilizing symbolic language and structural experimentation, their works reveal both the wounds and the wisdom of a generation navigating uncertainty. The short screenplay, though brief in duration, operates as a microcosm of collective memory—a mirror that refracts despair into imagination and critique. Ultimately, the research underscores that the short screenplay’s artistic and cultural potential exceeds its scale. Through its economy of form and depth of emotion, it articulates the shifting moral landscapes of Iranian society and offers renewed possibilities for social reflection. Structuralism elucidates the pattern of signs, post‑structuralism exposes the play of power within meaning, and critical individualism retrieves the emancipatory energy of imagination. Together they illustrate how cultural conditions inform the syntax of storytelling and how storytelling, in turn, reimagines culture itself. In sum, the decade of the 2010s should not be read merely as a period of socio‑economic fatigue but as a moment of creative re‑awakening within the margins of art. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_729259.html The film A Cube of Sugar by Reza Mirkarimi, which was screened in 2010, is one of the most acclaimed films in domestic and foreign festivals. In addition to receiving awards from the Fajr Film Festival, the film also represented Iranian cinema in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 85th Academy Awards. Most of the research conducted on the film has often focused on the obvious level of its cultural signs and meanings, and as a result, the underlying layers of signs, symbols, and cultural codes have not been explored as they should be. The purpose of this article is to answer the question of what broader and larger cultural meanings and discourses are represented and conveyed to the viewer behind the film’s nostalgic look at Iranian culture and traditions. The present study, with an approach based on cultural studies and Fisk’s semiotic approach that emphasizes the codes of reality, representation, and ideology, has explored and analyzed the film A Cube of Sugar and its broader discourses. In addition, the aforementioned film has been analyzed based on Stuart Hall’s three positions in reading the text, including reading media products. The three readings considered by Hall are the preferred reading, the consensual reading, and the conflicting reading. The findings of the present study indicated that, behind the representations of wedding rituals as well as funerals and mourning ceremonies in Iranian culture and traditions in the film A Cube of Sugar, aspects of myth-making and an ideological discourse regarding the past are also evident in the film’s portrayal. In addition, by preferring, highlighting, and praising the traditional lifestyle and its values ​​and rejecting life in a contradictory and contemporary way, the film mythologizes the traditional life and lifestyle of the older generation. Besides, in its cultural narrative of the two families of the bride and groom, the film portrays the bride’s family as representing the traditions of Iranian culture and the groom’s family as representing the manifestations of modernity and Western life, and in this way, it presents an ideological and polarized representation of us who are good and them who are bad. The filmmaker’s attitude towards us, who are the bride’s family, is positive, and towards them, who are the groom’s family and have chosen a modern life, is negative. The Cube of Sugar is also important in at least two other aspects. First, the film can be classified as a “national cinema” film in terms of its emphasis on displaying our cultural traditions in holding two wedding ceremonies and a funeral and indirectly promoting a native and nostalgic discourse of Iranian traditions and customs in contrast to today’s modern and “non-native” culture. The Cube of Sugar is entirely dedicated to representing the objective and subjective elements of ancient Iranian culture and customs for viewers of both old and new generations. In this way, it is a film that also fits within the framework of the country’s cultural and cinematic policies. In this macro-policy, artists are encouraged to familiarize the new generation with ancient Iranian-Islamic culture and customs, in contrast to the global and Western “uniformizing” culture, and to prevent a generational gap in this regard. With these considerations, it can be said that A Cube of Sugar is a worthy film as it honors Iranian values ​​and traditions and reminds the Iranian viewer of them through the “language of cinema.” The fact that this film, as a work aiming to represent aspects of Iranian-Islamic social and cultural traditions through the depiction of two ceremonies—weddings and funerals—in the cultural geography of the city of Yazd, raises the question of how successful it has been in this regard and what discourse it promotes, makes the film unique in its kind and worthy of research and study. The present study is based on semiotics, and among the various approaches to semiotics and cultural analysis, John Fisk’s semiotics has been considered. The choice of Fisk and Hartley’s semiotics better illuminates the way of representation and meaning creation and also the way of “transmitting meaning” in the film A Cube of Sugar and has deeper insights. In Fisk’s semiotic analysis, a media text and its codes operate in a hierarchical and complex structure, and these codes are already explicitly or implicitly encoded in the film/television. Fisk’s three codes, which are completely simplified for analysis in this article, are the codes of reality, representation, and the level of ideology. The sequences were selected according to the research questions and with “purposive” sampling and examined through the three levels of Fisk’s semiotics mentioned above. The reading and analysis of this film has also been based on Stuart Hall’s three positions in “Reading the Text.” Hall identifies three ‘positions’ for the ‘reading/decoding’ of a text by the audience or analyst: The first position is a hegemonic one, in which the code appears natural and transparent, and the reader accepts the preferred reading intended by the producer of the text. The second is a negotiated/compromising reading, in which the reader, while more or less agreeing with the producer’s position and accepting their preferred reading to some extent, also resists it and interprets it in a way that reflects their own position, experiences, and interests rather than those of the producer. The third position is an oppositional reading. In this reading, the audience, based on their own understanding and social position, opposes the dominant codes of the text’s producers and reveals meanings beyond the preferred position of the text’s creator. In other words, the audience disagrees with the ‘preferred’ code of the text and attempts, in engaging with the text, to establish an alternative interpretive framework. Despite all that has been said, it should not be overlooked that, historically and geographically, Iran has always been a multi-ethnic and multicultural land. What has preserved this cultural diversity over time is the culture and ‘national identity,’ which manifests itself in various rituals, customs, and traditions. The capacity of cinema to represent the culture and national identity of different communities is so significant that this potential is recognized in virtually all countries, and nearly every nation has sought to incorporate its national culture and traditions into film and cinema as a widespread cultural subject. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_731936.html Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, offers a profound rethinking of the relationship between human beings, technology, and art. In his seminal essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’ Heidegger challenges the conventional, instrumental definition of technology as a mere collection of neutral tools or means to human ends. Instead, he presents a deeper ontological analysis, claiming that technology is a distinct mode of revealing or unconcealment (aletheia) of Being. He argues that modern technology discloses the world through a particular framework called enframing (Gestell), a mode in which everything, including nature and humanity itself, is revealed only as a resource to be controlled, stored, and optimized. Enframing is not merely a physical system or a set of devices, but a mode of understanding the world—a metaphysical disposition that transforms beings into standing-reserve (Bestand), available for manipulation. This shift in the essence of revealing conceals the deeper truth of Being, reducing it to calculability and efficiency. Consequently, the human subject is no longer a sovereign agent using tools but becomes enmeshed in the technological system, subject to the very logic of utility it sought to command. Heidegger’s analysis destabilizes the comforting narrative of human mastery over technology, showing instead that technology masters us by shaping the horizon of our understanding. This insight situates Heidegger within a broader tradition of twentieth-century critiques of modernity, alongside thinkers such as Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse, and, later, post-humanist theorists, yet Heidegger’s ontological focus makes his critique unique. In stark contrast to this technological mode of revealing, Heidegger turns to art, and specifically to the work of art, as another essential way in which truth can emerge. In his essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ Heidegger investigates the essence of the artwork not from the standpoint of aesthetics, representation, or cultural value, but as a site of ontological disclosure. A genuine artwork, he suggests, opens a clearing in which the truth of Being can shine forth. Art, therefore, is not merely about beauty or expression—it is about the unconcealment of the world and our place within it. Whereas technology tends to level all things into resources and eliminate their mystery and singularity, art can bring forth the strangeness and depth of things, preserving their ambiguity and richness. Heidegger famously describes this as the struggle between earth and world within the artwork: earth, representing the concealed and sheltering aspects of Being, and world, representing the organized and meaningful context in which beings appear. The artwork stages this dynamic tension and, through it, reveals a mode of Being not captured by technological rationality. This paper examines the fundamental confrontation between technology and art as two divergent paths of revealing in the modern age. From a Heideggerian perspective, it seeks to illuminate the existential and ontological stakes of this opposition, especially in an era increasingly dominated by digital technologies, automation, and algorithmic thinking. Rather than viewing technology and art as entirely separate or opposing domains, this study explores the possibility that artwork can engage with technological resources without being subsumed by their enframing logic. In this sense, the paper investigates how art can critically appropriate technological tools to create spaces of resistance, reflection, and liberation. Heidegger himself hints at this possibility when he writes that “the essence of technology is nothing technological” and that “where the danger is, there grows the saving power also.” This paradox suggests that within the very structure of technological danger lies the potential for a different, freer relationship to Being. Art, by remaining attuned to this danger, can act as a site where such a relationship begins to emerge. It does not oppose technology with nostalgia for the past, but rather opens a poetic space for reimagining our dwelling within a technological world. The saving power is not a return to pre‑modern innocence but a transformation of our relation to technology through art’s capacity to disclose Being otherwise. Furthermore, the paper argues that Heidegger’s notion of poetic dwelling—a way of being in the world that honors the mystery and finitude of existence—is not merely an abstract ideal but a necessary response to the metaphysical domination of technology. The poetic does not reject the material or technical; rather, it redirects our attention toward the essential, the hidden, and the incalculable. Through poetic thinking and artistic creation, human beings can recover a more original relationship with truth—one that neither reduces nor objectifies but allows beings to appear in their own right. Poetic dwelling thus becomes a counter-disposition to enframing, a way of inhabiting the technological world without being consumed by its logic. To concretize this philosophical framework, the paper turns to cinema as a paradigmatic modern art form born of technology. Film exemplifies the paradox of art within technology: it relies on cameras, projectors, editing software, and digital platforms—all technological apparatuses—yet it can transcend mere technicality to disclose truth. Cinema can either reinforce enframing, reducing human experience to spectacle, entertainment, and commodified images, or it can resist enframing by opening a clearing where Being is unconcealed. The case study of Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971) illustrates this tension vividly. The film portrays an ordinary man pursued relentlessly by a faceless truck, a machine without identity or motive. The truck embodies the anonymous, threatening presence of technology—massive, efficient, and opaque—while the protagonist’s struggle dramatizes the human confrontation with technological danger. Duel thus stages the Heideggerian struggle between earth and world: the earth as the concealed, overwhelming force of the machine, and the world as the fragile human attempt to make sense of and resist it. In this way, cinema demonstrates how art can appropriate technology without surrendering to its enframing, transforming technical means into vehicles of ontological disclosure. The implications of this analysis extend beyond cinema to the broader digital condition of contemporary life. In an age of ubiquitous screens, algorithmic governance, and artificial intelligence, the danger of enframing is intensified: human beings risk becoming mere data points, optimized flows, and standing‑reserve for systems of control. Yet, as Heidegger suggests, the saving power grows within the danger itself. Artistic practices that engage critically with digital media—experimental film, interactive installations, poetic coding, and algorithmic art—can open spaces of resistance and reflection. They remind us that technology need not only conceal but can also reveal, if approached poetically. Thus, the confrontation between technology and art is not a static opposition but a dynamic interplay with profound existential stakes. In this sense, Heidegger’s philosophy remains urgently relevant: it provides a lens through which to critique the reduction of human life to data and efficiency, while also pointing toward the possibility of recovery through art. In conclusion, this study reinterprets Heidegger’s critique of technology and his ontological elevation of art not as a binary opposition but as an invitation to engage more deeply with our modern condition. In a world increasingly defined by speed, optimization, and control, Heidegger’s philosophy calls for a turn toward slowness, receptivity, and attentiveness. The work of art, in its capacity to open a clearing for Being, remains one of the last refuges of truth in a technological age. Yet, rather than isolating itself from modernity, art may paradoxically find in the very tools of technology new ways to disclose the human, the mysterious, and the poetic dimensions of existence. Thus, this paper explores how, from within the technological condition itself, the artwork can respond to the challenge of enframing by reactivating the ontological power of art. In doing so, it seeks to articulate a space where technology does not dominate but serves; not conceals but reveals—a space where poetic dwelling becomes once again possible.  https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_728104.html This study, focusing on the ideas of Byung-Chul Han, the contemporary German-Korean philosopher, analyzes the crisis of meaning in neoliberal societies and explores its reflection in the film The Matrix. The central question is how the neoliberal structure and its technological mechanisms have led to the disintegration of life’s meaning and human identity, and how this condition is represented narratively and symbolically in The Matrix. According to Han, neoliberalism, relying on mechanisms such as self-exploitation, extreme transparency, dataism, and the dominance of digital psychopolitics, deprives the human subject of authentic meaning and entraps them in a process of consumerism, excessive competition, and isolation. Under these circumstances, meaning is reduced from an inner, interpersonal, or ethical phenomenon to quantitative, subjective, and market-driven data. The research employs a descriptive-analytical method based on qualitative content analysis of the film. The Matrix, as a prominent example of conceptual cinema, provides a symbolic framework to represent this crisis. The film challenges notions of reality, freedom, and identity, replacing embodied human experience with a virtual space. The character Neo symbolizes the rebellious subject who detaches from the data-driven regime and embarks on a search for meaning. The findings indicate that The Matrix, beyond being a science-fiction work, functions as a cinematic reflection of neoliberal society, depicting the crisis of meaning in relation to digital exploitation, the illusion of freedom, and the collapse of boundaries between reality and illusion. This analysis contributes to the understanding of the relationship between contemporary philosophy and cultural representations in cinema. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_728708.html How can Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the cinematic image be reinterpreted in such a way that stillness and refusal emerge as a new mode of presence within the cinematic image? In recent decades, theoretical debates on the cinematic image and its relation to time and movement have gained a central place in philosophical and film studies. This study revisits Deleuze’s theory of the cinematic image to demonstrate how visual and narrative elements in film can generate a renewed experience of cinematic presence. While Deleuze primarily analyzes the image within the frameworks of movement and time, this research shows how Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish filmmaker, in The Man Without a Past, employs formal elements such as stillness, silence, and narrative suspension to construct an ontological Image of Refusal that offers a distinct mode of presence in cinema. The notion of the Image of Refusal challenges Deleuze’s established categories and, by departing from the binary of the movement-image and the time-image, introduces a new theoretical possibility for understanding the aesthetics of stillness in cinema. Through qualitative analysis, interpretive-hermeneutic reading, and textual research within the framework of Deleuzian philosophy and film theory, the article demonstrates how Kaurismäki’s minimalist formal strategies, by reproducing spaces of suspension and refusal, actualize Deleuze’s concept of the thought-image and open a multifaceted experience of meaning and presence within the cinematic image. This reinterpretation not only enriches the understanding of Deleuze’s theory but also proposes ways to apply his concepts to contemporary film analysis, emphasizing the importance of close attention to form and narrative in philosophical and conceptual studies of cinema. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_730141.html Introduction This study aims to provide a psychoanalytic reading of the subject's predicament in the film Requiem (directed by Amir Naderi, 1978), employing the concepts of psychosis and melancholia metaphorically within Jacques Lacan’s theoretical framework. This film belongs to the early period of Iranian New Wave cinema during the 1960s and 1970s—a movement characterized by its innovative and experimental tendencies, often reflecting contemporary social issues through forms of critical realism. In the film, the main character, after serving eight years in prison, is unable to reintegrate into society or, in Lacanian terms, re-establish his position within the symbolic order as a linguistic structure, undergoing a psychotic rupture from the chain of signification. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how, due to the absence of familial and social bonds, he emerges as a quasi-psychotic subject and represents a melancholic experience as disorientation and wandering through the city. To illuminate the psychoanalytic dimensions of the central character's predicament in Requiem, a foundational understanding of these disorders is essential, bridging the film's metaphorical layers with Lacanian theory. This theoretical groundwork reveals how structural disruptions underpin the subject's estrangement. Psychosis and melancholia have often been conceptualized as pathological phenomena. Classical psychoanalysis associates psychosis with a fundamental change in the understanding of reality, while Lacanian theory sees it as arising from a disruption in the functioning of language and signification. This disruption leads to a failure of stabilization in the symbolic order, conceived as a dimension of the social order. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s and Jacques Lacan’s perspectives, melancholia typically occurs within the psychotic structure: Freud associates it with the loss of an object, while Lacan emphasizes its connection to the collapse of the symbolic order and the over-proximity to the objet petit a. It appears that no direct studies on psychosis and melancholia from a Lacanian perspective have been conducted in Iranian cinema. Therefore, the significance of the study lies in addressing the aforementioned psychoanalytic concepts in Iranian cinema and exploring a condition reflecting the human experience of wandering and instability in the world. Methods The present study employs a descriptive-analytical method, drawing on data collected through film observation, library, and electronic sources. The study designates the film Requiem (directed by Amir Naderi in 1978) as its case study, with the aim of offering a psychoanalytic reading of the main character's individual and social condition, and in this way, it metaphorically examines his experience of psychosis, rupture from the signifying chain, and melancholia. The theoretical framework is grounded in the approach of Jacques Lacan; in the study's theoretical foundations section, these concepts are explored alongside other fundamental components of Lacanian thought, such as the subject's relation to the primordial signifier or the Name-of-the-Father, language and the three orders, the object petit a, desire, and the Other. The film analysis employs a textual method, examining the narrative structure and arrangement, modes of characterization, and representational forms to elucidate the subject's interaction and conflict with the space depicted in the film. Findings The findings of the present study indicate that in Requiem, the main character Nasrollah, on the threshold of his release from prison—which functions as an intermediate space between past and present—strives to return to the city and everyday life. However, bereft of any familial or social support structures, he becomes disoriented and wandering. From a historical and sociological perspective, Iran during this period was subjected to the inconsistent modernization initiatives of the ruling regime, which engendered profound socio-economic dualities that profoundly influenced the fabric of daily life and interpersonal relations among the populace. Consequently, Nasrollah is relegated to the margins within such a context. This phenomenon can be extended to Lacanian concepts from a psychoanalytic vantage point, insofar as his estrangement and alienation from society position him as a subject afflicted with a stutter in language, severed from any linkage to the signifiers of the symbolic order and, by extension, to the Other. In this regard, the absence of the Name-of-the-Father—as the foreclosure of the primordial signifier—or a coherent kinship structure—as a foundational support—serves as a metaphor for a hole or lacuna at the level of the symbolic and signification, rendering the main character incapable of reconstructing his position within this order and thereby consigning him to a psychotic condition. The confrontation with the death of his mother, the final familial referent, exacerbates this collapse. In her absence, the only familial remnants—his father's mementos, namely a rifle and a target board—manifest as Lacanian objets petit a. The objet a, emblematic of a structural lack, operates as the cause of desire and must ultimately be supplanted by other objects. Yet, in the film, these items constitute Nasrollah's sole anchors for signifying action and economic subsistence, remaining irreplaceable. The rifle and the board fail to stabilize his socio-symbolic position; thus, Nasrollah persists in a state of lack. This psychic condition is further echoed in the film's formal structure. The filmmaker's camera persistently captures the main character's disorientation amid urban and peripheral mise-en-scène through fragmented shots, thereby depicting an experience that is at once individual and social. This not only underscores the plight of a marginalized subject in Iran's developing society but also, from a psychoanalytic standpoint, reflects the subject's rupture from the signifying chain, situating him at a liminal surface between the imaginary, symbolic, and real orders. Moreover, the film features a character named Looti, who possesses an animal that he regards as his own child. Nasrollah establishes a connection with Looti, who, in a metaphorical sense, functions as a surrogate for the primordial signifier; however, Looti too perishes. Consequently, the main character's futile attempts to reconstitute relational bonds, coupled with his over-proximity to the objet petit a, ensnare him in a cycle of repetition, jouissance, and melancholic experience. At the end of the film, the subject's melancholic experience intensifies: he sells the rifle and the board, and with the meager sum obtained, he arranges his drunkenness. Nasrollah reemerges in the city, where the streets envelop him in a state of drunkenness and aimless wandering, akin to the Lacanian Real and the impossible. Conclusion Amir Naderi’s Requiem (1978), a film belonging to the Iranian New Wave cinema, offers a profound insight into the structural ruptures of its historical moment, which in turn develop the film’s narrative construction. A metaphorical reading of Requiem reveals that the story of Nasrollah, the main character as a recently released prisoner, operates simultaneously on a psychoanalytic plane and carries structural significance. This psychoanalytic dimension appears to manifest through the concepts of psychosis and melancholia. The present study, drawing on Lacanian theory and formulating a conceptual framework for understanding these conditions, interprets the analysis of the main character’s individual–social disjunction as a disruption in the chain of signification and reveals its key components in the film’s text. The findings, through a simultaneous examination of the individual and social dimensions of the subject, reveal that Nasrollah emerges as a fragile subject upon confronting the world outside prison. This becomes initially evident through the experience of the father's absence and the confrontation with the mother's death. Subsequently, the persistent experience of loss intensifies in the absence of connection to the symbolic order, drawing the subject closer to the objet petit a as its structural lack. Consequently, the narrative structure, characterization, and formal strategies—such as the use of urban mise-en-scène—not only reflect the fragmented historical conditions but also trace the trajectory of the character’s wandering and disintegration as a metaphor for psychosis and the progression toward a melancholic experience. Ultimately, this Lacanian perspective illuminates the significance of the film Requiem for examining psychic rupture at the individual level and in relation to transitional societies, paving the way for future analyses of Iranian cinema through psychoanalytic concepts such as psychosis and melancholia. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_731669.html Jean Epstein’s conception of photogénie identifies a distinctive quality in objects, living beings, or human figures whose moral and existential character is heightened through cinematic reproduction. This understanding of cinema emphasizes its ability to disclose aspects of the world that remain hidden in ordinary experience, projecting into visibility textures, rhythms, and presences invisible to the eye in daily life. Such disclosure is not merely visual; it activates the viewer’s lived experience through body and senses, positioning cinema as a deeply embodied perceptual encounter rather than a disembodied act of observation. In this sense, the cinematic image is capable of revealing not just events or appearances, but the very experiential qualities that saturate them, offering access to a sensory field unavailable to discursive or documentary knowledge. Vivian Sobchack, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, advances the related notion of shared embodiment, asserting that film is possessed of a body as much as the spectator is, and that film experience is intercorporeal by nature. In her view, film acts as a perceptual subject in its own right, engaging the spectator through a reciprocal, embodied exchange. To watch a film is therefore not merely to trace a narrative but to enter into a tangible rapport where the rhythms, resistances, and breaths of the film intertwine with the bodily tempo of its viewer. In such a configuration, film appears to breathe, resist, and carry weight, aligning its pulse with the spectator’s own corporeal rhythms. Rather than serving as a purely representational system, the film becomes a sensory entity, organizing experience through an embodied relationship. This reading, although not in fundamental opposition to classical film theories such as those of André Bazin or Siegfried Kracauer, shifts the emphasis from cinema’s realist or socio-material functions toward an examination of how film itself feels, how it structures bodily experience, and how it solicits perceptual participation. The existing body of film scholarship has remained largely devoted to formalist analyses—concerned with editing, mise-en-scène, and cinematography—or ideological critiques focused on cultural and political functions. Comprehensive integration of phenomenological perception into film theory has been relatively rare, creating a theoretical gap that this study aims to address by merging Epstein’s photogénie with Sobchack’s concept of shared embodiment in the analysis of spectator experience. The research seeks to examine film as a sensory being and to understand the spectator’s bodily experience as a relationship with such a being. Its methodological approach is qualitative, conducted as a case study and rooted in descriptive phenomenology. Resources include library-based theoretical works as well as archival audio-visual materials. The Turin Horse by Béla Tarr was selected for analysis on the basis of its slow rhythms, extended takes, restricted mise-en-scène, minimalist sound design, and repetition of actions, all of which invite a multi-sensory mode of engagement. Findings indicate that certain key sequences in the film convey not only the events that constitute its narrative but also the lived qualities of those events. Viewing becomes a participatory act in which the spectator steps into the film’s temporal field, responding bodily to its pace and atmosphere. This transformation of the spectator from passive observer to active participant highlights the contemporary relevance of Epstein’s theory and demonstrates how its fusion with phenomenology of perception, alongside Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the time-image, can generate a powerful framework for examining minimalist, body-centered cinema. Within this framework, cinema is reconceived as a relational, bodily, and sensuous co-presence between film and spectator. The Turin Horse offers an instructive example of this proposition, as its experience manifests not in mere image consumption but as immersion into an existential dimension shared by both film and viewer. In this dimension, bodily boundaries blur, and perceptual events emerge from the intertwining of the film’s corporeality with that of its audience. This reading positions the cinematic event at a level beneath language and semiotic coding, in which meaning is generated through sensation and mutual corporeal engagement rather than through narrative or metaphor. Analysis of The Turin Horse reveals that its cinematic effect is not reducible to representation or conventional storytelling. Instead, the film operates as a sensory event or perceptual organism, functioning like a tactile ecology that draws the spectator into its embodied orbit. Through rhythm, silence, repetition, and precise life-world detail, The Turin Horse engages both the body and consciousness of the viewer, situating them within the film’s experiential space. The interplay of extended takes and atmospheric minimalism ensures that the spectator cannot remain detached; they must inhabit the film’s unfolding temporalities. Four narrative junctures are particularly illustrative of this bodily entanglement: the initial encounter with the horse and unrelenting wind, the cycles of daily labor and existential erosion, the intimate care of combing the horse’s mane, and the final dissolution into darkness. Each of these junctures suspends classical narrative momentum, estranges conventional meaning, and relies on temporally and spatially specific lived experience to solicit multi-sensory participation. By inviting the spectator into this dynamic of co-existence and co-resonance, The Turin Horse embodies what it means for a film to act as a sensory being. It does not mirror reality passively, nor does it confine meaning to a narrative that can be intellectually parsed in isolation from bodily engagement. Rather, it generates an event in which film and viewer co-inhabit an experiential field. This phenomenological encounter challenges linear notions of cinematic time and narrative causality, opening possibilities for rethinking the nature of spectatorship in work that privileges duration, repetition, and corporeal presence. The implications of this approach extend across theoretical, practical, and research domains. In a theoretical sense, it adds a new dimension to philosophy of film by reframing cinema as a site of corporeality and lived awareness. It brings Epstein’s essentialism of photogénie into heterodox dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the lived body, Sobchack’s theory of reciprocal experience between film and spectator, and Deleuze’s critique of linear narrative through the time-image. Practically, such a perspective offers innovative analytic instruments for film education, criticism, and production, particularly in contexts where slow cinema and minimalism foreground bodily and sensory engagement over conventional plot progression. In terms of research, the approach fills a notable gap in contemporary film studies, especially within the Iranian academic setting, by systematically investigating the relationship between body, consciousness, and cinematic experience. It opens pathways for future scholarship on sensory intersubjectivity and embodied aesthetics, suggesting that cinema’s communicative potential lies as much in pre-linguistic, pre-semiotic sensation as in symbol or story, and that such investigation can deepen our grasp of how audiences experience narrative not as abstract content but as physical and temporal immersion. Ultimately, The Turin Horse demonstrates that cinematic experience can be understood not solely as the act of viewing, but as an immersion into a shared existential space where bodies intermingle across the medium threshold. In this space, the temporality of the film is not simply observed—it is inhabited, forming a perceptual event in which the distinction between film’s body and viewer’s body is fluid. The research makes clear that the cinema, particularly in its minimalist and phenomenological expressions, can be approached as a living, sensory organism, speaking in rhythms, silences, and corporeal currents that precede language. This reframing not only bonds Epstein’s foundational ideas to contemporary practice but also equips scholars and practitioners with a model for engaging cinema at the intersection of perception, embodiment, and time. In recognizing cinema’s capacity to operate as a mutually resonant body, the study invites a broader reconsideration of spectatorship as a fundamentally corporeal act, wherein meaning arises through lived contact rather than detached observation. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_732018.html AbstractThe phenomenon of simulation in the postmodern era represents one of the most profound cultural, philosophical, and aesthetic challenges of contemporary society. In this period, the proliferation of digital technologies, social media platforms, and visual media has increasingly blurred the boundaries between reality and representation, creating a world dominated by simulacra, substitute images, and virtual constructs. In such a world, signs no longer merely reflect reality but actively constitute it, shaping human perception and experience in ways that diverge fundamentally from traditional forms of representation. This transformation has gradually shifted the experience of contemporary individuals from a direct, lived reality to an existence mediated by images, simulations, and digital reproductions, where engagement with the real is increasingly indirect and technologically mediated. Within this context, cultural and artistic productions—especially cinema—are no longer simply mirrors of reality; rather, they act as creators of alternative realities, constructing experiences that both reflect and generate worlds beyond the empirical or tangible. This study examines the film Parallel, directed by Isaac Azban, through the theoretical lens of Jean Baudrillard. In his works, including Simulacra and Simulation (1981) and The Perfect Crime (1990), Baudrillard introduced concepts such as simulation, simulacra, and hyperreality, demonstrating how signs and images can displace reality and obscure its absence. In the postmodern era, it is no longer possible to draw a clear distinction between reality and its representation. Signs operate autonomously, producing a reality that may no longer correspond to the physical or objective world. From this perspective, Parallel provides a concrete example of how postmodern cinema enacts simulation visually and narratively, illustrating how narrative structures, mise-en-scène, and aesthetic strategies collaborate to create parallel realities and hyperreal experiences. The methodology of this study is qualitative, based on semiotic and narrative analysis. It emphasizes the interplay between image, identity, and technology within the film’s narrative structure, visual design, and overall aesthetics. Particular attention is given to the representation of mirrors and digital imaging as tools for generating parallel realities. Findings reveal that the mirror in Parallel functions far beyond mere reflection; it serves as a technological medium through which alternative realities are constructed. Mirrors do not simply reproduce the visible world; they actively participate in the reproduction of reality, facilitating the emergence of parallel versions of events. This mechanism exemplifies Baudrillard’s notion of simulation, in which images do not reflect reality but produce it. The narrative structure further illustrates the implications of this process for human subjectivity. Characters are trapped within continuous cycles of replication and reproduction, where distinctions between original and copy are erased. Human subjects are dissolved into a network of simulacra and digital imagery, experiencing existence as ongoing interactions with replicated and simulated worlds. This scenario aligns closely with Baudrillard’s concept of the "perfect crime," in which the real is eliminated and its absence is masked by proliferating images. In this framework, the mirror functions as a metaphysical instrument, enabling hyperreality—a realm where time, space, and human perception collapse under technological mediation and digital compression. The film demonstrates how imaging technologies can create parallel worlds, replacing direct human experience with mediated experiences of infinite reproductions. A notable aspect of Parallel is its intertextual references to classic cinematic works, including The Godfather and Frankenstein. These references operate on multiple levels: evoking historical and genre-specific contexts, while creating layers of representation within representation. This meta-cinematic strategy exemplifies the precedence of simulacra over reality, showing how cinematic texts themselves participate in producing hyperrealities. The film not only discusses reality but also reenacts the mechanisms through which digital realities emerge. This self-reflexive quality demonstrates a key feature of postmodern cinema: narrative, image, and audience perception are interwoven in a complex process of simulation, prompting philosophical inquiries into reality, identity, and authenticity. From an aesthetic perspective, Parallel demonstrates a sophisticated use of lighting, color, and spatial composition to visualize the transition from lived reality to hyperreality. Warm, natural environments gradually give way to cold, artificial, and lifeless spaces, symbolizing the human estrangement from direct engagement with the real and immersion in digital reproductions. These transformations are not merely stylistic; they align with the narrative and mise-en-scène to shape audience perception and reinforce postmodern hyperreality. The visual shift underscores the ontological consequences of simulation: human experience is mediated by signs and technological frameworks, displacing authentic engagement with the physical world. Narrative loops and repetition further illustrate how postmodern cinema disrupts conventional linearity. Events recur in parallel versions, creating a networked temporality contrasting traditional chronological experience. Characters exist within overlapping layers of reproduced actions, demonstrating that in hyperreality, human experience is multi-layered rather than linear. Through these strategies, Baudrillard’s concepts of hyperreality and simulation are translated into a tangible cinematic experience, allowing viewers to encounter these abstract theories perceptually. The relationship between technology and human identity is another crucial dimension. In Parallel, characters constantly interact with digital representations, which mediate their perception of themselves and their surroundings. Human identity is constructed and destabilized within networks of simulacra. The subject is no longer the origin or locus of reality but participates in producing parallel realities. This underscores a postmodern thesis: in digitally mediated contexts, identity is fluid, contingent, and embedded within technological processes. Human subjectivity is redistributed across networks of simulation, emphasizing the inseparability of perception, technology, and constructed realities. Moreover, mise-en-scène and spatial design demonstrate that every visual element—mirrors, reflections, light, color—is strategically used to interrogate reality. Cinematic devices achieve metaphysical significance, allowing audiences to experience hyperreality directly. The interplay of visual representation and narrative construction renders the film a medium through which philosophical and critical questions about reality, authenticity, and perception are raised. The film transforms the cinematic apparatus into an instrument for experiential inquiry into postmodern conditions. Consequently, Parallel can be regarded not merely as a cinematic adaptation of Baudrillard’s theory but as its embodiment in visual and narrative form. Narrative, image, and audience perception are deeply intertwined, generating a philosophical and aesthetic discourse that actively engages the viewer. The film exemplifies how postmodern digital cinema, through simulation, imaging technologies, and complex representational strategies, dissolves the boundaries between reality and representation, situating human experience within endless reproductions and hyperreal constructs. This analysis highlights broader cultural and philosophical implications. In the postmodern era, human experience is intertwined with digital media, networks, and imaging technologies. Contemporary individuals become networked subjects, whose identity, perception, and lived experience are shaped by simulation, reproduction, and hyperreal representation. Parallel functions not only as a cinematic text but as a visual and narrative map of profound transformations in human experience, showing how technology mediates, constructs, and destabilizes both reality and subjectivity. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that Parallel, by employing simulation, imaging technologies, and layered intertextual representation, poses fundamental questions about reality, identity, and authenticity. The film illustrates that postmodern digital cinema does not merely reflect the world but actively constructs it, replacing lived human experience with endless cycles of signs and hyperreal experiences. This study provides a foundation for future research on digital cinema, media philosophy, and the role of technology in shaping human experience, showing that in the postmodern era, images and signs displace reality, producing a multi-layered, networked, and hyperreal condition in which human subjectivity is continually transformed and mediated. Ultimately, Parallel exemplifies the philosophical and aesthetic implications of postmodern simulation, demonstrating how cinema functions as a mirror, a creator, and a critical lens on reality. Through narrative, visual composition, and intertextual references, the film transforms theoretical insights into perceptible experiences of hyperreality. By highlighting the collapse of linear time, the multiplication of parallel versions, and the dissolution of human subjectivity within networks of images, it provides a profound meditation on contemporary existence, situating the viewer at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics, and digital experience. It is precisely in this capacity—where cinema moves beyond reflection to active reality construction—that Parallel becomes both an artistic achievement and a paradigmatic example of postmodern digital cinema’s ability to interrogate and redefine human experience. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_732123.html This study undertakes a deconstructive examination of Aristotle’s concept of the ideal tragic plot as formulated in Chapter 13 of the Poetics, focusing on the intricate relationship between hamartia (ἁμαρτία) and what may be termed ethical entitlement. While Aristotle’s formulation seeks to establish a ethical and aesthetic balance between the hero’s character, his action, and the resulting suffering, this balance conceals an unresolved tension at the very core of his ethical and poetic system. The present research exposes this tension through a Derridean reading that reveals the instability of the concepts of moral responsibility, awareness, and desert (ἀξία), showing how the notion of hamartia functions not as a clarifying principle of moral causality but as a site of aporia within the Aristotelian framework. Aristotle’s theory of tragedy rests upon a series of ethical presuppositions derived from his Nicomachean Ethics. The tragic protagonist, according to Poetics 13 (1453a7–13), must not be a person of complete virtue or utter vice, but one who falls into misfortune through hamartia. This term, often translated as “error” or “mistake,” carries a crucial moral ambiguity: it implies both ignorance and responsibility, both innocence and guilt. The ethical foundation of the ideal plot therefore depends upon a delicate mediation between moral accountability and moral exemption. Aristotle insists that the tragic effect—pity (ἔλεος) and fear (φόβος)—emerges only when the hero’s suffering is undeserved in the strict sense; yet he simultaneously demands that the hero’s downfall be self-caused, arising from his own action. This dual demand generates an inner contradiction: the hero must be both the author and the victim of his fate, both responsible and not responsible, both ethically entitled to compassion and ethically implicated in his suffering. The notion of ethical entitlement—the question of who deserves pain, pity, or punishment—becomes central to unpacking Aristotle’s tragic model. If ethical entitlement presupposes the agent’s freedom and awareness, then hamartia, by introducing a form of ignorance or involuntary action, destabilizes this foundation. Aristotle’s own moral theory claims that virtue and vice are acquired habits formed through voluntary actions (EN II.1, 1103a15–25). However, since habit itself arises through training and social conditioning, the boundaries of voluntariness become blurred. The ethical subject, shaped by formative experiences beyond his control, can neither be fully responsible for his disposition nor entirely exempt from accountability. Consequently, when applied to tragedy, the concept of moral desert (deservingness) collapses into indeterminacy. This indeterminacy becomes more visible when one considers Aristotle’s discussion of beast-like (θηριώδης) and mad individuals. For those whose moral formation has been impaired from childhood or corrupted by culture, ethical judgment loses its ground. As Nussbaum observes, Aristotle effectively excludes such figures from “the circle of moral judgment,” recognizing that without the possibility of moral education there can be no genuine responsibility. Yet the tragic hero, unlike the beast or the madman, occupies an intermediary position: he is neither wholly ignorant nor fully virtuous, neither innocent nor guilty. In this liminal condition, hamartia emerges as a trace of moral undecidability—an instance where the very criteria of judgment dissolve. Derrida’s critique of naming and categorization illuminates this mechanism. Naming—such as calling one “mad,” “irrational,” or “wicked”—functions as a performative act of power that stabilizes meaning by excluding what threatens it. In Aristotle’s system, the exclusion of the “non-rational” serves to preserve the coherence of his ethical teleology. The tragic hero, however, reintroduces what the system excludes: a rational being whose suffering cannot be ethically justified yet cannot be detached from his own agency. Hamartia, thus, is not a mere moral lapse but a structural disturbance within the logic of moral entitlement. It exposes the impossibility of maintaining a stable boundary between voluntary and involuntary action, between the just and the unjust, between deserving and undeserving suffering. In Poetics 13, Aristotle constructs an “ideal plot” wherein the protagonist’s misfortune arises from his own hamartia, not from vice or chance. Yet this very prescription betrays a philosophical impasse. If the action is voluntary, the suffering is deserved; if it is involuntary, the hero cannot be blamed. The synthesis Aristotle proposes—a mixed condition of partial ignorance and partial responsibility—does not resolve the aporia but displaces it. The ideal plot becomes the site where moral causality is both affirmed and deferred. The cathartic effect, rather than purging the emotions of pity and fear, continually reactivates the ethical uncertainty that gives rise to them. From a deconstructive standpoint, the relation between hamartia and ethical entitlement marks the point where Aristotelian ethics and poetics intersect yet undermine one another. The moral logic that grounds ethical entitlement depends on the clear attribution of agency, intention, and responsibility. The aesthetic logic of tragedy, by contrast, demands the suspension of such clarity to evoke pity and fear. In the tragic scene, ethical judgment becomes impossible precisely because the conditions of responsibility are indeterminate. Thus, the “ideal plot” Aristotle envisions cannot be a structure of moral coherence; it is rather a space of perpetual oscillation between justice and compassion, knowledge and ignorance, action and passion. Furthermore, if one follows Aristotle’s ethical psychology, in which hexis (ἕξις, moral disposition) is formed through habituation, the tragic crisis reveals a deeper paradox: the very formation of moral character entails a loss of freedom. What begins as voluntary action solidifies into involuntary structure. By the time the hero acts, he acts from a settled disposition whose origins lie beyond his control. Hence, responsibility and ethical entitlement are undermined from within. The tragic event does not merely dramatize moral error—it dramatizes the collapse of the notion that moral error can be cleanly distinguished from moral innocence. In this light, hamartia becomes a philosophical metaphor for the instability of ethical categories. It resists translation into “error,” “flaw,” or “sin,” because each of these assumes a determinate relation between intention and consequence. Instead, hamartia signifies a spacing—a differential gap—between knowing and doing, between moral agency and moral effect. This gap is precisely what makes pity and fear possible: we pity the hero because he does not fully know; we fear because we sense that the same gap structures our own ethical life. The deconstructive reading thus reorients Aristotle’s Poetics away from a prescriptive theory of plot toward a meditation on the undecidability of moral experience. The tragic effect is not the resolution of ethical conflict through catharsis, but the perpetual exposure of its irresolvable character. Hamartia ceases to be a cause of downfall and becomes a symptom of the impossibility of assigning clear ethical entitlement. The hero’s suffering is neither just nor unjust—it occupies a space of suspended judgment where meaning, morality, and affect continually defer one another. In conclusion, this study argues that Aristotle’s “ideal plot” in Poetics 13 contains within itself the seeds of its own deconstruction. The relation between hamartia and ethical entitlement destabilizes the very moral distinctions upon which Aristotelian tragedy depends. By reading hamartia as a site of aporia rather than as an explanatory concept, we uncover an unacknowledged instability at the heart of classical poetics: a tension between the desire for moral order and the aesthetic necessity of indeterminacy. This tension, once brought to light, invites a reconsideration of the ethical foundations of tragedy in both ancient and modern contexts, suggesting that the enduring power of tragedy lies not in the affirmation of justice, but in the exposure of its perpetual deferral. In this suspended field of ethical entitlement, even the wicked—those whom Aristotle explicitly excludes from the sphere of the tragic—begin to reenter through a faint shimmer of shared humanity. When the boundaries of responsibility and awareness blur, the moral distance between the virtuous and the vicious collapses. The “evil” character, no longer fully accountable nor entirely alien, becomes recognizable as one of us—a being entangled in the same network of desire, ignorance, and necessity. In this moment, tragedy ceases to be a courtroom for ethical judgment and transforms into a stage of empathy. The spectator no longer weighs guilt but feels kinship; no longer seeks justice but glimpses vulnerability. Hamartia, in this sense, opens the tragic world to an ethics beyond desert—an ethics grounded not in the measure of blame, but in the fragile recognition of our shared fallibility. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_732174.html Satire, a pervasive and pivotal element in Persian literature, has consistently served as a potent instrument for poets and writers to engage in social critique and articulate profound perspectives. As a distinct form of humor, satire deliberately avoids direct expression, operating instead within the realm of implication and connotative meaning. This characteristic imparts a semantic depth beyond the literal surface, transforming satire into an ingenious form of linguistic deflection or distortion, primarily aimed at engaging the reader's intellect and directing attention to the underlying critical intent. Lexically, satire is associated with concepts such as derision, innuendo, and mockery. However, in literary terminology, it denotes a text (prose or verse) that critically, and often ironically, depicts moral failings, human follies, or societal deficiencies and corruption through an indirect, often mocking manner. As an internal and artistic phenomenon, satire often arises from the conflict between individual ideals and the constraints of social realities, particularly when the artist experiences a sense of oppression. The fundamental goal of satire is the artistic magnification and foregrounding of the negative and undesirable aspects of social flaws and incongruities. Through an astute and incisive lens, satire effectively and powerfully exposes hidden meanings and behaviors that contradict moral, humanistic, and religious values, often veiled within the social fabric. Satire functions as a powerful tool for social criticism and reform. By highlighting the defects and distortions within social structures, norms, and behaviors, it cultivates a deep awareness and concern in the audience, thereby paving the way for potential improvement and transformation. Consequently, satire is widely recognized as one of the most effective and at times indispensable methods of social commentary. Beyond verbal and linguistic humor, situational satire is a highly utilized and capacious genre in artistic works. This type of satire relies less on humorous words or phrases, focusing instead on visual representation, implication, and conceptual imagery. In situational satire, the creator intelligently presents challenging scenarios, events, and behavioral patterns, allowing the audience to establish comparisons, juxtapositions, and correlations between contradictory or incongruous elements within the work, thereby grasping the irony or absurdity of the situation. To construct such humorous scenarios, the author systematically applies conventional techniques, including: 1) Exaggeration of physical appearance, professional roles, and comic character types; 2) Creation of an incompatible network of relationships among characters; 3) Behavioral mismatch with the character's age, personality, or social standing; 4) Ironic modification of plot elements (e.g., exposition, rising action, suspense, climax, resolution); 5) Creation of situational humor within the plot through digression, sub-plots becoming main issues, sudden twists, repetition of situations, inverted values, logical sequence of illogical events, and non-sequitur cause-and-effect; 6) Use of humorous techniques in character actions and conduct (e.g., exaggerated movements, behavioral surprise, situational incongruity, repeated behaviors, actions motivated by exaggerated fear, shame, or tension); and 7) Utilization of a humorous or extraordinary setting (time and place) that is inconsistent with the characters. Gholamhossein Saedi, recognized as one of Iran's foremost playwrights, instigated a profound transformation in the nation's dramatic literature, a legacy that remains evident in contemporary works. He was a polymath artist, leaving behind brilliant and enduring contributions in both fiction and drama. One of Saedi's most effective expressive tools was the skillful use of satire to reflect and expose the societal ugliness and shortcomings of his time, with the ultimate goal of awakening public conscience and facilitating social reform. Saedi was deeply aggrieved by the government's stringent censorship policies, viewing them as a serious obstacle to artistic creation. It was in the face of such a restrictive cultural and political environment that Saedi was compelled to turn to satire as a method of veiled, protestive expression. Saedi’s play, The Zaviyeh, not only stands as a notable work in his dramatic repertoire but also provides a deep ground for exploring and critiquing the cultural, political, and social contradictions of its era. This work, the second play published in the collection Dictation and The Zaviyeh, unfolds in an entirely symbolic and metaphorical setting. The central theme revolves around the futility and meaninglessness of human efforts to achieve effective mutual understanding and communication, an endeavor that ultimately leads to greater isolation. The stage itself is a metaphor: a corner or confined space enclosed by barbed wire between two streets. This restricted area becomes a gathering point for characters, each representing a specific social stratum—from the intellectual philosopher with glasses to the aggressively represented old woman, and figures such as the mustachioed man, the commoner, the poet, and the journalist. These individuals convene in this severely limited environment to express their views, yet instead of constructive dialogue, they merely compete to seize the platform and impose their perspectives. The result of this rivalry is nothing but fruitless wrangling, mutual accusation, insult, and a series of blatant contradictions that underscore the absurdity of their pursuit for shared understanding. This research focuses on an in-depth analysis of the humorous situations in The Dikteh and Zaviyeh, and on the various methods the author employed to elicit laughter. The primary theoretical framework for this analysis is the Superiority Theory, a key perspective that traces the root of many humorous moments to the audience's subconscious sense of triumph or mastery. Addressing the causality of laughter in response to humor, this theory posits that the pleasure derived from a sense of superiority is the main impetus for laughter. According to this view, laughter originates from a sudden feeling of superiority triggered by an immediate mental comparison. This comparison can occur between the self (as the knowledgeable observer) and the play’s characters (in a state of lowliness, awkwardness, or folly), or even a comparison with the self in a past, less capable state. The spectator or reader of satire laughs when they momentarily perceive themselves as more informed, wiser, or more dominant than the character being mocked. In essence, the perception of humor is a process heavily dependent on personal judgment and the audience’s perspective. This feeling of superiority can emerge in comparison to equals or subordinates, or, paradoxically, even in confrontation with figures of authority or superiors. In the face of others' weakness, stupidity, or confusion, our laughter serves as a confirmation of our own intellectual dominance. This laughter is generally accompanied by pleasure, though it may contain traces of pity or compassion. Conversely, the Superiority Theory explains why a joke about powerful individuals can induce laughter: by laughing, we symbolically and subconsciously triumph over those who hold power or dominance over us, feeling superior, at least for a fleeting moment. In this context, laughter serves as an immediate reaction that provides both emotional release and a fleeting sense of dominance. Furthermore, satire can be a tool for collective revenge and the symbolic humiliation of a despised individual or group; the deeper the hatred, the greater the pleasure derived from their humiliation through satire. In summary, laughter arises from observing the foolishness, mistakes, and awkwardness of others, and even a trivial incident can activate this gratifying sense of superiority. This study focuses specifically on analyzing the techniques and methods Saedi used to create situational satire in The Zaviyeh. Saedi, with his remarkable insight, uses these humorous situations to subtly yet powerfully critique and reveal the social iniquities and deficiencies of his time. A key research question is, "How can these satirical situations be interpreted as serving the characters' objectives from the perspective of the Superiority Theory?" The answer is profoundly linked to the core narrative: all characters are relentlessly striving to prove their superiority to others and secure a position or opportunity to speak. This insatiable competition for higher status and self-aggrandizement is the main driving force behind most of the play's situational satire techniques. This struggle for dominance transforms the play's scenes into moments of truly comical situation comedy. However, it must be acknowledged that this laughter is bitter, dark humor; a satire that, beneath the resulting amusement, delivers deep and incisive social criticisms to the audience. Subsequently, the research explored the precise methods Saedi employed to generate this situational satire. Analysis of the play’s extracted data revealed that Saedi effectively utilized a broad spectrum of established situational satire techniques. In terms of frequency, the techniques are ranked in descending order across the levels of plot, action, characterization, and finally, setting. Moreover, at a micro-level, the most functional sub-techniques in creating this atmosphere included verbal conflicts, the complex network of relationships among characters, dramatic suspense, digression or the mainstreaming of a subsidiary issue, behaviors inconsistent with the character's role and situation, and actions stemming from tension and nervous pressure. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_732227.html Literary and Dramatic Analysis of the Condolence of Imam Reza (AS) by Rajai-Zafraei Abstract In the Islamic period, with the prevalence of Maqtal-e-Nawsi, which was mainly about the events of Ashura, the tradition of composing and writing ritual works continued, and later in the ninth century, with the book Rawda al-Shuhada by Kashfi, it reached its peak and even surpassed the works written after it. It should be noted that the attention of political authorities to Ta’ziyya from the Safavids to the end of the Pahlavis was accompanied by ups and downs. The roots of ritual performances are repeatedly mentioned in literary chronicles, and usually the common proposition among them is that ritual performances in the general sense in Iran go back to centuries before Islam. If Ta’ziyya is not initially considered as a ritual performance, the continuation of Ta’ziyya in its non-Islamic and general sense can be traced back to centuries before Islam, and in its specific meaning in the Islamic era, at least in a specific way, to the first century of the Hijri lunar calendar. Of course, Ta'ziyyah in the form of a performance that can be called a performance today, far from being considered a mere ritual, is not very old according to some researchers and dates back to the era of Karim Khan Zand and ultimately the Safavids. On the other hand, the definitions of Ta'ziyyah found in various sources usually consider it to be a type of Iranian-Shiite performance whose content, regardless of the methods of processing the structure, is based on religious teachings. Ta'ziyyah is important not only from historical-social and literary-performance perspectives; but also, since it narrates about a specific religion, it also represents and represents a type of ritual and religion. From the perspective of literary types, it can also be claimed that Ta'ziyyah is one of the main sub-genres of Shiite literature, which has been popular among the Iranian masses, especially since the end of the Safavid era, due to its importance in dramatic literature. This importance and social status have caused many orators and poets associated with the masses, especially since the Qajar era, to create numerous texts on the subject of the martyrdom of the Ahl al-Bayt and their lives (AS) in the form of poetic plays. Many of these works have been recorded in manuscripts and have received less attention in the course of dramatic art. On the other hand, the existing manuscripts of ta'ziyyah and parallel research in the field of ta'ziyyah studies generally focus on the tragedy of Karbala and less attention has been paid to other topics such as the tragedies of other Imams (AS). Mohammad Ali Rajai-Zafreh (1281 AH-1361 AH) is one of the prominent religious poets and poets of the late Qajar and early Pahlavi eras. He composed numerous works in the field of ta’ziyyah, and despite his literary position in the field of ta’ziyyah, his works have been less introduced and published. Accordingly, in the present study, based on one of his lesser-known ta’ziyyahs in mourning for Imam Reza (AS), an attempt has been made to discover missing links in the research on the history of ta’ziyyah during the middle of his lifetime, and in the process, some literary features of this influential literary genre are introduced by analyzing Zafareh’s work as a perfect example of literary ta’ziyyahs of the late Qajar era. To achieve this goal, after a general study of Ta’ziyyah, the text of Rajai Zafra’i’s Ta’ziyyah has been analyzed in detail in two areas: literary features and dramatic elements of Ta’ziyyah using the method of content analysis. The most important results that can be obtained from this study are that, in comparison to many poets of the Qajar era, Rajai Zafra’i has tried not to limit himself to expressing moods and imaginations in this work and his other compositions, and has been able to display various aspects of Shiite identity through narrations and dialogues. One of the most important manifestations of this effort of the Ta’ziyyah writer is the content and structural actions in giving advantage to the supporters in conflict with the opponents. It seems that the main difference between Ta’ziyyah as a native type of play and Western play is more related to the arrangement and editing of content, and generally the differences between the two have not been related to formal structures. It can also be analyzed that the greater attention paid to topics related to the tragedy of Karbala in Ta'ziyya is probably due to the greater poignancy of that event in terms of the magnitude of the subject matter; as the Shiite world still holds Muharram more dear than other days of mourning. Obviously, this does not mean lowering the status of any of the Ahl al-Bayt (a.s.) in the art of Ta'ziyya. Perhaps it is because of the sacred view of the characters in Ta'ziyya that the kind of sophistication that is seen in the characterization of the characters in Western works is not very tangible in Ta'ziyya. This is probably because in Western drama, the poet's goal is generally to elevate the dramatic art of the work, while in Ta'ziyya, since the main goal of the Ta'ziyya poet is to mention the tragedy and express completely religious and heavenly themes, he does not prioritize the artistic issues of the play and does not pay attention to the formal characteristics of the play and its art. This issue also shines outside of the play in the poetic techniques of Ta'ziyya, so much so that Rajai Zafra'i's Ta'ziyya, despite his poetic concern for the order of the play, cannot be considered among the first-rate brilliant works of the Qajar era in terms of literary grandeur, although the various valuable literary and non-literary aspects in his Ta'ziyya indicate the importance of the Ta'ziyya's position. The final point is that Rajai Zafra'i's Ta'ziyya sheds light on one of the neglected aspects of Shiite dramatic literature for the audience. The importance of Imam Reza's (AS) Ta'ziyya and the relative strength of this work in comparison to other Ta'ziyyas on the same subject are some of the points that we have reached through this research. It should also be said that Rajai Zafra'i's Ta'ziyya, in addition to its relative literary strength, also has capabilities from the perspective of dramatic elements that have received less attention. The final finding is that, due to his mastery of literary principles, unlike many Qajar era ta'ziyyah writers, Rajai Zafra'i insists on observing literary standards in his poems. He has included three components of impact on the audience, attention to the religious content prevalent in the era, and observance of general literary features such as meter and rhyme as the principles of his ta'ziyyah art, and has tried to create a relative diversity in the field of meters and musical elements of speech; however, the difference in the dramatic field in his work from the style of modern plays on the one hand, and the religious concern in observing religious meanings in his works have caused that, from a literary perspective, his works cannot be placed at the forefront of Iranian dramatic literature of the last two hundred years. Despite all these points, one of the main findings in the study of his ta'ziyyahs is the necessity of introducing and publishing his gatherings as works in the transition from traditional dramatic art to the contemporary era. Keywords: Ritual literature, Imam Reza (AS), Ta'ziyya, Rajai-Zafra'i, drama. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_734339.html The Pahlavi state’s modernization project in twentieth-century Iran, particularly during the second Pahlavi period, has often been described as a rapid, authoritarian, and top-down process that prioritized visibility, spectacle, and symbolic transformation over deep structural change. Rather than emerging organically from sustained economic, social, and cultural transformations—as was largely the case in many Western contexts—modernization in Iran was implemented as a state-driven initiative aimed at projecting an image of progress, rationality, and national advancement both domestically and internationally. Scholars of Iranian social history and gender studies have repeatedly emphasized that this project relied heavily on visual and symbolic markers of modernity, especially in the realm of culture, everyday life, and the regulation of bodies. Within this framework, the female body became one of the most visible and contested sites through which the state sought to materialize and display its modernizing ambitions. This study begins from the premise that the official Pahlavi modernization project transformed the female body into a representational surface upon which a particular, state-sanctioned image of modernity was inscribed. Policies such as mandatory unveiling, the promotion of Westernized beauty standards, reforms in family law, and the media circulation of the figure of the “modern woman” were not merely social reforms but visual strategies designed to render modernization legible and immediately perceptible. As scholars such as Afsaneh Najmabadi, Janet Afary, Parvin Paidar, and Minoo Moallem have argued, these interventions were largely imposed from above and were not rooted in grassroots feminist movements or demands for women’s expanded agency. Instead, they often resulted in the regulation, standardization, and disciplining of women’s bodies, reproducing patriarchal power relations within a modernized visual framework. Within this historical and theoretical context, this article examines popular Iranian cinema prior to the 1979 Revolution—commonly referred to as Filmfarsi—as a crucial cultural site where the contradictions of authoritarian and decorative modernization were both reproduced and, at times, inadvertently exposed. As a mass medium closely tied to popular tastes, desires, and anxieties, Filmfarsi occupied a paradoxical position. On the one hand, it frequently reinforced dominant ideological narratives by normalizing visual markers of modernity and aligning itself with official discourses of progress. On the other hand, precisely because of its close engagement with everyday experience and collective imagination, popular cinema also reflected the tensions, uncertainties, and unresolved conflicts embedded within the modernization project itself. The central hypothesis of this study is that a recurring narrative–visual pattern found across a wide range of Filmfarsi productions functions as a symbolic condensation of the Pahlavi modernization project. This pattern consists of the rapid and surface-level transformation of a female character—typically portrayed as rural, traditional, or belonging to a lower social class—into a “modern” and urban woman. Crucially, this transformation is almost always orchestrated under the supervision or control of a male authority figure or a patriarchal institution and is conveyed through an intensified visual focus on the female body, clothing, makeup, gestures, and comportment. The process of becoming “modern” in these films is thus reduced to a visible makeover rather than a meaningful shift in social position, agency, or access to rights. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, descriptive–analytical approach grounded in gender studies and theories of authoritarian and performative modernization. Drawing on library-based research and close textual and visual analysis, the article offers a comparative examination of eight popular films produced between 1953 and 1979, a period that corresponds to the consolidation and intensification of Pahlavi state power following the 1953 coup and the subsequent expansion of oil revenues, consumer culture, and Western-oriented lifestyles. The films analyzed include Golenesa (1953), The Shepherd’s Daughter (1953), Bi-Panah [Defenseless] (1953), The Lost Flower (1962), Sogoli (1970), Akbar Dilmaj (1973), Golenesa in Paris (1974), and Escape from Paradise (1974). Although these films differ in genre, tone, and narrative resolution—ranging from melodrama to social comedy—they are unified by the repetition of a shared visual and narrative logic centered on female transformation. The analysis demonstrates that in these films, modernity is consistently represented as something that can be acquired through the alteration of external appearance. Cinematic techniques such as close-ups, montage sequences, and fetishistic attention to bodily details fragment the female body into discrete visual elements that can be rearranged and optimized according to dominant standards of beauty and desirability. In this process, the woman’s body is rendered a spectacle—an object to be seen, evaluated, and consumed—rather than a site of autonomous action or subjectivity. The transformation is typically abrupt, compressed in time, and detached from any depiction of sustained learning, social mobility, or political empowerment. This narrative shortcut mirrors the broader logic of Pahlavi modernization, which sought to produce immediate and convincing images of progress without addressing underlying social inequalities or power relations. Importantly, while similar visual transformations occasionally occur in representations of male characters—particularly in narratives of class mobility or urban success—the study argues that female transformations carry a far greater symbolic weight. Male characters who adopt modern appearances are often portrayed as active agents of their own advancement, whereas women’s transformations are framed as acts of compliance, adaptation, or submission to male desire and authority. As such, the female body becomes a privileged site for negotiating the boundaries of acceptable modernity, serving simultaneously as a marker of progress and a target of intensified control. The findings further suggest that Filmfarsi’s engagement with decorative modernization is deeply ambivalent. Although many films reproduce the visual grammar of official modernization by equating modernity with surface change, they also reveal a persistent anxiety regarding the stability and legitimacy of the “modern woman” figure. The narrative outcomes for transformed female characters vary significantly, ranging from tragic destruction and social exclusion to conditional reintegration into the family or a return to pre-modern identities. This narrative instability points to a broader cultural uncertainty: the inability of authoritarian modernization to generate a coherent and sustainable model of female modernity that reconciles visual change with social empowerment. From this perspective, popular cinema functions as a cultural mirror that reflects not only the aspirations but also the failures of the Pahlavi modernization project. By repeatedly staging the same visual pattern of forced or accelerated transformation, Filmfarsi inadvertently exposes the gap between the promise of modernity and its lived reality. The female body, positioned at the intersection of desire, power, and spectacle, becomes the site where this gap is most clearly visible. Modernity, as depicted in these films, appears less as a liberatory process than as a performative demand—a requirement to look modern without being granted the social conditions necessary for genuine emancipation. In conclusion, this study argues that the recurring motif of female bodily transformation in pre-revolutionary Iranian popular cinema should be understood as a visual allegory of authoritarian and decorative modernization under the Pahlavi regime. Far from being a purely cinematic convention or a product of genre-specific storytelling, this motif encapsulates the contradictions of a modernization project that privileged appearance over substance and visibility over structural change. By situating these films within the broader political, cultural, and gendered dynamics of the period, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of how mass media participate in the production, circulation, and contestation of modernity. Moreover, it demonstrates that Filmfarsi, often dismissed as merely commercial or escapist, constitutes a valuable theoretical archive for examining the entanglements of state power, gender politics, and visual culture in modern Iranian history. https://rpa.soore.ac.ir/article_734340.html This research undertakes an in-depth examination of Pierpesar, the 2023 Iranian feature film directed by Oktay Barahani and produced by Hanif Sarvari and Babak Hamidian, by mobilizing the conceptual architecture of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Through a methodical exploration of Lacan’s three registers—the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real—the study aims to illuminate how the film articulates the complex entanglement between intellectualism, the mechanisms of domination, and the persistence of patriarchal order in contemporary Iranian society. The study’s principal inquiry concerns the manner in which Pierpesar represents the failure of the intellectual project, the self-perpetuating logic of authoritarian power, and the place of jouissance (enjoyment) within closed political systems. By extending its analysis beyond a surface reading of narrative elements and cinematic technique, the study demonstrates how the film offers a subtle yet incisive critique of the structures that enable domination to repoduce itself across social and familial contexts. In the Imaginary register, the film situates the intellectual figure within a fraught terrain of misrecognition, narcissistic projection, and identity fragmentation. Lacan’s Imaginary is the realm in which the subject becomes entangled with ideal images, striving to embody a coherent and unified self that can never be fully realized. In Pierpesar, this dynamic is expressed through the intellectual’s persistent effort to cultivate a polished self-image—one that aligns with his fantasy of being a critical, enlightened, and morally elevated figure. Yet beneath this carefully constructed image lies a network of unconscious conflicts that undermine his agency. His self-perception begins to fracture under the pressure of unresolved psychological tensions, leading him to displace critical energy into trivial competitions and fruitless confrontations. Instead of challenging the apparatus of domination, he becomes preoccupied with the maintenance of his Imaginary identity. This portrayal underscores the vulnerability of intellectual subjectivity when it relies on idealized fantasies rather than confronting the Real conditions of power and social constraint. The Imaginary, in this reading, functions not as a liberating domain but as a mask that conceals the intellectual’s incapacity to intervene effectively in the social field. The removal of the mother and the appropriation of the family home further reinforce this logic of power. The home, traditionally associated with maternal bonds and emotional security, is transformed into a patrimonial asset controlled entirely by the father, demonstrating how desire and social relationships are subordinated to the structures of domination. The sons experience a profound sense of loss and are compelled to align their desires with the will of the father rather than their authentic wishes, resulting in the suppression of key aspects of their own subjectivity. Within the Symbolic register, the film exposes the intricate ways in which institutions, norms, and discursive structures sustain authoritarian and patriarchal power. The Symbolic order, which Lacan conceptualizes as the domain governed by language, law, and cultural codes, operates here as the locus of the “Big Other”—the authority that defines the permissible forms of identity, behavior, and desire. In Pierpesar, the Big Other is embodied by the patriarchal father-figure and extended through broader structures that impose distorted legal and moral codes upon both the intellectual and the community. These rules are not merely external constraints but internalized frameworks that shape perception and govern the subject’s relationship to desire, authority, and resistance. The film demonstrates how class-based and gender-based privileges acquire legitimacy through these symbolic mechanisms. The daughter of the tenant becomes a symbolic object—an objet petit a—whose position within family and social dynamics reinforces obedience and consolidates patriarchal authority. The father’s desire dictates the configuration of the household, compelling others to adjust their own actions and desires in accordance with his will. Through this mechanism, the film illustrates how desire, law, and authority intertwine to maintain social hierarchies, and how even acts of critique or rebellion are often constrained within the dominant symbolic logic. In the Real register, the film highlights moments in which the coherence of the narrative collapses and the contradictions inherent in the structures of power become visible. The Real represents that which cannot be fully symbolized or articulated, moments in which the symbolic order is revealed to be incomplete or inconsistent. In Pierpesar, this occurs during the exposure of the father’s hypocrisy and during confrontations in which characters such as the tenant’s daughter assert themselves against authority. These ruptures illuminate the gaps within power structures and reveal the possibility of resistance, showing that the law and social norms contain fissures that subjects can potentially exploit. Yet the film also makes clear that enjoyment—or jouissance—remains a key mechanism for perpetuating patriarchal domination. Even resistance is frequently incorporated into the existing cycle of authority through affective or compulsive channels. The father’s manipulation of desire and pleasure serves to bind the subjects to the system, demonstrating that liberation is never straightforward and that enjoyment is often co-opted to reinforce the structures of power. The analysis demonstrates that Pierpesar offers a complex depiction of the paradoxical relationship between intellectuals and systems of power. The intellectual’s inability to enact meaningful change is not simply a matter of personal weakness; it is rooted in the structural constraints imposed by the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real registers. The Imaginary imposes limits through misrecognition and idealized fantasies, the Symbolic constrains action through institutional and discursive authority, and the Real disrupts attempts at coherence through the revelation of systemic contradictions. The film thus contributes to broader discussions about the role of intellectual critique in societies characterized by authoritarianism and patriarchy, emphasizing the ways in which subjectivity and power are mutually constitutive. Moreover, Pierpesar illustrates how patrimonial domination endures through the combination of control over material and symbolic resources, the cultivation of psychological dependence, and the integration of law with moral authority. These mechanisms operate not only at the institutional level but also within intimate family relationships, demonstrating the pervasiveness of patriarchal power. The intellectual and other characters, even when aware of these dynamics, remain caught in a web of desire, obligation, and internalized norms that continuously reproduce the existing order. This perspective highlights the importance of attending to both structural and affective dimensions when considering the persistence of domination in social and familial contexts. Ultimately, the film shows that genuine transformation requires a radical rupture from these recurring cycles. The intellectual’s failure is emblematic of the broader challenges of resisting entrenched power: without fundamental changes to the symbolic, social, and psychological foundations of authority, critique risks being absorbed and neutralized. Pierpesar demonstrates that patriarchal and patrimonial power is reproduced through the interplay of desire, law, and affect, underscoring that both personal and structural forms of liberation demand a profound reconfiguration of social norms and relationships. Finally, the film emphasizes that these dynamics are not merely abstract or theoretical but are concretely embedded in everyday life. The appropriation of the home, the structuring of desire, and the orchestration of familial relationships reveal the subtle and pervasive ways in which authoritarian and patriarchal authority operates across generations. By tracing these interconnections, the film illuminates how the cycles of domination, enjoyment, and repression are reinforced through both institutional and intimate mechanisms, ultimately demonstrating that any meaningful social transformation requires attention to the psychic, symbolic, and material dimensions of power simultaneously. Moreover, the film underscores the enduring tension between social norms and individual desire, highlighting how subjects are constantly negotiating between internalized authority and personal aspirations. This tension demonstrates that the reproduction of patriarchal and authoritarian structures depends not only on overt control but also on subtle psychological conditioning, internalized expectations, and the mediation of affective relations across generations.