Reimagining the Cinematic Gaze: An Analysis of Iranian Mystical Cinema in Majid Majidi’s Baran
Sarah Abdullah
Journal of Contemporary Poetics December 24, 2024 DOI: 10.54487/jcp.v8i1.5803 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Keywords | Movie theater Male gaze Visual arts Literature Aesthetics Psychoanalysis |
| Key points | Argues that Western gaze theories are inadequate for analyzing Iranian mystical cinema and proposes a "mystical gaze" framework rooted in Iranian culture. |
Abstract
For the last few decades gaze as a theoretical concept has been explored from philosophical, political, and psychological perspectives. However, its exploration in media studies has been the most extensive where it has been used to explore the viewers’ engagement with visual media. Theories of male gaze (Mulvey), female gaze (Lorraine Gamman, Margaret Marshment), objectifying gaze (Fredrickson and Roberts) and imperial gaze (E. Ann Kaplan) have explored the function of art and viewer’s relationship with the views in the West. However western-centric theoretical frameworks that explore the role of gaze become problematic when one initiates a discussion on mystical cinema as it is developed outside the influence of mainstream cinematic thrust and its purely capitalist and consumer-driven markets. A case in point is Iranian mystical cinema that is theopoetic in tradition and provides a viewing experience distinctly opposed to scopophilia. Taking everyday ordinary protagonists, instead of larger-than-life heroes, this cinema takes us on a journey of their inner selves as they grapple with mundane experiences of life. The objective is not to depict the everyday life of individual characters objectively but to use the ordinary, banal, and everyday to ask philosophical questions about life, death, and the connection between the real and the spiritual. The need for a gaze theory that is steeped in Iranian culture is required to process these films. This paper argues for the idea of mystical gaze as a broad code with which to process these films and applies it to Majid Majidi’s film, Baran.Keywords: Iranian cinema, cinematic gaze, media studies, gaze theory, mysticals
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |