Overview of the Gay Characters in the New Cinema of Turkey (original) (raw)
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Queer representations in cinema are both influenced by and reflective of local or global cultures. In the context of Turkish cinema, patriarchal Turkish culture often negatively impacts the portrayal of queer identities. These portrayals tend to reflect society's view of queers rather than illustrating their actual place within society. This study examines the evolution of queer representation in Turkish cinema from its inception to the present, highlighting queer identities and representation issues through the lens of Judith Butler's queer theory.
İbne, Gey, Lubunya: A Queer Critique of LGBTI+ Discourses in the New Cinema of Turkey
2019
In my thesis, I examine the intersections between liberalism, neoliberal globalism, and LGBTI+ visibility and identity politics, through films that present “openly” non-normative sexualities through cis/transgender male, female, or non-binary characters in the new cinema of Turkey. First, I survey existing scholarship on how liberal capitalism impacts the formation of LGBTI+ subjectivities and identity politics. Furthermore, I trace how non-normative sexualities, practices, and discourses evolved along with socioeconomic and political shifts in the Turkish Republic following the Ottoman Empire. Accordingly, I review Turkey’s adoption of neoliberal ideologies in the 1980s and how these ideologies engage with its local, heterogeneous gender and sexuality discourses, performances, and representations in films. I argue that along with neoliberal ideologies there is a reemergence and increase in the visibility of LGBTI+ identities in the public and media spheres. Secondly, I scrutinize the ways in which films imagine their nonheterosexual characters, remark on identity politics, and contribute to or disavow hetero- and homonormative discourses in the Turkish national context. To that end, I do textual and formal analysis of five films, Dönersen Islık Çal (1992), Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar (1994), Il Bagno Turco – Hamam (1997), Anlat Istanbul (2005) and Tamam Mıyız? (2013), written and directed by well-known directors of Turkish origin. Consequently, I compare them with respect to their release dates, which reflect the political temperaments of their times in relation to the LGBTI+ politics. Finally, I argue that, despite the increase in the visibility of LGBTI+ identities in the Turkish media landscape, the recent filmic representations of LGBTI+ narratives are imbued with acceptance and respectability politics aligning themselves with the ideals of global neoliberalism, whereas the earlier films challenge the persistent stereotypes, gender norms, and the status quo.
Transexuality in Turkey - The Representation of Transexual Identities in Contemporary Turkish Films
Transexuality in Turkey - The Representation of Transexual Identities in Contemporary Turkish Films, 2013
LGBT issues in Turkey are often ignored by the government entities and mostly misrepresented in the Turkish mass media. Transsexual subjects, often erroneously identified as transvestites, yet have been subjected to various types of violence and stereotyping throughout the history of the modern Turkish Republic. The mass media undoubtedly played a part in enforcing many negative and/or erroneous stereotypes in the minds of the audience. Yet, there are some Turkish films that on the surface aim to bring to light the hard conditions transsexual subjects face in their daily lives. Apart from reviewing the background of transsexual issues in the Turkish history and analyzing the approach of the Turkish media in their treatment of transsexual subjects, I also aimed to establish the extent in which the media could be the cause of the re/creation and re/production of the transsexual image, gender roles and violence within the heterosexist and transphobic social structure in Turkey. To do so, I analyzed the representation of transsexual struggle as presented in three Turkish films, produced in the 2000's, with transsexual characters in them. I concluded that, despite the positive intention to highlight the transsexual members of society and portray them in a sympathetic way, these films still succumbed to the same stereotypes present in the heteronormative discourse treating prostitution, alienation, psychological and physical violence. The films portray the worst-case scenarios transsexual subjects may face, while failing to empower the transsexual characters or punish violent actions aimed against them. Therefore, the Turkish media and film industry seem to contribute to the prevalence of stereotypes about transsexual subjects, who also may reproduce and reinforce these stereotypes, even though unwillingly.
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CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2023
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7. Precarious Masculinities in the New Turkish Cinema
Queer studies, 2022
7. Precarious Masculinities in the New Turkish Cinema "New Turkish Cinema" is a disputed label. It is grounded on "one of the biggest crises" in the history of cinema in Turkey, since after 1990 spectators "no longer (a) went to the cinema in general, and (b) when they did, they especially avoided Turkish films" (Atam 202). The label therefore, as Zahit Atam asserts, "is used as part of a simple and pragmatic discourse, rather than as an appropriate term to characterise the new cinema in Turkey" (202). Asuman Suner (12) sees two separate forms emerging from this crisis: 1) a new popular cinema with considerable box-office success that is trying to emulate the style of Hollywood productions (e.g. Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak, see discussion below) and 2) an art cinema based on European auteurism and receiving critical acclaim and prestigious awards in national and international festivals, but attracting no Turkish audience, or only a very limited and elitist one (e.g. Güneşe Yolculuk). Popular Turkish cinema up to the 1980s is called "Yeşilçam cinema," literally meaning "pine-tree cinema." The name stems from a street in Istanbul that housed the film production companies. During its golden years in the 1960s and early 1970s, an annual average of 200 films was produced (Suner 3). Before director Yılmaz Güney entered the scene, Yeşilçam cinema was a highly commercialized cinema of stars with little power granted to directors. Relying mostly on melodrama and comedy, but also historical action adventure and gangster films, this changed in the 1970s with the advent of social and political turmoil and the ensuing politicization of cinema. Güney first starred in this cinema as an actor playing a rough lower-class anti-hero type at odds with the former polished image of middle-class heroes, which made him the most popular star in Turkey and earned him the nickname "Ugly King" (Suner 5). He then turned to directing and became known for his politicized social-realist films such as Umut (Hope, 1970) and especially
The LGBTQ question in Iranian cinema: A proxy discourse?
DEP, 2014
The morality code that limits Iranian cinema does not hinder the local filmmakers' attempt at portraying social, cultural, political issues in contrast to the values proposed by the Islamic Republic. In spite of censorship, in the last three decades Iranian cinema has produced a large number of films that are a (not so) veiled critique of the social-political arena. The women's issue, for example, is well represented by a variety of films known under the name "filmha-ye zananeh" (women's films); however, the female gender is not the only one to raise the Iranian audience's interest, at least by judging to the increasing number of films dealing with gender identities produced in Iran (and by Iranian filmmakers in the diaspora) in recent years. Even though the official narrative on the local LGBT community shifts from negation to harsh punishment, its presence is vibrant and undeniable and increasing in cinema as well. Besides, and paradoxically, the Islamic Republic's moralistic stance and its forbidding any possible contacts between the two sexes on the screen has encouraged a production of art films in which cross-dressing and queer situations are normally staged as a substitution of "normal" relations between men and women. The paper examines some of these ambiguities and paradoxes related to gender in post Revolutionary Iranian cinema.
Gendering Turkish Action Films in the Post 2010 Period: "Hey boy, protect me and don't cry!"
Studies in European Cinema, 2021
This study investigates how the post-2010 Turkish action films portray men. Popular cinema positions all other sexual identities as secondary and often Other than (hegemonic) masculinity. In this context, this study examines masculinity in the centre of the narrative in the Turkish action films. The sample of the study consists of three action films with high production and box office hit in Turkey from 2010 to the present day, Kaos: Örümcek Ağı (Chaos: Spider Web, 2012), Çakal (The Jackal, 2010) and Panzehir (Antidote, 2014). Thus, the relationship between masculinity representations in Turkish mainstream action films and reality is discussed. In this study, the male characters can be categorized either fearless to sacrifice themselves for their family and nationality or negative subject men who never have characteristics that are not approved by the society. While there are almost no women in the narratives of these films, it can be classified that Turkish action films, as films that completely reflect the men’s world and become womanless.
Part of the "Cinema and sexual and gender identities" project, this Dossier is an in-depth exploration of how homosexuality has been represented in the history of cinema. Homosexuals have always had some form of "visibility", but for a long time only as comic or tragic masks, perpetuating a system of attitudes based on heterosexual norms and homophobia. Only since the 1990s has cinema started to provide more realistic, honest and respectful representations of homosexual figures who could finally aspire to be, on equal terms with heterosexuals, well-rounded characters, not simply conditioned by their sexual orientation. Find more about the project at www.cinemafocus.eu
The Conflict of sexuality in Films: Analysis of Nollywood depiction of Homosexuality
Jurnal Pengajian Media Malaysia
This study addresses a sensitive subject in the context of the socio-cultural, political, legal and religious opposition to homosexual groups in Nigeria. It addresses the social depictions, honest portrayal, and conflicts between heterosexual and homosexual characters based on sexuality in Nollywood films. The study adopted a quantitative content analysis of twenty (20) Nollywood films. The study revealed that homosexual characters are depicted as physiologically, psychologically, socially and spiritually misfits. However, the film producers made an educational effort in exposing practices seen as offensive to societal norms and values. Further findings reveal that homosexual characters are portrayed as morally negative. This demonstrates the truism of the normative hypothesis that media take colouration of society in which they are situated. Finally, the study revealed a high level of perceptual conflict of non-acceptance, stigmatisation, rejection and prohibited reaction by hetero...