Discourse Interaction and Discourse Confrontation; Discourse-Semiotic Approach to «The Deers»

“The Deer”, a film by Masoud Kimiai (1974), is the most controversial movie in the most critical period of contemporary Iranian history on the verge of the Islamic Revolution. Cinema critics, social analysts, and ordinary people have discussed the movie for a long time. We decided to analyze this movie in order to understand the relationship between socio-political discourses and the socio-cultural contexts in that historical period. to this end, we used discourse-semiotic approach which is based on Laclau and Muffe’s discourse theory. We identified four major discourses in the movie, namely traditional discourse, revolutionary discourse, capitalist discourse and governmental discourse. Revolutionary discourse, as the primary discourse in this movie, joins the traditional discourse to confront the other two discourses. The discursive map we arrived at on the basis of this film seems to be compatible with the prevailing discourse in Iran at time of 1979 Islamic Revolution.