) How the interplay between culture, community, taboos and relationships shape the narrative trajectories of The Salesman and Masaan.

In The Salesman an Iranian woman, named Rana, is sexually assaulted and her husband, Emad, wants revenge. He tracks down the man throughout the film. However, they discover that the apartment they have been living in after their old one collapsed formerly belonged to a prostitute who had issues with her clients. When the man attacked Rana in the bathroom, he thought he was having sex with a prostitute. He even left money for her and Rana used it to buy groceries thinking Emad had left it for her. While Emad wants revenge, Rana does not and wants Emad to leave the situation alone. Rana still suffers trauma from the attack, but does not hold the attacker at fault since he did not know he was attacking Rana.

While that scenario plays on cultural norms of a Muslim country where sex is strictly controlled and made legal or illegal by edicts from an Iman, the other aspect of the film is the story within a story that also speaks to the rape storyline. Rana and Emad play the parts of Linda and Willy Loman in The Death of a Salesman. Throughout the movie the actors playing Rana and Emad play these characters who play roles in the stage play. Death of a Salesman is about Willy Loman being incompetent and angry at the world because he feels that his inability to succeed has outside causes rather than his own personal failings. Emad feels incompetent because he could not protect his wife from an attacker and also has trouble tracking the attacker down even though the attacker left the keys to his pickup truck. Then when the attacker is found, and Emad discovers that he is not really an attacker, he feels as if he can do nothing to make the world right again for Rana. He also wants to blame the man who told him about the vacant apartment where he and Rana went to live after theirs was destroyed for not telling him it had belonged to a prostitute.

The Salesman is not about theater, but it uses theater to point out social and psychological problems in Iranian society. Godfrey Cheshire of RogerEbert.com says, “Some descriptions of The Salesman call it a thriller, suggesting a Hollywood-style suspense film. It’s not. It’s a psychological and moral drama about how one man’s anger and damaged self-image drive him to the brink of destroying the very thing he ostensibly most wants to protect: his marriage” (Cheshire). In this way, The Salesman demonstrates how it is different from movies made in Western countries because it is not able to be neatly fitted into a specific genre such as “thriller” or “revenge” films.

Masaan is a movie about bucking cultural norms in India. “Masaan” means crematorium, and one of the characters works in one of India’s crematoriums. The reference to burning is about the burning desire that two couples portrayed in the film have for one another despite the threat of jail for defying the law about sexual relations before marriage. While the film shows how sexual issues are considered immoral, bribing the officials is accepted as part of life and not condemned. Deborah Young of Hollywood Reporter says, “It's curious that while the film waves a big flag for personal liberty, it takes the corruption of public officials completely for granted. The end of the bribery story is morally jaw-dropping, especially on account of the lack of directorial comment” (Young). However, in the end, those involved in bribery are condemned. Because bribery is so common in India, it is a rather shocking ending.

The movie begins with Devi and a student in a class she teaches going to a cheap hotel to have sex. The police are called and Devi is arrested. The boy locks himself in the bathroom and commits suicide. Devi’s father must pay a bribe to keep her from jail and to prevent her story from getting out, but it does. Her father sends a boy who works for him to dive in the Ganges and get coins so he can take bets on who will get the most coins. He uses the money to pay the bribe to the police.

In a parallel storyline, a boy, Deepak, from one of the lowest social casts in India, works at the crematorium burning bodies. He defies the social stereotype by going to college and taking engineering classes so he can rise out of his caste. He meets and falls in love with a woman from a higher caste even though that sort of thing is not usually done in India. Jay Weissberg of Variety says, “Theirs is a generation wired to global social values and unwilling to be kept down by caste, but as the first age group to resist the straightjacketing hold of class, they have to fight the entrenched beliefs of their elders” (Weissberg). The woman dies and Deepak is heartbroken. He finds out when her body comes to his crematorium for burning. He keeps her ring as a souvenir, but eventually throws it into the Ganges as he moves on.

One can predict that Deepak and