Why criticize the phenomenon of “commercial cinema”?

Fars News Agency – Cinema Group: The nineties are a strange decade in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A decade when all the power of the government was focused on foreign policy and the cultural situation of the country was completely abandoned. A decade in which the billion-dollar budgets of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, using rents, without entering the field of culture and art of the country, in the name of study and research, end up in the pockets of incompetent managers and traffickers. This decade was also the decade of contradictions. During this period, the artistic community was living in a difficult living situation, and at the same time, the “Tehran Auction” was breaking the billion-dollar record. During this decade, people were subjected to severe sanctions in poverty, and at the same time, “luxury” appeared in home serials. The phenomenon of “commercial cinema” by Manouchehr Hadi is also a product of the policies of this decade.

The busiest cinema director of the nineties

Manouchehr Hadi has been the most prolific director of Iranian cinema in the 1990s. He has made and released about 16 movies, series and telefilms during these years. With works such as “Someone Wants to Talk to You”, “Life is Elsewhere” and “We Need a Simple Worker”, he developed a social tendency and in the second half of the nineties with “I am not Salvador”, “Armpit Mirror”, “Romance”, ” Rahman 1400 “,” Del “,” Giso “,” Nissan Nisi “and … followed the path of humor.

Hadi’s early works promised the emergence of a problematic filmmaker, but halfway through, the director slowly changed course and rolled into the market. A market that ended up selling more and sacrificing “cinema” and “art” in the first place. Manouchehr Hadi expanded his circle of humor film by film, mixing politics and sexual issues, and spared nothing to make people laugh. Thus, his work was reduced to constructing stereotypical situations, repetitive fragmentation, and generally sexual “cyberspace” jokes. His latest work is a collection of Instagram clips that have been produced to go viral.

Looking at the type of filmmaking of world-renowned directors, we will see that it is customary; Well-versed cinematographers ultimately make a film in the most optimistic mood of the year, because making any work of art requires constant study, research and reflection. But Hadi makes long serials and this work is not finished, he goes to the next work and this serialization approach makes his works poor quality, low and meaningless day by day.

Commodification of art and the emergence of culture industry

In Manouchehr Hadi’s recent works, the process of opposing aesthetics and emptying his works of aesthetic aspects proceeds in such a way that his serials become objects and commodities among other commodities and objects. It is in this commodity that the “culture industry” enters and operates this mechanism. This approach can be called “commodity idolatry”. The idolatrous nature of the commodity is the sanctity of what one has produced, but as an exchange value, it has become alien to both the producer and the consumer. This is the real secret of fame and success.

Commercialization has overshadowed Hadi’s works to such an extent that he can no longer be included in body cinema. His later works are a combination of Persian films and Turkish serials, this is the amalgam that Manouchehr Hadi presents as a work of art.

He has acquired a style of “art of revelation” that is based on money and capitalism and tends to serialization rather than serialization. It seems that the speed of construction and the desire to “earn more” has put him in this position. The marketing and commercialization of art has completely swallowed the filmmaker, leaving nothing but a graveyard.

Why criticize this kind of art?

Now the question arises why one should oppose such art (cinema and serialization) and criticize it? As mentioned in the previous lines, Hadi’s works are “culture industry”. Mass art and products of the cultural industry “semi-automate” the functioning of the audience’s mind. They take control of the mind and severely limit the liberating element of art, fantasy. Thus implicit meanings are limited and everything becomes predictable.

In this type of work, innovation, novelty and anything out of the ordinary are rejected, and the audience in this tame, monotonous and well-known world, easily succumbs to the ideology of the creators of the work. In the works of cinematographers such as Manouchehr Hadi, the thoughts of the audience are systematically manipulated and the audience increasingly loses the effective critical power of their society. In fact, the culture industry is the main cause of this.

In the final analysis, Hadi’s works produce a passive audience and superficiality is their dominant aspect. Some critics believe that “overwork” has reduced the quality of conductor work, but capitalism, the market, and commercialization seem to be the main reasons.

Finally, Hadi seeks to popularize art, so he has become subject to the law of the market, by idealizing the culture of a certain stratum of the masses, surrendering to their backwardness, and thereby accepting and even sanctifying their backward position. Surrendering to the culture of the masses means accepting the capitalist ideology, which is inverted from the truth and accepting its alien position.

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