‘Zapata is Fighting the Enemy Here’: Defanging a Rebel in Pre-revolutionary Iran

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the Persian dubbed version of Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan, 1952) in terms of reception, translational manipulation, and censorship. The version’s historical context, including the political and ideological developments of the decades preceding the Islamic Revolution in Iran, is provided. Then an analysis of the manipulations in the microstructural level follows. Finally, the micro- and macro-structural understanding is coalesced to come up with an overall picture of the movie’s Persian version, its implications for the historical context in which it emerged, and some conclusions about the importance of history in analyzing translation practices in the receptor culture.