Representation of identity concepts in Bahman Ghobadi's films

Abstract:

In this research, using the semiotics method, it has been tried to examine the sequences of the four films named (A Time for Drunken Horses, Songs of the Motherland, Half Moon (Nivi Mang), Turtles Fly Too) by Bahman Ghobadi in order to achieve the main goal of the research, which is the representation of identity complexes in his films.

In this research, seeing The required information has been collected sequence by sequence of the films. In fact, the unit of analysis in this research is the sequence.

Variables and keywords:

Variables include: ethnicity, gender, ideological discourse, social classes and identity.

And keywords:

1-Identity images: a set of material and spiritual relationships of humans, the principles of which are already formed.

2-Representation: Representation from Stewart Hall's point of view is the use of language to produce a meaningful point about the world, meaning does not exist in essence but is created and the result and product of a denotation procedure.

In the end, these results were obtained from the research that by using the tools of semiotics and sociology of the work of art, it can be claimed that Bahman Ghobadi in his surreal films tried to make his works of art under the influence of Kurdistan society and also Create an environment around it. Therefore, in the semiotic analysis of his films, all four variables, namely, gender, discourse of domination, social, class and regional inequality of Kurdistan, as well as identity, have been present. Because the mentioned phenomena are in the context of the Kurdistan society and his films are a representation of the reality of the Kurdistan society that he tried to represent these realities in a surreal way. Chapter 1 Introduction to the research 1- Introduction The conventional approach to things in the natural and material world is that the material and natural characteristics of things determine what they are and their meaning is also a product of this characteristic. host In this approach, representation is a secondary process that only becomes meaningful when things are formed and their meaning is formed. But in the world of cultural studies, meaning and representation have evolved differently. Today, the concept of representation has a prominent position in cultural studies. The representation of meaning is the creation of meaning through the use of signs and links language to culture. Representation is usually defined as "the use of one thing instead of another for the purpose of conveying meaning" and "concepts". Representation is the inherent process of production and exchange of meaning between the components of a culture, and this requires the use of language, signs and images to represent things.

In other words, representation is one of the cultural acts that produce culture. The emphasis on cultural functions here means that it is the participants in a culture who give meaning to people, objects, and events. Things do not have meaning in themselves. Therefore, the meaning of things is the product of how they are represented (Hall, 2:2003) and culture is the meaningful interpretation of things, the meaning that is the product of people's representation of them, and the representation depends on the effective performance of things for us (Smith, 2003). Therefore, culture and representation are in a dialectical relationship.

Today there are three theories about how to represent the world. Reflective theories consider language as a mirror of the world. This theory, which is indebted to positivist traditions and especially to Wittgenstein of the first period, considers language as a tool, a tool to convey the meaning that exists in things. Intentional theories consider meaning to be what the speaker, artist or writer intends to say, and therefore language expresses these desires and intentions. This theory can be identified especially in the hermeneutic traditions of Schleier Macher and Dilta, who considered understanding to be the discovery of the author's subjectivity, and phenomenological approaches. In reflective theory, the meaning of objects, persons, ideas or events lies in the real world, and the function of language as a mirror is to reflect the true meaning of objects that are inherent in them. However, according to the intentionality approach, words have the meaning that the speaker wants them to have (Hall, 2003:24), but the theory that has had a great impact on cultural studies is the constructivist approach. In the new approach, meaning is produced and constructed, not discovered. The constructivist approach emphasizes the social and general nature of language.Contrary to the claims of the above two approaches, neither things nor individual users have and do not have a fixed meaning in language. This approach does not deny the existence of the material world, but emphasizes that this material world is not the transmitter of meaning. In this approach, meaning is based on the construction of representation systems (ibid., 10). Based on this, representation is an action that measures the material world (Milner, 2015), but it should not be assumed that the meaning is dependent on the material quality of the signs, rather the meaning is dependent on the symbolic functions of the signs. As a result, in the approach of social constructionism, meaning is understood as the formation and construction of things. Therefore, culture is conceptualized as a creative and productive process and is as important as the material and economic basis in the design of social objects and historical events, and is not merely a reflection of the world after the events.

The constructivist approach has two related models. The semiotic approach which is influenced by the works of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the discourse approach which is the work of Michel Foucault. In the semiotic approach, anything, words, images and things themselves can be used as signs to produce meaning, and in general, it is a method of analyzing how to convey meaning through visual representations. In this approach, representation is thought of as a way in which words are used as signs within the language (Hale, 2008). Unlike semiotics, the discourse approach that Foucault's works played an important role in developing represented representation in a broader sense, as a source for the production of social knowledge. One of the important differences between the two is that the semiotic approach seeks to understand how production works through language and representation. While the discursive approach deals more with the effects or consequences or policies of representation (Story, 2016).

1-2- Statement of the problem

     Cinema in today's world, as an inclusive and wide text and a medium for conveying meanings and connotations, which the coder has placed for his audience in the cinematic work. Analyzing the products of this media is necessary and necessary for researchers in various fields of human sciences due to the reception of its audience. Since the beginning of cinema, for many years, the only method of analyzing these media texts has been an aesthetic look at movies. But nowadays, the method of studying cinema is not limited to this method. The change of direction from a purely aesthetic view to a combined analytical view, such as semiotics and narrative analysis of film texts, has been the product of the efforts of a wide range of thinkers from different fields such as linguists, sociologists, anthropologists and literary and film critics. In most of these methods, we try to use a combined method (such as combining linguistics with film analysis or using sociological tools and the like) to achieve analyzes arising from overlapping analyzes of different sciences. They ignore the implications and meanings in it and always analyze the aesthetic dimensions of the text. As a result, they ignore the implications related to the intellectual, cultural and social dimensions of the text and do not pay attention to the context or context that creates and implies these texts. Today, as a result of the extensive efforts of thinkers such as "Roland Barthes", "Christian Metz", "Pier Paolo Pasolini" and "Umbertovacco", this method has become a coherent and fruitful field of study in cinema studies. The works of these thinkers are rooted in the thoughts of the Swiss linguist "Ferdinando Saussure". Saussure, who is the founder of this science, considers semiotics to be the science of investigating the life of signs in the social context and considers it a science including linguistics and believes that part of this general knowledge about signs deals with linguistics and its methods. Saussure provides semiotic thinkers with very useful conceptual tools that can be used in all areas of the study of signs. The optionality of signs, the Dali and symbolic system in the signs and the analytical axes of substitution and coexistence, along with creating the possibility of simultaneous analysis, are part of the possibilities that "Saussure" provides for semiotic analysis.