Reviewed by Evelyn Hartogh

Anthropologist Michael M. J. Fischer takes a chronological approach to Persian/Iranian cultural history, discussing recent Iranian cinema after analysing Ancient Persian Zoroastrian rituals, the stories of the Shahnameh (literally The Book of Kings, orated historical parables written down in 1010 C.E. by Firdausi), the emergence of the nihilistic modernist short story in the early 1900s, pre-revolutionary Iranian Surrealist cinema and New Wave cinema, and the post-revolutionary recent social realist cinema from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.  Fischer is deeply interested in historical context and argues the lead-up to the 1977-1979 revolution greatly influenced cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, while recent Iranian cinema has been forced to make sense of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the flood of refugees from Afghanistan in the 1990s, and the current human devastation due to the U.S.-led wars in Iran’s neighbouring countries of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fischer divides his book into two main sections juxtaposing Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian cultural production.  In the second, Fischer looks at recent social realist cinema from Iran, and neighbouring countries.  Recent cinema paints a picture of an entire region experiencing shell-shock, from seemingly endless bombing and shooting, and the very visual reminder’s of war’s legacy of creating the homeless, and people without limbs.  Amidst all of this destruction, a recurring theme in Iranian cinema is the perspective of the child, and it is this theme of hope, new beginnings, innocence and humanism that Fischer traces back to the ritualist devotions of Zoroastrianism and the moral parables in the Shahnameh.  Ancient Persian Zoroastrian ritualised transcendence and illumination and the ethical idealism in the Shahnameh epics of morality and romance, Fischer argues, are so influential and ingrained on the Iranian psyche, that they form the humanitarian and symbolic basis of contemporary Iranian film.

The first half of Mute Dreams, Blind Owls and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry looks at the oral, and symbolic cultural history of Persia via the rituals and philosophies of Zoroastrians and the epic The Book of Kings, the Shahnameh.  The detail of each chapter is incredible, with Fischer including step-by-step description, and discussion, of the symbolic significance in performance of the Zoroastrian yasna rituals of recitation, from the pre-Islamic Avesta.  He then retells and analyses many of the various parables from the Shahnameh.  As important to Persian culture as the epics of Homer are to the Western tradition, the Shahnameh is a history, mythology, fable, fairytale, and ethical guidebook, as much as it is literature.

By using a chronological structure, Fischer is able to refer the reader back to the Shahnameh parables and the Zoroastrian rituals that Iranian cultural products continue to reference.   Fischer sees Sadegh Heydayat’s 1937 nihilistic short novella The Blind Owl as deeply influential on Iranian filmmakers, commenting that the book was  “so powerful it is said to have triggered a series of suicides when it was published” (180).   Iranian surrealist cinema of the 1960s echoed the socially critical movement in pre-revolutionary Persian literature that often portrayed Iran as “diseased, a drugged dream, a progressive decay which can and must be thrown off” (181).   Ali Ahmad in his 1962-64 critical essays about the Gharbzadegi (western influence) commented that, “cinemas were merely the piggy banks into which Iranians dropped coins each week to enrich the Metro Goldwyn Mayer stockholders; the army consumed half the national budget to allegedly defend the borders, while those very borders remained open to the invasions of profit-seeking companies; … women were … unveiled so as to spur on Western cosmetic and clothing industries, thus becoming pawns in a world where they had no economic independence and have no real freedom of action” (163).

During the 1960s and 1970s Iranian cinema developed its own B-grade films named Abgushti, after the common man’s stew.  They also had their own style of the Western revenge film, similar in theme also to the Samurai epic, with films like the 1969 Qaisar, alternately spelt Gheisar a cowboy-esque revenge film where a man must murder the rapists of his namus (his women).   Fischer suggests reading this film more in the context of Hollywood Westerns and their tradition of noble heroes rather than as a depiction of the much-criticised honour killings of the Middle East.

Contemporary Iranian film makers also often reference Gav (the Cow), alternatively spelt, Gaav from 1969, which may on the surface be film about a man who loses his cow, but also suggests many Zoroastrian philosophies about the powerless of men to outside influences beyond their control.  Meanwhile, Towers of Silence (1975) dealt more openly with the conflict between Western influence on Islamic and Persian traditions.  These films, Fischer argues, all build up to the cultural shift to social realism in cinema after the 1977-1979 revolution (although during the revolution itself, cinemas were burned and shut down, filmmaking soon began again after a brief hiatus).

One of the more evocative post-revolutionary films is Close Up from 1990, a film that examines the exposure of a man who impersonates a popular filmmaker.  The film pays homage to 1966’s Blow Up, and both movies explore the theme that close examination of any subject does not answer questions but simply provides more detail and complexity.

The later half of Mute Dreams looks at how recent Iranian cinema has dealt with depicting war and its aftermath.  Instead of concentrating on the demonising the enemy, Iranian cinema has instead looks at the often forgotten citizens who are left to literally pick up the pieces and find a way to survive.  Fischer contextualises the more well known successful international art house Iranian films such as 2001’s A Time for Drunken Horses, 2003’s Osama and Kandahar, alongside a plethora of films of similar themes of humanity and survival that have come out of Iran since the revolution.

Internationally, Iranian filmmakers and artists face great difficulty and expense in obtaining technological resources. U.S. trade embargoes mean that equipment is often bought in another countries and smuggled into Iran and built from scratch.  The artists themselves are also often refused visa to the U.S. to attend festivals.  It is no wonder that Iranian filmmakers have no need to demonise the West in their films, all they need to do is show the devastation of war on their neighbouring countries to justify their rejection of Western cultural products and their desire for social realism rather than Hollywood propaganda.


Mute Dreams, Blind Owls and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry
(2004)

by Michael J. Fischer
Duke University Press
ISBN: 0-8223-3298-1, ISBN13:  978-0-8223-3298-5
488pp 58-illustrations $US24.95