Abstract
In this article I describe what I see as the subliminal messages of desire and intimacy in the following Iranian movies: Gabbeh (1995), The Blue Scarf (1994), May Lady (1997), and Born in the Month of Mihr (2000). I argue that although the Islamic legal discourse has reasserted itself after the revolution of 1979 and appears to have become dominant, the “erotic” discourse that is ever so subtly embedded in Persian poetry and popular culture is alive and possibly thriving. Taking a light-hearted approach, I discuss representations of love and sex in these four films within the context of the dynamic tension between the legal discourse that regulates the gaze, ahkam-i nigah, and the erotic discourse that subverts the very same regulations, nazar-bazi. This paper was first presented at the conference on “Women in Iranian Cinema,” held at University of Virginia at Charlottesville, 30 March–2 April 2000. It is intended to be light hearted and tongue-in-cheek. A version of it has been translated into Persian and published in Iran Nameh: A Persian Journal of Iranian Studies, XIX, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 337–347.
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