Cineture: The Trans(inter)mediality and Socio-cultural Mobility between Iran and the US

Literature and film have proven to be influential socio-cultural mediums, facilitating interactions and counteractions between nations where politics often fail to do so. Introducing cineture as a transmedial genre, this article is situated at the intersections of glocalized culture, and Iranian-American studies by considering literature and film as the contact zone between Iranians and Americans. Cineture, the combination of cinema and literature, refers to the circulation of cultures through its specification of film-text transmediation. The application of cineture demonstrates the combination and blending of literary and cinematic works leading to cross the “center and periphery dichotomy.” To study cineture and present the cultural mobility between Iran and the US, the works of Asghar Farhadi and Don DeLillo are chosen. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this paper conducts close readings of Iranian and American novels and films, drawing on several scholars like Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Roland Barthes, Hamid Dabashi, Henry Jenkins, Marie-Laure Ryan, and Roland Robertson, among others. This article demonstrates how there are grounds for communal interactions between Iran and the United States with culture-defined stories being examined through cineture.