“Based on what European newspapers tell us,” the author of a 1909 article in New Iran (Iran-i Naw) newspaper heralded, “the microbes of various diseases will now be shown to us on cinematograph screens.” This statement evinces an early 20th-century “medicalized” outlook that embraced cinematic education in the diagnosis of the ills of “body nation” in order to propel Iran towards progress and social advancement.Footnote 1 Much of the scholarship on the history of Iranian cinema considers film spectatorship in the first three decades of the 20th century as a leisure practice with origins in royalist and elitist entertainment forms. A close reading of newspaper articles and film announcements presented in this article, however, reveals that cinema's significance extended well beyond its role as what scholars commonly consider a diversion for the nobility and other elites.
In what follows, I reperiodize the history of cinema in Iran by foregrounding its employment and veneration as a means of public education rather than a form of monarchist entertainment. I reread the study of cinematic practices, and “the relations of power that inform their production, distribution, exhibition, and discursive and material effects,” by considering cinema as “a node around and through which flowed discourses and practices of government as a shaping of the modalities of selfhood, citizenship and populations.”Footnote 2 This article first demonstrates cinema's implication in the cultural formation of governance in Iran, which manifested in popular discourses on nationalism and education in the first two decades of the 20th century prior to cinema's institutionalization in the 1930s. It then attends to cinema's subsequent appropriation and regulation by the Pahlavi state as part of its nationalist agenda to homogenize and uplift the masses.Footnote 3
Several theoretically and empirically comprehensive studies on educational systems in Qajar and Pahlavi Iran have examined the central role of pedagogy in the project of state building and crafting a “national” identity. However, very few of these important works attend to the role of cinema in the “moral enlightenment” of the public and “awakening” of nationalist sentiments.Footnote 4 This article does not seek to investigate Iran's modern education system or pedagogical curricula promoted in film programs; nor does it aim to examine the ways in which various “educational” films functioned to edify the masses. Rather, it attempts to demonstrate the status that cinema gained as a form of ethical self-management in popular discourses that linked education to national advancement, and then as a governmental technology of power in the early 20th century.
In the first two decades of the 20th century, cosmopolitan merchants and social thinkers painted cinema as an educational organ in the service of technologies of the self to cure individual, social, and national ills. Drawing on a broad range of archival sources including newspaper articles and film announcements, I show how, in the absence of a centralized state in the 1910s and early 1920s, cosmopolitan citizens who were cognizant of and in dialogue with global trends promoted the means for the governance of self by attaching a potent significance to cinema as a medium for the moral enlightenment of the masses. In the conversations of these cosmopolitans, cinema was closely associated with individual moral edification and, subsequently, national advancement. In line with the medicalized language adopted in Iran in curing “social illnesses” at the turn of the century,Footnote 5 cinema promised to cure societal maladies that resulted from ignorance. The inclusion of what was perceived as didactic international films (including science, history, and scenic films) in social events and school pedagogical programs not only created profits, but also worked to legitimate cinema among the urban public as a model of conduct at a time of precarity.
Despite its acceptance as an educational medium among many cosmopolitan merchants, social critics, and an urban public, cinema gave rise to increasingly contentious discourses in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In what follows, I highlight some of these competing conversations, which promoted the technology either as a didactic instrument or as a modern space that propagated “degenerate” European social norms and led to a weakening of Persian values and Iranian nationalism. I contend that the criticisms aimed at cinema were concerned less with the technology, than with the newly established Pahlavi government's neglect in controlling film screenings and incompetence in confronting the unbridled circulation of European customs through these visual offerings.
With the crystallization of statist nationalism under the first Pahlavi Dynasty (1925–41), the government of Reza Shah became increasingly engaged in the local and global sociocultural dialogues on cinematic education. Having been informed of its potent role in national pedagogy and international propaganda through the debates of cosmopolitan cultural trendsetters, the state eventually co-opted and institutionalized cinema as part of its nationalist didactic agenda. In attempts at what Michel Foucault calls the “governmentalization of the state,” Pahlavi officials took over cinematic tasks that were originally taken up outside the state.Footnote 6 The state soon made cinema an extension of its technologies of power, which functioned “to conduct the conduct” of individuals to shape an Iranian civil society.Footnote 7 The government also engaged with criticisms that were aimed at cinema by taking measures to regulate theaters and manage cultural practices. To this end, theater spaces became increasingly standardized, film programs administered, and conduct in movie houses directed. An investigation of newspapers, official journals, and magazines, in addition to some of the movies that gained governmental permit for screening during this era, attest to the formal acceptance of cinema as a pedagogical medium, especially utilized for domestic propaganda, managing cinematic imaginations, and creating a national identity. As this article demonstrates, cinema's approval by cosmopolitan practitioners and social critics as a means to discipline Iranian society was part and parcel of the urban public's nationalist ventures that had begun prior to the inauguration of the Pahlavi Dynasty and its statist nationalist projects.
CINEMATIC EDUCATION THROUGH DECENTRALIZED PRACTICES (1900S–EARLY 1920S)
Scholarship on early and silent films has linked cinema to modernity. Scholars have argued not only that cinema was one of modernity's technological offsprings but also that it worked to articulate and mediate modern experiences through, for instance, the creation of new forms of (mass) spectatorship and novel sites of sociability. These experiences in turn engendered new social practices, as well as public and private interactions.Footnote 8 Due to an increase in the transnational flow of migrants and an overall growth in the population of Tehran in the late 19th and early 20th century, the number of facilities such as guesthouses, hotels, theaters, teashops, restaurants, cafes, and shops intended for the congregation, education, and entertainment of diverse people increased dramatically. The creation of these public sites coincided with the creation of government-led measures to forestall the multiplication and spread of diseases including the establishment of sanitary facilities such as the city piping system and public washrooms, the planting of trees in urban streets, and the dissemination of hygienic guidelines among the public. Such societal transformations and novel practices gave rise to modern notions of temporality that projected a salubrious and disease-free national horizon of expectation. As Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has identified in his reading of late 19th- and early 20th-century essays and periodicals, Iranian modernity's medicalized “diagnosis-prognosis” political discourse was extended to social concerns arising from urban transformations, unfamiliar experiences, and novel practices of this era.Footnote 9 Cyrus Schayegh has explicated some of the anxieties that arose from the use of modern technologies, mechanized transport, and shrinking of notions of time and space in the early 20th century. Some Iranians became increasingly concerned about the speedy spread of epidemic diseases and an increase in stress leading to mental diseases, and in consequence to moral vice.Footnote 10 Such concerns propelled a desire for a progressive Iran free of “social maladies” and their manifested traits of “lying” and “cheating.”Footnote 11 These societal ailments were perceived to stem from the weakening of Persian morale in light of the intervention of modern technologies and European military forces since the 19th century, and Iranian “imitation” of “Western” cultural norms.
In such circumstances, education and moral instruction were deemed by social and cultural thinkers as indispensable to creating a healthy nation, disciplining the masses, advancing the country, and locating Iran on the global map. According to Schayegh, concerns about the modern age led to quests for remedies in the field of biomedical sciences and an overall promotion of sciences and education, which, according to the words of a reporter in 1921, worked to “tackle social problems, strengthen Iran, and recast it into a unified, fit, modern society.”Footnote 12 The medicalized discourses of many late 19th- and early 20th-century critics point to the significance of pedagogy as a “panacea,” which awakened morale and thrusted Iranians toward an age of progress and scientific advancement.Footnote 13 For this reason, Iran experienced a boom in educational institutions.Footnote 14
Contrary to some of the literature on Iranian cinema that considers movie watching solely entertaining, illegitimate, or forbidden due to religious concerns,Footnote 15 as the popularity of private and public cinematograph screenings grew during this time, the status of cinema as a public mode of communication that enlightened the public and engendered commercial profit became noteworthy to cinema owners and intellectuals. As early as 1907, the newspaper Tamaddun (Civilization), which was in active circulation during Iran's Constitutional Revolution (1906–11), characterized theaters and movie houses as increasingly progressive factors in the future of Iran, especially in the way they excited and incited desire for national advancement.Footnote 16 Another article published in the proconstitution newspaper Iran-i Naw (New Iran) in 1909 pointed out how cinematograph screenings benefited the masses by publicly displaying social “microbes.” The author of the article claimed that in order “to repel the enemies of humanity,” it was now possible “to take good measures against the microbes that have entered the blood” of the nation, and that have “fully deteriorated the health” of society. The cinematograph, the author asserted, magnified these microbes, made them visible, and raised the consciousness to avert them. Using the medicalized language that marked discourses of Iranian modernity more broadly, the author prescribed the use of the cinematograph not only for diversion but also “for the scientific instruction” of students.Footnote 17 He urged urban schools to include cinematograph programs in their curricula, as the projection of images was far “better for the comprehension of the students than the explanations of the most capable of teachers.”Footnote 18
Almost a decade later, in 1924, the Berlin-based monthly magazine Iranshahr (Iran-city) likewise commented on the cultural benefits of the cinematograph. Claiming that Iranians had not yet “discovered the current importance of theater and cinema,” the author, Murtiza Mushfiq Kazimi, complained that “the higher-ranked [officials] and intellectuals of the country” were still “reluctant to go to cinemas” and that they only prescribed “cinema going” for their kids when they moaned and cried. In arguing that when “the excitement and inclination for recreation and studying have been obliterated . . . one cannot hope for progress,” Mushfiq Kazimi linked the promotion of cinematic education and culture to the creation of a civilized Iran.Footnote 19 The author urged cinema owners and state officials to establish “a company for the importation of translated American and German films,” so that they could be “screened for women in private spaces” and audiences would become familiar with the “awe-inspiring events” of European civilizations.Footnote 20
Since the early 1900s, film screenings were conducted by cosmopolitans, who seem to have devised their cinema programs—textual descriptions of films in program announcements—through prudent and careful deliberation. Early cinematograph operators such as Haji Nayib Muʿili, Rusi Khan, Aqayuf, Antoin Sevreguin, and Ardishir Khan (Ardashes Batmagerian) were members of merchant and guild communities who by virtue of their trades were informed of global goings-on. Other merchants such as Ibrahim Khan Sahaf-Bashi were not only active in projecting films, but also involved in political and constitutionalist activities.Footnote 21 As businesspeople who benefited from commercial profits generated by film screenings, and as modernists who integrated discourses of national progress into their professions, cinema operators offered a multitude of “silent” visual offerings in their daily programs. These offerings, which ranged from international scenic and war newsreels to scientific and fictional-drama films, were intended to appeal to diverse tastes and communities in a diasporic hub such as Tehran.Footnote 22 As cultural trendsetters and cosmopolitans engaged in the social and political rhetoric of this new age, cinema owners and cineastes soon came to discover the significance of international films in public enlightenment—especially at a time when commercial national productions were absent.Footnote 23 Their insights were also in line with new European educational philosophies that promoted film screenings as didactic tools. As early as 1909, announcements for screenings advertised “moral films” (pardih-hā-yi akhlāqī), i.e., cinematic productions that offered moral lessons intended to guide Iranian imaginations.Footnote 24 Soon after, movie theatres such as Casino Cinema (Sinama Kazinaw), Sun Cinema of Lalihzar (Sinama Khurshid-i Lalihzar), and Palace Cinema (Sinama Palas) advertised moral films alongside scientific, historic, and war films in their program announcements. In a 1919 film announcement in the periodical Raʿd (Thunder), Palace Cinema specifically claimed the purpose of cinema programs to be “the rectification of public morality.”Footnote 25 In 1923, Sun Cinema, established within the famous Farus Publishing House, likewise commented on the benefits of cinema for students in Iran and advocated its use for pedagogical purposes, as was “customary in all of Eurotopia [farangistān].”Footnote 26 Such accounts attest to cosmopolitan merchants’ familiarity with global conversations in regard to early cinematic education. Moreover, they demonstrate the ways in which some in Iran envisioned the future of their country to be commensurate with more advanced global counterparts.
Many of the films projected in the 1920s were advocated by various cinematograph operators for the beneficial attitudes that they supposedly induced in their audiences. In 1919, Iran newspaper stated that viewers of the film The Tiger's Trail (1919), an adventure serial starring Ruth Roland, will acquire a robust “will,” “strong heart,” and “righteousness,” and will never be “hopeless” again.Footnote 27 In another issue from 1926, Iran promoted Civilization (1916), an American antiwar film that was produced during World War I, as not just a “spectacle” but a “lesson” that inclined human kind toward “humanity.”Footnote 28 The author of the review further praised the film for stirring “peaceful sentiments” in anyone who watched it, be it a “minister, lawyer, military [official], merchant, farmer, young or old.”Footnote 29
To draw a comparison with some Western countries such as the United States, many pedagogical institutions and movie theaters in the 1910s regularly featured educational films such as scenic, scientific, and historical films to “democratize” and “Americanize” education. Jennifer Lynn Peterson's work on early American films is especially illuminating in this case. Peterson argues that nonfiction travelogue films were included as part of the American pedagogical curricula and public cinema programs of the 1910s, not only as a source of profit devised by the film industry, but also as a means to “uplift” cinema audiences into more enlightened high-class subjects.Footnote 30 According to her, the popularity of films during the nickelodeon boom engendered reactions from Progressive Era reformers, clergy, and educators who considered cinema “cheap entertainment.”Footnote 31 To free itself from such criticisms, the American film industry created film content that would garner cultural respectability and that linked cinema to forces of reform.Footnote 32 As the examples above demonstrate, cosmopolitan film projectionists and cinema owners in Iran engaged with international conversations highlighting cinema's potential in moral edification and showcasing films that, at least in advertisement, aimed to enlighten the masses.
In his book on early cinema and popular science in France, Oliver Gaycken also comments on the close connection between early cinema and educational programs in the early 20th century.Footnote 33 Gaycken contends that pre–World War I popular science films were precursors to the establishment of an educational cinema that came into its own in the 1920s. The incorporation of cinema into the educational system, Gaycken argues, added to the popularity of cinema and even enabled scientific films to morph into a new commercial genre.Footnote 34 In the sociopolitical context of Iran, the incorporation of pedagogical films into cinema programs did not give rise to the creation of such a cinematic genre in the 1910s and 1920s, but it arguably legitimized cinema as a “moral” institution among the urban public in Tehran at a time when cinematic practices were decentralized. As will be discussed shortly, after the Iranian government's institutionalization of cinema, the official promotion of films in didactic programs additionally functioned to reorganize educational models along European-style pedagogical systems and to position Iran as contemporaneous with its global counterparts.
With the increase in the number of cinemas in Tehran, other Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Mashhad, Rasht, and Simnan also participated in the expansion and diversification of public sites of sociability, namely, hotels, roads, theaters, and movie houses, while likewise embracing cinema as a means of moral elevation. In Tabriz, for example, the announcement of the launching of Iran's Illusion Cinema (Iliziyun-i Iran) in 1910 specifically advertised a cinematograph program that mainly included films pertaining to “science, history, geography of the globe, relating to schools and publications, ethics, light comedies et al.”Footnote 35 The same movie theater offered discounted tickets for students. It seems, therefore, that cosmopolitan merchants who had intellectual and commercial contacts with diasporic communities in Iran and neighboring countries understood the potential role of cinema in guiding imaginings of what Iran ought to be.
The locations of film screening venues are also worthy of attention in that they further attest to the significance of cinema as educational tools in the service of modernity and nationalism. In Tehran of the 1910s, several film venues opened on Nasiriyyih Avenue where the famous school of higher education, Dar al-Funun, was located. Film gatherings were also sometimes held in seminars and conferences where diverse crowds congregated. In 1910, for instance, Shirkat-i Kunfarans (the Conference Company) organized a conference and cinematograph screening on the upper floor of Farus Publishing House.Footnote 36 To draw more students and school officials, in 1915 New Cinema (Sinama-yi Jadid) allocated 200 free tickets to students in Tehran to attend a screening of a film that was of such importance that it was intended to be the “only” film in the program of that night.Footnote 37
Until the late 1920s when the first Persian-language silent films were produced and screened, Iranian cinemas only showcased international newsreels and feature films with foreign-language intertitles. In the early 1900s and 1910s, the majority of projected films contained French, Russian, Turkish, German, and English intertitles. Cinema owners and operators soon came to realize that cinema's full potential to enlighten the public could be better exploited if the public understood the intertitles of these imported silent productions.Footnote 38 Although the languages were incomprehensible to the general public, the images featured onscreen were deemed educational, especially when accompanied by live translators who orally explicated scenes and intertitles, which was often the case.Footnote 39 By 1917, however, cinemas started screening “new films from the war front” and “comical, historical, and moral dramas” whose intertitles had been translated into Persian,Footnote 40 a practice that ensured profitability and was also indicative of brewing nationalist sentiments emphasizing Persian language as the signifier of a glorious ancient culture in a modernizing nation.Footnote 41 Many other theaters soon followed the same practice. In 1923, the periodical Sitarih-yi Iran (the Star of Iran), advertising for Pathé Cinema (Sinama Patih) of Grand Hotel,Footnote 42 stated that cinema's progress in the world was due to the “awareness of people of the content of programs.”Footnote 43 On this basis, it advocated that intertitles be written in the language of the country in which they were projected. Following this short explanation, the newspaper advertised 999 Nights, a film that had been imported from Berlin and had its intertitles translated into Persian.Footnote 44 In the same year, Iran issued an advertisement for Farus Cinema under the subtitle, “What was the subject of last night's film? – I did not understand because it was not in Persian,” assuring the audiences that going forward Farus Cinema would translate the intertitles of its featured films “from English and Russian into Persian [language].”Footnote 45
By Persianizing the language of intertitles, integrating live translations (through the employment of a dīlmāj [translator] during film screenings), and thus integrating new meanings into international films, motion pictures became familiar cultural products that now embodied a major national signifier of the vatan (homeland), i.e., the Persian language. At a time when it was not yet centralized or officially absorbed by the state, cinema thus became a medium in the service of the technologies of selfhood, that is, the means for governing oneself to become a member of the civil society; it informed audiences of the global order, refashioned subjectivities in line with the demands of a new age, and stirred patriotic sentiments at a time of heightened national consciousness.
NATIONALIZATION OF EDUCATION AND CENTRALIZATION OF CINEMA (LATE 1920S–1930S)
Although cinema had been used by cosmopolitan merchants and members of guild communities to enlighten the public and inspire nationalist fervor, after Reza Pahlavi (r. 1925–41) came to power in 1925, cinema gained a more prominent political role, especially in the educational system.Footnote 46 The Pahlavi government's institutionalization and endorsement of cinema worked to morph it into a statist disciplinary tool that served modernization processes and the government's nationalist agenda in the 1930s. Considering cinematic tasks part and parcel of a larger apparatus in training citizenship and promoting nationalism, the state, along with some social and cultural thinkers of the time, took them over. As culture was employed in what Foucault considered the “governmentalization of the state,” cinema became a political technique of governmentality.Footnote 47 By utilizing “didactic forms of culture,” the state sought to change norms of social behavior and create a disciplined nationalist society.Footnote 48
The “sole enemy” of Iran, as the writer, diplomat, and critic Hussayn Kazimzadih stated in 1922, was “the degeneration of morality”—a sentiment that justified his calling for a “war and jihad” against it. The savior of this “swamp of hypocrisy, falsehood, and vile,” he—like his contemporaries—believed, was “science and social education.”Footnote 49 Kazimzadih argued that the tools for such education included “preaching and propaganda,” “publication of theses and moral books,” creating “scientific and moral societies,” imposing “penalties and social punishments,” “the maintenance of health and physical exercise,” and avoiding “dangers” associated with “unemployment” as well as “theaters and cinemas.”Footnote 50 These were some of the social and cultural programs that became important to the Pahlavi state. In 1931, an author who went by Dr. Partaw, writing for Arman (Aspiration) magazine, likewise held that “the most important factor for the advancement and prosperity of a nation” was “national education,” which consisted of “family nurturing and primary school education.”Footnote 51 The intensification of discourses around education policy during the Pahlavi era, as Afshin Marashi contends, reveals an increasing “public awareness” about the relationship between “national culture and the administration of an education system.”Footnote 52
In addition to newspapers, starting in the mid-1920s governmental journals began to publish an abundant number of articles informed by international centralized education systems in which cinema occupied an important role. In 1925, the monthly magazine Taʿlim va Tarbiyat (Education and Training), the official publication of the Ministry of Education, published a series of articles on the institutionalization of cinema in various countries, as well as the importance of cinema to pedagogy. A piece from September 1925 titled “Variety: Primary School Education in France” (Mutinavviʿih: Taʿlimat-i Ibtidayi dar Faransih) investigated the didactic modes in both France and England.Footnote 53 The article specifically looked into the role of cinema as a vehicle “to disseminate knowledge and develop cognition,” especially in the fields of “scientific-geographic facts, life sciences, history, and technological exhibition and industries.”Footnote 54 In another article titled “Education in Others’ Countries” (Maʿarif dar Mamalik-i Digaran), the same magazine explored the conditions of public pedagogy in Russia. According to the article, Russian higher education had become centralized under the authority of the Commission of Education, the responsibilities of which had expanded to include the administering of “state theaters,” “the Academy of Fine Arts,” other “music and artistic industries,” “didactic organizations,” and “local and town schools.”Footnote 55 Such new developments in international pedagogic systems undoubtedly informed official Iranian debates on the creation of a national and centralized education system in the country—debates that situated cinema as an essential component of the modern didactic mission.
Elaborating on the significance of cinema, in 1933 the chairman of the National Police Establishment (Tashkilat-i Kull-i Nazmiyyih-yi Mamlikati) also described cinema as a “crucial cornerstone” for “the changing of social mentality” and “uplifting” in addition to representing “the national progress of any state.” According to the chairman, cinema could introduce the masses to “necessary principles,” and direct the attention of “foreign spectators” to industrial and social advancements in the country.Footnote 56 In 1934 Taʿlim va Tarbiyat published another article titled “Teaching with the Use of Cinema” (Tadris bih Vasilih-yi Sinama) which held that in “civilized” (i.e., modernized) countries “teaching with cinema” was one of the “most common methods in schools.” The article then stated that, in keeping with such trends, one film projector had been installed in the hall of Dar al-Funun School of Higher Education that would eventually “show historical, scientific, and pedagogical films based on a specific program.” “The Ministry [of Education],” the article noted, “was seeking to install more devices” of film screening in other high schools in Tehran and the provinces, to keep Iran's educational tools in temporal continuity with those of the civilized world.Footnote 57 In fact, the 1934 Annual Report of the Department of Publications’ Operations (a subdepartment of the Ministry of Education) affirmed that in that year an “educational cinema” (sīnamā-yi ʿilmī) had been installed in Dar al-Funun and was actively used by students. Hinting at the first instances of Pahlavi interference in cinematic education, the report stated that each of the films considered for screening was selected “by the Department of Publications” based on “literary and technical aspects.” More than half of the available films were banned from screening due to their “lack of benefits to technical [sciences] [mazāyā-yi fannī].” Though indicating that films were reviewed before projection, the report also mentioned that the department had taken measures to “publicize the subject [of films] in newspapers and encourage litterateurs to write articles on this topic”— efforts that, the author believed, had already yielded positive results.Footnote 58
In the same year, the government ordered Ibrahim Muradi (1899–1976), a filmmaker, critic, and writer, to assess the state of cinematograph screenings in Dar al-Funun.Footnote 59 Upon completing his examination of the “hall and cinema area” of the school on 15 November 1934, Muradi expressed his recommendations for improvements in a report to the Ministry of Education, Endowments, and Fine Arts (Vizarat-i Maʿarif va Uwqaf va Sanayiʿ-i Mustazrafih). He suggested that instead of projecting the magic lantern, “scientific films” (fīlmhā-yi sīyāntīfīk) should be imported from Europe for students’ use.Footnote 60 Until such films were brought to the country, Muradi advised the ministry to employ the sixteen scientific film reels that had been in use at the Military High School Laboratory.Footnote 61 Increasingly incorporated into official didactic programs, cinema was leveraged towards revamping social behaviors and taming imaginations, especially among youth.
In line with the mission to instruct students, in 1934 the Ministry of Education designated Muhsin Azizi (b. 1905), from the Iranian Embassy in Paris, to take part in the “Rome International Congress on Education and Pedagogy through Film,” in which authoritative representatives from forty-five member countries were to participate.Footnote 62 Muhsin Azizi's report on the proceedings included a brief history of the Congress, an exploration of its goals, and its structural framework. The Congress, the report stated, was divided into various branches that examined the role of film and cinema in “the maintenance of individual hygiene” and thus “the preservation of [the health of] society,” “the pedagogy of the masses,” “the relation of the state to educational cinematography,” “technical aspects” of cinema, and the “disciplining of the nation”Footnote 63—all topics that piqued the interest of the Pahlavi state as it attempted to conduct the conduct of the populace through cinema.
In conversation with official views on cinema, in a March 1926 article in Shafaq-i Surkh (The Crimson Twilight), ʿAliquli Mahmudi stressed the significance of cinema for public edification and expressed his regrets that it had not gained enough attention in Iran despite being “the best device for education and moral instruction.”Footnote 64 In April of 1935, Nasrullah Falsafi, the editor in chief of Taʿlim va Tarbiyat, published an extensive article that looked into various “Tools for Education,” including “Oral Lectures,” “Books,” and the “Use of Cinema in Schools.”Footnote 65 The article recommended use of films in schools so that the visual repertoire of students would develop in addition to other abilities. However, Falsafi also suggested this use be limited because the speed of moving images would not allow students to pay attention to the subject or to remember details.Footnote 66 Another article published in the journal Mihr (The Sun) in 1937 also explored the “Services of Cinema in the Progress of Education.” “A writer, no matter how intellectual and professional,” the article stated, “cannot fully describe the civilization, habits, traditions, actions and tense moments of a nation and people.” In this respect, “cinema comes to the help of publications,” in that it “illustrates buildings and constructions, the fashion of walking and speaking, [and] the laughter of people who live in the most distant parts of the world . . . and because cinema is the best interpreter of nature, and is nature itself.”Footnote 67 These statements attest to the high status that films assumed in the imagination of government officials and agents of education in Iran. Cinema worked to visualize international communities and customs, familiarized Iranians with their international counterparts, and positioned Iran as an active participant in the 20th-century global order.
As we will see, despite efforts by the cultural elite and the state to promote cinema as an educational means, some sociocultural and religious elites deployed a countercultural rhetoric to package cinema as a space of degeneracy. One can perhaps read the contestatory discourses of these thinkers as attempts to tap into contemporary political discussions indirectly targeting the Pahlavi Dynasty and its alienating policies.
A CINEMA OR A “BROTHEL”? IRAN'S CONTENTIOUS DISCOURSES ON CINEMA
The Pahlavi state's speedy modernizing campaigns of the late 1920s and 1930s evoked a plethora of reactions, many of which were not positive. In fact, in Tehran and other major cities, the 1920s increasingly gave rise to concerns about a crisis in Persian ethics perceived to have stemmed from the adoption of European values through the spread and use of European cultural products. The Pahlavi state's rapid processes of modernization intensified these developments. Some members of urban society took issue with these changes and challenged the proliferation of public sites of sociability that contributed to the socialization of men and women (such as movie theaters), the prominent presence of unveiled women on the street and onscreen, the promotion of unveiling among the public, and the screening of many foreign films that provided possibilities for cultural appropriation. Whereas the previous section explicated some government officials’ approval of cinema as a tool for enlightening the public, this section demonstrates the variegated anxieties that cinema propelled among secular and Islamist intellectuals and social critics who aimed to challenge the government's policies and hoped for the regulation of public conduct and social norms. Aware of the negative charges aimed at cinema, and in dialogue with conversations surrounding this medium, the Pahlavi government, as the following paragraphs illustrate, took measures to standardize cinematic productions, screenings, and film programs.
A 1928 article in the periodical Habl al-Matin (Robust String) claimed that Iranians and Europeans were of “the same kind [jins]” with a major difference: while the latter possessed “perseverance, righteousness, science, and patriotism,” the former had “consciously” only adopted the knowledge of “self-adornment” from Europeans. “Why do Iranians not acquire [notions] of responsibility and nationalism which are European virtues?” asked the author.Footnote 68 Some social thinkers considered cinema, along with novels and periodicals, culpable in promoting “moral degeneracy” especially among youth. Remarks by the poet, writer, and editor in chief of Armaghan (Gift) magazine Vahid Dastgirdi (1879–1942) in 1933 are especially illuminating in revealing objections to cinema. According to him, “effective wise advice and philosophical and literary sermons had been washed off” from the world and were instead replaced by “the advice of novels, cinema, and newspapers.” In a clear stance against the widespread discourses surrounding “moral cinema,” Dastgirdi questioned “Which moral cinema” was there that “did not display lust . . . in front of the youth's vision?”Footnote 69 Dastgirdi castigated cinema for incarnating “the love-making of unchaste impure Europeans” for Iran's inexperienced youth.Footnote 70 Highlighting the intensification of charges aimed at the precarious and dark space of a movie theater,Footnote 71 Dastgirdi identified the cinema as “the house of indecency” (dār al-fahshā, i.e., brothels) and “the locus of decay” (markaz-i kharābī) of chastity and honor. Dastgirdi did not advocate the total obliteration of cinemas, novels, and newspapers—in fact he encouraged their “multiplication in number”; however, he believed in the annihilation of “lies” that promoted films and other cultural products imported from other countries as “moral” (akhlāghī) offerings. He hoped that only those newspapers, films, and novels that were “in actuality” moral agents of society rather than “the enemy of [public] morality [akhlāq]” be disseminated—perhaps through a centralized institution.Footnote 72
ʿAli Akbar Hakamizadih (d. 1987), an Islamic reformist, also took issue with the dystopic space that cinema engendered. Writing in 1935, Hakamizadih believed that although women and men were of “the same kind [jins],” their “mingling” in spaces such as cinemas was “more harmful than the mixing of wolves and sheep,” especially since the latter took “life at once” whereas the former obliterated “existence, gradually.” Addressing an already commercialized cinema culture in Iran, Hakamazadih reprimanded “ignorant people” who posted pictures of “mischievous women” (zanhā-yi nābikār) with “erotic poses” (hālathā-yi shahvat-angīz) on the walls of their rooms. Their children could “learn the ways of adultery and lust” from an early age, he warned.Footnote 73 Such proclamations against images of unveiled women in the mid-1930s were concurrent with the increasing appearance of European and Iranian women in urban spaces, the growing presence of unveiled Iranian women on streets and onscreen, the enactment of an official decree that banned veiling, and the emergence of mixed-gender cinema spaces.
Objections to cinema were also expressed in poetry. A poem titled “ʿIfaf-Namih” (The Book of Chastity) that was published in Armaghan magazine in 1934 explored the unfavorable consequences of women's unveiling in public:
The same poem then moves on to connect notions of “Westernization” to the weakening of Persian cultural values:
In another instance, the poem states:
After accusing women of learning the arts of “colorful dances” from the “West” and thus degrading the nation, the poem explored how cinema, novel, and theater functioned to debase society:
The mingling of men and women in public sites of sociability, such as movie houses, and the vices that arose from it, were specifically targeted in the poem:
The unveiling of women and especially the widespread depiction and circulation of images of uncovered women in international films elicited disapproval from some social thinkers. Many of the charges directed at cinema were arguably grounded in political—and not necessarily religio-spiritual—dissent and were aimed at the government's inadequate management of cultural products. The widespread importation and projection of international films that featured images of “naked women” and the unfamiliar practices that arose from the socialization of men and women in mixed-gender cinema spaces, were perceived as extensions of Western cultural imperialism, or Iranian “imitation” (taqlīd) of European conduct.Footnote 81 The government responded to these criticisms by regulating cinema spaces and codifying its visual content.
In his 1934 book Ayin (Rite), for instance, the secular thinker Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946) criticized the institution of cinema as part and parcel of the hegemony of Western civilization. In his treatises on what he conceptualized as “Europism” (urūpāyīgarāyī), or being plagued by European modes of life, Kasravi remarked that those who were afflicted by the “West” believed that cinema, along with the automobile, theater, and other technologies of European civilization, had to be imported to Iran for the country to become civilized.Footnote 82 Kasravi contended that all the words of “commendation” celebrating cinema as a device for the “goodness” (nikū-khūyī) and “awakening” (bīdārī) of people to have been “lies” and “exaggerations.” Considering the screenings “futile” (bīhūdih) and “childish” (kūdakānih), he felt that films made the “eyes weak” and “wasted” (tabāh) morale. Kasravi held “European and American” companies that produced and distributed films responsible for the desolation of morality in Iran.Footnote 83 Many others believed that the problem resided in the films that were selected to be screened. For instance, in 1933 the newspaper Iran-i Bastan (Ancient Iran) complained that cinema in Iran had not yet developed fully because most movie theaters were screening “pitiful” and “old” films that did not have any following in Europe; instead of screening historical films such as Ben Hur (1926) that “delighted the tired soul” and refined “public morality,” cinemas projected films that drove people to go to “cafes, gambling houses, and taverns.”Footnote 84
In disputing the government's exercise of power through cinema, or rather challenging what they perceived as the state's nonchalance towards the infiltration of western customs and practices through films, elites objected to the popularity of cinema among the Iranian public. Although the state attempted to regulate and manage the population through an institutionalized cinema, secular and religious members of society demonstrated their insubordination and, to borrow from Foucault, “acted upon the actions” of the government by confronting cinema and criticizing its surrounding culture.Footnote 85 Such criticisms prompted the government to enact stricter regulations of cinematic programs and to discipline cinematic practices.
CODIFYING CINEMA AND REGULATING TASTE (1930–40)
With the intensification of charges against cinema and international films, alongside the ongoing public and official pleas for the promulgation of cinematic education, the Pahlavi state embarked upon several cinematic reforms. The government undertook measures such as regulating film screenings, codifying movie theaters, standardizing cinematic practices, and commissioning Persian-language film productions, to appease its critics, manage public conduct in theaters, promote nationalism through visual education and propaganda, and therefore control the society's potential for cinematic imagination.
Cinema was codified in 1930 through the Nizam-namih-yi Bardashtan-i Film va Namayish-i Sinama (Code of Film Recording and Cinema Screening), a set of regulations announced by the Ministry of State (Vizarat-i Dakhilih).Footnote 86 Foucault suggests that the exercise of power “consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome.”Footnote 87 The new regulations arguably intended to do precisely that, i.e., to conduct modes of action in cinema spaces and to fashion filmic activities that “were destined to act upon the possibilities of action”Footnote 88 of audiences, cinema operators/owners, and filmmakers. The first chapter of the code was dedicated to filming regulations in various locations in Tehran. The code distinguished between fictional films and documentary-style newsreels and actualités, devising different limitations for each. According to the regulations, anyone interested in shooting a film in Iran had to submit a proposal to the authorities that included information on the director's name and address, the filming city and location, the fictional narrative and scenario of interest, and the date and time when the shooting was to take place. The applicants were further obliged to screen the finished film for “a special commission” appointed by the National Head Office of the Police (Tashkilat-i Kull-i Nazmiyih-yi Mamlikati) in order to be approved for a screening permit; all films were required to have a permit for both private and public showings.Footnote 89
The 1930 code moreover addressed various technicalities associated with screenings, such as the permissible “distance between the cinematograph device and film reel,” the number of exit doors in each movie theater, and the gap between theater seats and the screen.Footnote 90 According to the code, the Municipal Office premised the establishment of any cinema building in a city on the attainment of an official permit from the police office of that city, registration of the building in the city's Municipal Office upon receipt of the permit, and agreement of the establishment to be surveilled by that office.Footnote 91 The spatial positioning of cinema buildings within the city, and the hygienic and sanitary practices of movie theaters, also required the ratification of the Municipal Office before any permits could be issued. One might speculate that the sanitary provisions and regulation of cinema spaces were implemented as measures to further legitimize cinema, especially in light of reactionary attitudes and concerns over the making of a healthy Iran in the future.
The 1935 Code for Cinemas (Nizam-namih-yi Sinamaha), an expanded version of the 1930 code ratified by the Ministry of State (Vizarat-i Dakhilih), demanded the categorization of movie theaters into three grades, each with its own set of criteria, providing official evidence of social stratification. Grade one cinemas, for example, were required to screen “at least three films” in each program. The three films in grade one cinemas had to be arranged in the following order: “1) Newsreels of events that are no more than two months old, 2) Scientific, industrial, geographic, or athletic films, 3) Major film productions, the production of which are no more than one year old and their length is no less than two thousand meters.”Footnote 92 The concern over hygienic measures also manifested in the regulations for grade one and two movie theatres, where devices for air purification were mandatory. While grade one and two cinemas had to showcase at least one feature film— by the early 1930s mostly talking motion pictures—and several short reels, grade three cinemas were designed to exclusively feature silent movies.Footnote 93 The differentiation in ticket prices—a barometer of the economic class of each movie house—was observed in all three cinemas, and was further applied to seats in each venue.
According to the 1930 code, film merchants or the heads of cinema institutions that imported films, were required to submit the “original names” of the films that they intended to import and project for the next three months. Moreover, films that had been registered by one person could not be registered by another, unless six months had passed since the time of the initial registration. Although all cinema owners were required to obtain a permit for screening from the Municipal Office of each city, the office reserved the right to ban the showing of certain films in specific parts of the country. Children between the ages of five and fourteen were charged half price, and students who were above the age of fourteen were to be given a discount for one-third of the ticket price. Therefore, in line with sanitary policies, social hygienic measures were taken by the government as a means to fashion a socially healthy population. All film programs of grade one and two cinemas were required to end with Iran's national anthem (“Salute of Iran”) with the use of an orchestra or a gramophone. According to Article 19, all film programs in grade one cinemas were obliged to be in Persian language, while their translation into other languages was optional—a regulation that points to the taste, ideological orientation, and social class of grade one cinema audiences.Footnote 94
As briefly mentioned earlier, hygienic guidelines figured prominently in cinematic regulations. Smoking was strictly prohibited in movie theaters—though it was still a usual occurrence.Footnote 95 Although consumption of opium had been a common practice, its use in the 1910s and 1920s came under much criticism by cosmopolitans and intellectuals, and in the late 1920s the Pahlavi Dynasty deemed its consumption in public spaces illegal. In 1927 the Ministry of Interior/State (Vizarat-i Dakhilih)—in consultation with the Office of Health Administration (Idarih-yii Kull-i Sihhiyyih)—communicated a decree to local police offices in the provinces, in which it declared the use of “opium and hashish” in coffee shops and public spaces to be prohibited based on Article 275 of the Penal Code.Footnote 96 In Tehran, according to the same letter, the Head Office of the Police (Idarih-yi Kull-i Tashkilat-i Nazmiyyih) and the Municipal Office of Tehran (Baladiyyih-yi Tihran) were appointed as the executive bodies responsible for the enforcement of that law; it was advised that relevant offices in the provinces also be assigned to prevent consumption of opium.Footnote 97 Therefore, contrary to the decentralized screening practices of the first two decades of the 20th century, when films were projected in cafes, restaurants, and hotels, the third decade of the century witnessed a centralization of cinematic practices that would in turn facilitate state surveillance of cinematic activities and regulate cinema as a disciplinary corpus governing conduct in theatres.
The official state records of the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs, and Fine Arts from the year 1935 attest to the government's efforts to manage the cultural material that was accessible to Iranian audiences (especially students), and that could therefore direct cultural taste. Out of the fifty-four films and stage pieces submitted to the ministry in order to obtain performance or projection permits, only forty-five acquired official consent, thus indicating the ministry's discrimination towards materials that lacked “technical and literary value.” According to the same report, certain measures had been taken to “promote screening [namāyish] in schools and to introduce students to the benefits and basics of this technology”; the ministry had specifically encouraged the adoption of “national stories” from Shahnamih for theatrical performances and film screenings, which again highlights the significance that the state ascribed to modern forms of visual and performative arts and to the adoption of nationalist narratives in cultural productions.Footnote 98 According to a 1939 report prepared by the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs, and the Arts, between September and February of 1939 137 films had been reviewed by the ministry, followed by another 106 between March and September of 1939. The report elucidates some amendments made by the Ministry of State and Ministry of Justice to the 1935 Code for Cinemas, including the prohibition of the admission of children below the age of seven to movie theaters; the amendments also made the admission of children between the ages of seven and sixteen contingent upon the suitability of the film for children. By the end of September 1939, the report stated, a total of thirty-four films had been examined and deemed appropriate for students.Footnote 99 These reports illustrate the measures that the government took to respond to criticisms that were aimed at cinema, and the significance that the state attached to the institution as a technology of governance that directed the conduct of citizens.
One could liken Pahlavi conceptions of educational cinema to Charles Acland and Heidee Wasson's conceptualization of “useful cinema” as “a body of films and technologies that performs tasks and serves as instruments in an ongoing struggle for aesthetic, social, and political capital.”Footnote 100 In the context of Iran, one observes the state promotion of an educational cinema that included a range of experimental, fictional, scientific, and didactic reels, rather than strictly pedagogical films. The state's instructional use of cinema during the early Pahlavi years to structure audiences’ “possible field of action,” to borrow from Foucault, thus points to the transformation of a decentralized and a more-or-less democratic cinema culture into a centralized one.Footnote 101 Despite its entertainment and aesthetic appeals, cinema was seen as an instrument for managing society and shaping nationalist subjects.
A look at some of the films that obtained screening permits from the government helps to clarify the filmic agenda at the time. Au Nom de la Loi (In the Name of the Law), a 1932 French film by Maurice Tourneur, was deemed by a film reviewer for Iran as a “social” and “moral” film suitable for Iranian audiences.Footnote 102 Another film critique in Iran considered Frank Lloyd's Cavalcade (1933), an American drama about British life, a “great” industrial and historical production that depicted “horrific and unacceptable results and consequences” of war. The prevalence of “moral degeneration,” “prostitution,” and “the tasteless life” of drunken men and women in cafes and gatherings, were seen as “the direct outcome of international wars.”Footnote 103 Such unsympathetic depictions of war-ridden nations arguably promoted an Iranian psyche that disapproved of engaging in international wars and/or immoral practices, while they envisioned a healthy, fit, and progressive Iran. The nationalist (and semifascist) Iran-i Bastan (Ancient Iran) periodical wrote a page-long description of the 1934 German propaganda film, Deutschland erwacht (Germany Awakes), in which it praised the film as a telling example of the devotion of German people to their homeland. The author considered the feelings of German society towards their leader (Hitler) and “the growing sense of patriotism” of their population to have been the most “beneficial” aspects of the film, ones deserving “the following” (payravī) of Iranians. According to the same article, the screening of the film at Mayak Cinema (Sinama Mayak) was accompanied by a documentary short film that depicted scenes from the historical sites of the grand city of Isfahan, such as the Bridge of 33 Arches and Khaju Bridge. The showcasing of such national images alongside Germany Awakes, the article proclaimed, provided a “special kind of excitement and thrill” for “Iranian patriotism”—especially because while images of “the home-country” (vatan) portrayed the “ancient” achievements of Iran, Germany Awakes inspired “ideas about the future,” “feelings of patriotism” and “struggle” (mujāhidat) for a better Iranian future.Footnote 104 It is no surprise then that Iran-i Bastan believed the most effective propaganda, both inside and outside Iran, was conducted through film; this was why the author expressed delight in the growing number of talking films in Persian.Footnote 105
In 1935, Iran-i Bastan praised the Imperial Film Company of Bombay as an Iranian institution run under the supervision and competence of Iranians—even though the institution was managed by an Indian from the Parsi community of Bombay, and benefited from the collaboration of Iranian artists such as Abdulhussayn Sepanta.Footnote 106 In fact, despite directors such as Ovanes Ohanians and Ibrahim Muradi who produced films in Iran in the early 1930s, Sepanta's cinematic activities in India came to play a major role in the emergent Persian-language cinema of the 1930s. Films such as Dukhtari-i Lur Footnote 107 (The Lur Girl)—for which Sepanta wrote the screenplay and in which he starred—came to be sources of pride for Iran's social elite and the government for how it harbingered the production of “national” (millī) talking films that could be distributed internationally to introduce Iran to the global audience onscreen. According to a film review published in Iran, certain parts of Dukhtari-i Lur were worthy of attention and made it “comparable” with good productions, namely “the subject of the film,” “the setting,” “nice scenery,” “precision in filming, and incarnation of the eastern spirit.”Footnote 108 Another part of the film that was met with enthusiastic applause of the audiences, the film critic contended, was the part that “depicted the progress of Iran in the last few years,” hence explaining the film's alternative title, Iran of Yesterday and Iran of Today.Footnote 109 Expressing a more nationalist view, a writer in Iran-i Bastan remarked that those who had watched the film became aware of “the patriotic [vatan-parastanih] sentiments” of the producers and saw the “bright flame that emanated from their love for the country” and that was “burning in their heart.”Footnote 110
Praising the success of Dukhtari-i Lur on its first screening, the film critic for Iran encouraged the Indian institution to produce more “Persian films with the same level of seriousness,”Footnote 111 while another critic for Iran-i Bastan hoped that “the heroic and national [vatanī] stories of Shahnamih” and “the history of Iran”Footnote 112 would be filmed and screened by the Imperial Film Company, an endeavor that was undertaken by the same company in subsequent years. In fact, the government commissioned the Imperial Film Company and Sepanta to make more Persian-language films based on the history of ancient Persia and Perso-Indic literature. For instance, the Pahlavi government “undertook some measures to celebrate the millennial anniversary of Firdawsi's birth” by commissioning “a film about the life and historical myths of this great man.” Because it had already “endeavored to make talking Persian films,” the Imperial Film Company of Bombay was commissioned to produce Firdawsi (1934).Footnote 113 Other Persian-language talking films of the 1930s that were directed by Sepanta in India included the Imperial Film Company of Bombay's Shirin and Farhad (1935), alternatively advertised as Khusraw and Shirin, Chashman-i Siyah (Black Eyes, 1936) produced by Krishna Film Company in India, and Layli and Majnun (1936) produced by East India Film Company of Calcutta. Subjects of much poetic work and literary praise in Iran and the region, such themes not only glorified ancient Persianate culture and literature but also provided appropriate content for educating the masses.
Like Persian-language talking feature films, short documentaries and newsreels were filmed and projected in Iran to serve as propaganda for the government. The newsreels that were sanctioned by the Pahlavi government included images from the foundational inauguration of the National Bank by Reza Shah,Footnote 114 parliamentary celebrations,Footnote 115 and cities such as Isfahan (mentioned above). In addition to these, there were many newsreels on Iranian political events, architecture, and landscape that were shot by international forces and featured in Iranian movie theaters.
The institutionalization of cinema entailed managing cinema spaces, regulating film programs, and stratifying movie theatres. The classification of cinemas in turn facilitated the compartmentalization of urban areas (according to cinema grades and economic/social status), and guided the socialization of individuals in cinema spaces and in the city. Although the regulations may not have always been strictly applied or followed, the state's systematization of cinemas points to an official attempt at centralization, rationalization, and order based on quality and affordability of films and audience taste in a modernizing Iran. Although cinema grades reflected social differentiation in various neighborhoods, the inclusion of a hierarchy of ticketed seats in each venue perhaps attests to attempts at democratizing education and uplifting public taste. Moreover, the government's propagandist measures to promote and commission Persian-language talking films aimed to educate the Iranian nation and display its national sovereignty on a global level.
CONCLUSION
In the 1900s and 1910s, cosmopolitan citizens’ promotion of cinema as a means to edify the masses morphed cinema into a public communication medium, the capacity of which was not limited to entertainment. During this time, cinematic education was perceived not necessarily as a tool to “Iranianize” the nation, but as a cultural and political force to awaken the heterogeneous Iranian public and to engender an imagination for a unified (yet hybrid), socially fit, sovereign, and advanced nation.
As the number of movie theaters and film screenings grew in urban centers such as Tehran, official attention paid to film gatherings also increased significantly. Whereas in the early 20th century cinemas functioned more or less independently based on the commercial and nationalist predilections of cosmopolitan merchants, starting in the late 1920s and early 1930s cinematic tasks were “seized upon by the state” and incorporated into Pahlavi state's “self-assigned pedagogic mission.”Footnote 116 At the same time, the intensification and rapid pace of societal transformations concomitant with the advent of the Pahlavi state further aroused feelings of discontent and marginalization amongst many, especially clerics and the sociocultural elite. Reza Shah's cultural and social modernization campaigns, including rapid propagation of sites of sociability, increased public presence of unveiled women following his aggressive campaign in 1936, importation and projection of a large number of international films that featured unveiled women, and propagation of nationalist debates that perceived such modernization processes to promote “imitation” of the West and abandonment of Iranian customs, provided sufficient excuses for reactionary responses to cinema, especially in the 1930s. Showcasing moments of insubordination, many Islamists and secular intellectuals took issue with the extant cinema culture of the time as part of a larger political struggle—a form of ideological battle that was sublimated in cinema (and other cultural products) and that continued to persist in Iran as a form of political warfare.
Informed of such anxieties, the Pahlavi government made official efforts to standardize film programs, control screenings, and further incorporate cinematic education as part of its nationalist agenda—techniques of governmentality that, in line with Iran's global counterparts, aimed to exercise power by directing the conduct of individuals and the society. In addition, the state commissioned the production of Persian-language talking films that foregrounded Iran as an ancient sovereign nation at a time when discourses of economic and political sovereignty were at their height. Despite the government's attempts at regulating cinema spaces, changing the norms of social behavior, and using cinema as a propagandist apparatus, proclamations against cinema continued to soar in the 1930s and 1940s—and persisted until the 1979 revolution. For as long as “moral degeneration” was perceived to stagnate Iran or prohibit it from advancing globally, cinema and its capacity for “imitation” prompted ideological charges that categorized it as “corrupting,” “westernized,” and “westernizing.” Therefore, although cinema acted as a liminal space of hybridity where the past propelled the future, it became a site where competing sentiments of secular and religious thinkers converged and transformed it into a highly politically charged space for many decades to come.
