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had been detrim entally absent from the “patent”— as op p osed to the latent—
culture o f Iran, Film farsi, fundam entally, albeit greatly inadvertently, transform s
the con scio u sn ess o f the Iranian public w ith respect to the body.
A mosaic of the Rangarang Show singers and sets
The secon d m ost im portant v e h ic le o f the pop culture in Iran w as
R angarang (C olorful) Show . A trem endously popular pop m u sic sh o w in the
vein o f the European and A m erican sh o w s o f the 1960s and 1970s, Rangarang,
b ein g regularly broadcast from the Iranian N ational T V , broke a w h o le n ew path
in the realm o f the Iranian esthetics: the avant-garde, abstract-art,
phantasm agoric set-d esign in g o f this sh ow , alm ost u n excep tion ally full o f
glittering light and color, and its ex o tic co stu m e-d esig n in g , esp ecia lly w ith
regard to fem ale artists, m ade a huge im pact on the attitude o f the ordinary
Iranian citizen concerning beauty and im agination. T his fa sh io n -sh o w style o f
art, prim arily d w ellin g on light and color, em phasized, gen erally pleasantly, but
som etim es to the point o f vulgarity, the sig n ifica n ce o f the syn th esis o f the body
and ligh t/color in hum an esth etics. In the end, Rangarang S h ow and Film farsi
typ ically m erged on the co v ers or w ithin the p ages o f the cou n tless y e llo w
journals. T he fact that m any o f the singers w ere also actors and v ice versa
contributed all the m ore to the d issolu tion o f the boundary b etw een the tw o
p henom ena and their effe c tiv e merger.
In addition to the a b ove-m en tion ed v eh icles o f the pop culture, the
m ore e x c lu siv e ly c la ssy and up-m arket art festivals such as the “F estival o f
Culture and A rts” and the “Shiraz Arts F estiv a l,” both held annually sin ce the
late 1960s, and then the p o m p o u sly glam orous “C elebrations o f the 2 5 0 0 Y ears
o f the Persian M onarchy” in 1971, w h ich all in all constituted a setting m ore for
and to the taste o f the Pahlavi elite and their international visitors, due to their