Representational Analysis of Religious Discourses in Iranian Cinema: A case of Ketab e Qanon

The aim of this article is to analyze the religious discourses represented in the movie “Ketabe Qanoon”. In this study Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory on polyphonic novel is used in which he believes that these novels do not have a univocal voice and instead reflect voices of different social strata. In order to analyze the movie, the methodology of Laclau and Mouffe is used.
Findings show that the movie has respectively a polyphonic discourse. The discourse of common sense religion is represented as dominating discourse which is being challenged by religious intellectualism and traditional Islamic discourses and asks the audience for judgment. In such judgment, the comparison is not between the religious intellectualism and traditional Islamic discourses, but between these discourses and the discourse of common sense religion, the practitioners of which are common people who have inherited Islam without having chosen it consciously. The aim of the movie is to dispute with the common sense religious discourse and in order to do the task, uses those analyzing concepts which are common among the other two discourses.