Cinemas on Fire: Walter Benjamin’s Spielraum and the 1979 Revolution in Iran

In his seminal essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’, Walter Benjamin introduces the concept of Spielraum. With this term, Benjamin suggests that cinemas possess the potential to serve as spaces where the revolutionary masses can actively engage in political actions. However, during the 1979 revolution in Iran, cinemas paradoxically became the main targets of revolutionaries’ violent actions, including arson and bombings. Aiming to complicate Benjamin’s theory of Spielraum, this article will situate his theory in this context to explore why cinemas did not emerge as Spielraum for revolutionaries in Iran. Subsequently, through a comparative analysis, it demonstrates that the Ta’zieh and Tikīih, as traditional theatrical mediums/spaces, embodied the characteristics of Spielraum in revolutionary Iran. It argues that in this context, the Pahlavī’s secularizing ‘modernization’ agenda, combined with the Islamic clerics’ efforts to politicize the ‘tradition’, leveraged the spatial and performative dynamics of Ta’zieh and Tikīih to construct this medium/space as a Spielraum. This study not only illuminates the complexities of 1979 Iran but also highlights the inherent fluidity of Benjamin’s concept, revealing its reliance on the interplay between various actors of a specific sociopolitical context.