Mapping Loss: An Examination of Styles of Sadness Metaphorization in Male and Female Sacred Defense Cinema (A Case Study of Bodyguard and Track 143)

Abstract

Sadness is one of the most fundamental emotional experiences in war-related narratives, and the manner in which it is conceptualized can reflect cultural, social, and gendered perspectives on the experience of loss. Drawing upon Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and Kövecses’s (2010) tripartite model of emotional metaphors, the present study investigates styles of sadness metaphorization in two prominent films of Iranian Sacred Defense cinema: Bodyguard (Ebrahim Hatamikia, 2016) as an example of a masculine narrative and Track 143 (Narges Abyar, 2014) as an example of a feminine narrative of the war experience. The study employs a descriptive–analytical methodology with an integrated quantitative and qualitative approach. In the quantitative phase, conceptual metaphors related to sadness were extracted from the dialogues and narrative situations of both films and classified according to three patterns: “feeling–response,” “cause of feeling,” and “cause of feeling and response.” Their frequency and distribution were subsequently compared. Statistical findings indicate that the frequency of sadness metaphors in Track 143 (50 instances; 56%) is significantly higher than in Bodyguard (11 instances; 22%). Furthermore, the distributional patterns of metaphor types differ across the two films. In Bodyguard, “feeling–response” metaphors account for the largest proportion (54%), whereas in Track 143 their share declines to 32%, while “cause of feeling” metaphors (28%) and “cause of feeling and response” metaphors (20%) assume a more prominent role. Qualitative analysis of representative examples demonstrates that, within the masculine narrative, sadness is primarily represented as an immediate and condensed emotional reaction, often accompanied by anger, isolation, or a desire for release. In contrast, the feminine narrative portrays sadness as a gradual and meaning-making process shaped through metaphors grounded in temporality, lived suffering, and waiting. The findings suggest that the director’s gender not only influences the extent to which sadness is represented in war narratives but also plays a significant role in the metaphorical conceptualization of sadness and in the existential mode of confronting loss.