Why should comedy cinema be criticized these days?

Fars News Agency – Cinema Group: Since the beginning of the Corona epidemic and even though many experts and artists in this field talked about the need to skin Iran’s cinema in the post-corona period so that the cinema will continue to survive, the reality of movie sales shows something else. Surprisingly, in the Corona days, wherever cinemas had time to breathe, people lined up to see weak comedy films, and without exaggeration, these films became the savior of cinemas in the worst period of movie sales.

Let’s not forget that the film that won the title of the best-selling film in the history of cinema was the comedy film “Dynamite”, which is one of the worst works in the history of cinema. A film that did not contain much significant points in the direction, script and games, but despite this, people welcomed it strangely. At first glance, it seemed that this film could not bring the audience to the cinema, but in the end, the sales of the film – considering the conditions of the cinema – were stunning. With a phenomenological look, we can see that we have experienced this obvious contradiction in the years before the revolution, when some of the weakest works won the title of best sellers.

In the last decade, satirical films such as “Amber Whale”, “Khob, Bad, Jalef” and “Hazarpa” were also able to move the sales record of the country’s cinema. But all these works had one thing in common, which is the lack of cultural and artistic values, moving in the direction of vulgarity, superficiality and a simplistic view of comedy and humor.

We have used this issue as an excuse to take a critical look at the best-selling comedy cinema and what is happening on it.

*Comedy films, “Culture Industry” showcase

Humor, humor, irony and humor have a long history in traditional Iranian performing arts and Persian literature. The presence of imitators and jokers in the history of Iranian art has provided people with laughter and entertainment. Clowns, imitators and slanderers also mentioned points that others did not have the courage to express at the height of their performance, wit and laughter with sarcasm.

In the general definition, comedy is “a work that creates joy and happiness in the viewer and ends well and happily; But the richness of a comedy depends on the concept that made the audience laugh.”

In recent decades, “Culture Industry” has developed day by day with the help of media advertising and has shown itself from the most advanced urban areas to the most remote parts of far villages. Undoubtedly, one of these media that has shown an all-round reflection of the culture industry is cinema. The phenomenon of cinema and film has played an important role in the popularization of the culture industry.

Thanks to dealing with the unconscious field of the human being, cinema has more influence on the human being than other media, and because of this, the owners of the media and industries have turned more and more to shape and order the mental, cognitive and cultural fields of the human being.

In the last two decades, comedy cinema has become the main showcase of the culture industry. The comedy cinema, which was formed in the beginning for laughs and a kind of emotional impact and momentary thinking, gradually created a kind of unrestrained and vulgarity in speech and behavior, and these days it has reached its peak of disorganization. So that in recent years, some people have stepped beyond the circle of Iranian and Islamic morals that have been thousands of years old and entered into a bargain in this cunning market and auctioned off all the country’s cultural reputation and sewed bags for their own pockets from people’s pockets. They conquered the box office.

In general, the best-selling satires of these years are the great killers of the comedy film genre, because they brought this genre down to the level of poor TV series and caused the audience to be trained to choose such bad and annoying films, choices that are neither conscious nor freely, but it is the birth of the neoliberal thought of the time – through the media – which shaped the people of the society.

Interestingly, the best-selling works have had the same and common process, the meter and measure of all of them has been to gain more profit and sales, and this is what neoliberalism promotes. Crossing the red line, sexual jokes, some political jokes, etc., that’s why some of these best-selling works of today’s cinema are much worse and more disgusting than the Persian films of the Taghut era!

In fact, they represent “mass culture” or “mass culture” and their works are the result of false and unrealistic demands.

In order to achieve more profit, on the one hand, they weaken the independent art and on the other hand, they regress the native culture, this industry, from the masses of its audience, passivity, submission, readiness to accept anything and a sense of satisfaction with actual and potential achievements. It demands an individual, and conformity with prevailing norms and values ​​is forced into it, and most importantly, it suppresses rationality, sensitivity, and spontaneity through false activity.

What do “dynamites” do with the mind of the audience?

Looking at the movie “Dynamite” as the record holder of sales in Iranian cinema, we can talk a little more precisely about this important issue and examine the reasons why comedy cinema is a best seller. “Dynamite” basically narrates the adventures of an apartment where people from different walks of life with different opinions live, such as drug dealers and students. In this movie, two students played by Pejman Jamshidi and Ahmed Mehranfar, a drug dealer played by Mohsen Kiaei, and two girls played by Nazanin Bayati and Zeiba Karamali are also present in this building, for example, their intellectual conflicts will create humorous situations. But it is this set of opposites that targets the matter of enjoining good and forbidding evil in its heart like a Trojan horse. In fact, in the way of other comedy works of these years, Dynamite uses a simple method to advance its goals, by breaking the norms and repeating them, it gradually destroys the sensitivity to values ​​and turns them into a natural and normal thing.

At first sight, “Dynamite” aims to convey this message to the audience that extremism is bad, whether in religious or non-religious matters, but rather than having a critical and thoughtful view, it is a representation of a type of social schizophrenia.

This is why the comedy movie “Dynamite” as a product of the culture industry, observes the concept of low culture, which is tried to eliminate culture by cultural institutions (cinema) and by replacing the components of a culture (low culture). Native and has a high culture.

* Passing movies and scenarios from thought and reaching the level of vulgarity

The major and serious problem of films in the field of humor is their excessive superficiality, films are not the product of thinking. The problem we have in the cinema today is that movies and scenarios go beyond thought and reach the level of vulgarity. It is true that the happy atmosphere of comedy films may help the viewer get rid of their worries and problems for a moment. But this is a simplistic view, because a film like Dynamite is a product of the “culture industry” and the first victim is the audience’s thinking. A movie that is based on sexual stereotypes and has found a theme to bring the audience along with it by over-exaggerating it.

A look at the sales of “Dynamite” followed by “Individual” and “Seg Band” clearly shows that in 1401, comedy films with dull and threadbare scripts but with famous actors have been able to attract attention. In any case, at a time when Iranian cinema is not doing well, and at best 1% of Iran’s population goes to the cinemas, the sale of comedy films is valuable to keep the cinemas alive, but the time has come to provide suitable food for this small audience so that the spectrum More people go to the cinemas.

If the will of the producers and directors is not so focused on selling more, and if they do not reproduce sloppy and frameless works, and if they think a little about the nature of art and consider a cultural mission for themselves, new doors will open little by little. This does not mean going towards purely artistic and avant-garde cinema, but it is a suggestion to maintain the minimum in a time when art is being forgotten day by day.

*Conclusion

In the final analysis, comedies like Dynamite can be seen as the result of the dominance of cabaret films, which have returned to the Iranian cinema box office in a new form. These works, which push the boundaries of vulgarity and Persian films in a reactionary way, each one is a testimony to the unbridled immorality in the country’s cinema.

In most comedies of Iranian cinema, more than the whole story provides happy times for the audience; The same use of colloquial and sometimes repetitive words is seen and the audience usually reacts to these words and sexual words. From this point of view, a cinema that is caught in the trap of sexual jokes is not a cinema, but a phenomenon that is destroying society’s culture. Of course, these films have an economic justification from the industrial aspect, but the question here is whether the society and the new generation demand such films?

These days, we are facing critics’ warnings about comedy works from all sides. They warn that: a new wave of so-called comedy films that have been launched in Iranian cinema can deal a fatal blow to the body of cinema, a cinema that is devoid of thought and thought and can lead to moral and cultural collapse in society over time. .

Cultural management should think about finding young, agreeable and wise thinkers so that they can interact with each other and examine the needs of the society so that they can produce products that can be called healthy comedy and presented to the cinema.

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