مجله مطالعات میان رشته ای ارتباطات و رسانه
پیاپی 2 (زمستان 1397)

Tragedy is one of the most important dramatic genres dealing with the most serious and important issues befalling human beings.  It deals with man’s resistance against great powers, leading him towards an unknown destiny, providing him with perception and knowledge in compensation of the suffering inflicted. Tragic dramas portray disastrous destinies to purge and purify the audience and result in spiritual refinement. This capacity of Tragedy makes us think about converting religious narratives into performances in which they strive in purging and purifying souls.
Religious narratives are part of our literary and cultural treasures. They include Quranic, religious stories, and the history of prophets and chosen ones. The present study tries to identify the potentials of tragedy as a genre in dramatization of religious narratives in the Islamic tradition. It finally concludes that tragedy with all its components including hero’s action, Hamartia (i.e. fatal fascination rather than traditional Aristotelian concept of it), Catharsis and recognition can provide a good background to discover the truth and lead to spiritual refinement. We believe it is a good basis and starting point to dramatize what happened in story of Ashura.

Ever since the beginning of the 20th century comic stories have been used as a powerful tool in shaping the identity and aligning the ideas and thoughts of the Japanese people. Benefiting from clever and sophisticated techniques in their narratives along with their ability to stimulate the patriotic feelings of the nation, these artworks soon became an important means to propagate and promote national and governmental ideologies. During the Second World War, comic stories and animations were specifically used for encouraging the youth to conscript in the army, strengthening the national unity, justifying the acts of Japanese army in China and Korea, and even spreading fake news about the battlefield. Similarly, in the post-war years, comic stories (Manga) and Japanese commercial animation known as “Anime”, acted as effective tools in healing the wounds of the defeat and the aftermath of atomic bombings. This research aims to investigate the presumed power of these visual narrative media and define the extent of their influence in the Japanese society by conducting a historical survey on the emergence and development of Manga and Anime. Accordingly, a comparative study method is used to evaluate the role of Iranian animations in shaping the concept of national identity.

Expository mode in documentary film making emerged from Grierson documentary movement in the 1930s and by adopting “Voice of God” commentary model, it served educational and propaganda purposes. This mode of documentary film, being both in rhetoric or argumentative form, addresses its viewer through a narrator. Due to technical and aesthetic developments in the process of television’s evolution, it has been widely used as a popular mode for documentaries since late 1950s. In Iran, however, this mode has not been very well known; most cinema and television producers and directors who approached this kind of documentary, have failed in appealing to a broad audience because they were not familiar with capacities and trends of this documentary mode. Therefore, they have maintained to archetype methods. Hence, the aim of this research is to take a new look at the structure of "Expository Documentary” and propose ways on how can this mode be appropriately applied in TV. This research has been done with the aim of recognizing structural and aesthetic features of expository documentary, considering its content wise capacities and how to utilize them in episodic and non-episodic TV programs. Beside the mentioned aspects, some up to date & eminent samples of expository documentaries produced by distinguished TV networks have been observed & studied through their structure.

This article is a semiotic study on one of the most important movies by Dariush Mehrjui. Since gender and other feministic issues have been regarded important for auteur filmmakers, studying gender has become a socio-cultural phenomenon which helps researchers of social sciences & cultural studies to find a better understanding about it.Accordingly the present research lies in the arena of communication within cultural studies traditions, being critical & cognitive about real culture. The research is opting to answer this question that: “How Mehrjui has represented gender and consequently the feminine & masculine binary in the feature film Banoo (The Lady)?Since the aim of this research is to reveal the coded layers of meaning which are usually narrated in the cinematic structure, therefore, the methodology of the research inclined to semiotics analysis. This will help to discover ideological codes and achieve in our goals. On the other hand, since cinematic works represent values governing ideology and meaning, decoding of representation necessitates the semiotic analysis of the text. The findings of this study shows that the main character of “Banoo” is depicted to be modern, not being talkative, well educated having feministic traits and pretends to belong to a high culture class. She is apparently independent but in reality very dependent, she seems to have spiritual tendencies and is very charitable, she is loyal, superstitious, maverick and at the same time very vulnerable. On the other hand, men are depicted as oblivious to their social class, selfish, despot, aggressive, over protective towards women, dogmatic, fanatic, self-opinionated, and healthy with a good physic.

Children’s language is of a social genre and has an independent identity. Improper communication between adults and the children puts them in crisis. Children’s acting in radio drama is mostly oral and a two way communication, during these interactions meaning is created. In present research features of child characters and the characteristics of correct interaction between child and elder characters is defined in radio dramas. To achieve the aforementioned, “Little Princess” radio drama has been chosen on purpose and with a qualitative methodology, the research acquires discourse analysis with two approaches of being comparative & inductive for the survey. By analyzing oral actions of Little Princess in approaching any of the adult characters, 21 sub- items have been drawn out. Then, in a more abstract level, 4 main categories (Language Exclusivity, Expressivity, being Cognitive & Behavioral) come to consistency. In comparative approach regarding the theoretical framework of the research (Theory of Communicative Action), 5 main issues (Theme of Speech, Subject of Speech, Tone of Speech, Character’s Purpose of Communication, and The way of Approaching Opposite Characters Claim) were defined by default and all the existing relations in drama have been surveyed on this basis. Findings show whenever actions move towards understanding, the Little Princess performs well enough to push drama forward and reach mutual meaning, but whenever adult characters direct actions towards being strategic, it will lead to their domination, imposes meaning and halts the currents dialogs from moving forward.
According to the outcomes of the research, child characters in radio drama should have all the capacities of a dramatic character but their oral actions must not get along with elders. They are expected to match their real living experiences. Correct use of oral action for child characters will lead to create two equal & opposing forces which their resultant is the rightful revealing of meaning. Sensory recognition of child characters & rational recognition of adult characters will provide a binary sense of dialogs in drama.

The Introduction of “Computer generated Imagery” or CGI has revolutionized every aspect of motion picture special effects, creating a fantasy world which had never existed. Digital cinema has its own genealogy; giving rise to a system of simulations which is totally believable by audience. This article studies this system of simulations and shows how it came to existence. The main hypothesis is that digital technology paved the way for a world of simulations and these simulations made a system of visual codes. These visual codes sometimes had no real world referents (angels with two long wings for instance) or involved events that were not likely to unfold in front of a camera (like sinking of Titanic).
First, we provide a historical survey of digital cinema and then we can study the importance and effects of this attitude in the contemporary cinema. This article is descriptive and analytic considering documents and studying relevant feature film. Selection of the films was random, mainly based on their effect on cinema when they were released.
The result of this paper shows that a special kind of aesthetic has been created which through its simulations has an impact on audience’s perception. In a sense, thanks to digital cinema, a digital metaphysics has emerged.