REPRESENTATION OF THE LOWER CLASS IN IRANIAN CINEMA

Date

2025-4

Author

Bonyadi Babaee, Minoo

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

77
views

0
downloads

Cite This

This study analyzes the representation of the lower class in the selected Iranian films produced by some of the most prominent Iranian filmmakers. It argues that there is a shift in the representation of the lower class throughout time in a way that, in recent films produced by filmmakers who have social concerns, they have been represented in a pessimistic point of view, showing them as culturally and physically isolated with no hope of improving their living circumstances. Considering the economic and sociopolitical changes in Iran, the living conditions of the people have also been affected. As the filmmakers who choose poverty as one of the main themes of their films try to reflect aspects of the realities in the society, by analyzing the representation of the lower class in selected Iranian films, this thesis attempts to show how these changes have affected the living conditions of the poor. To this end, a qualitative approach was used to carry out the research. First, a thematic analysis was done to identify the ways class relations and space have been used to portray the poor. Second, a visual analysis was carried out to illustrate how the lower class have been visually represented within the identified themes. It was concluded that besides being physically and culturally isolated, the poor are represented as sophisticated people, who, unlike the older representations, can make immoral choices and are doomed to suffer from poverty for the rest of their lives.

Subject Keywords

Representation, Iranian Cinema, Lower class, Poverty

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/114535

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis