Cultural Studies
A. Ravadrad; M. Mousavi Haghshenas
Abstract
With a comparative discourse analysis of three important museums, this article tries to show the relationship between the institution of power and the institution of museum in Iran. The research question is whether or not Iranian museums on different historical topics and periods receive equal attention ...
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With a comparative discourse analysis of three important museums, this article tries to show the relationship between the institution of power and the institution of museum in Iran. The research question is whether or not Iranian museums on different historical topics and periods receive equal attention from the power institution, today. The method of discourse analysis is based on Foucault’s concept of power as well as a description of Gillian Rose on this theory. This research is about power apparatuses and institutional technologies in three important museums i.e., The Museum of Ancient Iran, The Islamic Museum, and The National Museum of the Islamic Revolution and Holy Defense Museum. For that matter, a second type of the discourse analysis has been used that focuses more on institutions, their related procedures, and how content is produced. Findings from field surveys of museums indicate significant differences in the apparatus and institutional technologies being used there. The results show that The National Museum of the Islamic Revolution and Holy Defense Museum articulates the discourse of its trustees such as anti-arrogance, resistance, and progress in comparison with others that are equipped with the most diverse, advanced, and attractive designs, space, displaying technologies, and facilities. The Islamic Museum, by the way has its own importance for authorities because of its post-Islamic Iran cultural manifestations compared to The Museum of Ancient Iran.
Cultural Studies
Mohammad Rashid Soofi; A. Ravadrad
Abstract
This paper aims to introduce a mixed research method for the analysis, reading, and interpretation of urban visual culture texts. To reach this goal, mural have been chosen as the most outstanding urban visual text. In order to do a case study, one of the outstanding wall-paintings located in Tehran`s ...
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This paper aims to introduce a mixed research method for the analysis, reading, and interpretation of urban visual culture texts. To reach this goal, mural have been chosen as the most outstanding urban visual text. In order to do a case study, one of the outstanding wall-paintings located in Tehran`s Vanak square, has been selected to be analyzed by a mixed method. The analysis of the visual text has been done in two stages including semiology and discourse analysis. For the first stage, we used O`Toole`s semiotic method suitable for analyzing urban murals, and for the second stage, we employed Laclau and Mouffe`s discourse theory. Findings of the case study for the micro level showed that, key signifiers - as nodal points - of the text have been recognized as nature, city, man, and woman and the relationship and interaction between them have been distinguished in the form of binary oppositions such as nature (village)/city and man/woman. At the macro level, the main competitive discourses identified in the text, are Environmental Protection vs. Urban Sprawl and Masculism vs. Feminism, that are lively and actively in an antagonistic situation using their key signifiers. Finally, the dominant and hegemonic discourses through positive representation of their key signifiers can be considered as Environmental Protection and Masculism.
Azam Ravadrad; Baharak Mahmoodi
Abstract
This paper aims to study the imagination of Tehran through 1340s and 1350s Iranian cinema and the main question is that what kind of representation on city was fueled by cinema. This study was conducted based on analysis of four impressive films in these two decades. Two of them are popular ...
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This paper aims to study the imagination of Tehran through 1340s and 1350s Iranian cinema and the main question is that what kind of representation on city was fueled by cinema. This study was conducted based on analysis of four impressive films in these two decades. Two of them are popular movies (Ganje Gharoon and Khater Khah) and the two other (Khesht-o Ayeni and Ragbar) are related to avantgarde cinema. Although they are different in presenting the city in some aspects, the results reveal that both approaches emphasise on the negative aspects of the city and expose latent contradictions in the extreme way.
Azam Ravadrad; Amirhossein Tamannaei
Abstract
In this article the relationship between cultural policies and cinema in Iran is studied through a comparison between cultural-cinematic policies of two different Iranian states during years 1377 and 1389 and their effects on selecting the representative of Iranian cinema to the academy of Oskar. The ...
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In this article the relationship between cultural policies and cinema in Iran is studied through a comparison between cultural-cinematic policies of two different Iranian states during years 1377 and 1389 and their effects on selecting the representative of Iranian cinema to the academy of Oskar. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the field of sociology of cinema, concentrating on Tony Bennett's theory relating to the effect of politics and state on form and content of cultural products. The methodology of the article is documentary and the technic used is qualitative content analysis. The analysis of cultural policies of cinema, as an issue in the field of sociology of cinema, shows that although form and content of movies are both influenced by social conditions, to which cultural policy is a part, form has been a more important criteria for the selection of movies to present in the academy of Oskar. In other words, there is a general policy in Iran that supports the idea of entering the competition of Oskar each year in order to show that Iranian cinema is so mature that is able to compete with the cinema of other countries. This policy leads to use the form and the aesthetic quality of movies as dominant criteria for the selection. Therefore, although based on each period's policies and state it is expected that selected movies produce some special contents, the importance of form has led to a selection of movies that are not directly appropriate with their co-existing domestic policies. Considering this interesting finding, it can be theoretically concluded that the effect of cultural policies on cinema is more on the content while the form of cinema is to a great extent free from the bounds of cultural policies.
Azam Ravadrad; Baharak mahmoodi
Abstract
Tehran as a symbol of Iranian modernity has been considered in many Iranian fiction films. Representation of Tehran in cinema can be the representation of Iranian modernity revolution. This study focuses on the representation of urban image in Iranian fiction films through critical theories such as Simmel ...
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Tehran as a symbol of Iranian modernity has been considered in many Iranian fiction films. Representation of Tehran in cinema can be the representation of Iranian modernity revolution. This study focuses on the representation of urban image in Iranian fiction films through critical theories such as Simmel or Benjamin opinions. In this article we discus about the mediator role of cinema for representing the Urban life Image and confliction of modernity in Iran.Meanwhile some megalopolis such as Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York and sanpitersboorg est.…have had great opportunity for understanding confliction of modernity in their situation, Tehran has never have that chance. Regarding to this vacuum we want to explain the role of Iranian fiction films for understanding the entrance of modernity consequences in different eras. We believed that fiction films can represent confliction of city and village, represent of modern dualities, non cohesive rationality and many other gaps in Iranian modernity that we have to know.
Azam Ravadrad; Ali Hajimohammadi
Abstract
Communication technologies today are greatly developed to the extent that obtaining information from different parts of the world is no more only depended to real and physical traveling. People are now able to travel as far as they want and whenever they wish using cyberspace, while sitting at home. ...
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Communication technologies today are greatly developed to the extent that obtaining information from different parts of the world is no more only depended to real and physical traveling. People are now able to travel as far as they want and whenever they wish using cyberspace, while sitting at home. Tourism in this condition is no more dependent on time, place and financial planning. Two important questions raise here, first, can virtual tourism replace the real tourism and eliminate the need for it? Secondly, could cognition produced by the virtual tourism be the same as the cognition formed by the real tourism? To answer these questions, defining the characteristics of virtual and real tourism is needed. The main basis of this comparison is being in special place and an experimental sense of being in that place, in the real tourism, on one hand, and selectivity of places and receiving packaged information in the virtual tourism, on the other. This paper claims that although the virtual tourism could offer vast and complete information to the tourist, but in reality it lacks sense of being in place and lived experience. For these reasons, the obtained cognition is manipulated and unreal. Secondly, this type of tourism can be considered only as a complement to the real tourism. A tourism that begins with virtual space and leads to the real world could have positive and better consequences of both spaces on the process of cognition.
Azam Ravadrad
Abstract
This paper attempts to study the correlation between IRIB’s Religious and Non-religious programs, and the levels of religiosity in Iran. Accordingly, I would firstly explain the key concepts as religious program, non-religious program, religious broadcasting, and Ideological broadcasting; then, ...
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This paper attempts to study the correlation between IRIB’s Religious and Non-religious programs, and the levels of religiosity in Iran. Accordingly, I would firstly explain the key concepts as religious program, non-religious program, religious broadcasting, and Ideological broadcasting; then, analyzing some instant programs, from non-religious to religious, I would attempt to formulize their impacts on one’s definition of religion –either as a private or simultaneously private and public matter. It is shown that in the trilogy of purely religious, purely entertaining, and mediated religious programs, it is the third which satisfy a religious television’s ideal.
Azam Ravadrad; Mahdi Montazer Ghaem; Parisa Sarkarati
Abstract
Regarding the importance of representation in redefining individuals and social groups’ identity, the interpretation of women from representation of feminine identity in television is examined in this article. The main question asks: what is the relationship between women’s interpretation ...
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Regarding the importance of representation in redefining individuals and social groups’ identity, the interpretation of women from representation of feminine identity in television is examined in this article. The main question asks: what is the relationship between women’s interpretation of feminine identity in television and their media consumption. It was assumed that women resist against those media contents which reproduce unwanted identity for them, and they do this through not consuming the presented contents. The research method was qualitative, using intense interviews with women from different social groups having different characteristics. Using Stewart Hall’s concept of Encoding and Decoding, it is examined that how women with different characteristics in terms of occupation, education and their marital status, adopting different readings, produce different meanings for those serials which try to reproduce a housewife identity for women. The results showed that the kind of women’s interpretation of media representations is different according to their different characteristics, and that this is in relation to their selective usage of media contents and shaping the desired contents for them.
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