The wandering children of iranian cinema from myth to history

Abstract

This study is an effort to analyze the image of children and adolescents in Iranian cinema, and its relationship to the image of the childhood that exists in Persian mythology and literature. The wise child appears in the times of crisis, when the logic of the elderly, based on patriarchal experience and control, is unable to solve a social problem, and all lines of communication and dialogue between the people and opponents —either as an external threat or as a tyrant ruler—, have reached an impasse. At this crucial moment, the wise child's particular logic save the people and solve the problem through the intelligence which is not contaminated by the logic of benefit, and through a strategy that is only possible by its high flexibility.
In cinema, this myth appears at a critical moment of Iranians contact with the modernity, and becomes the protagonist in a number of Iranian movies in a certain social-historical context. The educational space, moving this character forward, builds a perfect microcosmic relationship with social reality and sometimes turns the text into an allegorical image of a society which is changing value system, and thus in a deep identity crisis.