Transgressing Boundaries: The Politics of Resignification and Iranian Diasporic Imaginary in Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Themes of social otherness and liminality are addressed in Chap. 5 , “Transgressing boundaries: The politics of resignification and Iranian diasporic imaginary in Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” Firstly, I situate A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night within its cross-cultural context, paying close attention to its inception, direction and production. Secondly, I provide an overview of the film’s multiple genre affiliations and its pastiche aesthetics, arguing that it displays a high degree of intergeneric awareness and self-reflexivity, inviting comparison between genre play and the transcendence of national borders and entities. Thirdly, I explore the feminist dimensions of this film and its focus on gendered violence and horror. In the fourth section, I focus tightly on the Girl’s chador, noting how Amirpour resignifies this symbol of female veiling. Lastly, I consider how Amirpour merges with her female protagonist, discussing authorial identity and self-inscription in relation to notions of homeland and homecoming. The central thread that unites the five sections of this chapter is transgression and the violation of metaphoric, generic, geopolitical and physical borders as a catalyst for social transformation—from the Girl’s violent yet politically-charged activities against male tyranny and the mistreatment of women in Bad City to Amirpour’s repurposing of familiar signs and tropes.