The Representation of Social Issues in Iranian Cinema after the Islamic Revolution

Introduction Iranian society is full of various social issues. The issues such as poverty, discrimination, inflation, corruption and delinquency, addiction and inefficiency are all part of the constant preoccupations of community members. Among the elites, there are many definitions of social issues. Wright Mills defines the social issue with four characteristics of structural origin, generality, being threating, and structural solution (in Yousefi & Akbari, 2012). Rwomire (2001) considers it to be an undesirable phenomenon that is viewed intolerable by a significant number of the community members and collective action is necessary to correct it. Meanwhile, one of the major areas of social issues is in cinema, and recognizing social issues in the form of image and pictures especially in cinema works can considerably help reduce psychological ambiguities in the field of social issues since “cinema movies are the important cultural source for understanding nature and causes of social deviances” (Soltani Gard Faramarzi, 2016). Review of the related literature suggests that although cinema works have addressed different issues and harms, these works lack a comprehensive and holistic representation of the issues and they have generally pursued different social issues in a scattered manner. Thus, a clear and comprehensive picture of the relationship between Iranian cinema and social issues cannot be achieved. Hence, the present study attempts to analyze comprehensively social issues in the highest-grossing movies of Iranian cinema and pursues the goal of how social issues are portrayed in Iranian cinema after the Islamic Revolution. Material & Methods In the present study, qualitative content analysis was used as the research method for investigating social issues in cinema. Also, 37 highest-grossing movies of cinema after Iranian Revolution were selected as the sample by using purposive sampling method. It was presumed that all films somehow explicitly or implicitly cover social issues. However, in the selection of the highest-grossing movies, it was emphasized that these types of movies have a common inter-subjectivity among the audience on the most important issues of Iranian society. In addition, some scholars have argued that in order to be able to demonstrate, over a long period, the assessment of cinema based on social changes, the movies should be selected that are acceptable and popular among people (Azad Armaki and Amir, 2013: 111). Discussion of