I hope to use my study of serial and visual narrative in the Project Narrative Summer Institute

to develop the second chapter of my PhD thesis. I will achieve this outcome by using my project
for the program to explore ways in which engagement with the theoretical readings can
contribute to the chapter’s conceptual framework. Furthermore, the discussion of other serial
narrative texts will help to contextualize the serialized films I discuss in the chapter. The final
project will thereby apply material from the program to the specific context of my case study.
The study examines Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani’s Fereshteh trilogy (1999-2003),
which tells stories of the titular female character’s victimization at the hands of a series of violent
men. Milani’s depiction of masculine violence over the course of the three films appropriates a
trope from pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema: the luti (meaning “tough guy”). Whereas the earlier
luti films depict heroic men who commit acts of revenge on behalf of helpless women, Milani’s
sympathies with the victims problematize the violence of pre-revolutionary film. I read these
depictions as engagements with the complexities of the treatment of women in Iranian society
immediately following their influential role in bringing the Islamic Republic into power.
The chapter uses Milani’s films as a point of comparison with two other post-revolutionary
films: Fereydoun Jeyrani’s Parkway (2007) and Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices (2014). Where
Milani operates in the generic register of melodrama, Parkway and The Voices appropriate the
lutis by turning their glorified machismo into the terrifying monstrosity of horror. Jeyrani and
Satrapi align viewers’ perspectives with female victims’ fear. Since Jeyrani works within Iran but
Satrapi’s film was made in the United States with English-speaking actors, reading the two films
together allows for comparison between local and diasporic Iranian filmmakers’ uses of the luti
in horror films. The chapter connects these interactions with Milani’s appropriation of the luti in
the Fereshteh films. For that trilogy, however, the trope comes into contact with serialization, and
I will use the readings and discussions in Project Narrative to develop my understanding of how
serialized cinematic narrative influences the luti’s reappearance.
The discussion of the luti exemplifies my thesis’s aim to analyze the dialogue between
elements of horror films, Iranian cultural practices, and the country’s national narratives.
Reading Iranian film and horror together, I argue, facilitates understanding of the role of
cinematic fictions in the creation and perpetuation of national imaginaries. The second chapter
looks specifically at narratives of gender in Iran, with which Parkway and The Voices engage
through the luti. Analysis of the Fereshteh trilogy contexutalizes that engagement, and my
readings of all of the films will thereby benefit from a better understanding of serialization’s
influence on depictions of the trope.
My thesis exemplifies my broader interest in the relationship between the narratives of
nations and stories told through visual media such as film and comics, an interest that has led me
to both Iran and the United States. The multivalence of visual narratives makes for productive
spaces for the interrogation of national imaginaries, and I have been drawn to texts that
demonstrate this productivity. The Fereshteh films are a particularly noteworthy example of how
visual media has addressed questions of national identity, and serialization plays a formative role
in that address. This case study will thereby bring a unique perspective to Project Narrative,
which in turn will enrich my analysis of the expressive capacities of the trilogy’s narrative form.
I aim to use my final project for Project Narrative to deepen my understanding of the relationship
between that form and both my thesis and my wider research interests.