- Title: Representation of Everyday Life in Animation: Examining the Representation of Lifestyle and Gender in Serial Animations of Iranian Television in the Last Decade
- Student: Seyedeh Zahra Mousavi
- Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Reza Moridi
- University: University of Art
- Degree: Master’s
- Major: Animation
- Defense Date: Bahman 1394 (February 2016)
Abstract:
This research examines the representation of Iranians’ lifestyles across the sixties, seventies, and eighties through television serial animations. Given the broad scope of television animations in the mentioned years, only those produced in Iran, targeted at children and young people as audiences, and possessing features through which lifestyle characteristics or social components could be examined were considered. Therefore, the research cases in each decade are the animations Work and Thought (1364), Zohreh and Zahra (1369), Kash and Kashki (1376), Dayi Jan and Jan-e Dayi (1377), Shekarestan (1387), and Our House (1384), in examining which layered semiotics has been employed. Using Fiske’s theories in analyzing visual works, the semiotic analysis of the animations comprises two levels: “visual analysis” and “analysis of social signs.” It can be stated that there is a significant relationship between social events and the content of the animations of each decade. The two events of the Islamic Revolution and the Imposed War are turning points in the social life of the recent three decades. Work-centrism, pragmatic thought, and economic consumption in the animations of the sixties are a representation of the Imposed War and supplying the basic needs of society in the sixties. The post-war leisure era and the growth of the urban middle class in the form of cultural consumption and entertainment orientation are seen in the animations. The desire for improvement in post-war conditions is manifested in the fantasy escapism of the seventies’ animations. In the eighties, there is a return to the events of the previous two decades, which is objectified in the depiction of shared memories of the sixties by the media. This re-examination and critical thinking are evident in the animations as a rethinking of gender roles and a rethinking of history.