Literary Adaptation, Gender Discourse, and the Imperialist Narrative: A Critical Interpretation of the Film Reading Lolita in Tehran

This article offers a critical interpretation of the 2024 film adaptation of Reading Lolita in Tehran, directed by Eran Riklis, arguing that the film operates as an instrument of neo-Orientalism in the service of a contemporary imperialist narrative. Drawing on Bourdieusian field theory, it examines how the film’s transnational production—characterized by an Italo-Israeli financial alliance and the spatial reconfiguration of Tehran in Rome—facilitates a neo-Orientalist gaze. Textual analysis shows that the film employs de-historicized and fragmented visual strategies that flatten the complex lived experiences of Iranian women into reductive symbols of suffering, foregrounding motifs of oppression for Western consumption and validating a binary logic of Self and ‘Other’. The discussion then traces the film’s alignment with contemporary US and Israeli geopolitical rhetoric, showing how it instrumentalizes gender and human rights to sanctify military and diplomatic agendas. Ultimately, the film functions as an apparatus of neo-imperial hegemony, naturalizing global power asymmetries and moralizing geopolitical conflict.