Social Interaction and Cultural Convergence between People and the Clergy; An Intertextual Reading of Three Religious Films: Under the Moonlight, The Newt, Gold and Copper

In recent decades various films have been produced in the Iranian cinema with the theme of the relation between people and the clergy, among which we can mention Under the Moonlight, The Newt, and Gold and Copper. Despite their differences, these films belong to a common discourse. This article is after a new categorization of clergy-related signifiers in a network of concepts/ signifiers (people, devotions, ethics, God's path, serving people, …) which though having political concerns, it seeks it through mixing with masses of people. This implies clergy-people/ politicians type of relationship instead of clergy/politicians duality, in which the third dimension is deliberately hidden. Therefore, it could be mentioned that the dominant discourse in these films signify a certain social interaction and convergence of the clergy with people. Here the clergy attempts to reconstruct its traditional role in the civil society of modern world while it never directly raises this question why it has been standing aloof from the traditional/religious environment. In other words, this type of films declines mentioning directly the element of politics (power), and this is performing its directional role as an "absent" signifier. This article first uses an intertextual reading to extract the discourse elements of "restoring religious values in modern society" with its classification type. Then it tries to discuss the kind of problems that the clergy gets involved with when facing the Iranian society of the recent decade.