@article { author = {Ameri, Behnam and Pourjafari, Fatemeh}, title = {Through the Looking-Glass: Postmodern Metafiction and the Hyperreal in Shahram Mokri's Black Rabbit, White Rabbit}, journal = {Journal of Edulingual Studies (JES)}, volume = {1}, number = {2}, pages = {65-73}, year = {2026}, publisher = {Zerodale Academic Press, an Imprint of Zerodale Inc., Toronto, Canada}, issn = {}, eissn = {}, doi = {10.22034/jes.2026.588511.1011}, abstract = {Shahram Mokri's Black Rabbit, White Rabbit (2025) is a radical postmodern experiment that stages a crisis of representation itself. This article argues that the film weaponizes narrative convention through its literalization of Chekhov's Gun, transforms the Möbius strip into a narrative and ontological structure, and refuses the audience the stability of a single "real" reality. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Jean Baudrillard, Linda Hutcheon, and Jean-François Lyotard, the analysis demonstrates how Mokri's reconstruction of a foundational Iranian cinematic text (Hezardastan), his use of the Alice in Wonderland motif, and the film's unique location in Tajikistan together create a labyrinthine meditation on historiography, hyperreality, and the death of the author. The film exposes cinema as a machine that produces meaning through deliberate, self-aware illusion and then deconstructs that machinery in real time. Ultimately, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit stands as a challenge to the viewer: to watch it is to enter a labyrinth, to confront the machinery of narrative, and to realize that there is no exit.}, keywords = {Postmodernism, Metafiction, Hyperreality, Historiographic Metafiction, Chekhov's Gun, M&ouml,bius Strip}, url = {https://www.jesjournal.com/article_248466.html}, eprint = {https://www.jesjournal.com/article_248466_49eaec28f4900fa5af48bc8d1961b071.pdf} }