a post modernistic study of myth on “the death of yazdgerd

abstract: myth is as old as mankind; it has transformed and lasted in the form of stories, and anecdotes, together with literary and artistic works. one cannot ignore the presence of myths in culture, literature and art (especially cinema) every era ranging from the age of aeschylus, euripides and aristophanes to the contemporary age of cinema has a firm attachment with myth- of all historical periods and in different literary genres and schools. one of the outstanding criteria of literature and post modernistic arts is their serious approach to myth and mythical narrations in spite of the fact that it is different from that in classical and even modernistic texts. the writers of present article have attempted to define postmodernist components of a bahram bizayi’s movie named “marg- e-yazdgerd” through analyzing and defining the significant features of content and structure of the movie. they, also, have tried to reveal that this outstanding movie in iran possesses components likes: contradiction, lack of coherence, intertextuality, and a post modernistic view to myth. special view to myth (heterogeneous myth, demythologizing, and myth deformation of hero) and its reflection in marg- e-yazdgerd are more outstanding than other criteria of post modernistic narration. in this article, the main issue which studied is concerned with how myth is represented in death of yazdgerd movie and the postmodern approach of bahram beyzai toward myth in the above mentioned movie is of course analyzed and explained. in order to explain this issue, the authors have tried to answer the three following questions drawing upon intertextual method of content analysis and mythological criticism in cinema: a)what is the intertextual relation or relations of death of yazdgerd movie which is basically historical event based with myth?, b) how and in what direction or directions the narrative structure of death of yazdgerd has approached the structure of mythological narrative?, c)in death of yazdgerd, upon which element or elements of postmodern narrative is myth and mythological narrative based? in other words in addition to the special look at myth, what other elements of postmodern narrative can be seen in this movie? the most important and prominent postmodern elements of death of yazdgerd can be distinguished and interpreted among the following pivots: intertextuality, contradiction, incoherence, unreliability of constraints and passage of time, time being event-based, cyclization of time, all of them being interrelated with the special look of the postmodern narrative toward myth. beyzai escapes from bringing up reality by creating imaginary cinematic images in the narrative text coming from death of yazdgerd. by provoking lack of certainty, he makes the viewers to judge and also asks them to wonder what will happen in the end; does th miller kill the king? does the king kill the miller? or whether the king kills the king. beyzai consciously challenges history and historical narrative and realist narrative method as well thinking that this method is completely true and acceptable; the narrator of death of yazdgerd artfully makes the addressee doubt the reality, especially historical reality.