Culture Industry & Television in Iran: Critical Analysis of “Mahe Asal (honey moon)” Program

Culture Industry & Television in Iran; Critical Analysis of “Mahe Asal (honey moon)” Program This paper is to analyze the Television of Islamic Republic of Iran (IRIB), based on the approach of culture industry theory. On the literature review, the approach of Frankfurt School toward modern capitalism, culture industry theory and their approach toward mass media, specially television has been described. The case study of the research is “Mahe Asal (honey moon)” Program which has been broadcasted during 2013 to 2018. To analyze the program by applying the theoretical or purposive sampling, the episodes of the mentioned program have been analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The main results of research include: misreporting the real needs (individualizing the structural problems), making the rationality instrumental, declining the human to the object level to achieve the goal, propagation of compromise and deferring to the economic situation (hailing and sentimentalizing the poverty) and commercializing the ethic and religious values to achieve the profit. The mentioned categories have been critically interpreted. The research results show that considering the spread of neoliberal and capitalism values in Iranian society and economy, the television despite alleging to criticize capitalism, but in fact is integrated with capitalism and consumerism values.