%0 Journal Article
%T Through the Looking-Glass: Postmodern Metafiction and the Hyperreal in Shahram Mokri's Black Rabbit, White Rabbit
%J Journal of Edulingual Studies (JES)
%I Zerodale Academic Press, an Imprint of Zerodale Inc., Toronto, Canada
%Z 
%A Ameri, Behnam
%A Pourjafari, Fatemeh
%D 2026
%\ 07/01/2026
%V 1
%N 2
%P 65-73
%! Through the Looking-Glass: Postmodern Metafiction and the Hyperreal in Shahram Mokri's Black Rabbit, White Rabbit
%K Postmodernism, Metafiction, Hyperreality, Historiographic Metafiction, Chekhov's Gun, M&ouml
%K bius Strip
%R 10.22034/jes.2026.588511.1011
%X 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.
%U https://www.jesjournal.com/article_248466_49eaec28f4900fa5af48bc8d1961b071.pdf