Document Type : Original Research Paper
Authors
1 MA in Cinema Studies, Department of Cinema, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Cinema Studies, Department of Cinema, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
New Iranian woman with relative freedoms, especially in the social activities domain, appeared as a result of the modernization process at metropolitan levels during the Pahlavi era. But this freedom was not liked by Iranian men, even the intellectual lot. For instance, the new wave of cinema prior to the Islamic revolution took the intellectual form at the time when itself had a critical stance toward the modernization process of the Shah, and sometimes showed even anti-modernist approach, now by portraying new woman with her outward deception and esoteric emptiness, it tried to reprehend the same by presenting her as a symbol of modern lifestyle and a symbol of the decline of the original Iranian culture. With a descriptive-analytical method and using library sources, the present paper tries to study the depiction of new woman in the two films related to new wave cinema in Iran, Mr. Naive and The Balooch. It concludes that new woman, like other phenomena of modern life, takes away the old patriarchal control and that persuades filmmakers to portray her as an attractive, superficial, and dangerous commodity of modern metropolis. In other words, new woman becomes a phenomenon that, in line with other modern phenomena and even at the top and most important of them puts down Iranian men and culture. In fact, in the form of localism and criticism of the Shah's incomplete modernization, these films rise up against modernity and defend patriarchal traditions and regain lost control. The representation of gender is of great importance in the sociological studies of art, and the article hopes to point out the depth of gender problems in Iranian society by examining the portrayal of new woman in the troubling new wave of cinema.
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