Stereotypes on Iranian Silver Screen: The Case of Farhadi’s The Salesman from a Neo-Orientalist Perspective

The paper focuses on this fundamental question: has Asgar Farhadi, according to his claim, succeeded in breaking the existing stereotypes about Iran in The Salesman (2015)? The purpose of this qualitative research is to scrutinize the stereotypes Fahradi represented in Salesman. Accordingly, the theoretical framework is Neo-Orientalism. The study field is twofold: first, the movie is scrutinized as a text, including its dialogues, plot and characterization; second, the foreign language critics and viewers on two reliable and popular international film criticism websites are analyzed (Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, 232 comments). After investigating the images of Iran in Salesman and comparing them with the messages received by the Western audience, it was concluded that Farhadi did not succeed in breaking the existing stereotypes about Iran and Muslims, especially in the representation of women and Iranian society. On the contrary, he reinforced the colonial discourse. Around 45% of the comments on these two websites refer to the concept of stereotypes about the Middle East and Muslims.