A Study of Iranian Audience and Popular Films

In this article we study the attitudes of Iranian cinema audience toward popular films. Affected by classic elite cultural theories, popular culture and consumers of popular culture have been humiliated for many years. According to this theories, audience of popular magazines, popular music, popular films and other popular culture products, have been considered as passive victims. Cultural studies approach, have changed this view. In this article, we use the cultural studies approach and consider popular film audience as active audience. We addressed “Ekhrajiha 2” for this study, regarding its popularity and its rank among the bestsellers in the history of Iranian cinema. Released in 2009. “Ekhrajiha 2” have been written and directed by Masoud Dehnamaki as a “Comedy/War” genre. The story of movie is about some Iranian soldiers during the Iran–Iraq War. In this research, two qualitative techniques have been combined to gain best result about audience attitudes: interview and participatory observation. First, one of the researchers (Mowlaei) has watched the film with audience in the cinema theater for 9 times. Cinema theaters have been chosen from different areas of Tehran that attract audience from different social groups. He recorded the audience behaviors and reactions. Then, another researcher (Kermani) interviewed some film viewers from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds. Results indicate that audiences decode the movie in different ways. As Stuart Hall says, encoding and decoding in communication have different phases in a process. Although director had tried to highlight Islamic and national ideological messages, audiences considered “Ekhrajiha 2” as a comedy product and enjoyed funny scenes of the movie. Thus, different audience groups decoded the movie in different ways. Using participatory observation and in-depth interviews, we also found six reasons for high welcome of the movie: 1. Film “Ekhrajiha” is a “movie sequel”, and some audiences went to the cinema to watch following stories. 2. Representing a new viewpoint on Iran–Iraq War. In the Iranian war cinema, many previous movies have represented Iranian soldiers as the holy people. In this movie, some soldiers are represented with funny and villain personalities. 3. Extensive advertising: IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) and other state propaganda heavily encouraged people to watch the movie. 4. Different decoding possibilities: the movie structure allows audiences to decode messages and scenes in different ways. 5. Appearing fun atmosphere in cinema theater: In some Tehran cinema theaters, audiences made a fun atmosphere. They went to the cinema with their family and friends and got pleasure from this atmosphere. 6. Reproducing the movie in a consumption moment: cinema audience participated in reproducing movie simultaneously when they watched movie in cinema theaters.