Pahlavi’s Ideal of “Citizen-Soldier” for Iranian Men, and Three Cinematic Responses: Broken Bodies, Fallen Soldiers, and Tradition Resisting

Authors
Javad Nematollahi 1
Alireza Sayyad 2
1 Ph.D. candidate, Art Studies, Department of Research in art history, Faculty of art, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Cinema, Department of Cinema and Theater, Iran University of Art, Tehran
Abstract
This article explores the Pahlavi regime's ideal of the "citizen-soldier" in Iran and its subsequent failure, and reaction generated, as depicted in three instances of the politically conscious Iranian New Wave cinema: Requiem (1978), Beehive (1975), and Baluch (1972). These films act as critical lenses reflecting the profound disjunctions between the state's objectives of training citizen-soldiers and the public realities. Requiem portrays the broken bodies that the state failed to train and subsequently abandoned in the outskirts of Tehran. Beehive features a young man trained but left unutilized by the state, while Baluch depicts a rural man rebelling against the "corrupt," "weak," and "westernized" urban elite, advocating the revolt of "authentic" Iranian soldiers against the citizen-soldier model. Through these films, the ideological conflicts and palpable consequences of the state's body politics for men, and the culminating resistance, are exposed. The films are concerned with the societal and individual impacts of the Pahlavi regime's body policies, and highlight the disconnect between state aspirations and lived experiences. The analysis underscores how these films criticize, and react to the state-driven modernization and the resultant socio-political tensions, and participate in the revolutionary sentiments that culminated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution

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The International Journal of Humanities
Volume 32, Issue 1
May 2025
Pages 62-81