Cultural Gate-Keeping Policies in Official Dubbing in Iran: A Case Study of The Godfather Series into Persian

The present article investigated the themes and topics, which were deemed unsuitable to the Iranian society, in an American film series The Godfather, which has been broadcast on Iranian mainstream Television several times. This series contains many controversial issues such as love, violence, religion, and politics that have undergone heavy censorship in order to adhere to the target ideological and cultural norms. The film is however the greatest films of all time. A comparative study of the original and dubbed versions revealed that discrepancies between the two were at visual, content, and auditory levels, and at each level, numerous instances of religious, political, and moral appropriations were detected and classified. For example, scenes or dialogues that promote Christianity and American values, or contain illegitimate relationships, sexuality, violence, dancing, singing, women’s smoking, women’s inappropriate clothes, and alcoholic beverages were eradicated or concealed through substitution strategies. Then, five interviews were conducted with outstanding dubbing artists and dubbing directors to see if they confirm the findings as recurrent censorship themes in Persian official dubbing and to ask why this series was broadcast with such heavy censorship.