representation of male camaraderie and female friendship in iranian romantic comedy genre textual analysis of 11 iranian romantic comedies

most of iranian comedy films, before and after the revolution, can be categorized as romantic comedies. these films depict romantic relationship between men and women as a funny incident and constitute the iranian romantic comedy genre. drawing on genre theory, this paper aims at understanding the relationship between the romantic comedy’s heroes and heroines with their friends, and at finding the real values and beliefs that are reinforced through these interactions. to do so, eleven romantic comedy movies are selected. the moves had been screened on tehran or other cities’ cinemas for at least a week from 1990 to 2011. a textual analysis was performed on the movies to find binary opposition sets. the analysis reveals that male camaraderie/female friendship serves to show there is no power in sisterhood and supports the social regeneration of patriarchic ideology. the perpetuation of patriarchy demands the dissolution of sisterhood and the romantic comedy genre contributes to that dissolution, suggesting that is impossible for women to ever team up. the spouse (1994) is the only narrative that does not follow this oppositional pattern. to the contrary, it recognizes and appreciates female friendship.