Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 PhD Candidate in University of Art, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor in Cinema Department, University of Art, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Studying films to obtain and discuss their themes, often within the framework of qualitative methodology, always faces the problem that extracting what is in the film depends more on the accuracy of the researcher's tastes, and changes in viewing conditions can change the results. Having a framework for studying the content of the films, in addition to giving them the necessary consistency on the basis of theoretical backgrounds, makes the results of the study more consistent and thus the data are more reliable.
The theme is a concept in literary criticism that has hundreds of years’ history in dramatic literature and was redefined in the works of Russian formalists at the beginning of the 20th century and found new uses. The theme can be understood as the semantic aspect of a fictional work that is represented in it by its formal elements. Stuart Hall categorizes existing approaches to representation and choosing constructionist representation as the preferred approach. He applies this critique to Saussure's semiotics, which made a theoretical approach to explain how words act as sign language, while in cultures, meaning is often linked to larger units such as narratives, collections of images and discourses. Laclau's and Moff's discourse theory is one of the existing approaches to social constructionism. In this research, we have adopted a constructivist representation approach and, with the help of concepts provided by Laclau's and Moff's theory of discourse, we propose a method to help extract the themes of the films from their narrative.
The narrative of the film is the source of its themes, but since filmmakers often try to express what is on their minds circuitously, understanding the themes of the narrative is not an easy task. In this study, by introducing the concepts of objective and narrative constructs, we seek to separate and classify the data extracted from the film. Objective constructs, as the name implies, are the result of the audience's perception of film sounds and images, and narrative constructs are abstract constructs that are formed in the mind of the audience on the basis of objectively received structures, that is, the film's character and plot. In this way, first, by relying on characterization as the result of the combination of the film's multiple sign systems, in the light of Laclau's and Moff's discourse theory, we consider the character as a nodal point that articulates the information that the film provides about him. Therefore, revealing the personality traits will be like revealing how to articulate his identity, and in the next step, after identifying the common features of the film's characters, we come to group identities. By applying this method in Deportees (Ekhrajiha by Mass’oud Dehnamaki, 2007) we come to two contrasting group identities: the true religious represented by clergyman and Mirza, and the religious claimed by Haj Saleh and Abbas. On the other hand, by exploring the main events of the narrative and how they relate to each other, one can find other thematic propositions in the films; in this film, true religious tolerance leads to collective redemption of misguided people.
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