“Khanom-e Valedeh” was made for sexual jokes / This is the same Ruhowzi cinema

To understand the state of the best-selling pseudo-comedies in Iranian cinema, perhaps instead of asking why these films are made so poorly, we should ask what incentive exists for them to be made better at all. When a product with minimal creativity hits the market, finds its audience, and returns its maker's investment, what need remains for change? In such a situation, the weakness of the screenplay and

According to Ambassador Arjan's report, Farhikhtegan newspaper wrote: "Khanmvaldeh" should be examined in this framework; A film that, instead of opening a new horizon in popular pseudo-comedies, puts together a set of old and familiar tricks: exaggerated dances, sex jokes, cross-dressing, physical misunderstandings and cultural taboos. It is as if the funny materials were chosen before the creation of the work and now they are supposed to fit into it in any way possible. It is no longer important what the characters have, how the comic situations are formed or what role the camera plays in creating them; It is enough that the result is effective at the box office.

Vulgarity cannot be escalated to infinity and expect the audience to still show the same initial reaction. When creativity gives way to ready-made and non-artistic stimuli, the producer has to increase the intensity of those stimuli to get the same amount of laughter. The same joke that yesterday attracted attention by crossing a red line, is not so surprising today. So the jokes should be more explicit, the crossing of red lines should be more reckless and new taboos should be targeted. However, the audience gets used to this new dose and what was supposed to shock them one day becomes a part of their normal expectation. As a result, the manufacturer needs to increase the dosage again; An attrition cycle in which the intensity of the stimulus increases without increasing the quality of laughter.

Of course, this cycle cannot be examined independently of its audience. A significant part of the Iranian cinema audience needs an opportunity to have fun and get away from everyday pressures. This request is neither strange nor blameworthy. The problem begins where the need for entertainment becomes an excuse to release products whose creators do not make the slightest effort to exceed the initial expectations of the audience. There is a difference between simplicity and rigging; Just as entertaining is not the same as underestimating the audience; But the audience who cheers for the vulgarity and laughs at it, gives the vulgarity sellers the license to underestimate him severely!

On the other hand, when the producer attributes the success of his product to the audience's taste, one must ask how independent this taste is from the dominant patterns of production. Do audiences really only want this kind of comedy, or has a significant portion of the market simply fed them the same stereotypes for years? The reception of the audience contributes to stabilizing this situation, but the responsibility of the producer cannot be equated with the responsibility of the audience who chooses among the available options. The policymaker has a decisive role in the formation of this cycle by setting the stage for the production and screening and the way he deals with the commercial success of the works.

"Khanmvalde" is an illustrative example; Because it reveals its dependence on this formula more than ever. A joke with a dead body's finger, oranges that are supposed to replace a part of the body, women's clothing, women's swimwear, body inspection and sexual situations are among the materials that the film uses to make people laugh.

But the presence of a potentially funny element does not in itself mean the formation of comedy. Comedy needs situation design. The character must have a desire, face an obstacle, and the encounter between the two should lead to a comic outcome. In "Khanmvalde", it often seems that the plot is just a path to the next joke. The script is a string to connect these parts, and decoupage is often enough to record the events. Decoupage, in the logic of these creators, means making sure the camera is on and the actors are playing pranks!

Repetition of jokes aggravates this weakness. Repetition works comically when it adds something to the situation, changes it, or creates a new sensation each time. Otherwise, we are dealing with a re-enactment of a stimulus, not an expansion of a comic idea. The film repeatedly returns to the same previous elements, without making a new situation out of their repetition. The result is an obvious contradiction: the work resorts to the same devices that have lost their power to make people laugh due to repetition.

In the meantime, sexual jokes and playing with red lines become the final destination of the film. It's as if the more frank the joke and the more reckless the situation, the closer the film is to laughing; While crossing a taboo alone does not create an idea or give quality to the work. Taboo breaking, on its own and independent of drama, script, characterization and situation design, may attract the attention of the audience; But this attention reveals his empty-handedness rather than showing the ability of the creator. Artistic boldness doesn't come from making gross-out sex jokes or crossing cultural boundaries.

This is where the logic of the culture industry approaches its dead end. The standardized product must remain familiar to ensure its consumption, but at the same time it must seem fresh enough to entice the audience to buy tickets for a new movie. When the creator only intensifies the previous elements instead of innovating, novelty is reduced to an intensification of banality. This strategy may work for a while, but it cannot replace cinematic creativity forever. The audience may laugh at a joke, but they get tired of repeating it, and eventually, they need something to excite them that can no longer be achieved by simply increasing the dose. vulgarity also has a threshold for effectiveness; After that, what remains is not surprise, but a boring addiction to vulgarity.

Ebrahim Amerian probably evaluates this situation with different criteria than the criteria of a movie critic. For someone who sees cinema first and foremost as an investment field, return on investment is the most important sign of success. There is nothing wrong with business in cinema by itself; But when the logic of sales overshadows everything and script, mise-en-scène and creativity are sidelined, the result cannot be measured by commercial criteria alone. Is the cinema a vulgar packaging factory for the market? Moreover, even from a business perspective, relying on an outdated formula cannot be an eternal guarantee of profitability.

Since culture and art are not important for Amerian and his ilk, it is better to talk to the manufacturers of these products in the language of the market. It's not just why you don't care about cinema; The thing is, even business logic can't save you from the limitations of the formula you keep repeating and the banality you keep aggravating. The audience will not laugh forever at sexual jokes and repetition. You can't increase the dose of vulgarity every time and expect the audience to react the same way forever. Sooner or later, the stimulants wear off and the manufacturer is faced with a product that has nothing but rampant escalation of vulgarity in its pocket to make it seem fresh.

The issue of "Khanmwalde" is not simply the weakness of a film or the difference in taste between critics and part of the audience; The problem is a notion of filmmaking that reduces laughs to aggravating corny jokes and regrettably crossing red lines. Comedy doesn't have to be sophisticated or intellectual, but to be truly comedy, it needs more than dance, sex jokes, and reproductions of current trends. You can increase the dose of vulgarity, but you cannot prevent the audience from getting used to it; And when vulgarity is no longer surprising, the only thing left is more vulgarity.