Analyzing the Environmental Issue in Iranian Cinema (Critical Discourse Analysis of Three Iranian Films on the Environmental Theme)

Introduction: The country of Iran is facing many environmental issues and problems, the solutions to which require a broad movement and synergistic actions among government, institutions, organizations, and individuals in society. Given the limited number of cinema and television productions in this field, it seems necessary to conduct this research to develop and increase productions in environmental themes. In fact, the importance of this research lies in the link between cinema's environmental responsibilities. The questions we will answer in this research are:
 How does Iranian cinema represent the environment? Moreover, what areas of the environment are represented in the movies?
Materials and Methods: The examples in question are films whose main narrative is entirely about environmental issues. The method of data extraction involves the researchers extracting every sentence and text that explicitly or implicitly refers to the environmental issue, categorizing them, and placing them in specific divisions at the levels of "description", "interpretation", and "explanation”. They were discussed in the context of Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method. One of the best and most prominent analyses of the conditions for the formation of a discourse in the social situation of a text and the relationships between it, the language, and actors is critical discourse analysis. This method examines language as a social function and emphasizes the reproduction of social power through texts. In this method, unlike linguistic analysis, we are no longer dealing with only the syntactic and lexical elements that make up the sentence as the main basis for explaining the meaning, i.e., the "context". Rather, we face factors outside the text, that is, the situational, cultural, social, political, communication context, etc. Therefore, discourse analysis studies the crystallization and formation of the meanings and messages of linguistic units in relation to internal linguistic factors (text context) and extralinguistic factors such as cultural, political, and social contexts. Text analysis from Fairclough's point of view has seven dimensions. Its four dimensions (grammar, vocabulary, text coherence, and the overall structure of the text) are related to the owner of the text, and its three dimensions (word power, coherence, and intertextuality) are related to the reader's interpretation and understanding of the text. In short, Fairclough examines three phenomena in the analysis of each communication event: 1-Text: includes words, grammar, semantics, and phonetic system. 2- Discourse activity: includes the processes of text production and consumption. 3-Social activity: it is an aspect of discourse that deals with the political, economic, and cultural issues in which the discourse is formed.
Results and Discussion: The issues related to clean energy, reliance on oil resources, and development based on renewable resources, optimal consumption of water and energy, emphasis on a peaceful lifestyle with the environment, and the lack of government planning in recruitment and employment, as well as the lack of forestry forces, are represented in these three works. Also, environmental crises such as soil erosion, desertification, deforestation, the unfair distribution of energy and water, the drying up of wetlands and lakes, the destruction of flora and fauna, and government policies are not mentioned. Issues such as wood smuggling, garbage, air pollution, and the use of clean energy are reduced.
Conclusion: Based on the results, a film that narrates environmental challenges and problems in a coherent and specific manner and falls within the environmental genre is very rare in Iranian cinema. Most of the films and series made in this field could not have a special focus on environmental issues, and by introducing other topics into the film, they did not move them in parallel and along the same path as the main stream of the film story, and thus suffered several tears in the narrative and the main line or stream of the film. which is the environment disappearing and confuses the audience. In addition to reducing these issues, the government's lack of policies and performance is clearly evident in the examined films; contrary to the views of environmental experts and activists, it is assumed that the government's policies for protecting the environment and natural resources are perfect and complete.