Pek çok yüzüyle kadın:1960-1970 yılları arasında Türk sinemasında gecikmiş modernlik

This thesis is a critical analysis of the ways in which selfhood is created and expressed in Yeşilçam melodramas. I will primarily discuss the dynamics of a certain social and cultural dichotomy, namely, the antagonism that is constructed under the general rubric of a discourse of modernity through the central relationship between the male and the female protagonists in the movies chosen. In this sense, by keeping my primary focus on this specific point and addressing it as the central paradigm in Turkey’s history, I follow a cultural reading to analyze the ways in which Yeşilçam, as a cultural institution, articulates modernity. Offering a comprehensive cultural reading with a psychoanalytic and postcolonial approach, I purpose to discover broader issues of culture and how it fits into the larger scheme of meanings surrounding the cultural mind.Abstract ................................................................................................................... iv Öz ............................................................................................................................. v Dedication ............................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ vii Table of Contents ................................................................................................... viii List of Tables ............................................................................................................. x List of Figures ........................................................................................................... xi CHAPTERS 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Belatedness Between History Identity ........................................................... 5 1.2. Postcolonial Psyche: “Hurt Inside the Mind”................................................ 10 1.3. Melodrama: The Genre, the Language and the Memory ............................. 15 1.3.1. Melodramatic Engagement ................................................................... 19 1.4. Gender and Identification ............................................................................ 23 1.5. Procedural Overview ................................................................................... 24 1.6. Outline of Analysis ....................................................................................... 27 2. Yeşilçam As A Nation’s Story within the Frame of Belated Modernity ................ 29 2.1. Construction of the Difference: Power and Knowledge ............................... 30 2.1.1. Representing the Cultural Dichotomy: Subordination and Domination.. 32 2.1.2. Ambivalence of Yeşilçam Discourse: How Movies Strenghten the Hierarchy Between Figures and Hypocritical Celebration of the Female Identity............. 42 2.1.2.1. Contradiction Regarding the Placement of Female Identity: Which One Is the Girls? Perfectly Pure or Initially Lack? ........................................ 43 2.1.3. Politics of Self-Recognition: Conceding of One’s Own Inadequacy ......... 54 2.1.3.1. How Female Identity is Jeopardized in Mirror Centered Scenes: “Has she never looked at the mirror?” ................................................................ 57 2.2. Yeşilçam Melodramas and Melodramatic Engagement: Does This Only Happen in the Movies? ................................................................................................... 65 3. Female Subjectivity: An Inquiry on A Body of One’s Own ................................... 70 3.1. Self-Transformation as the Third Way: Kill me, Heal me .............................. 70 3.1.1. The Process of Self-Transformation: “You will be taught all you need.” . 77 3.2. Who is the New Woman after the Self-Transformation: “Güllü is Dead.” .... 81 3.2.1. The Aftermath of the Self-Transformation: “Nothing has changed, other than what I am wearing”................................................................................. 91 3.3. Self-Transformation and Desire: How Desire Follows the Glittered Capital .. 95 3.3.1. How desire is outlanded in dream sequences: “We have lived a love like a dream.” .........................................................................................................102 3.3.2. Kezban as an Alternative Way of Reading the Desire: “You are not a schoolgirl anymore.” ......................................................................................107 4. Fathers and Sons and the Emergence of the Snob: Masculinity in Crisis ............114 4.1. Emergence of the Snob: The Story of a Loss ...............................................115 4.1.1 Caricaturization of the Snob: How the Snob is a Victim?........................123 4.2. An Analysis on the Male Protagonists in Kezban Roma’da, Sarmaşık Gülleri, and Hayat Sevince Güzel: Is it Possible to Mention an Exceptional Man? .................126 4.3. Hegemonic Masculinity: A Happy Ending for the Boys ................................142 5. Conclusion: Politics of A Happy Ending: What Does It Mean to Forgive? ...........147 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................15