The Way of Representing Intergenerational Relationships in Iranian Popular TV Series

Using elements of Labov model, this research devotes to analyze intergenerational relationships (i.e. relations between young people and adults with an emphasis on parents) in Iranian TV popular Series which are focused on youth issues as their core theme. Our findings show that three general patterns are represented through these TV Series which are included generational agreements, generational changes (include differences, disturbances and interactions) and hidden or obvious generational gaps. Meanwhile the only one which positively represented attitudes and behaviors of both adults and young people is the generational agreement pattern. Also in other patterns there are some common obvious behaviors such as respectful behaviors of young people toward adults (in spite of their differences in fundamental values) and behaviors indicating good will of adults toward young people are presented as valuable actions. But criticized behaviors just known as the results of individual mistakes of both groups which either would be corrected by advices and helps of adults or would have some bad results. Such an approach toward the intergenerational relationships show that this social important issue has been reduced to the level of an individual issue by Iranian state TV (IRIB) and it seems affected by some general policies dominated in this media organization in representing intergenerational relationships. Such policies emphasize some serious limitations in “categorizing or polarizing members of different generations” and prevention of showing “family fights, contentions and severe conflicts” (even in comedy genre). Therefore these policies incline to cover up this social issue rather than assessing its different dimensions