The representation of challenges between tradition and modernity in "As Simple as That"

Researchers believe that، due to the expansion of mass media and familiarity of youths with modern life، modernity has influenced on family more than other institutions. The paper is to find out how the clashes of modernity with tradition impacted on Iranian society and on its most important institution i. e. family and how these impacts have been portrayed in Iranian cinema. Thus، the film «As Simple as That» by Reza Mirkarimi is studied on the basis of Laclau and Moffe''s discourse theory and Soltani''s Discourse Semiotics approach. According to Discourse Semiotics approach a film is studied in three phases: textual analysis، intertextual analysis، and contextual analysis. First phase includes a semiotic analysis of film characters and the identification of discourse orders. This phase is very important because the other two phases are based on the findings obtained from film text analyses. The first step in this phase is picking out major characters and / or locations as identifying signifiers. Then، evaluative signifiers and their meanings should be identified. Evaluative signifiers are those attributing specific characteristics to identifying signifiers. What characters say and do، the type of clothes، food، belongings are actually evaluative signifiers attributing meanings to characters. The next step is characterizing discourse orders with a focus on antagonism. Any of film characters represent a discourse in the social space. Afterwards، themes and major concepts woven in film structure are extracted. At this stage، the themes related to the subject of the study and the way each of the discourse define these concepts are elaborated on. Finally، the features of the discourses are presented through diagrams. Then، at the intertextual analysis phase، the obtained discourse orders are compared and contrasted with other similar films. Finally، through contextual analysis the findings are discussed in a more general social level and the ideas of other scholars at a broader scale about the subject matter of the research are presented and evaluated. Iranian cinema has not fall behind of social and cultural changes and since art، movie industry، has a lot of capacities to introduce problems and affects family، the movie makers use this mediator to express their ideas and worries about society on different areas، including contrast between tradition and modernity in the family unit and used it، directly or indirectly، in their movies. Obviously، in recent years، there’s been an increase in producing movies with this theme. The main question of this research is to understand the effects of collision of tradition and modernity on society and the most important of all، the family and how these effects represented on the 80’s family movies. Studying this can give us better understanding on how filmmakers are thinking، and since this thinking is affected by society and its conditions، we can get a better look on social image and its challenges. The main objectives of this paper are investigating the articulations of the movies discourses and the descriptions that these discourses give for fundamental family concepts. Another goal is to show how cultural products، like movies، give us a better look of the biggest intellectual movements، including Iranian family challenges