Urban Sociology
sara farahpoor; Sina Razzaghi Asl
Abstract
Highlights
- This research develops a new approach to applying an artistic medium as the subject of urban studies.
- Researchers can identify and classify the dominant patterns of urban life in Tehran’s historical center through the narratives in Iranian movies.
- Urban spaces in the ...
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Highlights
- This research develops a new approach to applying an artistic medium as the subject of urban studies.
- Researchers can identify and classify the dominant patterns of urban life in Tehran’s historical center through the narratives in Iranian movies.
- Urban spaces in the historic area of Tehran in recent Iranian movies are commonly represented as isolated, dangerous spaces.
Introduction
Urban spaces, especially in historic areas, have undergone a transformation as a result of de-semantic processes and new formulations of declined urban areas. The process has led to a decline in the quality and transformation of the inhabitants’ everyday life in these areas. Since cinematic spaces best reflect the nature of everyday urban life, looking at urban spaces through the lens of the movies may be an approach that enables a new way of encounter with space and history.
The relationship between cinematic spaces and urban spaces will help to understand the contrast between urban development and the everyday life of the residents of urban areas from a human point of view, an aspect that has often been neglected by other approaches to urban studies. This relationship, which originates from the emergence of the movies at the heart of the modern urban society and continues to this day, was also manifested in Iran from 1930. In fact, the production of the first moving pictures coincided with major urban developments in the historical center of Tehran.
On the other hand, many urban spaces in these areas have gradually been emptied of their original functions and meanings over time, and they have assumed a representative, false function instead. The loss of connection and continuity between the historic area and other parts of the city has led to the transformation of urban spaces into something other than the environment containing the flow of everyday urban life. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to identify and classify urban themes and the dominant patterns of everyday urban life in Tehran’s historical center through visual data and narratives in Iranian movies.
Theoretical Framework
In order to elaborate on the theoretical framework, it is necessary to explain the notions of space, representation, and everyday life, and this will not be possible without referring to Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre considers space to be three-dimensional, related to society, time, and history. In the book Production of Space, he presents three formulations of the concept of space by stating that urban spaces are created through the dialectical interaction of three modes of production. The first mode is the tangible, material dimension of spatial experience (real space), the second is the representation of space (mental space) as a concept that is built by existing discourses and conventional ideologies, and the third is representational space, or lived space, as a concept that is understood from space through everyday life and is a combination of the first two forms.
Accordingly, reliance on the creative capabilities of the movies demonstrates that the notion of representational spaces in this article can help to understand and explain the evolution of these spaces and the symbolic determination that they accept and display in each period of time.
Until achievement of theoretical saturation, the authors continued the review and analysis of the movies based on the criteria taken from the theoretical framework of the research, including the representation of the historic center of Tehran in the movies and the detailed representation of the urban spaces in this area, the connection between the movie plots and the changes made in the function and quality of these spaces as a result of the intervention policies adopted in the historical center, and the representation of the everyday life of the residents of historical districts and their methods of resistance against the above developments. In the first phase of thematic analysis, all the elements presented in the movie text which contained meaning related to the purposes of the research were extracted and translated into semantic expressions. In the next phase, the frequent concepts were outlined and highlighted. Then, the categories formed from the selected relevant codes were classified under one main theme, and this process continued until theoretical saturation was achieved.
Finally, in the explanation of each theme, the movies were described and analyzed based on the common themes that make up a central category and based on a time trend. While drawing the semantic and historical relationships between the main themes, the authors portrayed the transformations taking place in the representation of urban spaces under each main theme and in each historical period.
Method
Utilizing the method of thematic analysis in the study of Iranian movies, this research seeks to adopt a new approach to spatial transformation in this area. For this purpose, thirty Iranian movies released between 1964 and 2019 were selected to make up the sample.
Findings and Discussion
The findings demonstrate that the Iranian movies are capable of providing a rich image of the relationship between the evolution of urban spaces and the patterns of everyday urban life in Tehran’s historic area. These patterns are formulated in five themes under the following titles: urban transformation, conversion of the social context in Tehran’s historic area, wandering around the city, social life at a caravanserai, and resistance efforts in everyday urban life in Tehran’s historic area.
Conclusion
It seems that the image represented in Iranian movies of everyday interactions in the historic area of Tehran has been severely damaged in the recent decades. Spaces that were once reflected as places of praxis and resistance are represented today as dangerous, isolated spaces, which is a result of injecting new meaning into the urban area and manipulating the citizens’ mental image.
Meanwhile, the approach adopted in some movies to depicting the methods of resistance in everyday urban life turns into something more than just a representation of space. In other words, perhaps due to the inherent nature of the image in the representation of reality and the filmmaker’s creativity in the reflection of liberating forms, the characters of a movie can challenge the structure of the social environment using unconventional forms of presence in space and creating meaning through resistance efforts and praxis in urban life.
Acknowledgment
This article is extracted from the first author’s master thesis in titled “Studying the representation of urban spaces transformation in Tehran`s historical fabric on Iranian cinema” at the Shahid Rajai University of Tehran.
