Shukhi-ye Zesht o Tekrāri: Performing Blackness in Iranian Entertainment
Abstract
There persists a lack of consistent critical engagement with issues of race, particularly
Blackness, in Iranian spaces, despite the continuous presence of “race” in the Iranian
experience. As such engagements with Blackness range from a denial of its existence
in Iran to famous rapper Hichkas calling the beloved blackface figure, Hājji Firuz,
as shukhi-ye zesht o tekrāri—an ugly and tired joke. This thesis explores what race
means in non-Western contexts, specifically through audio-visual manifestations of
race in cultural rituals and products. Siāh-bāzi, or “playing black,” blackface performances
are a form of traditional theatre in which the blackface character serves as racialized
comic relief. Much more common and well-known, Hājji Firuz is a perennial blackface
character that announces the coming of spring and the spring New Year (Nowruz), whose
racialization is also indispensable to his performances. Finally, in a more authentic
portrayal of Black Iranian identity through the character of Bashu in Bahram Beyza’i’s
celebrated film Bashu, the Little Stranger (1985), race nevertheless continues to
be manifested physically through a visual Othering that becomes somewhat resolved
through participation in the nation-state’s institutions and standard language, while
at the same time revealing the racism in Iranian society and the failures of the nation-state.
In examining representations of Blackness, whether as blackface performances or authentic
portrayals, this thesis investigates broader questions of race, Othering, nationalism,
and scholarship while questioning the wholesale application of English-language, Western-based
theories to an Iranian context and rejecting essentialist analyses.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
International Comparative StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16733Citation
Mostafavi, Parmida (2018). Shukhi-ye Zesht o Tekrāri: Performing Blackness in Iranian Entertainment. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16733.Collections
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