The plot focuses on a childless peasant who lives with his wife and their cow. For the desperately impoverished hamlet in which they live, the cow is a primary source of sustenance. Accordingly, the man dotes on the cow, adoring his as cow as if it were his child, taking the cow to graze in the open fields and carefully washing it. His connection to this cow is so strong that when the animal dies under mysterious circumstances while the man leaves to go to the capital, the villagers conspire to lie to him about the fate of his cow, fearing that the truth would break him. Despite these efforts to obscure the truth, the man does not believe the others, eventually turning insane and believing himself to be a cow before coming to an untimely end.

Given the ambiguities surrounding many of the plot points, like what exactly happened to the cow, much of the film itself is left to the interpretation of the viewer. One interpretation of the movie that is very much in keeping with the themes of our class is that the cow can be seen as symbolizing the oil of Iran. The cow is so central to the functioning of the village that its demise leads to a major disruption in the village. Indeed many of the villagers are dependent on this singular cow. Similarly, around this time oil was itself central to the functioning of Iran, to the extent that a threat to its supply constituted a threat to national stability.

Another possible interpretation of the film that would speak to the themes of the course are to consider the village and centrality of the cow to its way of life as representing the inertia of a traditional, culturally authentic lifestyle. As this lifestyle is rudely and abruptly disrupted by the death of the cow, rather than rapidly adapt to changing realities, i.e. quickly adapt Western attitudes and technologies, the erstwhile cow owner chooses to live in a state of denial. This eventuates in the man’s death, while can be read as the filmmaker’s caution to Iran against a refusal to adapt to changing realities.

This anxiety about change and the struggle to reconcile change to traditional culture and ways of life are unique to the Iranian experience of the period. Rather than attempting to whitewash the difficult transition Iran underwent at the time, the film allegorically presents a complete image of the challenges of culturally authentic modernization.

I came away from The Cow with an ambivalent impression of modernity. I first noticed modernity’s presence in the character of the chief, whom I see as being representative of the village as a whole. Much like his counterpart in The Grocer and the Chief, He sees himself becoming impotent in the face of modernity. The interactions with Saffan’s son and his ceding of authority to Eslam in the Hassan case both represent this loss of power and control. This change is not presented in any negative light. The chief willingly gives over authority to Eslam and everyone seems to agree he is the best man for the job. The Eslam-Hassan dynamic became for me symbolic of the local modernist attempting to pull his compatriots into modernity.

If we take Kapuscinski’s claim that Iranians under the Shah retreated into premodern tradition as a place to “seek shelter” (K, 113), we might take Hassan as undergoing similar psychological trauma with the death of his cow, especially if the Bolouris are thought of as representing the Shah’s regime. Iranians watching The Cow in Tehran would know the feeling of anxiety about losing everything at any moment which induces Hassan to sleep with his cow for fear of the Bolouris. His psychotic break and retreat into animalism would likely garner some sympathy among viewers. However, Hassan’s condition is also wild and terrifying, the dark scenes in the cow shed at once provoke sympathy and disgust.

Eslam, meanwhile, seems to embody local modernist thinkers, who both harbor deep faith in the source of modernity (i.e. the city) but also empathize with their compatriots and see them as modern individuals. Eslam’s continual entreaties to Hassan to remember his name and identity as an individual reflect this. But there is ambivalence around Eslam. In the scene when he whips Hassan, the film shows the temptation Eslam feels to view Hassan as beneath him or even subhuman. There seems to be both support for modernist thinkers and concern.

It’s a common refrain that revolutions start with ideas; that it is philosophers, scholars, and other intellectuals that influence true change.  I see this theory as largely correct; after all, Montesquieu’s works were sitting in the center of the table when America’s founders drafted the constitution, while Voltaire and Rosseau’s ideas were crucial in fomenting the French Revolution.  However, I also believe that to elevate it as a universal truth is naive.  While revolutions begin with ideas, they are generally enacted through brute force, in turn creating a climate in which it is the strongest and most resilient, not the ideologically “right” or “pure” are likely to emerge victorious.

Rubashov is the hero of Darkness at Noon and it is easy to see him as victorious. After all, he dies in noble silence in the same room where others had perished kicking, screaming, and begging.  However, just because he maintained a poise and inner peace at his fatal hour does not mean he did not enter that hour a broken man.  Rubashov was not only killed by the movement that he viewed himself as working tirelessly to support but was cowed by interrogation tactics that he had vowed to overcome.  His ideological conviction in his innocence was thoroughly destroyed; he died having confessed to a series of crimes that, when originally arrested and still of sound mind, he knew he had not committed.

I think it is impossible to posit any of the characters as “right” or “wrong.”  One rarely finds the comfort of “black and white” when attempting to objectively study a war or revolution; instead, there is “strong and weak,” those who have the power to enforce their personal convictions or motives and those who don’t.  Through this lens, Gletkin is the book’s winner.  Whether in pursuit of what he saw as ideologically right or simply of personal advancement, he destroyed both Rubashov’s will to survive and will to believe, turning him into a subservient and near-robotic product of the movement that he ironically helped to create.  In my opinion, the defining quote from the book is Gletkin’s: “we have only one duty: not to perish.”   This is far from a romanticized perspective; far from a statement that can ideologically inspire.  However, it is a summation of world politics and conflict, which follow hierarchical not horizontal principles.

The most common reading of Grocer’s “Lerner and the Chief,” at least as it pertains to modernity, is that the grocer is the story’s true hero.  The grocer, as is ultimately acknowledged by the residents of his village, had a quasi-prophetic nature; less than four years after he died Balgat resembled more the world of his dreams than the one that scorned him for his “pretentious” ways.

To claim that the grocer is the story’s most powerful symbol of modernity, however, is to disregard some of the basic mechanisms by which society changes.  The grocer’s relationship with the village was better defined by a hostile dichotomy than a cooperative evolution.  Just because the grocer foresaw and appreciated “modernization” does not mean that he influenced it.  Indeed he ostracized himself from society and looked condescendingly down at his fellow villages rather than fostering an environment of mutual respect in which he could “raise them up.”

Thus the grocer was a prophet and not an agent of change.  In stark contrast, the chief, despite holding convictions that the grocer would consider antiquated, actively oversaw the “modernization” of his village, supporting and helping his people in the transition that swept over them following political change in Ankara.  In my opinion, especially in today’s complex and multicultural societies, this is what represents true modernity.  Society can only peacefully and effectively evolve through the construction of bridges between new and old worldviews, not through the Soviet-style scorn and then meteoric destruction of a previous way of life.  “The Grocer and the Chief,” while problematic in some ways, can still be said to have import on “modern” societies.  As we storm further into this 21st century of rapid change, we would be wise to heed the graceful and compromising attitude of Lerner’s wise chief.

Once you’ve answered the above, apply your definition critically to Daniel Lerner’s seminal piece, “The Grocer and the Chief.”  How might this essay, warts and all, help us to better understand what it means to “be modern?”

Please keep your answers short (no more than 250 words, if you can!).  Post your reply using the “New Post” feature (but title it using your own creativity).  Make sure to tag it as “We Moderns?”  Remember to post a reply to a reply by Monday.  Simply scroll through the entries and reply to whichever one catches your eye!  Let me know if you have any questions.