Abstract

This study proposes an alternative analytical framework for the interpretation of the arrest of an Iranian teenage female social media star by regime authorities in May 2018. I argue that the regime’s reaction to the youngster’s dancing was a product of a complicated historical dialectic with the West, rather than an objection to dance as a performative category. While the Iranian regime may have inherited the predominantly negative perceptions of the solo female dancing body from the Pahlavi era, dancing is not a crime in post-revolutionary Iran. However, dance is ‘meaning in motion’, and it can be inscribed and re-inscribed with political, cultural and social markers – depending on the motives of the spectator. This paper argues that it was the meaning ascribed to the teen’s dancing by hardline authorities that led to her arrest, and not the act of dancing itself. By historicising and framing the arrest within the discourse of ‘Westoxication’, this study interprets the arrest as a form of state-centric cultural resistance. The site of cultural contestation, the youngster’s dancing body, became the discursive and ideological terrain on which the regime repudiated Western cultural norms in defence of its own post-revolutionary standards of decency and cultural authenticity.

摘要

本研究提出了另一种分析框架，用于解释 2018 年 5 月政权当局逮捕一名伊朗少女社交媒体明星。 我认为，政权对年轻人跳舞的反应是与西方复杂的历史辩证法的产物，而不是反对将舞蹈作为表演类别。虽然伊朗政权可能继承了巴列维时代对女性独舞身体的主要负面看法，但在革命后的伊朗，跳舞并不是犯罪。然而，舞蹈是“运动中的意义”，它可以被政治、文化和社会标志铭刻和重新铭刻——这取决于观众的动机。这篇论文认为，正是强硬当局赋予少女跳舞的意义导致她被捕，而不是跳舞本身的行为。通过在“西方中毒”的话语中对逮捕进行历史化和框架化，本研究将逮捕解释为一种以国家为中心的文化抵抗形式。文化较量的场所，即年轻人跳舞的身体，成为该政权拒绝西方文化规范以捍卫其革命后的体面和文化真实性标准的话语和意识形态领域。