The Image of Iranian Women in European Televisions; a Case Study of TV Documentaries

The depiction of Iranian Women at European 3 TV documentaries has been studied in this paper. So through an interpretative approach, the semiotic analysis has been applied to analyze the content of these documentaries. The selected documentaries to analyze are outstanding documentaries on Iran. These three documentaries include:Taboos, (2004), Rageh inside Iran (2007) and  Prostitution behind the Veil (2006).
Two questions have been raised an answered in this paper: first, how the Iranian women have been depicted in selected European TV documentaries (specially the British and French TV channels? Second, what are the most important imaginations of Iranian women on the selected documentaries of European TV channels?
This paper is grounded in a framework of mediated Orientalism which operates as a dominant framework, building on historical experiences of political and economic imperialism, through which Western institutions exploit territories ascribed to a region entitled the “Middle East,” the very naming of which exposes a particular perspective not grounded in indigenous conceptualizations. The process of imposing political and economic domination necessitates an attempt to control an ideological landscape, creating a context in which that very act of domination seems justified and understood, not questioned but instead part and parcel of conventional wisdom. Ideological justifications for domination then become manifest in the discourse of Western institutions, including media organizations as well as universities, corporations, military units, and other agencies. The media industry, along with these other organizations, portrays the region and its associated communities in particular ways that reinforce a justification and explanation for Western domination. Media discourse accentuating violent and fearful acts without attention to the complexity of political and historical issues is not separate from but indeed rooted in historical relations of power. Mediated texts need to be understood within the professional, organizational, political, and economic contexts in which people create these cultural products. The production of mediated texts operates within the broader framework in which Orientalist ideologies persist in political as well as cultural agencies, structured through the economic imperatives of the media industry ducts.
Based on the framework described above, the analysis of documentaries shows two types of depiction on Iranian women have been presented in the selected documentaries: the first type of depiction has reproduced the orientalism stereotypes about Iran and depicted an absolutely dark of Iranian women which is characterized in: life in a dark social context, absolute subordination of women, absolute superiority of men, the contradiction of official policies to the freedom and autonomy of Iranian woman. The second type of depiction, distances from representing a dark image of Iranian women and presents a grey image of these women. For instance, the teenager girls who do not feel any obligation on their veil or a news photographer, a filmmaker, a business woman and etc who are actively  engaged in cultural, artistic & economic activities in the society and are not inactive and subordinate people.