Iranian Cinema in Postmodern Costume: How Ghanizadeh’s Maskhareh-baz/ A Hairy Tale (2019) Approaches Postmodern Art

The studies concerning the employment of postmodern techniques in Iranian movies failed to address how postmodern practices can reflect relevant postmodern themes and thoughts. To fill the gap, this paper aims to investigate the significance of utilizing postmodern styles of filmmaking in Iranian cinema by referring to one of the most recent avant-garde productions, Homayoun Ghanizadeh’s Maskhareh-baz/ A Hairy Tale (2019). To find the link between the postmodern form and the content of the movie, it draws on scholars’ views for theorizing postmodernism, particularly Linda Hutcheon. Benefitting from her views, this research reveals how postmodern features and styles of A Hairy Tale, such as metafiction and the intertextual web of references, reflect the uncertain, cynic and ironic condition of human in the postmodern world. The unreliable narrator of the movie, ironically named Danesh/ Knowledge, drowns the film in an intertextual ocean of references raging from classic cinema, literature of the absurd, pop art and historical events. Finally, it concludes that the film is successful in its attempt to portray a barbershop as a microcosm of the postmodern paranoid world, where humans are unable to trust any information they receive. Thus, by depicting human’s skepticism, the film illustrates the ambiguous condition of the postmodern man.