Résumé

As a significant stratum of film audiences, adolescents are often more susceptible to influence by film characters. Motivated by the question of what types of role models are presented to Iranian adolescents via the medium of cinema, we aim to study Narges Abyar’s 2013 film Track 143 (Shiyar 143 2013) to figure out how the rhetorical mechanisms of the film persuade adolescent audiences to identify with the protagonist and imitate the positive aspects of the main character as their role model. To this end, we draw on the visual rhetorical method as our analytical framework and employ Albert Bandura’s notion of observational learning to interpret the data. We hope to identify the rhetorical techniques employed effectively in Track 143 for persuading adolescent girls to follow a female protagonist of their own choosing as their role model. According to our findings, the film does not rely on logos or discursive reasoning. In this sense, the female protagonist overcomes her problems not through her own personal characteristics, which could have been taken up by female adolescent audiences, but through merely random and miraculous incidents.