The past-oriented Iranian culture: A semiotic analysis of the "Tunnel Zaman" program on “Manoto” TV Channel

This research aims to explain the cultural dynamics of Iranian society, part of which, lies in the contrast between past-oriented and future-oriented cultures. Media, as one of the tools of cultural reminiscence, can play a role in reviving the past-oriented discourse. For this purpose, the "Tunnel Zaman" program on Manoto TV channel, has been selected to analyze how the past Iranian culture is reproduced. The main question here is how this media plays a fundamental role in the representation and reproduction of the past-oriented discourse. The research has been conducted using the cultural semiotics method of the Tartu Moscow School, employing concepts such as binary oppositions, self and other, culture and non-culture, text and non-text, and presence and absence. This research accomplishes a kind of cultural typology of the past-oriented Iranian society. As a result, it became clear how media, especially in this study, the content of Manoto's "Tunnel Zaman", uses cultural mechanisms to transform the past from a state of non-text and death into a living text, as well as how the desirable past in this program, which is introduced as of the Pahlavi era, is reproduced and represented.