Turkish Cinema

Cinema and Politics

Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and The New Europe

Edited by

Deniz Bayrakdar Assistant Editors AslÕ Kotaman and Ahu Samav U÷ursoy

Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and The New Europe, Edited by Deniz Bayrakdar Assistant Editors AslÕ Kotaman and Ahu Samav U÷ursoy This book first published 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2009 by Deniz Bayrakdar and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-0343-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0343-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Images and Tables ......................................................................... viii Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Preface ........................................................................................................ xi Introduction ............................................................................................. xvii ‘Son of Turks’ claim: ‘I’m a child of European Cinema’ Deniz Bayrakdar Part I: Politics of Text and Image Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 Sacred Word, Profane Image: Theologies of Adaptation Ella Shohat Part II: European Cinema: Politics of Past and Present Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 40 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Politics/Psychoanalysis/Cinema Frank P. Tomasulo Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 51 From Salo To Gomorra: The Influence of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Political Perspective on Independent Italian Cinema Giacomo Manzoli Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 70 Politics, Realism and Ken Loach John Hill Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 82 Dogville and Manderlay: In Which We Encounter Lars Von Trier’s America Elif AkçalÕ

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Part III: The New European Cinema: Politics of Migration, Creolisation and Hyphenation Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 94 Creolised Cinema: Serbian Cinema and EU Integration Process Nevena Dakoviç Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 108 Visual Travels to Other Places: Politics of Migration in Reel Levent Soysal Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 118 Turkish Cinema and the New Europe: At the Edge of Heaven Deniz Bayrakdar Part IV: Turkish Cinema: Politics of Horizontal and Vertical Mobility Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 132 Different Understandings of Modernity in Halit Refi÷’s Birds of Exile (Gurbet KuúlarÕ) Zeynep Koçer Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 142 YÕlmaz Güney’s Beautiful Losers: Idiom and Performance in Turkish Political Film Murat Akser Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 154 Allegorical Failure in Sürü (The Herd) And Yol (The Way) Eylem Kaftan Part V: The New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Nationalism Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 164 Representations of Imperialism in Turkish Cinema within a Pendulum of Nationalism and Anti-Emperialism Kaya Özkaracalar Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 172 Film as the Media and the ‘Mediator’ in Conflict Transformation Müberra Yüksel

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Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 188 Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali (Last Ottoman YandÕm Ali) and Kara Murat; The Transformation of the Image of Invincible Turk From Comic Strip to Movie Screen Hande Yedidal Part VI: The New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Ephemeral Identities Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 202 Critical Thoughts on the New Turkish Cinema Zahit Atam Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 221 The Glorified Lumpen ‘Nothingness’ versus Night Navigations Zeynep Tül Akbal Süalp Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 232 YazgÕ or Kader: Not of Great Importance, or Taking a Stand Against Kader AslÕ Kotaman Part VII: New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Remembering and Forgetting Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 240 Islamic Ways of Life Reflected on the Silver Screen Özlem AvcÕ & Berna Uçarol KÕlÕnç Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 258 Venus in Furs, Turks in Purse: Masochism in the New Cinema of Turkey Savaú Aslan Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 268 (Cannot) Remember: Landscapes of Loss in Contemporary Turkish Cinema Övgü Gökçe Contributors ............................................................................................. 280 Index ........................................................................................................ 286

LIST OF IMAGES AND TABLES Image 1 ...................................................................................................... 43 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Shadows Image 2 ...................................................................................................... 46 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Coffin Image 3 ...................................................................................................... 49 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Doctors Table 1 ..................................................................................................... 243 The Islamic Movement’s progress in Turkey1 Table 2 ..................................................................................................... 247 Three important movies of the period Appendix 1 .............................................................................................. 254 Films with Islamic Sensibilities on the Silver Screen 1989-1996

1

Kentel, “Journals of Islamic Thought of 1990s and new Muslim Intellectuals: Knowledge and Wisdom Umran, Tezkire”, Political Thought in Modern Turkey, øletiúim, 2004.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume could not have been realised without the help of my assistants, colleagues and contributors. The 8th Conference of The New Directions in Turkish Film Studies on ‘Cinema and Politics’ at Kadir Has University was the basis of this volume. I am thankful to my university and especially to our Rector Prof Yücel YÕlmaz for his invaluable support for this conference.

I am grateful for their support to the British Council, Österreichisches Kulturforum Istanbul, Istituto Italiano di Cultura.

I found an environment of fruitful cooperative work and exchange of ideas in the Faculty of Communication which has always been a great motivation for scholarly work. In this sense I thank Levent Soysal, Louise Spence, Çetin SarÕkartal, Melis Behlil, Murat Akser, AslÕ Kotaman, Elif AkçalÕ and Zeynep Altunda÷ in the organisation phase of the 8th conference.

Over the years I have collaborated with many colleagues for the design of the conferences and the larger contribution to the New Directions in Turkish Film Studies Conference in general. I owe a lot to Nevena Dakoviç, John Hill, Zeynep Tül Akbal Süalp, Kaya Özkaracalar, Savaú Arslan, Övgü Gökçe and Zahit Atam. I would also express my gratitude to Ella Shohat, Frank Tomasulo and Giacomo Manzoli for their contribution to the conference and to this volume. Finally I thank all contributors who enriched the volume with their ideas.

I would like to mention the continous efforts and support of Ayfer Vatansever as administrative assistant of Dean’s office.

Ayten Görgün Smith, PÕnar Seden Meral, Ayça KÕrgÕz, Zeynep Altunda÷ and Elif Kurt helped in formatting the volume. I thank them all for always being there with a smile.

I would like to express my special thanks to Didem Önal from Kadir Has University Library who took part in every phase of the compilation as a hidden heroine.

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Hardy Griffin as the Writing Centre coordinator took over generously the responsibility of editing everything written for this volume. He has realised an incredibly hard work with so much insight.

Thanks to Amanda Millar and Carol Koulikourdi from Cambridge Scholars Publishing for supporting us with their experience and being patient.

When I began to compile this volume Ahu Samav U÷ursoy and AslÕ Kotaman joined me to complete the work in progress. They did all the coordination, paperwork, formatting in general and the communication with the contributors and our publishers. Without their help I would never be able to finalize this work.

PREFACE ABOUT THE VOLUME Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and the New Europe covers a wide range of essays by scholars from different corners of Europe like England, Italy, Serbia and Turkey and is enhanced with contributions from the USA. The themes mainly focus on films, directors and producers of the old European space and beyond. I have tried to categorize the parts with the help of a virtual map of my knowledge about European cinema. The essays on European film movements in part II ‘European Cinema: Politics of Past and Present’, with references to their political, social and aesthetic backgrounds, follows the first chapter by Ella Shohat ‘Sacred Word, Profane Images: Theologies of Adaptation’ that functions as a general introduction to the medium called cinema.

Ella Shohat explores in her paper ‘Sacred Word, Profane Images: Theologies of Adaptation’ the multifaceted relations between texts and images as shaped within a Judeo-Islamic space, and the implications of these relations for film as a medium and adaptation as a practice. In her opinion ‘an imprecise and reductive discourse about cinema as merely a visual medium, then, underestimates the potential of film language to transform ‘The Book’ into multiple realms in which the word, images, sounds, dialogue, music, and written materials all constitute, together, the complex space called cinema’.

Frank Tomasulo points out in his article ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Politics/Psychoanalysis’ that Caligari, as an early instance of a genre film, fulfills its major ideological functions: to be symptomatic of the psychosocial contradictions within a given culture. Hence he thinks that more than seeing Caligari as a direct reflection of the ‘real’ Germany –Weimar Germany– the film demonstrates how Weimar Germany attempted to signify itself. He concentrates his analysis through three modes of signification within the text’s discourse: the political, the psychoanalytical, and the aesthetic; in short: Caligari-as-Hitler, Caligari-as Freud, and Caligari-as-Filmmaker.

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Giacomo Manzoli’s article ‘From Salo to Gomorra: The Influence of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Political Perspective on Independent Italian Cinema’ discusses the persistence of some Pasolinian ‘topoi’ in the view of prominent Italian contemporary directors such as Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino, and Marco Tullio Giordana. He underlines the ability of Pier Paolo Pasolini to draw an interpretative view of Italian history.

In his contribution ‘Politics, Realism and Ken Loach’, John Hill revisits the question of realism and the political purposes to which it may be put. Using the work of the film director Ken Loach as his example, he revisits the debate surrounding the politics of realism that occurred in the 1970s, with particular reference to Days of Hope (1975), a series of television films dealing with labour history during the years 1916 to 1926, Hill indicates how the realism debate was largely conducted at a formal level and tended to ignore the specific political, institutional and artistic contexts in which the films appeared. He then goes on to show how the political significance of Loach’s work has changed due to the new political, industrial and aesthetic conditions under which more recent films, such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), have been produced and exhibited. Thus, while Loach remains one of the world’s most politically committed filmmakers, the political import of his use of realism, Hill suggests, cannot be understood in the abstract but only in terms of the specific circumstances in which it has been employed.

In her article ‘Dogville and Manderlay: In which we encounter Lars Von Trier’s’ America’ Elif AkçalÕ draws from the history of European Cinema in her analysis of the meanings that complete narratives through the choices in the style of narration in Lars von Trier’s Dogville and Manderlay. She finds common stylistic features in both films that achieve the desired meaning of the stories and hint at Lars von Trier’s political point of view. Her article analyses how particular stylistic choices –the soundstages and the photographs– contribute to question the values of conformity and hypocrisy which shape the societies in these films.

The European Cinema nowadays is discussed in Part III ‘The New European Cinema: Politics of Migration, Creolisation and Hyphenation’ from the point of view of new discourses and styles. The essays on German-Turkish and Serbian film approach the complex problem of hybrid, creolised and hyphenated identities.

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Nevena Dakoviç’s chapter ‘Creolised Cinema: Serbian Cinema and EU Integration Process’ explores the concepts of creolisation and hyphenation. Her title is ‘Subcategorizing and juxtaposing creolized versus hyphenated identity and Balkan versus Europe’. She explores the ways Serbian cinema has engaged with the politics and processes of EU integration. She points out that the Balkan, ex-Yugoslav and Serbian cinema at the turn of the century are exploring the ways films and their directors have often ‘pre-empted’ political developments –a shift from a politics of nationalism to one of Europeanization.

Levent Soysal in his article ‘Visual Travels to Other Places: Politics of Migration in Reel’ traces the shifts in our imagination of migration through a reading of Otobüs (The Bus,1974 ), ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (What Have I Done to Deserve This? 1984), and Gegen die Wand (Head On, 2004). Since the arrival of postwar immigrants in Europe, migration has been theorized and visualized first as a labor story, then a culture story, and finally as a transnational story. Within this intellectual imagination, Okan’s Otobüs represents the beginning, the move to the West; Almodovar presents a complete theory of migration at the intersection of (inter)national spaces; and AkÕn takes migrants on a transnational journey of return and figuratively ends the migration cycle.

Deniz Bayrakdar’s article ‘Turkish Cinema and The New Europe: At The Edge of Heaven’ concentrates on Fatih AkÕn’s YaúamÕn KÕyÕsÕnda (At the Edge of Heaven, 2007) which was inspired by the director’s hyphenated identity –a search for a soil, for the characters’ hometowns, and at the same time an attempt to settle down in Turkey. AkÕn makes his male protagonist ‘Nejat Aksu’ into an ‘Einsiedler’. Deniz Bayrakdar argues that At the Edge of Heaven is based on a continuous loss, longing and search which itself becomes the new identity of these ‘postmodern cultural nomads’ (Ça÷lar).

Part IV ‘Turkish Cinema: Politics of Horizontal and Vertical Mobility’ considers two important filmmakers of Turkish Cinema: Halit Refi÷ and YÕlmaz Güney. The articles discuss the directors’ personas, the representation of women in their films, and their political views, and bring up particularly notable ideas on the interplay between issues of gender, identity, and migration.

Zeynep Koçer provides in her article ‘Different Understandings of Modernity in Halit Refi÷’s Birds of Exile (Gurbet KuúlarÕ)’ a textual

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analysis of Halit Refi÷’s Gurbet KuúlarÕ (Birds of Exile, 1964) in order to investigate the ways in which the understandings of modernity in the 1930s and 1950s created different gender identities.

Murat Akser discusses in his article ‘YÕlmaz Güney’s Beautiful Losers: Idiom and Performance in Turkish Political Film’ idiom and performance as the political discourse of YÕlmaz Güney’s loser characters and how Güney’s political views and performance changes over time as he transforms himself from the ugly king of trashy adventure films in the 1960s to an auteur/political director in the 1970s and 1980s.

Eylem Kaftan examines in her article ‘Allegorical Failure in Sürü (The Herd) And Yol (The Way)’ how YÕlmaz Güney deals with power as a complex category which combines economic, political and cultural relations. Her article looks at the latent content of Sürü (The Herd, 1978) and Yol (Way, 1981) in terms of their allegorical qualities.

Part V ‘The New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Nationalism’, focuses more on the relation between cinema and politics, with analyses on representations of nationalism and anti-imperialism, on film as a medium of conflict transformation, and on the transformation of the caricaturized Turkish male protagonist.

Kaya Özkaracalar in ‘Representations of Imperialism in Turkish Cinema within a Pendulum of Nationalism and Anti-Emperialism’ first puts forward the representation of imperialism in a prominent sample of a round of new nationalist movies. Next, he analyses the representation of imperialism in another Turkish movie from a different era and compares these two representations with a view to linking these differences to different approaches to imperialism.

Müberra Yüksel discusses two films by Derviú Zaim with an interdisciplinary approach. Entitling her article ‘Film As The Media And The ‘Mediator’ In Conflict Transformation’, she points out that ‘films, as the third party, may reframe the audience’s perception of conflicts and enhance their self-reflexivity and moral deliberation to distant others so that they would become conscious about inventing the future with others from a constructivist standpoint.’ Yüksel defines Paralel Yolculuklar (Parallel Trips, 2004) and Çamur (Mud, 2003) as films ‘that have broken the ‘spiral of silence’ on the ‘Cyprus issue’.’

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Hande Yedidal analyses in ‘Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali (Last Ottoman YandÕm Ali) and Kara Murat; The Transformation of the Image of Invincible Turk From Comic Strip to Movie Screen’ the transformation of the caricaturized, invincible, extraordinarily powerful, fierce patriot till his last breath –the macho Turkish male protagonist– from the 1970s to today and the concepts and values that are carried with these characters throughout these years. She utilizes comic strips and films made from them: Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali, (The Last Ottoman Yandim Ali, 2006) and the Kara Murat (Black Murat) series of films from the 1970s, both of which aim to arouse nationalistic sentiments.

Part VI ‘The New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Ephemeral Identities’ focuses on important Turkish film directors and the film climate in Turkey from the 1980s onwards.

Zahit Atam explains in his article ‘Critical Thoughts on the New Turkish Cinema’ the reasons for, and the outcomes of, the crisis after the 1980 coup d’etat, through a look at the careers of two directors, Zeki Demirkubuz and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, in his essay ‘Non-conventional Observations on the New Turkish Cinema’.

Zeynep Tül Akbal Süalp analyses ‘The Glorified Lumpen ‘Nothingness’ versus Night Navigations’ –diverse and conflicting tracks in Turkey’s cinema after the mid 1990s. She points out that ‘on the one hand it is the cinema of vacuumed and sealed image subjects of the city with a glorified alienated, remote and lumpen ‘nothingness’, on the other hand it is a search for confrontations and encounters’ which she calls ‘night navigations and dream stalking’.

AslÕ Kotaman, in ‘YazgÕ (Destiny, 2001) or Kader (Fate, 2006): Not of Great Importance or Taking a Stand against Kader’, focuses on the main characters of Zeki Demirkubuz’s films in terms of their political views and the role of freedom of choice.

The essays in Part VII ‘New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Remembering and Forgetting’, evokes creative discussions about the issues facing the new cinema in Turkey, like Islamic life styles, the dominating masculine discourse, and the sentiments of loss, remembrance and mourning.

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Özlem AvcÕ and Berna Uçarol KÕlÕnç consider ‘Islamic Ways of Life Reflected on the Silver Screen’, focusing on the representation of Islamic life styles and the changes in those life styles in contemporary Turkish cinema which started with the definition of ‘Milli Sinema’ (National Cinema) in the 1970s, ‘Beyaz Sinema’ (White Cinema) in the 1990s, and ‘Yeúil Sinema’ (Green Cinema) today.

Savaú Arslan bases his article ‘Venus in Furs, Turks in Purse: Masochism in the New Cinema of Turkey’ on Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Lecture –BabamÕn Bavulu (‘My Father’s Suitcase’) at the Swedish Academy, Stockholm. Pamuk’s reference to his ‘father’s suitcase’ is used as a metaphor for the new cinema in Turkey that has attempted ‘to open up the father’s suitcase and address masculinity and fatherhood at different levels.’ Övgü Gökçe’s ‘(Cannot) Remember: Landscapes of Loss in Contemporary Turkish Cinema’ studies loss as an emerging sentiment in contemporary Turkish cinema through two recent films, BulutlarÕ Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds, 2003) and Sonbahar (Autumn, 2007).

It focuses on the films’ aesthetics as the main site ‘that accommodates relationships between loss, remembrance, and mourning.’

With contributions on the politics of text and image, past and present, migration, creolisation and hyphenation, horizontal and vertical mobility, nationalism, identities and memory in European and especially Turkish cinema, I think this volume is ready ‘to begin its journey’.

INTRODUCTION ‘SON OF TURKS’ CLAIM: ‘I’M A CHILD OF EUROPEAN CINEMA’ DENøZ BAYRAKDAR This volume on Turkish Cinema and The New Europe specializes in politics. Most of the articles in this book were presented at the eighth annual New Directions to Turkish Film Studies Conference in 2007. The conference in 2007 was entitled ‘Cinema and Politics’ and included a variety of papers on Turkish Cinema as well as contributions from other countries. It was not an easy task to gather different papers under generic titles hoping to suggest a proper integrated whole. With this in mind, I thought I would begin my introduction with an ‘edited title’: ‘Son of Turks’ claims: ‘I’m a child of European Cinema.’ The questions that this title incites will, I hope, open a way of looking at the relation between cinema and politics, especially within the framework of Europe and Turkey.

Varied approaches concerning the relation between cinema and politics focus on policies, eras, countries, mainstream and art cinema productions, transnational examples, changing narratives and identities. Both cinema and politics have actors and directors for their scenes, and in this sense their discourses intermingle. I am particularly attracted by the performances of the ‘actors/actresses’ in both arenas. The politicians, parliamentarians, and social group leaders as well as the actors, directors, and producers with ‘hyphenated/creolised/hybrid identities’ such as German-Turks, directors of Balkan cinema, or Italian filmmakers of Turkish origin give a wide and refreshing perspective to the discussion about Europe in the media. What these ‘mediated identities’ represent goes beyond the limits of the old Europe, towards the different sensitivity of the New Europe.

So, in the beginning of my introduction I am concentrating on what these ‘actors’ have said, and what has been said about them, in the texts and images of these politicians, filmmakers, actresses and authors in

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Germany, Austria and other European countries in Turkish and European newspapers. This increasing need to bring ‘our international achievements’ into the foreground is, a continuation of the pride discourse of nation states in a globalized world. The ‘European Champion’ stories of sports stars and beauty queens from the 30s to the 80s have changed slightly into the success stories of politicians and film directors from the 1990s on2.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, after winning several awards in European and other film festivals, was declared the ‘Best Director’ at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for his film Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys, 2007). In the previous year, again at Cannes, Fatih AkÕn was awarded best ‘European Film’ for his script for Am Rande des Lebens-YaúamÕn KÕyÕsÕnda (At the Edge of Heaven, 2006). He summarized his feelings by saying “....I’m a child of European cinema”3 The criteria for today’s champion actors are getting more complex and our expectations are rising. The interwoven networks of politicians, authors, directors and producers, players, and sports/wo/men are considered to represent a sense of the ‘Turkish Nation’ in Europe compared to, for example, those sports wo/men who represent the ‘national team’ and carry a more ‘nationalistic flavour’. The new group of ‘politics and culture’ –Orhan Pamuk, Cem Özdemir, Fatih AkÕn, Nuri Bilge Ceylan – do not allow a categorization of their identities as they tend to be either isolated or offer a disposition inclined towards building bridges, both characteristics which enhance their role in society and not their origins.

2

Yaúar Do÷u (1946, wrestler), øsmail Akçay (1966, marathon runner), Ahmet AyÕk (1970, wrestler), Cemal KamacÕ (1973, boxer), Naim Süleymano÷lu (1988, weight-lifter), Süreyya Ayhan (2002, marathon runner) or the beauty queens like Keriman Haliso÷lu (Miss World, 1932), Günseli Baúar (Miss Europe 1951), and NazlÕ Kuruo÷lu (Miss Europe, 1982). YÕlmaz Güney (screenwriter) and ùerif Gören (director) shared the Golden Palm for their film Yol with Costa Gavras’ Missing at the 35th Cannes film festival in 1982. Metin Erksan was awarded the Golden Bear for his film Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer, 1964) at the Berlin Film Festival; the film was also shown at the 61st Cannes Film Festival (2008) in the section “Une Certain Regard” among the classical films, for which section Fatih AkÕn was the president of the jury. In 2004, Fatih AkÕn was awarded the Golden Bear for his film Gegen die Wand (Against the Wall, 2004). Orhan Pamuk, the prominent Turkish novelist received the Nobel Prize in 2006.

3 http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/prj/sog/muk/en3522007.htm

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With this in mind I would like to compare the prevailing discourses of the Turkish and European media on achievements in politics and cinema of the ‘son of Turks’.

‘Son of Turks’ One of the most striking news articles after the elections in Germany in 2008 was written by Judy Dempsey. She entitled her article “Greens in Germany pick ‘son of Turks’ as leader.”4 The Green party, one of Germany's main political parties, has elected the son of Turkish immigrants to its top political post, the first time any party here has chosen a leader with an immigrant background. The election Saturday of Cem Özdemir, 42, born in southern Germany of parents who had come from Turkey to work as ‘Gastarbeiter’, or guest workers, during the 1960s, marks a major turning point not only for the opposition Greens, but also for the country as a whole. Even though more than 2.6 million Turks live in Germany, accounting for 3 percent of the population, few have managed to make it to the higher ranks of the professions, including politics and the civil service.5

I find this definition ‘son of Turks’ very useful to begin with. The Guardian sees Cem Özdemir’s achievement in a parallel way in its editorial ‘In praise of….Cem Özdemir’.

Cem Özdemir, the German-born son of two Turkish ‘guest workers’, was chosen as the Greens' new leader at the party congress in Erfurt at the weekend. This makes him the first person with immigrant parents to lead a mainstream political party in postwar Germany and also, it appears, the first in Europe as a whole.6

In this respect his Turkishness is again amalgamed with his being a ‘guestworker’s son’ and is proffered as the first example of an achievement, not only in Germany but in all of Europe. Abbas Djavadi from Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, discusses the issue through an analysis of the Turkish media’s perception.

4

Dempsey, Judy, “Greens in Germany pick ‘son of Turks’ as leader, International Herald Tribune, 16.11.2008 5 Ibid.

6 “In praise of... Cem Özdemir”, Editorial, The Guardian, 18.11.2008

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Introduction In any case, Özdemir’s election to co-chair was hailed as a groundbreaking event in Turkey, where the jubilant media were quick to compare it to another election across the Atlantic: Barack Obama's victory in the U.S. presidential vote on November 4. ‘A Historic Day’ was the headline of one of the popular Turkish daily newspaper ‘Hürriyet’, and the liberal ‘Taraf’ called Özdemir ‘Germany's Green Obama.’ Özdemir's own supporters had waged an Internet campaign under the slogan ‘Yes, We Cem’, nodding to the Obama campaign’s ‘Yes, We Can.’7

As Djavadi points out, the Turkish liberal daily newspaper Taraf compares Cem Özdemir’s achievement beyond Europe with America.

Taraf defines Özdemir as ‘Germany’s Green Obama’ which is then cleverly echoed by Özdemir: ‘If I were Özdemir of the Green’s that would be enough for me’. Özdemir continues ‘Obama is both white and black and one forgets very easily about that fact… this reality should always be remembered’ since he finds this hyphenation crucial. ‘For me it is very important, that one day it will be forgotten that we came from Anatolia’ says Cem Özdemir. He points out that they are ‘more German’ than is often assumed.8 Cengiz Çandar, a Turkish journalist –who is one of the leading discussants of Turkey’s entry into the EU– also draws a parallel between Cem Özdemir and Obama.

Just as Obama’s success in 2008 reflects his transformational ability in the US, Cem Özdemir’s position as the Co-Party leader reflects Germany’s transformation and ability to evolve. The German Greens, by electing Cem Özdemir, gave a transatlantic reply to the American people.9

He finds that Cem Özdemir’s vertical mobility in politics as a ‘black Turk’ or as a ‘green Obama’ gives us hope not because of national or ethnic justifications but for the welfare of democracy. And he sees this also as our expectation from Cem Özdemir, in whose abilities we trust. 10

7

Djavadi, Abbas, “Germany's 'Green Obama' Breaks New Ground For Minorities”, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, 18.11.2008 8 DW/Anadolu News Agency: “Almanya’nÕn Yeúil Obama’sÕ” (Germany’s Green Obama), Taraf, 16.11.2008 9 Çandar, Cengiz, “Barack Hussein Obama’dan AltÕ Yaú Daha Genç” (Six Years Younger Than Barack Hussein Obama), Referans, 19.11.2008 10 Ibid.

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The Guardian defines Özdemir’s reply to the comparison between him and Obama as ‘being inappropriate’. Based on the range of the success both have achieved on either side of the Atlantic, The Guardian points out that there is a big difference but also poses a hopeful challenge for the future. 11 Perhaps one day Mr. Özdemir - who in 1994 became the first Turkishdescended person to sit in the Bundestag - will even manage to draw as big and inspiring a crowd in Berlin as Mr. Obama himself did earlier this year.12

‘Sons of Turks’: To which geography of Europe do they belong?

Zülfü Livaneli thinks that Cem Özdemir is a true child of this geography, of this culture, besides being a German.13 In his interview in Bild am Sonntag, Cem Özdemir claims ‘We, the German Turks, are much more German than some people think’. He thinks that he is bridging the two sides; ‘being the son of Turkish parents’ but ‘a German in his behaviour’. He says that he takes his shoes off entering a house as is customary for Turks, but he finds himself punctual and disciplined in his thoughts even while working in Turkey.14 Other comments about his success also emphasize the use of Özdemir’s achievement in support of the ‘strong nationalistic characteristics of the Turks’. Yunus AltÕnsoy, European Döner Chamber Director (Avrupa Döner OdasÕ Giriúimi BaúkanÕ) finds that Özdemir’s achievement shows the results of hard labour more than ethnic origin. He says that ‘We Turks bring with us not only labour but also social and cultural heritage and this enriches the culture of the host country.’ He goes on to discuss how Özdemir’s father’s generation had to sacrifice a lot and he sees his success

11

“In praise of... Cem Özdemir”, Editorial, The Guardian, 18.11.2008 Ibid.

13 Livaneli, Zülfü, “Baúkan Cem Özdemir” (President Cem Özdemir), Gazete Vatan, 17.11.2008 14 Cem Özdemir’s interview in Bild am Sonntag, quoted in Sabah “Cem Özdemir'in EúbaúkanlÕ÷Õ Alman basÕnÕnda” (Cem Özdemir Copresident in the German Press), 16.11.2008.

12

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as the opening of the way to being prime minister, and “the same is also valid for the CDP, why shouldn’t they have a foreign party leader?” 15 There are several success stories of not only ‘sons of Turks’ but also ‘daughters of Turks’. Sami Kohen points out in his column in Milliyet that among the elected German-Turkish politicians more than half are women, which is itself above the Bundestag’s average.16 He also underlines that most of the German Turkish parliamentarians are voted in by non-Turkish voters which means that the majority also views the parliamentarians of Turkish origin as German citizens.

Among these women politicians are Emine Demirbüken-Wegner (CDU) and Ülker Radziwill (SPD) from Berlin, and Alev Korun17 of the Green Party in Vienna, who are working on projects on migrants, dual citizenship and women’s rights. Radziwill points out “...a politician liberated from his/her ethnic origins could have the chance to realize a similar achievement”18 referring to Cem Özdemir’s election.

The idea that Turkish politicians are seen by the majority as ‘einheimisch’ (native) is felt also by them as members of the society they live in. Hüseyin Araç, former Odensee, Denmark municipality member and current Danish parliamentarian for two and a half years says: “We, all from Odensee, we all are Danish.”19 Nebahat Albayrak, the first Turkish minister in a European government who is responsible for migration policies and juridical institutions, thinks that dual citizenship does not interfere with her bond with the Netherlands,

15

“Almanya’da Umudun AdÕ Cem Özdemir” (The Name of Hope in Germany is Cem Özdemir), DW-WORLD.DE Deutsche Welle, 17.11.2008 16 Kohen, Sami, “Avrupa’da böyle Türkler de var…” (There are also such Turks in Europe), Milliyet, 27.02.2007 17 Alev Korun has been the representative for migrants and integration issues of the Green Party, the Turkish originated Austrian, has been in the third raw in the elections along with Beatrice Achalake from Camerun, who works for women rights.

18 “Almanya’da Umudun AdÕ Cem Özdemir” (The Name of Hope in Germany is Cem Özdemir), DW-WORLD.DE Deutsche Welle, 17.11.2008 19 “Hüseyin Araç: Hepimiz DanimarkalÕyÕz”, (Hüseyin Araç: We Are All From Denmark), Türk Medya, Odensee, 06.06.2007

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that a Turkish passport is for her “the meaning of her identity, character and soul.”20 The discrepancy between the original and new identity plays a crucial role for the discourses and rhetoric of politicians of Turkish origin but it is, moreover, a dilemma for the general Turkish population in Europe in terms of language and education. The main issue is whether to integrate or assimilate -a choice which gives rise to anxiety. This discussion even embroils ‘the veiled Turkish women’ in German politics –an issue initiated

by Left Party parliamentarian Sevim Da÷delen and SDP member Mechthild Ravert.21 Turkish-Austrian ÖVP parliamentarian ùirvan Ekici in her speech in Yozgat about Turks migrating in the 1960s to Europe points out how Turks went to Europe to work there for 1-2 years and came back to have land and a house, but they understood in the 1990s that they are European and they are permanently in Europe. The biggest problem of Turks in Europe is education.22

She presents Turks living in Europe with a tough task: Turks living in Europe are the identity card for Turkey on the road towards joining the European Union. We represent Turkey voluntarily. Turkey’s entry into the EU is a secondary issue; the EU perspective has brought a dynamism to Turkey.23

Looking at politicians and parliamentarians’ discourse on making a living and career in Europe, the Turkish identity is amalgamated in sayings like ‘We are more German, we are more Danish’. This dedication of the European Turks to the new country is a ‘new identity model’ in my opinion, for they tend to build the dynamic character of the ‘new European citizen’. The Belgian-Turk vice president of the municipality Gent, Fatma 20

“Nebahat Albayrak: Türk Pasaportu Benim Herúeyim” (Turkish Passport means so much to me) Türk Medya, Amsterdam, 05.06.2007 21 Özkan, Fadime, “Almanya hâlâ acÕ vatan” (Germany is still a Homeland of Sorrow), Yeni ùafak, 07.11.2006 22 øhlas Haber AjansÕ (Ihlas News Agency): “Türk AsÕllÕ Avusturya Milletvekili ùirvan Ekici Yozgat’ta” (Turkish Deputy of Austria: Sirvan Ekici at Yozgat), Haberler.com, 26.07.2007 23 Ibid

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Pehlivan, thinks that they function like a bridge between the Turkish population and the European country they live in even as they are attached to Turkey. Murat KalmÕú, Delmenhorst parliamentarian finds that Turkey has difficulties in articulation and, similarly to Fatma Pehlivan, he sees his function as that of a bridge between Europe and Turkey.24 Another side of this new identity is constituted by the media, especially by the media conglomerates. AydÕn Do÷an, the owner of the Do÷an Group (one of the largest media holding companies in Turkey) was honored with the ‘Goldene Victoria” medal by the German Journal Publishers Society for his contribution to German and Turkish relations. The award was given by prime minister Angela Merkel. AydÕn Do÷an stated: For 40 years we have been for integration. For 40 years our newspapers in Germany and Europe, as well as Euro D and Euro Star TV channels have followed an integration-supporting broadcasting policy. Cem Özdemir’s election to co-chair in the Green Party is in terms of integration a great success.... Fatih AkÕn is another beautiful example. As a Turkish-German filmmaker he enriches the international culture.25

In this picture of Angela Merkel and AydÕn Do÷an, one can read further what is meant by ‘for 40 years we have been for integration’. The ‘actors’ of politics and the media are engaged in a ‘victorious’ event.

Steve Austen, one of the members of the initiative ‘A soul for Europe’, points out that politicians are missing ‘culture’ as a value. If communication within the EU and for countries around the EU should lead to a better communication for citizens, and if this is the only way to ensure the EU’s success, then one must define every criteria from a cultural perspective. Austen recommends fostering a younger generation that perceives cooperation as a cultural concept. The other option is to strengthen the borders between nation states in his opinion –other supporters of this view are Hans Dietrich Genscher, Timothy Garton Ash, Bronislaw Geremek, and Richard von Weizsaecker.26

24 CÕnal, Yusuf and Acar Yavuz, “Fatma Pehlivan’a Hizmet MadalyasÕ” (Service Medal for Fatma Pehlivan), Hürriyet, 25 “Özdemir’in seçilmesi uyum için baúarÕdÕr” (Election of Özdemir is a success for integration), Hürriyet, 19.11.2008 26 “Soul for Europe” Panel, Istanbul Technical University, 05.11.2007

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How do director/producers/actors position themselves in Europe?

To the question of whether actors define themselves in Europe as coming from Turkey or being born in Turkey, the actress Serra YÕlmaz, who sees herself as belonging to Istanbul although she works in Italy, has pointed out27 that in order to achieve success in the West, both Easterners and Westerners have to live in the West. Neco Çelik calls himself a second generation ‘Gastarbeiter’28 though he was not born in Turkey but is a child of ‘Gastarbeiter’s. For him Kreuzberg is his ‘vatan’ (fatherland)’. Yet, concerning others’ expectations of the ways in which the East inspires his acting, Neco Çelik answers “I learned through the channel of art that I’m a foreigner”.29 This comment underlines how global marketing values have pushed the identity of ‘being a foreigner in a Western country’ as the edge of the advertising envelope. Most actors feel Europe moreover in the culture politics of Central Europe which is getting more nationalistic and conservative; hence the gap is widening between EU politics and local governmental politics. Serra YÕlmaz thinks that the idea of an integrated Europe will require investment in the politics of culture. Here the space takes on a crucial role in the making and survival of the European identity; most actors think of their attributed spaces as their ‘vatan’ (homeland), such as Istanbul, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Rome.

On the subject of European expectations of art cinema, a good example can be found in Serra YÕlmaz’s recollection of the 1987 Venice Film Festival which was her first international film festival experience outside Turkey.

The expectations of Europeans from Turkish cinema in those years were focused on ethnic elements, Turkish male violence, migrants who move from somewhere to nowhere, and films with more universal themes were not welcome.30

27

YÕlmaz, Serra, “Avrupa’da Yaúayan Türk SanatçÕlarÕn Sanatsal Serüvenleri” (The Artistic Adventures of Turkish Artists), ÇalÕútay, Istanbul Technical University, 05.11.2007 28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

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She goes on to say that an Italian journalist wanted to interview her, not about the cinema but rather about politics.

This is not done with actors from Western countries. This is another imprisonment of ours. For a long time this attitude was common. Now topics have changed but I still feel under the umbrella of another country’s representative status. This happens in general to the cultural workers of the third world. 31

Another imprisonment of the ‘cultural workers’ –as the new generation after the ‘guestworkers’– is the questioning of their origins. Ferzan Özpetek answers a question on why he films in Italy although ‘he is a Turk’: “It is not important where you are born or make films. What is important is how the film looks, which feelings accompanied its creation. For example Fatih AkÕn was born in Germany and made his films in Turkey. I realised Hamam in Turkey. I also want to shoot in Turkey…”32

Ferzan Özpetek was honoured in 2008 with the ‘Italian Solidarity Higher Honour Medal’ in a ceremony in the Italian Cultural Centre in Istanbul. The Italian Ambassador, Carlo Marsili, counted Ferzan Özpetek among the most prominent directors in the world and called him the star of Turkish Cinema and ‘a Byzantine Roman’. He pointed out that Özpetek, ‘From his first film in 1996, Hamam, up to his latest film, Un giorno Perfetto, gave life to his films in Italy where he has lived for 31 years.’

Marsili underlined that Özpetek’s film career is the result of the profound bond between him and Italy, where he sought citizenship. The love he imparts in presenting the city on film has earned him the label “City Ambassador of Rome.”33 Looking at the Turkish media’s feedback concerning Ferzan Özpetek’s achievements beyond Europe, it is obvious that the Turkish media expects him to use his original identity. Serfiraz Ergun writes in her column in the Turkish daily Milliyet that she received an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The invitation letter announced Özpetek’s 31

Ibid.

Cihan Haber AjansÕ, “Türkiye’de film çekmeyi çok istiyorum” (I want to shoot film in Turkey), Haberler.com, 12.10.2008.

33 “Her úey 31 yÕl içinde oldu” (Everything has happened in 31 years), haberler.com, 26.10.2008.

32

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screening as follows: ‘MoMA in cooperation with Cinecitta presents the films of Italian director Ferzan Özpetek.’ Ergun criticizes Ferzan Özpetek’s, being labelled as Italian and finds it a pity that his original identity is not mentioned.34 The Turkish media seems to a large extent to use the origin of directors as part of the ‘fairy-tale-success stories’ keyword’ which is again based on legends of ‘national pride’. Serra YÕlmaz, who is in my opinion the ‘alterego’ of Ferzan Özpetek, in her roles bridging Rome and Istanbul in his films and in her life, finds that things get ‘news value’ if they are somehow justified/certified in Europe.

The films of five Turkish directors were chosen for the Toronto International Film Festival which counts among the best. In the 33rd year of the festival, Ferzan Özpetek participated from Italy with Un Giorno Perfetto, Nuri Bilge Ceylan with Three Monkeys, Fatih AkÕn with New York I Love You, Yeúim Ustao÷lu with Pandora’s Box and Semih Kaplano÷lu with Milk. 35

Here again, Ferzan Özpetek is emphasized as being ‘from Italy’ even though the Toronto Film Festival, which selected Turkish directors’ films in particular, and in its role as one of the best film festivals in the world, should be able to better define Ferzan Özpetek’s nationality.

A similar attitude can be seen in the Cihan News Agency’s republication of a news item by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, where the name of the newspaper lends credibility to the story: “The Guardian: Reha Erdem’s Times and Winds is one of the best films of the year.”36 News pieces in Turkey discussing Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s award for ‘Best Asian Director’ in the Asian Pacific Film Awards described these awards as the ‘Oscars’ of Asia and Australia. This example shows this basic need to compare each success according to international success categories, such as the Oscar awards.

34 Ergun, Serfinaz, “Ünlü øtalyan yönetmen Ferzan Özpetek” (The Aclaimed Italian Director Ferzan Özpetek), Milliyet, 20.11.2008.

35 Anadolu News Agency, “Türk Yönetmenler øzleyici øle Buluúuyor” (Turkish Directors Meet Audience), haberler.com, 07.09.2008 36 Cihan News Agency quotes Peter Bradshaw’s title, “The Guardian: “Reha Erdem’in 'Beú Vakit’ Filmi YÕlÕn En øyi Filmlerinden Biri” (Reha Erdem’s “Five Time’s a Day” is One of the Best Film of the Year) , 29.08.2008

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Although Turkish Cinema has seen a certain increase in its success in recent years, overall there is still a problem in categorizing the works of Turkish directors even in south-east European cinemas.

Dina Iordanova brings up this dilemma in the introduction to The Cinema of The Balkans.

Turkey was not included in our selection (it features in the 24 Frames volume on North Africa and the Middle East), but at moments I felt that Turkish cinema could also have been considered here as well.37

Reading her views about the cinema of the Balkans we can trace the reason behind her difficulty in including Turkish Cinema in her volume: Yet the endeavour has not been particularly successful, mostly on account of the Balkans’ presumed incompatibility with the truly European, which can be traced back to the Ottoman legacy that is declared as inherently non-European and is identified as a major obstacle for the South East periphery to belong to the ‘real’ Europe.....38

I agree with Dina Iordanova and would like to enhance her comment with the perspective of a Norwegian journalist who happened to have been picked up with me at Belgrade airport by a Serbian guide in 2007. On the way to our hotel she said ‘Here, in Belgrade, the border of Europe ends’.

The next day we found ourselves together again at the Conference on ‘Education Art and Media in the European Integration Process’ where I presented a paper on Fatih AkÕn’s At the Edge of Heaven.

In this context I find Rose Fenton’s ideas about borders very useful. As an artist she points out that artists do not know borders, they are there ‘to explore the world and share their ideas through their artwork.’ Referring to the thoughts of a Kenyan playwright she says “.... no culture is an island for itself and is influenced by other cultures and histories. This awareness is the base of bridges we would like to construct on different cultural borders.”39

37

Iordanova, Dina, “The Cinema of the Balkans”, Wallflower Press, London, 2006, p. 5.

38 Ibid. p. 9.

39 “Soul for Europe” Panel, Istanbul Technical University, 05.11.2007.

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In a sense, categorizing by drawing borders forces people to go into shelves for the sake of better governance in general, but there are people like these ‘actors’ of the New Europe who are questioning these types of rigid formulas. Neither the approach of the Turkish media, which justifies ‘Euopean Turks’ -only after certain achievements- nor the isolation of a conservative European perspective are acceptable.

There are also media which question the identities of the ‘son of Turks’ with more empathy. The Gate describes Fatih AkÕn thus: .....He confuses us. We say so because we cannot accept him either as a Turk or German. He is like someone from here, he shoots in Turkey but is at the same time a ‘foreigner’.....We all know it is inevitable that we are obsessive about people’s origins. The conversation starter between people who are just meeting, ‘where are you from?’ is a sign of this obsession. If you ask Fatih AkÕn the answer to this question is unknown. He neither says ‘I’m a Turk’ nor ‘I’m a German’ and he finishes the discussion by saying ‘I’m glad to be able to enunciate the identity crisis I’m experiencing in film.’

His family is from the Black Sea region. His parents migrated to ‘Germany, a bitter homeland’. He was born in 1973 in Hamburg. The family speaks Turkish at home; even Turkish customs and tradition prevail in his family life such as going back to Turkey for the summer holidays when he thought that they were going to his family’s country. Then this attitude changed with time. And then the contradictions began and he finds himself between two cultures. For good, his cinema gains in value because of this in-betweenness. He looks through this ‘space/gap’ at such an angle to the west and east, and tells us important things about the issue of ‘identity’ which we cannot fully differentiate sometimes.

Fatih AkÕn says essentially ‘one has to be a human being first of all’......He wants to understand Turkey, this country, and wants us to understand him. For example his emphasizing his last film as a ‘Turkish film’ was done with this intention......40

Fatih AkÕn describes what he does: “I come from this European auteur thing, I’m producing the stuff I’m doing, I'm writing the stuff I'm doing, I'm directing the stuff I’m doing. In the end it’s me on the front line, you know?”41

40

Hazar, A. Deniz, “FarklÕ Kültürlerin Naif Renkleriyle... Ferzan Özpetek” (With Naive Colors of Different Culture...Ferzan Özpetek) The Gate, December 2008 41 Kulish, Nicholas, “Fatih Akin: A filmmaker who builds bridges across cultures”, International Herald Tribune, 10.01.2008

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Introduction

Finally, the European ‘actors’ of the cinema and politics that incorporate a Turkish background are disseminating a new identity for themselves. This identity can be summarized with some keywords which define this ‘new Europeanness’: a common human ideal, culture beyond the limits of borders, freedom of creativity, and overlapping borders via civil society’s experiences. People in this ‘New Europe’ tend to belong to cities instead of countries (like in the medieval ages) –Rome, Istanbul– a commonality between Ferzan Özpetek and Fatih AkÕn.

The discourse of the media about these ‘actors’ is more problematic, as the media always tends to categorize and fix identities as part of global marketing; they feel the urge to put the actors into shelves.

I personally prefer Orhan Pamuk’s strategy of constructing a Museum of Innocence (Masumiyet Müzesi, 2008) wherein he has shaped his book on obsessive love as a cinematic experience for the reader. To map identities via objects and spaces in the city, that is similar to what Fatih AkÕn does in At the Edge of Heaven with telephone books and post-its.

New Europe exists in the books, films, and songs of the new generation without borders since ‘Europe’ no longer exists. Enis Batur points out that Europe is postponing the definition of body and soul and that causes stress, “as if there is a curtain which keeps us from seeing, and perhaps if the curtain opens we could see that there is no Europe.”42 The discourse of the politicians of the ‘younger generation’ and the actors shows the knowledge and experience of mapping text and image through performance.

Works Cited Cihan Haber, AjansÕ. (29.08.2008) “Reha Erdem'in’ ‘Beú Vakit’ Filmi YÕlÕn En øyi Filmlerinden Biri (Reha Erdem’s ‘Times and Winds’ is one of the best film of the year)” 29 A÷ustos 2008 Cihan Haber AjansÕ, haberler.com Çandar, Cengiz. (19.11.2008) “Barack Hussein Obama’dan altÕ yaú daha genç” (Six years younger than Barack Hussein Obama). Referans http://hurarsiv.Hürriyet.com.tr/goster/haber.aspx?id=10390606&yazari d=215 42

“Soul for Europe” Panel, Istanbul Technical University, 05.11.2007

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http://www.haberler.com/the-guardian-reha-erdem-in-bes-vakit-filmiyilin-haberi/ DW/Anadolu News Agency (16.11.2008) “Almanya’nÕn Yeúil ObamasÕ” (Germany’s Green Obama), Taraf.

—. “Almanya’nÕn Yeúil ObamasÕ” (Germany’s Green Obama), Taraf, (16.11.2008).

DW-WORLD.DE Deutsche Welle. (17.11.2008) “Cem Özdemir; Almanya'da Umudun AdÕ” (Cem Özdemir, der Name der Hoffnung in Deutschland) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3798796,00.html Ergun, Serfinaz (20.11.2008) “Ünlü øtalyan Yönetmen Ferzan Özpetek” (Acclaimed Italian Director Ferzan Özpetek). Milliyet http://www.yazarx.com/FSanatKultur/serfiraz-ergun/20-11-2008/unluitalyan-yonetmen-ferzan-ozpetek/53243.aspx Erus, Reha. (29.09.2008). Özpetek'in Filmi, Italyan Vekillere ùiddet Dersi Oldu, Roma Hürriyet Dünya http://www.Hürriyet.com.tr/dunya/10007254.asp Fatma Pehlivan'a hizmet madalyasÕ (Medal for Fatma Pehlivan) http://www..Hürriyet.de/?navi=article&grp=Politika&an=1311 Guardian, Editorial (18 November 2008) “In praise of Cem Özdemir” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/18/leaders-andreply-obama-germany-green-party Gündem. (19.11.2008) “Özdemir'in Seçilmesi Uyum Için BaúarÕdÕr” (Özdemir’s election is a Success for Integration) Hürriyet Gazetesi. http://www.Hürriyet.com.tr/gundem/10391292.asp?gid=0&srid=0&oid =0&l=1 Haberler.com. (26.07. 2007) “Türk AsÕllÕ Avusturya Milletvekili ùirvan Ekici Yozgat'ta” (Turkish Deputy: Austrian Parliamenterian ùirvan Ekici at Yozgat) http://www.haberler.com/turk-asilli-avusturya-milletvekili-sirvanekici-haberi Kohen, Sami (27.02.2007). “Avrupa'da böyle Türkler de var” (There Are Also Such Turks in Europe) Milliyet Korun, Alev. “Avusturya`da mecliste” (Alev Korun in the Parliament) http://www.tumgazeteler.com/?a=4164850 (28.11.2008) Livaneli, Zülfü. (17.11.2008). “Baúkan Cem Özdemir” (President Cem Özdemir). Vatan http://haber.gazetevatan.com/haberdetay.asp?tarih=18.11.2008&Newsi d=209275&Categoryid=4&wid=5 News (17 November 2008) “Cem Özdemir: Tahminlerden daha AlmanÕz” (Cem Özdemir: We are more German than Assumed)

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http://www.timeturk.com/cem-Özdemir-Tahminlerden-daha-Almaniz35245-haberi.html Özkan, Fadime. (24.11.2008) “Almanya, Hala AcÕ Vatan” (Deutschland, Noch Immer das Bittere Vaterland). Yeni ùafak http://yenisafak.com.tr/roportaj/?t=24.11.2008&i=13680 Özpetek, Ferzan. Türkiyede Film Çekmeyi Çok østiyorum, (I want shoot film in Turkey) 12.10.2008 Cihan Haber AjansÕ Haberler.com http://www.haberler.com/turkiye-de-film-cekmeyi-cok-cok-istiyorumhaberi/ —. 'Her ùey 31 YÕl øçinde oldu', (Everything has happened in 31 years ) 26 Ekim 2008 Haberler.com http://www.haberler.com/her-sey-31-yil-icinde-oldu-haberi/ Türk Medya, Odense (6.06.2007). “Hüseyin Araç: Hepimiz DanimarkalÕyÕz” (Hüseyin Araç: We all are Danish) http://www.medyatext.com.tr/V1/Pg/NewsCityDetail/NewID/22317/C atID/29/CityCode//CityName/Odense/CountryID/11/Header/hepimiz_ danimarkaliyiz.html Türk Medya. (5.06.2007) “Türk Pasaportu Benim Herúeyim” (Turkish Deputy of Austria: Sirvan Ekici at Yozga). Amsterdam. http://www.turkmedya.com/V1/Pg/NewsCityDetail/NewID/21513/CatI D/29/CityCode//CityName/Amsterdam/CountryID/7/Header/turk_pasa portu_benim_herseyim.html

PART I: POLITICS OF TEXT AND IMAGE

CHAPTER ONE SACRED WORD, PROFANE IMAGE: THEOLOGIES OF ADAPTATION1 ELLA SHOHAT

Poststructuralist discourses about translation challenge the idiom of “fidelity” and “betrayal” that assumes an innocent correspondence or symmetry between two textual worlds. Rather than a transparent and coherent presentation of an already-existing source, or a process of mimicking an originary text, translation always already involves acts of mediation, constructedness, and representation. At the same time these mediations do not escape the gravitational pull of geography and history; they are shaped and produced within specific cultural contexts that imply a “take” on the very act of translation. As a mode of translation, the adaptation of words into images, or novels into film, has often been seen as an aesthetic challenge involving the movement across two differing, even clashing, media. Yet, the displacement of written text onto a cinematic space, I will suggest here, cannot be appreciated solely in its formal dimension; rather, it must be seen within a larger, millennial movement across philosophical traditions and cultural spaces.

Given that the status of words and images varies widely within and across cultures, how can we speak of adaptation without addressing the veristic substratum haunting both novel and film? What happens, for example, in the movement from word to image within aesthetic traditions where verism has not occupied center stage, and where the very act of visual representation has been enmeshed in taboos and prohibitions? Here 1

This contribution was originally published as “The Sacred Word, Profane Image: Theologies of Adaptations” in Robert Stam and Alexandra Raengo’s A Companion to Film and Literature, Blackwell Press, 2004.

Sacred Word, Profane Image: Theologies of Adaptation

3

I want to explore both the multifaceted relations between texts and images as shaped within a Judeo-Islamic space, and the implications of these relations for film as a medium and adaptation as a practice. In fact, the tenuous and problematic dichotomy of image versus word was itself produced within a specific moment of monotheist rupture from polytheism. Yet, over millennia, the word/image clash has never resulted in “pure” religious practices, as is evident from certain syncretisms found even within monotheism. Such syncretism is due, perhaps, to the impossibility of an isolationist approach to the senses. Any negation of the very interdependency of the senses, becomes, to an extent, a futile philosophical endeavor. Since the Enlightenment, the separation of the senses – each endowed with essential qualities, and placed within a hierarchy – acquired a significant scientific meaning; that is, the privileging of the abstract over the concrete, and mind over body. Kant’s preference for the sublime of pure reason, for example, secularized, as it were, the monotheist investment in the disembodied God.2 The novel’s veristic procedures, one might argue, came into existence in an era pressured by two related and diacritical forces: on the one hand, the grounding of modern science in visuality, in the objective gaze, for example in a Cartesian perspectivalism that supposes an observing standpoint “outside,” and, on the other, a certain aniconism gaining philosophical importance, culminating in the twentieth-century sciences of “language.”3 And yet, unlike figurative representations, the novel as medium retained an a priori affinity with the religion of the word and scripture. Might the denigration of the cinema and adaptation be partially linked to the biblical phobia toward the apparatuses of visual representation? Could some of the hostility to filmic adaptations of novels, one wonders, be traceable in some subliminal and mediated way to this 2

“Perhaps the most sublime passage in the Jewish Law,” writes Kant, “is the commandment: Though shall not make unto thee any graven image … This commandment alone can explain the enthusiasm that the Jewish people in its civilized era felt for its religion when it compared itself with other peoples, or can explain the pride that Islam inspires. The same holds also for our presentation of the moral law, and for the disposition within us for morality”: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987, p.

135.

3 For an account of the visualist inclination of Western modern science, see Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the Word, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967.

On anti-ocularism, see Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-century French Thought, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

4

Chapter One

biblical injunction against the fetish of the image, the cult of star worship, and the fabrication of false gods? In what ways has faith in the sacred word provoked contemporary iconoclastic anxiety, perceiving adaptation as an inherently idolatrous betrayal?4 And how do we begin to account for adaptation when it is not of a book but rather of The Book, and one that virtually decrees that it not be adapted?

Born in a kind of righteous rage against the fetish of the image, monotheism explicitly prohibited the practice of “graven images” as part of the Ten Commandments, the first “contractual” agreement, or the covenant between God and the People of Israel as mediated by Moses. The first commandment – “Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me” (“Lo yihie lekha elohim aherim ‘al panai”) – is immediately followed by the second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (“lo ta’ase lekha pesel kol tmuna asher ba-shamayim mi-ma’al va-asher ba-aretz mi-tahat va-asher ba-mayim mi-tahat la-aretz)”5 Yet Deuteronomy’s verbal mediation in the expression of the taboo on visual representation paradoxically elicits in the reader’s mind the very image of what is prohibited: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, the likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.6 The passage that stipulates the interdiction of visual representation contains its own violation. The description elicits mental moving images of, for example, flying birds and swimming fish, while at the same time asking the reader to negate the very visuality elicited.

4

For more on the literary prejudices toward cinema, see Robert Stam, “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation,” in Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo (eds), Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp. 1–52.

5 Exodus, pp. 3–4 6 Deuteronomy 4, pp. 16–19

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The concept of a god who is at once One and indivisible is imbricated from the outset in the admonition both against worshiping other gods and against the very medium utilized in worshiping them, to wit any medium generating visual representations. Here, then, we find one of the ancestral sources of the demonization of visual media. The biblical prohibition of graven images, furthermore, comes with a positive corollary: the affirmation of the Holy Word. In fact, Judaic culture is thoroughly predicated upon concepts having to do with the “word” and “hearing.”

Central to the “covenant” (brith in Hebrew) between God and his Jewish people, for example, is the duty of male circumcision – a ritual of purity and loyalty to God – known as brith mila, or the covenant of the word.

Rather than indicating the action committed on the newly born male body, the term refers to language as signifying the relationship to God. The linguistic genealogy of the Ten Commandments, or aseret ha-dibrot, similarly, derives from the root “d.b.r,” signifying “speak,” while the Torah phrase of fidelity “na’ase ve-nishma’” (we shall do and listen), along with the daily prayer “Shma’ Israel adonai alohenu adonai ehad” (Listen Israel, adonai our God, one God) places words, written and spoken, at the center of the believer’s act. In contrast to the ancient Egyptian and Greek visual representations of gods, which often attached a human head to animals’ bodies – for example, sphinxes or centaurs – the Jewish God could neither be represented in animal form, nor be miscegenated as a cross between the human and the animal. With the Hebrew, as with the Arabic alphabet, an aesthetic of abstraction informs even the theological conception of a non-representational alphabet, a feature contrasting with Egyptian hieroglyphs based on resemblance, where the relation between signifier and signified was as much iconic as symbolic.

Within the monotheistic tradition all souls are equally created in the image of God. But the biblical formulations, which on one level seem democratizing via-à-vis polytheism, also embed a series of hierarchies: man over woman (whose existence derives from Adam’s rib), humans over animals, and animate over inanimate. God endows Adam – whom He created from “Adama” or earth in Hebrew – with the power of the word, the power to name, and thus granted him a verbal dominion over a world entrusted to him by his creator. Although man constitutes an imagistic representation of God, the divine itself was not to be represented in imagistic form. The very origins of monotheism are rooted in the idea, not only of the indivisibility of God but also of his invisibility, whence the

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prohibition of visual representation, that is, the censure on making any representation of an eternal God from perishable materials fashioned by mortal human beings. The original prohibition of “graven images” is motivated by a double hostility, first to idolatry – the worship of idols – and second to polytheism – the worship of many gods. The words formulating the prohibition are also significant. One common biblical phrase in Hebrew to designate the practice of graven images is ‘avodah zarah, literally, “alien,” “foreign,” or “strange” work, but figuratively “false worship.” The other phrase is ‘akum, an abbreviation for ‘ovdei kokhavim u-mazalot, that is, workers/worshipers of stars and constellations (a phrasing oddly reminiscent of the Hollywood Dream Factory and its worship of stars and love of astrology). Within Abrahamic-Mosaic7 theology, truth thus lies in the worship of the invisible, where believing is not seeing, and where not seeing is; believing.

A favorite within biblical filmic adaptations, precisely because of its spectacularity, the Torah story of the golden calf (‘egel ha-zahav) bears on these issues. In that story, the People of Israel, soon after their exodus from Egypt, wait for Moses to bring his message from God, but his extended absence triggers their skepticism about the novel idea of a single invisible God. They erect a golden calf, thereby provoking Moses’ outrage, culminating in his violent act of smashing the idol. A foundational narrative for the iconoclastic tradition, the golden calf has initiated generations of Jews and other monotheists into the theological anomaly constituted by monotheism vis-à-vis polytheism. Moses leads Benei Israel forty years in the desert in order to cleanse them of their Egyptian habits, ensuring the death of “dor ha-midbar” (the desert generation) prior to entering Canaan, a land to be filled with a new generation that “did not know Egypt.”

Idolatry was prohibited in Christianity too, as expressed in St. Paul’s cautioning against the speculum obscurum – the glass through which we see only darkly – or in the iconoclastic controversy of the eighth-century 7

The hyphen placed between Abrahamic and Mosaic tradition is meant to also evoke Mesopotamia as Monotheism’s cultural geography, since usually the discussion of the Monotheism’s origins centers on ancient Egypt. Extending studies from the fields of archeology and Myth into psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism wrestles with the European and non-European geographies of Jewish identity, highlighting monotheism’s beginnings in the realm of the Egyptian, i.e. that both Moses, the founder of Jewish identity, and Akhenaton, the founder of monotheism, were Egyptian.

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Byzantine church. Roman Catholicism, meanwhile, tended to accommodate the “pagan” penchant for animal symbolism by figuring Christ as lamb or fish. The iconoclasm of Protestantism, with its repugnance for crucifixes, saints’ statues, and ecclesiastical artifice, in a sense constitutes a partial reJudaization of Christianity.8 Islam, for its part, also reinforced iconoclasm, highlighted through descriptions of the Prophet Muhammad’s battle against the idolaters in the Qa’aba, while also recounting the smashing of idols by Abraham, the father of monotheism9. Arab history prior to the revelation of Islam is defined negatively as “al-Jahiliyah,” the early period of worshiping idols (“ansab”), only to be transcended by the ensuing prohibition of iconic representation; for no object (“sanam”) can be venerated next to God.10 Although the wall-painting decorations of palaces could portray the rulers’ battles, hunts, drinking, and dancing, figural representations of living creatures were to be avoided within designated spaces of worship. Some Persian manuscripts, however, did contain winged figures accompanying Muhammad’s ascension to Paradise, and in some cases the Shi’ites produced pictorial representations of the holy family and of Muhammad himself.11 The Qur’Ɨn does not explicitly state that the representation of living creatures is forbidden, yet most Muslim legal scholars viewed it as a violation, since it entailed an usurpation of the uniquely creative power attributed solely to God.12 The prohibition of graven images condenses a number of theological arguments having to do with interrelated anxieties circling around God’s image: (1) the fear of substituting the image itself for God, and thus committing idolatry – worshiping the object “standing in” for God, rather than God; (2) the fear of portraying God inaccurately in a kind of failed 8

On Protestant iconoclasm, see, for example, Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

9 Qur’Ɨn, surah 21 pp.53-52 to 70 10 On Islam’s iconoclasm, see, for example, G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

11 Similarly, when ‘Ala al-Din Kay-Qubad (1219–1236) built the walls around his city Konia in Asia Minor, he set up on each side of one of the great gates a winged figure. Thomas W. Arnold, Painting in Islam: A Study of the Place of Pictorial Art in Muslim Culture, New York: Dower, 1965, p. 24.

12 For a fuller discussion, see Bishr Fares, Philosophie et jurisprudence illustrées par les Arabes: la querelle des images en Islam, Melanges Lois Massignon (Institut de Damas, 1957), and Ahmad Muhammad, “Muslims and Taswir,” The Muslim World 45: 3, July 1995, pp.250–268.

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mimesis or wrongful representation; (3) the fear of embodying an infinite God in finite materials; (4) the fear of portraying God in shapes and forms made by finite humans; (5) the fear of giving “flesh” to God; and, ultimately, (6) the fear of representing the unrepresentable, that which is above and beyond representation.13 The prohibition of graven images, furthermore, linked the religious condemnation of representing deity with the assertion of the epistemological impossibility of actually knowing the deity. How can the unknown and the transcendent be represented visually?

Although man is created in God’s image, this same supposedly God-like man, paradoxically, cannot know God. The knowledge is unilateral and non-reciprocal. Any attempt at representation thus amounts to a sacrilege, precisely because it would force God’s invisible abstractness to “descend” into the “bad neighborhood” of the visible and the earthly.

While visual representation is the main object of the taboo, verbal representations of God are not regarded as entirely innocent either. The Sephardic philosopher Maimonides (Ibn Maimun), in his Arabic treatise The Guide of the Perplexed (Dalalat al-ha’irin), concludes, after a thorough investigation, that representing God in words can also be a sacrilege, if figurative biblical language is understood literally.14 Maimonides’ blurring of the distinction between the visual and language is rich in its implications for adaptation practices, for aesthetic theory, and for word/image relations. Extrapolating Maimonides’ argument, as we shall see, would place most of cinema’s five tracks under a cloud of suspicion, the visual track most obviously but also the phonetic speech and written materials track. The very act of representation, of translating, as it were, from the verbal to the visual, entails an anxiety, for to represent God is to contain and diminish him. Maimonides censured verbal descriptions of God because they might elicit images in the responding human mind.

God could only be spoken about in the negative – which He was not.

Within this theology of the negation, it is noteworthy that both Hebrew and Arabic lack any exact equivalent for the word “representation,” where, by definition, something “stands for” something else. Yet, the very act of semiotic substitution is at the core of monotheistic anxiety. The concept of 13 For elaboare discussions of the theological and philosophical dimensions of this debate, see especially Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997; Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

14 Moses Maimonides (Ibn Maimun), The Guide of the Perplexed, 2 volumes, trans. Shlomo Pines, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

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re-presentation also implies something that is present. The prefix “re” in the word “representation” implies an absence, since “representation” by definition is not direct, that is, present; it entails invocation of absence through an act of repetition, of presenting anew that which is not present.

Yet when God’s existence is only addressed in the negative, how can repetition take place? A presence that is absent, in other words, does not lend itself to re-presentation.

Within Judeo-Islamic theology, the importance of the word is predicated on its paradigmatic substitution for the visual. The desire for the visual and for a translation of the sacred into the perceptible is sublimated and displaced, as it were, onto other objects, images, and senses. Within these objects, the word reigns, whether in the form of the mezuzah (a small case nailed to the doorframe containing a scroll of parchment inscribed with the words of “shma’,” along with the words of a companion passage from Deuteronomy); or in the tefillin (phylacteries – a leather case also containing a scroll designed for Jewish men to bind words to their hands and between their eyes during prayer); or in aron hakodesh (the sacred space in the synagogue containing the biblical scrolls).

Judaic culture’s enthusiastic embrace of textuality as a generative (and regenerative) matrix founded a way of life. It cultivated the mystique and even the erotic of the text in its physicality: the touch of the tefillin on the male body, the kissing of the mezuzah at the threshold, and the dance around the Torah scroll. Allegorical expressions are often linked to the idea of a sacred language – the language of the Bible delivered by God – involving various degrees of concealment, especially the Torah as a fragmentary discourse, virtually soliciting the hermeneutic deciphering which typifies, for example, the talmudic commentaries. The historical narrative of the Jewish people has been deeply imprinted and “engraved” by texts. The messianic verses of the Sephardic poet Edmond Jabes describe Judaism as pre-eminently a passion for writing. For the homeless Jew, Jabes argues, the book is the fatherland and home is Holy Writ. Jabes anticipates, in this sense, not only George Steiner’s idea of a textual homeland, but also the glorification of the text and writing in the work of Jacques Derrida. In his essay on Jabes, Derrida speaks of the “pure and founding exchange” between the Jew and writing: the Jew chooses the scripture (writing, écriture) and Scripture chooses the Jew.15 15

See Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabes and the Question of the Book,” in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 64–78. See also George Steiner, “Our Homeland the Text,” Salmagundi 66, Winter–Spring 1985, pp. 4–25. Here one may want to note the

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In both Judaism and Islam, letters themselves become signs of the sublime as well as a site of visual pleasure, developed particularly within the art of calligraphy. In Islam writing is crucial, since God communicated and revealed himself through his Word, in the Arabic language – itself a subject for a major theological debate about whether the divine language is khaliq (creator) or makhluq (created). The genealogy of the word “Qur’Ɨn” derives from “q.r.a,” the linguistic root of the word “read.” “Read,” says the Qur’Ɨn, “And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous, Who teacheth by the pen, Teacheth man that which he knows not”16. At the same time, the Qur’Ɨn states: “O believers, wine and games of chance and statues and (divining) arrows are an abomination of Satan’s handiwork; then avoid it!”

(Qur’Ɨn, 92).

Whereas the art of writing was revered, the art of figurative images was more controversial. The visual artist was seen as usurping God’s prerogative as the sole “author” of life. The production of the visual, as with Judaism, was displaced onto other mediated forms. The surfaces of mosques and public buildings, for example, were covered with Arabic writing shaped in forms that would enhance the architectural design of a building. Calligraphy turned letters into a sensual visual medium, designing myriad geometric or vegetal forms created out of words, either through repetition or through sentences, often highlighting the greatness of God, his eternity and glory. Calligraphy gradually became the most important Islamic art, deployed even in non-religious contexts, adorning coins, textiles, and pottery. The Judaic and Islamic censure of “graven images,” and the preference for abstract geometric designs, known as arabesques, cast theological suspicion on directly figurative representation and thus on the ontology of the mimetic arts. While Roman Catholicism shared the Judaic prohibition of substituting an image of God for God, it also accommodated the desire for a visual, for the visible God. Brilliant paintings and frescos representing sacred scenes, including of individual saints and even some pictorial adumbrations of the deity, adorn churches.

Within the Judeo-Islamic ethos, a visible carnal divinity, such as that shown in Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel featuring a bearded male God in the process of creating Adam, would be quite unimaginable.

intersection between the twentieth-century “linguistic turn” and the revalorization of Jewishness as the religion of the word.

16 Qur’Ɨn, surah 96, pp. 3–5

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Marking the beginning of the so-called “modern encounter” between Europe and the Muslim world, the arrival of French forces in Ottoman Alexandria in 1798, along with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperial domination of North Africa and the West Asia, triggered a complex aesthetic dialogue, revolving around issues of mimesis and verism.17 Initiated both by individuals and institutions, a growing movement of translations of European literature (largely French and English) impacted upon the production of modern Arabic literature (the realist novel, in particular) as a syncretic site, mingling diverse Arabic literary traditions with veristic “Western” procedures. On one level, the idea of mimetic art, as we have seen, would seem almost inherently alien to the monotheistic tradition and to Judeo-Muslim aesthetic regimes.

Within this perspective, Judeo-Muslim culture, partial to the abstract, would be essentially antithetical to the diverse techniques and movement of reproducing the real: the Renaissance perspective in the arts, the nineteenth-century rise of realism and naturalism as literary “dominants,” and the ever-more-refined technologies of verism, specifically the still and cinematographic cameras with their built-in Renaissance perspective.

Verism did indeed pose an interesting challenge to cultures where mimesis had not constituted the norm. At the same time, however, JudeoMuslim civilizational space of cannot be reduced to the taboo on graven images, or viewed as completely disallowing the representation of living creatures, or as devoid of all mimetic practices. The Umayyad mosque in Damascus, for example, utilized mosaics that portray, for instance, houses and the natural world within a relatively realistic fashion. In palaces, as suggested earlier, the visual taboo was not fully respected, when the decoration of walls in tiles, wood, or stucco, as well as wall-painting depicted human beings engaged in parties, wars, or hunting. Miniature art invited sensual pleasure, and illustrative images drawn in manuscripts – for example, the stories of Kalila wa-Dimna from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – contain pictures of birds and animals.18 Furthermore, the Eurocentric narrative that emplots artistic history, like history in general, in a linear trajectory leading from the Bible and the Odyssey to literary realism and artistic modernism, raises the question whether such foundational 17 On the “modern” beginnings of the movement of translation into Arabic, see Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.

18 On these elements of mimesis in the history of Arab art, see Albert Hourani, A. History of the Arab Peoples, New York: Warner Books, 1991.

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texts, like their cultural geography, can be defined simply as Western.19 Telling the history of the novel as solely emerging from “Europe–” defined as completely apart from the cultural spaces of North Africa and West Asia – and then “spreading” to Africa and Asia, constitutes a problematic diffusionist narrative. The emergence of the novel, within another perspective, could be narrated as coming into existence within the syncretic worlds of the Mediterranean.20 Even the canonical European novel Don Quixote has the narrator refer to translation from Arabic book, a cultural inter-text marginalized by canonical literary history.21 A more dialogic view of the relationship between the so-called “East” and “West” would allow for spaces of syncretism, such as the uncovering of the traces of Arabic literature and art within Iberian culture, and through it, within the European Renaissance.

The cultural dialogue between the “west” and the “rest” is not of recent date, nor is it unidirectional, whereby the rest simply follow the west. The highpoints of western history – Greece, Rome, Renaissance, Enlightenment and Modernism – can be said to have been moments of cultural fusion, moments when Europe became traversed by currents from elsewhere.

Western art has at least partly been indebted to and transformed by nonWestern art.22 The movement of aesthetic ideas, then, has always been (at

19

Robert Stam and I elaborate a critique of the Eurocentric narrative of “History” and “Geography,” in Unthinking Eurocentrism, Routledge, 1994.

20 The novel, according to Margaret Ann Doody, did not begin in the Renaissance but rather forms part of a continuous history of about two thousand years of contact between Southern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa. Papyrus fragments of novels suggest that novel-reading was popular among Egyptians in the second century A.D., while the title of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, the longest of the surviving Greek novels, means “Ethiopian Story.” Doody, Margaret A. The True Story of the Novel, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. p. 18.

21 A Renaissance Italian writer like Boccaccio, as Robert Stam suggests, found it normal to draw on the Eastern repertoire of the Fables of Bidpai and Sindbad the Philosopher, while writers like Cervantes and Fielding were quite aware of and influenced by such texts. In Don Quixote, the narrator has a Castilian-speaking Morisco translate a parchment book in Arabic, and he mentions that a translator for a “more ancient language” (i.e. Hebrew) would not be difficult to find. Stam, Robert, Literature Through Film: Realism, Magic, and The Art of Adaptation.

Oxford: Blackwell, 2005 22 The debt of the European avant-garde to the arts of Africa, Asia, and indigenous America has been extensively documented. Leger, Cendrars, and Milhaud based their staging of “La Creation du Monde” on African cosmology. Bataille wrote

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least) two-way, whence the Moorish influence on the poetry of courtly love, the African influence on modernist painting, the impact of Asian forms (Kabuki, Noh Drama, Balinese theatre, ideographic writing) on western theatre and film, and the influence of Arab and Africanized dance forms on such choreographers as Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham and George Ballanchine.23 Artistic modernism has traditionally been defined in contradistinction to realism as the dominant norm in representation.

Within most cultural geographies, however, realism was rarely the dominant aesthetic mode. Modernist reflexivity as a reaction against realism, in other words, could scarcely wield the same power of scandal and provocation. Modernism, in this sense, can be seen as a rather provincial, local rebellion. Vast regions of the world, and long periods of artistic history, have shown little allegiance to or even interest in realism.

In India, a two-thousand year tradition of narrative circles back to the classical Sanskrit drama and epic, which tell the myths of Hindu culture through an aesthetic based less on coherent character and linear plot than on the subtle modulations of mood and feeling (rasa).24 While a Eurodiffusionist narrative makes Europe a perpetual fountain of artistic innovation, one could argue for a multidirectional flow of aesthetic ideas, with criss-crossing ripples and eddies of influence.

In the wake of the colonial re-encounter between Europe and the Arab world, verism nonetheless entered a new geopolitical semantics. Coming to occupy a central role in Arab aesthetic practices, verism was genealogically linked to the discourse of modernization – a discourse shared by both imperialist and nationalist ideologies. As appendages to the modernization project, art schools were founded in cities like Istanbul, about pre-Columbian art and the avant-garde, generally, cultivated the mystique of vodun and of African art.

23 Ruth St. Denis’s oriental mélange, I would argue, must be seen within the context of the coming-to-America of Arab belly dancers via the diverse expositions, which staged the orient in the late 19th century and early twentiethcentury. Documented on film (Fatima, 1897) where belly dance inspired the hoochie-coochie craze, blending the Orientalism of “exotic” dances into the American burlesque. See Shohat, Ella, “Coming To America: Reflections on Hair And Memory Loss,” in Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, Lisa Suhair Majaj & Amal Amireh, eds., Garland Publishers, 2000, pp. 284-300 24 On a critique of the metanarrative of Art History, see Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert, “Narrativizing Visual Culture: Towards a Polycentric Aesthetics,” in The Visual Culture Reader, Nicholas Mirzoeff (ed.), London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 27– 49.

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Alexandria, and Beirut. Artists of the “Orient” were learning to “disorient” regional aesthetics by mimicking Western styles of mimesis. Figurative art signaled a world-in-transition, in contrast to the largely abstract art of Islam, now rendered “traditional,” an obsolescent practice that would inevitably have to be abandoned in favor of the forces of progress. Within this melioristic metanarrative, mimesis conveyed not merely learning a mode of artistic technique, but also the process of becoming conversant with the aesthetic and cultural norms of so-called Western modernity.

A photograph in the January 1939 issue of the National Geographic magazine inadvertently captures some of these paradoxes resulting from the intertwined arrival of verism and nationalist modernization in Muslim spaces. The photograph documents mostly female students drawing a nude female model in a “life class” in the Academy of Art in Istanbul. Although the photo does not show the nude model, the reader/viewer receives a glimpse of her image(s) through the various canvases. In a kind of miseen-abyme, this photograph records not only the process of making realistic images but also makes the viewer aware of the very process of viewing via the photographic lens; since the viewer’s ability to see is inscribed in the mechanics of the camera itself as the scientific reincarnation of Renaissance perspective and of the mimesis of three-dimensionality.

Verism as artistic practice was gaining importance in the same place and around the same time that Erich Auerbach wrote his magnum opus Mimesis concerning the Western tradition of realistic representation.

Notably, it was in Turkey, a site of syncretism between Greek mimesis and Islamic arabesque that the German-Jewish refugee Auerbach contrasted the Hebrew Bible and Hellenic mythology, whose central figures had lived in the same region millennia earlier. Indeed Mimesis itself was premised on a dichotomy between Hebraism, associated with ethics, depth, equality, and the word, and Hellenism, associated with aesthetics, superficiality, hierarchy, and the image.25 25 Auerbach, in fact, registered an intellectual debate that began in the nineteenth century, in which Jewish-German intellectuals, such as Heinrich Heine, Hermann Cohen, Heinrich Graetz, and Frantz Rosenzweig, have responded to a diverse antiSemitic denigration of Hebraism and the veneration of Hellenism, the latter for possessing visual art and the former for its lack. See Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953; and Kalman P. Bland, “Anti-Semitism and Aniconism: The Germanophone Requiem for Jewish Visual Art,” in Catherine M. Soussloff (ed.), Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

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Several hundred years after the introduction of Renaissance perspective, and almost a century after the introduction of the camera, there should be nothing unusual about the photo of the art school. Yet, the novelty of a life class in a Muslim space merits the National Geographic gaze. The photo celebrates the apprenticeship of the young Turkish women in the creation of figurative art, while also signaling that a world-in-transition is unfolding in front of the reader/viewer’s eyes. The largely abstract art of Islam is implicitly rendered “traditional,” replaced by the new of the modern movement. The photo’s caption – “From Veiled Women to Life Classes with Nude Models” – explicitly links changing conventions in aesthetics to transformations in conceptions of gender. Wearing white gowns and standing in front of their canvases, the modern Turkish women – symbolic daughters of the new father of the Nation, Atatürk – abandon both Muslim aesthetics, associated with the fallen Ottoman Empire, along with the veil. Mimesis here conveys the process within a telos of becoming “like” and “repeating” the aesthetic and cultural norms of “Western modernity.”

In this strange rendezvous between “East” and “West,” realistic aesthetics signified modernity, while non-figurative art was implicitly cast as past times. Yet such an encounter generates some fascinating paradoxes. During the same period that the “Orient” was learning realism, the “Occident” was unlearning it. The ideology of political and economic modernization found its aesthetic corollary not in avant-garde modernism, but rather in realism, and in modernizing through the mastery of up-to-date veristic techniques. In the same period that the modernist avant-garde was rebelling against mimesis, opting for new modes of abstract, geometric, and minimalist representation, Arab-Muslim aesthetic practices were moving toward mimesis as an integral part of modernity. Yet discourses about aesthetic modernization in the Middle East were not linked to the contemporaneous modernist experimentation with the new languages of Futurism, Surrealism, and Cubism. Thus we see that the so-called nonWest has been often cast out of the metanarrative of art History, always seeming to lag behind Western aesthetic advancement.

The spread of the ideology of modernization into the Middle East had the effect of promoting Realism as the essence of the modern, rather than anti-illusionist avant-gardism. The cinema, as a product of modernity, registered and reinforced this aesthetic tendency. It was not the non-spatial painting of the miniature and the geometrical composition of the arabesque that were “translated” to the screen but rather the mimetic qualities of the

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novel. In some ways the novel’s verism seemed more appropriate to a technology whose “essence” seemed to be equated with the “real.” The penchant for adapting novels reached a kind of paroxysm in the 1950s, as the work of celebrated Egyptian writers such as Ihsan Abd al-Quddous, Tewfik al-Hakim, and Youssef al-Seba’i was brought to the screen. Wellknown French, English, and Russian novels were also adapted by Frencheducated filmmakers, such as Togo Mizrahi, Youssef Wahbi, Henri Barakat, and Hassan al-Imam, who Egyptianized the non-Egyptian novels and re-made films already adapted to the screen in France or Hollywood.

Among such readapted novels were Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Anatole France’s Thais, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Anna Karenina. At least fifteen French novels were adapted numerous times, including Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Balzac’s Le père Goriot, Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, which was actually adapted seven times, and Pagnol’s The Trilogy, which was adapted four times.26 Verism was propelled to center stage, signifying the double-edged sword of modernity: assimilation to hegemonic Western culture as well as resistance to its aesthetic regime.

Representations of living creatures within the diverse technologies of verism were becoming a virtual lingua franca within a modernizing aesthetic trend in the Arab-Muslim world. Photographic and cinematographic images, interestingly, were not categorically prohibited.

Based on theological interpretations of the hadith, or the Prophet’s sayings – “Angels do not enter a house where an image is stored unless it is a sign on fabric” (inna al-mala’ika la tadkhulu baytan fih suratun illa raqamun fi thaubin) – photography was not considered a creation but rather a sign, produced in a pattern or a formula.27 Photography and the cinema, however, were defined not as creating souls in the likeness of God, but rather as presenting God’s creation, and thus reinforcing his power rather 26

Mahmoud Kassem, “Adaptation, égyptianisation et ‘remake’,” in Magda Wassef (ed.), Egypte: 100 ans de cinéma, Paris: Editions Plume, Institut du Monde Arabe, 1995, pp. 238-241.

27 For a discussion of the aesthetic concerns raised by the Islamic prohibition on graven images, see Allen Terry, “Aniconism and Figural Representation in Islamic Art,” Five Essays on Islamic Art, Sebastopol, CA: Solipsist Press, 1988, pp. 17–37; Barbara Brend, Islamic Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991; Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of the Ornament, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992; Viola Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, Cairo, The American University of Cairo Press, 1998; Hamid Dabashi, “In the Absence of the Face,” Social Research 67: 1, 2000, pp. 127–85.

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than competing with him.28 Yet, treating holy matters within the profane space of novels and films did provoke tensions, themselves allegorizing the diverse force-fields shaping contemporary identities in Arab-Muslim spaces. The question of the novel as a “modern” literary form, adapting religious subjects within veristic fiction, became in itself a contested terrain. And in the colonial and neocolonial context of the negative portrayal of Muslim religion, the adaptation of the Holy Text onto the screen triggered clashes. Thus, even apart from the problem of cinematic adaptation, novels already formed a conflictual space. To take a recent example, Satanic Verses did not have to wait for screen adaptation to trigger an Islamicist fatwa against author Salman Rushdie.

In the contemporary Middle East, the colonial clash has also left its imprint on the image/word debate. From its outset, Egyptian cinema was the site of cultural tensions, especially when European companies attempted to produce films touching on Islamic themes. The film Al Zouhour al-Qatela (Fatal Flowers, 1918), for example, offended the Islamic community by garbling several phrases from the Qur’Ɨn, thus provoking the first case of censorship.29 A more severe case occurred in 1926, around the anticipated production of a film about the grandeur of the early days of Islam. The Turkish writer Wedad Orfi, who initiated the idea, approached the Egyptian director and actor Yusuf Wahbi to play the role of the Prophet Muhammad in a film to be financed by the Turkish government and a major German producer. Within a modernizing vision that characterized the new Turkish nation, it is not surprising that Atatürk, as well as the Istanbul council of ‘ulamas (scholars of religious law), gave their approval. Upon learning of the plan, the Islamic Al-Azhar University in Cairo alerted Egyptian public opinion, and published a juridical decision, stipulating that Islam categorically forbids the representation of the prophet and his companions on the screen. King Fouad sent a severe warning to Wahbi, threatening to exile him and strip him of his Egyptian nationality.30 The protests resulted in the abandoning of the adaptation of the Qur’Ɨn, for while the representations of living creatures within the framework of the relatively profane could be tolerated, such representations within the realm of the sacred were unacceptable.

28

Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, p. 49.

Samir Farid, “La censure mode d’emploi,” in Wassef (ed.), Egypte: 100 ans de cinéma, pp. 102–17.

30 Ibid., p. 102.

29

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These protests triggered the 1930 prohibition against portraying the prophet and the four righteous caliphs, while, later, the 1976 censorship law explicitly stated that “heavenly religions [i.e. the monotheistic religions, known in Arabic as ahl al-kitab, or the People of the Book] should not be criticized. Heresy and magic should not be positively portrayed.”31 Suspicion of the cinema led some religious scholars in Saudi Arabia to oppose even the building of movie theaters, although films have been watched within the private sphere. With the growing power of Islamicists in Egypt, in 1986 the prohibition was expanded to include all the biblical figures and prophets – for example, Abraham, Moses, Jesus – mentioned in the Qur’Ɨn. And, more recently, Youssef Chahine’s film Al-Muhajir (The Emigrant, 1994), a loose adaptation of Joseph’s story, angered the Islamicists due to the representation of one of the Qur’Ɨn’s prophets, obliging the director (of Catholic background) to defend his cinematic reading of the biblical story in court.32 Although its presumed “dubious morality” as a social institution has stirred much apprehension, the cinema’s intrinsic capacity to violate a deeply ingrained taboo has also contributed to its guilty status.

The spread of veristic and mimetic practices has not, for the most part, interrupted the millennial aesthetic code governing sacred spaces, which has continued to resolve the problem of visual pleasure and the censure of graven images through a complex mode of aesthetic abstraction. If over the past two centuries images of living creatures have inundated ArabMuslim visual culture, this limited verism could exist mostly because it was reserved for the realm of the mundane, and thus did not interfere with the more deeply ingrained taboo. Arab novelists and filmmakers have often respected the spatial division between the sacred and the profane, drawing the contours of the realist novel and film so as to exclude religiously prohibited visual representations. In contrast, film history in Christian-dominated societies has frequently presented prominent religious figures such as Christ. It was not the mere act of representing Christ or Christian figures that provoked official Catholic wrath against Luis Buñuel’s work but rather the films’ satirical stance toward Christianity.

Similarly, Mel Brooks’s satirical adaptation of the Bible’s tale of the Tablets of the Covenant (Luhot ha-Brith) on Mount Sinai in History of the World, Part I (1981) was at odds with Orthodox Jewish perspective. The Brooks 31

Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, p. 34.

Ibid., pp. 49-221. For further discussion of the history of censorship in Arab cinema, see also Viola Shafik, “Egyptian Cinema,” in Oliver Leaman (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 23–129.

32

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film has Moses, who receives three rather than two tablets, reduce the number of the commandments after he drops one of the tablets, thus calling attention to the arbitrariness of the Torah’s number ten. In a reflexive moment, the film also calls attention to its own transgression of the commandment condemning any visual representation of the sacred.

Despite the political marginalization of religious parties during the decades of Labor Party rule in Israel, satires of the Bible in the public sphere were usually met by political pressures for censorship. A mid-1970s’ TV program, Nikui Rosh (Head Cleaning), re-enacted the biblical story of the Torah deliverance, casting a funny-looking comedian (Dubby Gal) as Moses.

Barefoot on the hot desert sand, as God delivers an interminable message, Moses hops from foot to foot, his suffering exacerbated by the heat of the burning bush. Shown on the state-owned TV station, the scene provoked the protests of the religious parties for having subsidized offensive images. Apart from the carnivalesque parody of the grand monotheistic moment, Nikui Rosh transgressed another taboo by endowing Moses with an image. Not only does the Jewish culture barely display any archive of representations of Moses, but this specific iconoclast, it is said, intended for his tomb to remain unknown.

Unlike Hollywood’s “map of the stars” that guides the vision of pilgrims in search of local deities, Jewdaic tradition reinforces the importance of the biblical obscuring of Moses’ burial place to ensure that his grave did not turn into a site of idolatrous worship.

In the case of Judeo-Muslim tradition, even a respectful visual representation of prophets and of God comes under suspicion, and the act of mimetic visualization itself is subjected to surveillance. Interpreting the graven images prohibition strictly, the Jewish Ashkenazi faction of Naturei Karta, for example, has for the most part resisted the camera, shielding their faces with hats or hands to ward off any photographer. Given this context of a deeply ingrained taboo, it is no coincidence that the screens of both Israel and the Muslim world have not proliferated in adaptations of the Bible or the Qur’Ɨn. In Egypt, most films about Islam were produced in the wake of Nasser’s revolution during the 1950s and 1960s, and constituted a vehicle for promoting and staging national cohesion.33 Most narratives were set in the early days of Islam, such as Bilal, Mu’adhin al-rasul (Bilal,

33

Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, pp. 170–2. Shafik also points out that the production of Muslim religious feature films shifted at the end of the Nasser era to television.

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The Prophet’s Muezzin, 1953)34 by Ahmad al-Tukhi, who also directed Intisar al-Islam (The Victory of Islam, 1952) and Bayt Allah al-haram (The House of God, 1957), while only a few were produced about laterday Arab Muslim figures such as Salah al-Din (1961) who fought against the crusaders, or about mystic figures such as al-Sayed Ahmed al-Badawi (1953 by Baha Eddine Charaf) who spread Islam in the thirteenth century in Egypt.35 At the same time, the largely veristic procedures of Arab, Israeli, Turkish, and Iranian cinemas have performed a certain rupture with the non-veristic visual tradition, tending instead to adhere to the rules of mimesis and realism. Thus, within a film culture that has largely departed from the Islamic principles of visual representation, a faithful adaptation of the Qur’Ɨnic narrative has posed serious aesthetic challenges.36 While the Qur’Ɨn can be said to possess narrative qualities that the historical realist genre can easily accommodate, the scriptural taboo places obstacles to its “translation” into the cinema. Arab films that sought the historical genre to tell of Islam, resolved the problem of representing holy figures by avoiding it, even while the narrative unfolds all in the name of God and His prophet.

Mustafa Akkad’s film Al-Risala (The Message, 1976), however, represents a rare mode of adaptation of the Qur’Ɨnic narrative concerning the Prophet’s life.37 The script received the theological imprimatur of AlAzhar University, partly due to the filmmaker’s innovative approach to evoking the sacred without actually visually representing it. Never represented in the film, Muhammad’s presence is only implied. The film’s images show what is relatively unsacred, acknowledging, as it were, the inferiority of the visual, and its fallibility in the face of the holy. As announced at the film’s opening, The Message was submitted to the scholars and historians of Islam at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and the 34 While Bilal, The Prophet’s Muezzin is the correct translation of the Arabic title, the film was distributed in English-speaking countries with the title Bilal, the Prophet’s Call to Prayer.

35 See Ahmed Rafaat Bahgat, “Cinéma et histoire: du Baiser dans le désert à l’Émigré,” in Wassef (ed.), Egypte: 100 ans de cinéma, p. 176.

36 On the Qur’Ɨnic narrative, see, for example, Mustansir Mir, “Qur’Ɨn as Literature,” Religion and Literature 20: 1, Spring, 1988, pp. 49–66. I thank Ahmad Dallal for his insightful comments on this issue.

37 In the U.S. the film can be purchased in most shops or websites selling Islamic religious artifacts.

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High Islamic Congress of the Shi’at in Lebanon, who approved the “accuracy and fidelity of this film.” After a short prelude, the intertitles inform us that: THE MAKERS OF THIS FILM HONOUR THE ISLAMIC TRADITION WHICH HOLDS THAT THE IMPERSONATION OF THE PROPHET OFFENDS AGAINST THE SPIRITUALITY OF HIS MESSAGE. THEREFORE, THE PERSON OF MOHAMMAD WILL NOT BE SHOWN.

Written in capital letters and in bold to underline this crucial piece of information the warning addresses various publics, especially those fearful of blasphemy as well as those expecting a spectacular epic film in the Hollywood biblical tradition. On the one hand, the film’s grand scale, its high production values, its “location” shooting (with Morocco and Libya standing in for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina), its international crew, its wide-screen cinematography, its ostentatious commentative music, along with its larger-than-life heroes, would seem to point to a multiple generic affiliation with a number of spectacular genres: the biblical epic, the historical film, and the war film. The story of God’s revelation to Muhammad, and Islam’s triumph over the idolaters of Mecca, would seem to offer the celebrated hero as a vehicle for spectatorial identification. While traditional identification is facilitated via recognized stars, especially Anthony Quinn in the role of Hamza, one of Muhammad’s close followers, the truly central hero remains incognito.

The film’s introductory intertitles undercut any possible desire or anxiety concerning the visual representation of the hero of both religion and film.

Against the grain of the spectacular epic tradition, the intertitles announce a conspicuous lack, that of the visual (and aural) pleasure of getting to know our hero and star: Muhammad himself. In this sense, religious fidelity – to the text and to religious values – paradoxically entails infidelity to certain fundamental features of the film medium; the intertitles seem to promise nothing but frustration of the scopophilic cinematic experience.

In the context of adaptation, the word “fidelity” is often associated with the expectation of an exact correlation between the “original” literary text and its filmic representation, with the word “infidelity” suggesting a betrayal of the canonical text. In the context of adapting the Qur’Ɨn, “infidelity,” however, takes on serious overtones, as it involves a betrayal of God’s word in the most literal sense, since the Qur’Ɨn, like the Bible, is believed to be an unmediated delivery of the sacred word. The burden of

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fidelity in the case of Qur’Ɨnic screen adaptation is multifold. First, within the theological stricture concerning visual representation, the film’s capacity to represent is not equated with the act of interpretation; the filmmaker is expected to play a “neutral” role, and cannot presume to offer or “add” interpretations, an act reserved to the scholars of the Qur’Ɨn. Yet, the very permission given for making The Message inadvertently does imply some form of interpretation, since the Qur’Ɨn, as we have seen, is ambiguous on the subject of making images.

Second, the filmmaker is expected to abide by the tradition of avoiding imaging the prophet, never using the cinematic space to represent the nonvisualizable. Even if little is revealed about his appearance, Muhammad acts, speaks, and is talked about in the Qur’Ɨn. In the film, third-person speech about the prophet does not pose a theological problem since it does not involve his immediate presence on the screen. However, although Muhammad is an absent-presence in the film, on a number of occasions he is addressed in the second person, as “you.” In a few rare instances, the spectator is even placed within the subjective point of view of Muhammad himself. In one early sequence set against the backdrop of Ka’aba, for example, we witness myriad idolatrous practices. A few of the leading pagans suddenly turn their gaze in the direction of the camera/spectator, their faces manifesting awed respect and anxiety, underlined by a gentle murmur of wind on the sound track. The idolaters briefly suspend their activities, followed by a visitor’s question: “Who is that man who looked into my soul?” The visual, the sound, and the dialogue tracks are all orchestrated to imply a holy presence, which we infer to be that of Muhammad himself. The observing of the sinful activities by “the Prophet” constitutes the film’s first instance of deploying a disembodied gaze. The ensuing dialogue proceeds to orient the spectator, affirming that The Message employs an unconventional language to signify the screen presence of an invisible presence.

The Message negotiates this dialectics of presence/absence through a highly unusual deployment of point-of-view shots, over-the-shoulder shots, and shot/counter-shots, all unconnected, as it were, to any “visible” subject who might “anchor” these shots within a specific body and face.

While the film Lady in the Lake (1947) sutured the spectator into a total viewpoint of an unseen subject, The Message’s new twist on cinematic language entails a positioning of the spectator within multiple modes of address. In one instance, we hear a dialogue to the effect that Muhammad is now on a mountain, followed by an aerial shot that carries us to the

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23

mountain and into the darkness of a cave, as well as to what we assume to be Muhammad’s presence, all accompanied by the now familiar sound of rushing wind. The black screen is reigned over by an acousmatic voice enunciating: “Muhammad, Read! In the name of thy Lord who created Man from a sensitive drop of blood, who teaches Man what he knows not … Read!” An image of a flame, slowly moving up from the bottom to the center of the screen, conjures up what literally becomes light out of darkness. We have not seen Muhammad or heard his voice, but we did hear a voice, implied to represent the words of the angel Gabriel. Is this voice an enactment of Gabriel’s voice or does it merely relay quotations excerpted from the Qur’Ɨn, and read by the film’s sporadic voice-over?

The Message’s codified language tempts the spectator into inferring that the voice could not possibly be diegetic, since that would denote an explicit re-enactment of Gabriel, when the film never even provides the mortal prophet with a literal voice. Such denotation would amount to an acoustic corollary to the re-presentation in flesh of a divine figure. The very act of an actor lending his voice to a prophet, or to an angel, not to mention God, would be construed as sacrilege. However, despite the spectator’s initiation into the film’s governing theological logic and aesthetic code of effacing holy figures, the cinematic status of Gabriel’s voice remains ambiguous. Even if we feign that the film’s narrator is not performing the voice of an angel, his acousmatic presence ironically places him at the apex of the sound track’s vocal hierarchy. His deep and sanctimonious male voice as well as his non-diegetic position, elevates him to the privileged slot of the omniscient narrator with a radiating Godlike authority.

Placing us within Muhammad’s subjectivity, some sequences, as we have seen, suture the spectator into a static literal point of view. Others, meanwhile, engage the viewer in the prophet’s dynamic movement across space as well as in his interaction with diverse interlocutors. When Muhammad escapes the idolatrous Meccans into a cave -for example, the film cuts from the searching Meccans riding in the wide, open desert to the claustrophobic darkness of a cave- as “Muhammad” glances through the unbroken spider’s web at the approaching enemies. The film deploys an over-the-shoulder low angle shot, as if looking from Muhammad’s sitting position inside the cave at the standing Meccans who wonder over his whereabouts. In this over-the-shoulder shot, however, the spectator is deprived of a literal shoulder over which he or she could “lean” his or her cinematic gaze. Yet, since the spectator is cognitively already accustomed to the film’s coded language, he or she makes the visual leap and “fills in”

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the gap. The Meccans at the cave’s entrance, illuminated by the bright sun, are seen within Muhammad’s point of view; the spectator’s senses, perceptions, and knowledge are confined to the trapped hero’s “eyes” and “ears.” The overlapping between primary identification (i.e. with the camera and with the spectator’s own perception) and secondary identification (with characters and the diegesis) enhances the increasing suspense, happily resolved through an additional thrill of a “first-hand” experience of a deus-ex-machina intervention: the unbroken web convinces the persecutors to leave, since Muhammad could not possibly be hiding inside the cave. Human logic fails the antagonists, and, allegorically, the kafir, the infidel or unbelieving spectator; for God’s hand possesses different rational, dictating scenarios written from above (maktub).

In other sequences, characters speak to Muhammad or more precisely to the camera from diverse angles, furnishing the spectator with a sense of the prophet’s corporeality and bodily kinesis: sitting, standing, getting off a camel, building a mosque, or walking away from an offensive enemy. In these sequences, the deployment of the conventional shot/counter-shot only highlights the unequal status of the two interlocutors’ vis-à-vis the camera: the seen/heard and the unseen/unheard. In contrast to Christian theological acrobatics to explicate the Holy Trinity, Jesus in Muslim tradition is revered not as a deity but only as a prophet, who, like Muhammad, is thought of as a mortal figure, with the difference that the latter is said to be the last prophet. Yet, despite the film’s endorsement of Muslim theology, its formal procedures for rendering Muhammad as a visual absence, ironically only endow him with God’s own attributes as the invisible deity. At the same time, in spite of Muhammad’s concealment, the film offers the spectator another inadvertent blasphemous experience: the vicarious power of “being” the prophet. The diverse characters approaching the prophet address the camera directly, having the effect of conflating Muhammad with the viewer. As a result, the spectator is converted, as it were, into Muhammad – a cinematic act that paradoxically would seem even more sacrilegious than simply revealing a corporeal prophet on the screen. To put it differently, while such aesthetic paradigms observe the prohibition, they also betray tensions rooted in the challenge of translating across differing media.

Unlike the cinema in the Muslim world, where adaptation was bound to frustrate any desire to gaze at God and his prophets, Hollywood’s biblical films emerged from a long history of Christian visual representation

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of divine figures, even if some of the producers were of Jewish descent.

Often happily endorsed by Christian denominations, biblical films represented holy figures such as Moses or Christ in a way that gave an additional twist to the phrase “larger-than-life.” At the same time, in Hollywood, too, biblical narratives were subjected to a surveillance regime. The Hays Office Code and the Production Code of 1934 explicitly forbade the negative depiction of religious figures. For the Church, adaptation – as in the case of Arab cinema – was judged in terms of its faithfulness to the original text. Quite in contrast to a poststructuralist stance concerning the ubiquity of mediation, the theological expectations about biblical and Qur’Ɨnic adaptation for the screen have tended to be dominated by a non-reflexive discourse in which an adaptation does not form a mode of “reading” and “writing;” the filmmaker is conceived as faithful “follower” or disciple who offers no exegesis on the holy text.

Often deploying the spectacular epic, biblical adaptations, however, were inevitably mediated by narrative and generic codes located within the space of both the fantastic and the testimonial. The cinema’s apparatus of the “real,” of nurturing the illusion of facticity, absorbed the biblical story into the aura of the moving image, where the history of God and his people was reincarnated, unfolding before the spectator’s eye in a kind of a ghastly repetition of time past. The Christian concept of the Holy Trinity facilitated the practice of visually representing the Father and the Son, for God always already comes re-presented, reincarnated though his Son, dressing himself in flesh, as it were, in order to reveal himself to his flock.

(Could Jesus be thought of as a filial form of adaptation?) Rather than a violation of God’s decree, the artistic procedure of endowing God with an image is accepted as homage, a mimesis of God’s own descent to earth in perceptible human form.

God himself first made his debut in silent cinema, and his presence over the next century of film has been felt in diverse genres, including the spectacular epic, the quotidian drama, and the satirical comedy. Although according to the Bible God made man in his own image, a few films have projected God in man’s image, making casting an unusually difficult task.

Adapted by Larry Gelbart from Avery Corman’s novel, Carl Reiner’s film Oh God! (1977) has George Burns play a sympathetic 80-year-old man/God, who chooses a supermarket manager (John Denver) to spread the Word to the rest of the world. Vittorio de Sica enacts the role of God in the fantastic Italian comedy Ballerina e buon dio (Ballerina and the Good God, 1958) directed by Antonio Leonviola. In Yvan Le Moine and

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Frederic Fonteyne’s Belgian comedy, Les Sept Péchés capitaux (Seven Deadly Sins, 1992), Robert Mitchum reincarnates an American God who smokes cigars and speaks English. In the animated NBC series God, the Evil, and Bob (2000), James Garner gives voice to a laid-back aging hippie God clashing with Satan, speaking in the slick British-accented voice of Jonathan Crow. Antonio Fagundes performs an exhausted down-to-earth God, resting from his labors in the northeast of Brazil, in Carlos Diegues’s Deus é Brasileiro (God is Brazilian, 2003). Playing God constitutes a rare challenge for actors. How would a method actor prepare for the role?

Since omnipotence and omniscience are not available to be accessed in the form of “sense memories,” what feelings does the actor draw on to recreate the sensation of creating the universe?

Although God’s color, like his shape, is not described in the Bible, God has largely been cast as white. One of the few exceptions is Marc Connelly and William Keighley’s Green Pastures (1936) where AfricanAmerican actors perform in English black vernacular Old Testament characters, including Moses and God, depicted against the backdrop of a Southern-style Heaven. “De Lawd," played by Rex Ingram, loves mankind but is also frustrated with their wicked ways. The image of a Black God, potentially threatening to white spectators, is “balanced” by the segregated filmic space as well as by the stereotypicality of the representation. The written prelude, furthermore, acts as a virtual disclaimer: God appears in many forms to those who believe in him. Thousands of Negroes in the Deep South visualize God and Heaven in terms of people and things they know in their everyday life. The Green Pastures is an attempt to portray that humble, reverent conception.

Betraying anxiety about white reception, the film authorizes itself, as it were, to project a Black God image through a narrative of God-is-createdin-the-believer’s-image, qualified by an implicitly patronizing view that these believers have no access to the true (white) God. Yet, the portrayal of a black God is nonetheless remarkable in light of the historical whitening of the figure of Christ. More recently, Morgan Freeman plays God in Tom Shadyac’s Bruce Almighty (2003), about a man (Jim Carrey) who always complains about God, until Freeman as God appears, and endows him with extraordinary powers for a 24-hour period. Such recent casting in a racially mixed filmic space also stands in contrast to earlier all-black cast biblical films. At the same time, even films that portray a black God remain faithful to the Biblical gendered rhetoric about God. It is rare to find a cinematic portrayal of God as a woman. One such anomaly is

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Kevin Smith’s unorthodox satirical film Dogma (1999) which has Alanis Morissette appeared as God/woman at the end, although she does not exactly become a humanized god.

God’s cinematic incarnation requires concrete choices involving complexion, facial features, and figure. Unlike in novels, appearance and description in the cinema are grounded in the concrete and the specific; phrases such as “sad face,” “seductive eyes,” or “God’s hands” have to be translated into the shape, color, and features of a particular performer. The visual adaptation of oral and written narratives, including biblical ones about God, forces the painter, photographer, or film director to take a stance, as it were. Cinematic production necessitates a selection of actors, and a casting process that inevitably locates face and body in concepts of gender and race. In Western iconography, for example, Christ was gradually de-Semitized, his appearance remodeled as an Aryan, deemed more appropriate for a supreme being within a white normative ethos. This image of Christ has persisted in contemporary visual culture, including in Hollywood, in the cinemas of the Americas and in European film. In Franco Zeffirelli’s epic Jesus of Nazareth (1977), the blue-eyed Robert Powell was cast for the role of Jesus, and Olivia Hussey for the role of Mary, also spared any overly Semitic appearance.

Whether respectful films, such as Ferdinand Zecca’s La vie et la passion de Jesus-Christ (The Life and passion of Jesus Christ, 1905,) Sidney Olcott’s From the Manger to the Cross (1912)38 and Mel Gibson’s 38 Produced by major film companies—Pathe and Kalem—La vie e la passion de Jesus-Christ and From Manger to the Cross—were profitable. From Manger to the Cross is considered the first moving picture to be shot on location in the land where Christ lived and died rather than against painted backdrops. Despite the help of their Palestinian “faithful guide,” Ameen Zaroun, the crew encountered difficulties, resulting in relocating some of the filming to Egypt. Recounting the filming in the Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem Gene Gauntier, the film’s scenarist, who also played the Virgin Mary, described the crew’s fear for their life as a “mob of angry Arabs and Turks” who “muttered threats” and “demanded Baksheesh.”

Conjuring up images of encirclement, her narrative virtually evokes the crucifixion story itself. The “greedy” Arabs and Turks, ironically, stood in for the Jews in the film itself. With the endorsement of Christian organizations, missionaries screened the New Testament films across Africa and Asia for non-Christian—or recently converted—viewers, some of whom encountered Christ’s image for the first time via the cinema. Although From Manger to the Cross was influenced by the famous Biblical woodcuts of Gustave Dore (1866), it also helped shape a cinematic iconography of Jesus, played by the English actor Robert Henderson-Bland.

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The Passion of Christ (2004,) or revisionist interpretations, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Marxist interpretation Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Matthew 1964,) or the irreverent narrative like Louis Bunuel’s L’Age d’or (1930,) Python Terry Jones’s Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979,) Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary (1985) and, to an extent, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)-- filmic adaptations of the New Testament have featured Christ on the screen, portraying him in the flesh. Adaptations based on the “Old Testament” (i.e. the Jewish Bible,) meanwhile, have tended to focus on the signs and symptoms of God’s works without attributing an actual face and body.

Thus, in a sense, these films remained “faithful” to the biblical narrative that eschews any description of God’s corporeality as well as to the prohibition against visualizing God. Given that the classical narrative film places its hero at the center as a vehicle for spectatorial identification, the biblical film was faced with an unusual challenge. Even if mediated via one of his messengers, such as Moses, the absence of the main protagonist-- the usual raison d’être of the story and its teleology-- the force behind Moses, remains invisible throughout such films. One might understand the affinity of the biblical film with the spectacular epic genre as a form of compensation for the absence of the One in whose name the narrative unfolds. The excessive visuality of the spectacular in most Hollywood biblical films thus displaces two “lacks” – the verbal nature of the Book and a central character devoid of visual traits. Generally, filmic adaptations draw on the novel’s descriptions of characters, translating the visuality of the verbal into film language. In the case of biblical adaptations, however, the written word of the source text itself denies access to the visuality of the protagonist, believed to be the very creator of the word.

While Hollywood’s biblical adaptations can be said to remain faithful to this de-visualization of God, they can simultaneously be seen as subverting it by reversing the biblical hierarchy of word over image. The “ontologically” kinetic status of the filmic image, its wide-perception as a technology of truth, endowed cinema with reality effect over the written word. Cinema lent indexical credibility to the Bible, authenticating and arming it with visual evidence, as it were. At the same time, cinema implicitly celebrated its own technological superiority over the Bible’s “mere” verbality. In a kind of ironic reversal, it was now the Word that Interestingly Gene Guantier raised doubts about making a religious picture with “the Man of God” portrayed in the flesh instead as a light of a shadow.

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depended on a totemic image. Moses’ name and words have exercised their awe for millennia, but now millions, when they hear the name, conjure up the figure of Charlton Heston. As a modern fetish, cinema has provided a secular form of star-worship cults, while substituting its storytelling for the traditional narrator mesmerizing his tribe around the fire in the dark of night. The ability of cinema to chart the world like the cartographer, to chronicle events like the historiographer, to “dig” into the distant past like the archeologist, to anatomize “exotic” customs like the anthropologist – all have propelled it to the role of a powerful, popular storyteller. Manifesting its cultural legitimacy, cinema borrowed the Bible’s aura through the act of adaptation, but simultaneously staged its own pre-eminence through an extravagant visuality.

Despite their forms and themes constituting a major break with both the literary canon and popular narrative traditions, novels written in Arabic and Hebrew have possessed a certain prestige by virtue of working with and through the sacred languages of the Bible and the Qur’Ɨn. The unfolding of nationalist modernization teleologies in the Arabic and Hebrew realist novel, and specifically their role in the larger project of language standardization, could not nevertheless erase the historical traces of the sacred inscribed in the word. The twin product of science and entertainment, cinema, meanwhile, had to struggle for its seventh art status within various cultural geographies. Early on, cinema enacted a historiographical and anthropological role, writing (in light) national and religious myths. The penchant of Hollywood’s silent films for graphological signifiers, such as hieroglyphs and Hebrew script, or simply through images of an open book, illuminates cinema’s potential as an archivist and historiographer. Through the visual cornucopia of text, and especially of the “original” sacred text, early cinema granted an aura of civilizational depth to an infant medium still associated with lowbrow entertainment.

Early film theory was also concerned with the relationship between the image and the word, the visual and the written. Film theorists like Sergei Eisenstein saw both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Japanese ideograms as anticipatory of the cinema. Eisenstein’s view seems to bring us full circle; cinema prolongs the visual conceptual logic of the ideogram or the hieroglyph, in which writing is motivated in that it mimics its referents.

Unlike language, which inhabits the realm of the abstract and arbitrary word, cinema exists within the realm of the concrete and of visible resemblance. The very phrase “graven images,” at the same time, conjures

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up the ideas of Andre Bazin, for whom the cinema registers or “engraves” images, a factor that for him guarantees film capacity for revelation.

Certain notions within postwar film theory, for example, the ideas of auteurism, camera-stylo and film-writing or écriture, meanwhile, gesture toward restoring the sacred aura of the word.

The transformation of the sacred word into the realm of the visual has generated paradoxes in Hollywood cinema as well. Although not explicitly an adaptation of a biblical narrative, Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) can be seen as an anachronistic staging of the clash between the monotheist Moses and pagan Egyptians, as well as between Jewish and Christian readings of the Bible. Raiders of the Lost Ark reveals a hidden Jewish substratum, even in the absence of Jewish characters and even though the word “Jewish” remains unuttered throughout the narrative. Indiana Jones liberates the ancient Hebrew ark from illegitimate Egyptian-Arab possession and Nazi sequestration. Biblical myths of wonders wrought against ancient Egyptians are now redeployed against the Nazis. The Hebrew ark miraculously dissolves the Nazis, who, unlike the American hero, ignore the divine injunction against looking at the Holy of Holies. The censure of “graven images” and specifically the Jewish prohibition against looking at the sacred, triumph over the Christian predilection for religious visualization.

Instantiating the typical paradox of cinematic voyeurism, the film punishes the Christian-German for his hubris of daring gaze at the divine beauty, while simultaneously generating spectacular visual pleasure for the viewer, who is able, thanks to the cinema’s magic, to possess a God-like power to see even what the hero himself cannot see.

While the imaging of God’s body was censured in the Judeo-Islamic tradition, in both the Bible and the Qur’Ɨn, God does speak, and his voice is heard, although it is never described. Yet in the cinema, in contrast to a written text, the voice raises the problem of embodiment. The voice, not unlike body and face, is inevitably specific – it is gendered and accented, and sometime classed and raced, it has a grain, an accent, an intonation, a timbre, a pronunciation, and even a vocal mannerism, all of which may remain “inaudible” in a text. While silent biblical films could simply cite Christ’s or God’s words in the form of intertitles, talking films, when not relying on written materials, were compelled to relay the specificity of the audible voice. Adaptations for the screen entail descriptive attributes, necessitating an audible embodiment of God’s voice. The voice, furthermore, has to be mediated via a specific language. In biblical spectaculars the ancient Egyptians and the Israelites all speak English, as,

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for that matter, does God. All have as their lingua franca the English of Southern California, with a touch of a British accent to convey greater prestige. (In fact, the English of God and of the ancient Hebrews does not in itself constitute a sacrilege to traditional or Orthodox Judaism that maintains Hebrew’s sacredness, a language to be solely retained for holy rituals). In biblical films God’s voice – deep, masculine, serious, resonant – delivers a kind of authority conventionally associated with the documentary off-screen narration, symptomatically called “Voice of God” narration.

The aura of the disembodied voice is genealogically traceable to the biblical paradox of the invisibility of the omnipresent. Playing on a primordial monotheist awe toward the unseen Creator, dystopian science fiction and suspense films have often deployed an omniscient incorporeal voice. In the opening of each Mission Impossible TV episode (CBS, 19661973,) a pre-recorded message outline the latest top-secret assignment for the cold-war warriors, the Impossible Mission Force. The taped words (performed by the actor Bob Johnson) always concluded with the same warning: "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." Framing the narrative, the all-knowing voice appears and disappears at the beginning of each program, but the unfolding action dutifully reenacts his word. The viewers, identifying with the heroes’ intricate and virtually impossible mission, are left in the dark as to the actual face of the authority figure who, thanks to miraculous technology, has all the traces of his own voice – the recorded tape – vanish in a cloud of smoke.

Critical literary discourse refers to the “omniscient narrator,” or to the “invisible narrator,” imperceptible like God, to the point, as Flaubert suggested, of being “refined out of existence.” The special kind of authority exerted by the unseen voice has not gone unnoticed in film theory, as when Michel Chion speaks of the acousmatic voice as the voice that is heard but whose source is not detectable in the shot, as in the case of the off-screen narrator in the Wizard of Oz (1939).39 Biblical films, more specifically, endow cinema itself with an aura of the miraculous, for cinema can magically reproduce the voice of the all-seeing omnipotent deity. Here the cinematic soundtrack possesses a capacity that the Bible itself did not have, to wit the capacity to give voice back to God. While the divine voice in the Bible is mediated by the written word, in the cinema 39

Michel Chion, Audio-Vision, ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

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the voice is conveyed literally, as real sound. It is as if the cinema had the Godlike ability to reincarnate the voice of God, returning the Biblical word to its original spoken mode. Although God remains intangible on the screen, his voice, at least, is susceptible to mimesis, re-presenting in-theflesh the scriptural “spoken” words. Within traditional Judeo-Muslim space, meanwhile, the enacting of God’s voice provokes anxieties similar in nature to his visualization, since even the disembodied voice is seen as corporeal. The film The Message, as we have seen, responded to this anxiety by avoiding any direct enactment of the voice of God or of his prophet Muhammad. The film intermittently uses a male voice-over narrator, who recites scenes and sayings from the Qur’Ɨn that do evoke the presence of an authority beyond the spectator’s perceptible senses. At other instances, God’s “spoken” words are “heard” via the visual, that is, through the representation of written material quoted from the Qur’Ɨn.

The epic-spectacular generic space, meanwhile, cannot be seen as the antithesis of the biblical representation, since the Bible itself constitutes a mélange of genres.40 Indeed, the Bible proliferates in spectacular scenes on an epic scale: “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off” (Exodus 20: 18). God’s visuality is absent but the visual symptoms of his power are omnipresent and grand in scope, virtually constituting a visual language. It would be misleading, in other words, to contrast the cinema as a purely visual medium with the Bible as a purely verbal medium. The features of a Biblical spectacular film—astounding miracles, horrendous plagues, parted seas, burning bushes— are already present in the Ur-text prior to adaptation.

Spectacular moments in biblical passages offer nature’s sublime disturbances, such as lightning and floods, as signs of the divinity behind them, while God himself remains obscure and unintelligible. His “appearance” through cloud and fire has traditionally been interpreted as a manifestation created by God for the purpose of revelation, rather than as a display of God himself, or even of something resembling him.41 Deuteronomy describes the Israelites’ experience on Mount Sinai as a matter of hearing the voice of God without perceiving any shape (Deuteronomy 4: 12). The God who decreed the prohibition of graven images, the biblical text suggests, does not reveal himself to his chosen 40

On genres of the Bible, see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, New York: Basic Books, 1981.

41 Onkelos, the Bible translator/commentator, interpreted God’s “appearance” as merely a manifestation of his presence, not to be confused with God.

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people. The adaptation of biblical stories, even by Hollywood’s imagemaking machine, then, is itself constrained by a source text, the Bible, which obscures God’s image. The adaptation theology guiding most biblical films betrays an ambivalent relationship to the source text’s antivisual injunction. It renders God’s words and his audio-visual manifestations as a spectacle, yet leaves the precise nature of his image an unresolved enigma.

The aniconism typical of monotheism has been echoed in discourses about the cinema, which, especially since the introduction of semiology, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, have been concerned with obsessive mimesis, fetishistic voyeurism, the fixating gaze, star worship, and idolatrous iconicity. The powerful apparatus of cinema was said to produce reality effects that delude the spectator into believing in the threedimensionality of the moving image. Spellbound and transfixed in the dark, the spectator was paradigmatically imagined as somnambulating in a shrine, a hypnotized believer in a false god. The pseudo-ancient Egyptian and Greek architectural designs of the movie palace only intensified the association of cinema with ritual and pilgrimage. As in the Mosaic rejection of graven images, apparatus theory inclined to view cinema as an iconic space that entraps the spectator in an illusionistic primal error – substituting a representation of an object for the actual object. Echoes of monotheist anxiety about the substitution error are detectable in what I call the “literarist” ambivalence toward filmic adaptation. From this perspective, while the act of adaptation might seem, on the one hand, to affirm the desirability of the word, on the other hand, the actual adaptation is despised as merely a surrogate icon incapable of surpassing the true god, the supreme textual being. Films based on novels are regarded as doubly iconic both in relation to a pre-existent reality and also vis-à-vis the novel.

Within this literarist theology, film incarnates an earthly embodied object, inferior to heavenly words, while the practice of adaptation remains always already an act of inauthenticity and deviance.

Literarist adaptation discourse has also been haunted by creationist and originary theologies. In the beginning was God who created Adam in his image, but Adam is constitutionally incapable of seeing the all-perceiving creator who, in any case, warns against even thinking of creating his image. Imitation of God and a reproduction of his image, to evoke Walter Benjamin, would diminish his aura, premised on uniqueness and inaccessibility. Seen as mere repetition of the authentic word, film, in literarist adaptation discourse, is often assigned the actantial slot of the

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corporeal body vis-à-vis the novel’s “faceless” abstractness. If, in the beginning, there was always the word and the novel, film is then bound, within this logic, to re-enact the novel as divine creation to be refashioned in the creator’s image. Defined as a lack, cinema becomes a mere speculum that registers a copy of the originary word, just as man is God’s fallible reflection, and just as all creators ultimately mimic, on a smaller scale, the creator. Rather than another mode of mediation, cinema’s visual facility is reduced to an iconic object deemed to forever orbit around the holy text. Novels, furthermore, enjoy a certain aura derived from the very seniority of the medium of the word, through which God and monotheism are said to bring order out of chaos. Literarist discourse about the novel/film inscribes the creator/created dualism, in which the author of the world always remains the primeval and primordial source from which everything else emanates and back toward which everything refers. But, within another perspective, the adapted novel can be seen as the creature of the film, just as God can be seen as the copy of (wo)man. In sum, monotheism’s conception of God and his representation in a sense homologizes the intricate relationship between novel and film.

The aniconism of literarist adaptation discourse is premised on numerous misconceptions about the complex nature of cinema. Adaptation has been conventionally viewed as a transition from what is wrongly understood to be a uniquely verbal medium (the novel) to what is understood, again wrongly, to be a uniquely visual medium (film). The visual and the written remain locked within a rigid discursive dichotomy uninterested in the languagedness of the image, nor in the visuality of the word, whether literally through its graphic image or through the images it elicits in the reader and the viewer. Although the word/image dichotomy is inscribed at the very beginnings of monotheism, even the biblical hermeneutic tradition itself, as we have seen, has at times acknowledged that images and words are not easily separable. Words may elicit images, while narrative, as we know, offers the unfolding of a movement in verbal time and space, which triggers imagery in the mind of the reader (and the viewer). God’s own scriptural name, commonly pronounced as yehova, constitutes the Bible’s most sacred word. Yet, his name also inscribes the very prohibition on its utterance, thus paradoxically producing God’s textual presence as a merely visual mark, discernible only to the eye that sees. Images, for their part, may elicit words in the mind of the viewer, whether in the form of proverbs, metaphors, or concepts.

The monotheist locus classicus of the graven image prohibition left its residue in the valorization of the text, and in the view of filmic adaptation

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as an act of infidelity, a kind of denigration. Symptomatic of a certain logophilia and iconophobia, the rejection of adaptation manifests a deep investment in the word as a privileged medium of signification, somehow possessing access to a higher truth. An imprecise and reductive discourse about cinema as merely a visual medium, then, underestimates the potential of film language to transform “The Book” into multiple realms in which the word, images, sounds, dialogue, music, and written materials all constitute, together, the complex space called the cinema. Transcending such false dichotomies as the “visual” and the “verbal” is crucial for criticizing the orthodoxy of literarist adaptation theologies. To write complexly about the “translation” of “The Book” for the screen thus requires moving beyond an iconophobia rooted in the adoration of the word, and beyond a logophobia rooted in the fetishism of the image. Theological anxiety concerning the adaptation of sacred texts thus allegorizes the very discourses about adaptation: the anxiety of moving from the sacred and the canonical to the flesh-and-blood incarnation, grounded in the concrete and the specific – and, inevitably, the profane.

Works Cited Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim. Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Allen, Terry. “Aniconism and Figural Representation in Islamic Art,” Five Essays on Islamic Art, Sebastopol, CA: Solipsist Press, 1988.

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative, New York: Basic Books, 1981.

Arnold, Thomas W. Painting in Islam: A Study of the Place of Pictorial Art in Muslim Culture, New York: Dower, 1965.

Assmann, Jan Moses. The Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Bahgat, Ahmed Rafaat. “Cinéma et histoire: du Baiser dans le désert à l’Émigré,” in Wassef (ed.), Egypte: 100 ans de cinéma, 1995.

Bland, Kalman P. “Anti-Semitism and Aniconism: The Germanophone Requiem for Jewish Visual Art,” in Catherine M. Soussloff (ed.), Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

Brend, Barbara. Islamic Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

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Carlos M. N. Eire. War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision, ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Dabashi, Hamid. “In the Absence of the Face,” Social Research 67: 1, 2000.

Derrida, Jacques. “Edmond Jabes and the Question of the Book,” in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Doody, Margaret A.. The True Story of the Novel, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

Fares, Bishr. Philosophie et jurisprudence illustrées par les Arabes: la querelle des images en Islam, Melanges Lois Massignon (Institut de Damas, 1957), and Ahmad Muhammad, “Muslims and Taswir,” The Muslim World 45: 3 July 1995.

Grabar, Oleg. The Mediation of the Ornament, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Halbertal, Moshe and Margalit, Avishai. Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Hawting, G. R. The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples, New York: Warner Books, 1991.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentiethcentury French Thought, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987.

Kassem, Mahmoud. “Adaptation, égyptianisation et ‘remake’,” in Magda Wassef (ed.), Egypte: 100 ans de cinéma, Paris: Editions Plume, Institut du Monde Arabe, 1995.

Maimonides, Moses, (Ibn Maimun). The Guide of the Perplexed, 2 vols, trans. Shlomo Pines Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Mir, Mustansir, “Qur’Ɨn as Literature,” Religion and Literature 20: 1 Spring, 1988.

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

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Stam, Robert and Raengo, Alessandra (ed.). “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation,” in, Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.

Steiner, George. “Our Homeland the Text,” Salmagundi,66 Winter–Spring 1985.

Qur’Ɨn, surah 21: 53/52 to 70.

Samir, Farid. “La censure mode d’emploi,” in Wassef (ed.), Egypte: 100 ans de cinéma, 1995.

Stam, Robert. Literature Through Film: Realism, Magic, and The Art of Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.

Shohat, Ella. “Coming To America: Reflections on Hair And Memory Loss,” in Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, Lisa Suhair Majaj & Amal Amireh, (ed.), Garland Publishers, 2000.

Shafik, Viola. Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, Cairo: The American University of Cairo Press, 1998.

—. “Egyptian Cinema,” in Oliver Leaman (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film, London: Routledge, 2001.

Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert. “Narrativizing Visual Culture: Towards a Polycentric Aesthetics,” in the Visual Culture Reader, Nicholas Mirzoeff (ed.), London: Routledge, 1998.

PART II: EUROPEAN CINEMA: POLITICS OF PAST AND PRESENT

CHAPTER TWO THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI: POLITICS/PSYCHOANALYSIS/CINEMA FRANK P. TOMASULO

Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920) has been seen –by its authors and by Siegfried Kracauer– as a revolutionary horror film turned into a conformist one by its producers, Erich Pommer and Decla. More precisely, this early instance of a genre film might be seen as fulfilling one of genre's major ideological functions: to be symptomatic of the psychosocial contradictions within a given culture. Therefore, rather than seeing CALIGARI as a direct homological reflection of the “real” Germany of that epoch, we might better understand the film's representational process by noting that it does not so much signify “Weimar Germany” as it demonstrates how Weimar Germany attempted to signify itself.

The film's signifying systems –its genre conventions, narrative structure, lighting, set design, and acting– and its representational process –types of male and female characters, psychological situations, societal correlatives– need to be linked in a sublation of style and ideology. In short, by historicizing and politicizing the stylistic paradigm, so to speak, by exploring the intersections of genre and gender, I hope to expose the text and its structuration in its aesthetico-political context.

Three modes of signification within the text's discourse are worth considering from this standpoint: the political, the psychoanalytical, and the aesthetic; in short: Caligari-as-Hitler, Caligari-as-Freud, and Caligarias-Filmmaker.

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Caligari-as-Hitler Germany's late nationhood after the Franco-Prussian War (1870) proceeded from a loose federation of principalities to a strong centralized state. Its concomitant development from an agrarian to an urbanized society, from handicraft cottage industries to manufacturing, left its mark (pun intended) socially, psychologically, and culturally. The international system of cartels and trusts (1895-1914) that evolved from this process of industrialization culminated in the First World War. The German defeat in that war was a great shock to most Germans since the Fatherland had not actually been invaded.

The abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm and the establishment of a republic were strategic moves on Germany's part to help ensure more favorable peace negotiations at Versailles. These moves did nothing, however, to resolve the internal contradictions within the Realpolitik of the period.

The new republic was led by the Social Democrats, but forces on the left (in particular, the Spartacists), led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, mobilized a general strike before the armistice and fomented a major uprising just before the general elections. The Freikorps and Junkers, the military hierarchy on the right, put down the nascent German Revolution and murdered the leftist leaders.

Eventually, the Social Democrats won a plurality in the 1919 elections.

The resulting Weimar constitution was essentially democratic, but it nonetheless preserved the hierarchical prewar power structure: the entrenched bureaucracy, reactionary judges, the military, and big business interests that had dominated Germany throughout its high capitalist phase of development. Ironically, it was the leader of the socialist party, Friedrich Ebert, who became the first president of the Weimar Republic.

Ebert pledged to preserve the Prussian military tradition as one Spartacusbund and kept Berlin under martial law for most of 1919–the period in which Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920) was filmed.

Elements of this political/historical reality do enter the text, but they are displaced and become ideological representations of that reality. The contradictions of the text are thus not the same as the real sociohistorical and political contradictions outlined above since it is generally the task of ideology (and, I might add, genre) to efface such contradictions. The film

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does contain several overt internal contradictions (i.e., the aporia of the frame story and the central narrative); the contradictions being effaced are those between ideology and history itself. Indeed, the textual dissonances are an effect of the film's production of political ideology.

Although the film's authors, Janowitz and Mayer, were pacifists who felt their script was an attack on the militarism of their day, the resolution they ultimately proffer (even without the Rahmenhandlung, the framing device) is basically a social democratic one, namely, that the revelation of injustice will lead to its eradication. The final “revolt,” therefore, is on the psychological level (and within the parameters of society as it was then organized). It therefore remains reformist at best; at worst, it legitimizes the ideology of bourgeois liberalism. In addition, the displacement of the historically real repression in postwar Germany onto a psychoanalyst elides the real class dynamics of the Weimar Republic. What is basically a social struggle for control is displaced onto the plane of inner malaise, a staple of horror films of repressive cultures.

To be specific, the coffin of Cesare (his very name an allusion to the military conqueror Julius Caesar as well as to the recently deposed Kaiser) is a filmic icon that can be related to the death and eventual rebirth/reincarnation of German-Prussian militarism. Indeed, at one point in the film, Dr. Caligari informs the crowd that the somnambulist has been asleep for twenty-three years. Dating the print from its British release date (April 1921), we realize that Cesare has been in a trance since 1898, the precise year of the death of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck, of course, was the chief architect of German unification following the Franco-Prussian War, as well as the first chancellor of the German empire.

Similarly, the cabinet of the film's title may be a subtle allusion to the political cabinet of the new social democracy, a government “coffin” for postwar Germany. Thus, Cesare's diegetic reawakening can be linked to a need for a return to Prussian militarism, to the socially repressed. The later replacement of Cesare's body with a dummy hints at the ultimate ineffectuality of the “puppet” government of the Weimar Republic.

Francis is able to decode this; he realizes that the “puppet” stands in for the real forces of evil in Holstenwall. As he tells the police: “There is something frightful in our midst!”

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Image 1: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Shadows

Reading the film as sociopolitical allegory, then, we can see that the dummy Cesare represents the Weimar social democracy, which presents a front to the world to convince it that Germany's repressive, militaristic forces (represented by Cesare) are harmless. That the police capture the wrong man is indicative of another contradiction: in postwar Germany, the leftist leaders were persecuted, arrested, and murdered, while the rightwing forces were allowed a relatively free hand.

If Dr. Caligari is an avatar of the repressive aspects of German life that eventually culminated in the rise to power of Adolf Hitler (Caligari's name invokes that of another ruthless Roman emperor, Caligula), then his harkening back to a medieval manuscript (dated 1156 A.D.) and to his namesake (a monk circa 1093 A.D.) may suggest a return or regression to Germany's historical and political childhood, the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire, when militarism was undisputed. The medieval architecture in the film furthers this regressive historical motif.

Authority and tyranny are figured in the text through another motif, the continual appearance of high-backed chairs on which bureaucrats sit.

Even the mild-mannered, poetic Alan has a high-backed chair in his flat, hinting that he also has an authoritarian side. The dialectics of ascent and descent (high staircases up to the police station and asylum; long stairways down to the fairgrounds) reinforces this sort of hierarchical figuration.

Indeed, the whole film may be positing a reconsideration of the traditional German belief in authority (going to the police, trusting the medical establishment, etc.).

Caligari can consequently be seen as positing outwardly respectable

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forms (Dr. Caligari=social democracy=Weimar Republic) masking basically tyrannical impulses (Cesare=militarism=Kaiser). Such a political/historical reading reveals that young men can be mesmerized into committing murder at the behest of authority.

Caligari-as-Freud In precisely the same year that Caligari was being made (1919), Freud published his treatise on war neuroses. This work emphasized the conflict between the soldier's old peacetime ego and his new warlike one. In the same year, Freud began work on a first draft of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Historicizing Freud, one can see that the real-life horrors of World War One may have had an effect on the direction of his work from the earlier study of unconscious individual phenomena (1895-1920) to the systematic inquiry into the structure of society (1920-39).

In Caligari, Cesare's peaceful, flower-loving persona is in sharp contrast to his brutal behavior in Francis's narration, confirming Freud's diagnosis of war neurosis. Furthermore, the duplication and multiplication of the situations and participants represent various forms of Freudian parent-child relationships. On this level, the film (like most horror films) allows for the individual and social discharge and gratification of unconscious oedipal desires (Caligari, as father figure, is locked up and put in a straightjacket), but the “censor” ultimately triumphs when Francis is eventually restrained himself for even wishing such a fantasy. This oedipal scenario is also repeated in the Cesarean section of the narrative (pun intended again), in which Cesare renounces his master by taking Jane for himself (cf. Totem and Taboo); however, he is sternly punished for this offense to patriarchy. He is hunted down and dies. Even Jane substitutes Caligari for her own father when she searches for him at the fair. And Jane falls under Caligari's spell with disastrous consequences.

Oedipal revolt and patriarchal suppression inform the entire narrative.

Caligari himself is forced to wait and is patronized by the Town Clerk.

Likewise, at the police station and in the asylum, Francis is patronized by various authority figures. The oedipal injunction to grow up and be like the father was even inscribed in the film's advertising slogan: Du musst Caligari werden (“You must become Caligari”), which became a part of popular culture along the lines of STAR WAR's “May the Force be with you.” Unlike the latter slogan, however, this one is actually seen by Dr.

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Caligari in the film. It is written across his world at the moment his mind snaps and he takes on the identity of his medieval namesake from the First Reich. It is as if the film, despite some progressive content, is saying that Germany must return to its militaristic forbears for inspiration in the current crisis.

Not only must Dr. Caligari “become Caligari,” but Francis (through the psychoanalytical processes of transference and projection) must identify with the doctor (as father). And, sure enough, Francis takes over Caligari's office, pores over his diary, imagines the whole “You must become Caligari” scene, and instigates the usurpation of the charlatan's authority at the asylum. In this context (the entire film being Francis's talking cure on the bench), it is not important whether or not Francis has actually remembered something from his past; because he verbalizes his feelings and shapes them into language (whether intertitles or filmic images), they can be seen as symptoms. Even if Francis's story is dismissed as lunacy or nightmare, that cauchemar may be the “royal road” to the (social) unconscious.

Otto Rank has written on the Doppelgänger motif in The Student of Prague. In that story, a man promises not to kill his rival but later learns that his “double” has. In Caligari, Francis initiates just such a vow with Alan regarding their rivalry for Jane's affections. Shortly thereafter, Alan is murdered. Since the murderer is never actually seen on screen –a looming shadow substitutes– it is possible that Francis himself killed his friend (perhaps that is why he was institutionalized in the frame story). If Francis is not the murderer (indeed, there might not have even been a murder), it may well be that he has “killed off” a part of himself, to assuage the resultant guilt. Indeed, even within his own narrative, Francis appears to behave like a guilty party. He is straightening his clothes when informed of Alan's murder; his reaction to the news is suspicious and exaggerated; he even imagines Alan smiling at Cesare's death prediction an obvious wish fulfillment on Francis's part.

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Image 2: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Coffin

Another Freudian device used in Caligari is the mechanism of dream.

The film's analogical codification of the oneiric establishes rather conventional gender paradigms, epitomized in a visual pattern of circles and straight lines, articulations that suggest cunnic and phallic imagery.

Jane's room, for instance, is circular, as are her wallpaper patterns, draperies, and decorative moon. In contrast, jagged or straight lines figure throughout the male discourse and are especially associated with Caligari.

Caligari carries a cane and has three prominent lines on both his hair and his gloves. Three prominent lines also run up the steps of the police station and toward the asylum staircases. Thus, the linear is repeatedly associated throughout the text with masculine authority (Cesare's knife), the orbicular with feminine submission. In fact, when Francis confronts his nemesis, he explicitly resolves the conflict with reference to this motif: “The circle is closing in, Dr. Caligari!”

Another Freudian figuration in the text involves the repetition of

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gazes, glances, and glasses: vision-as-power. Both Jane and Cesare have blank stares, as if mesmerized. Freud, of course, was associated with hypnosis from his early days with Charcot and Breuer. And Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego deals with hypnosis as a regressive state analogous to dream. The “gaze into my eyes” concept of hypnosis is present in CALIGARI through a relay and exchange of glances and through the prominence of Caligari's eyeglasses. Francis is able to recognize Caligari only when the doctor puts on those circular spectacles. Finally, Dr. Caligari's experiments center on whether subjects would commit otherwise prohibited acts under hypnotic suggestion.

Raymond Bellour has suggested that “hypnosis is a better analogy for the cinematographic apparatus (le dispositif) than the more frequently invoked analogy of the dream.”1 In Caligari, the somnambulist's mechanical physiognomy and consciousness signify an automaton-like existence comparable to the position of the cinema spectator mesmerized by the bidding of the controlling imagery. Thus, the Caligari-Cesare relationship mirrors that of the film director-spectator in that the audience is put in a quasi-trancelike state by the cinematic spectacle and the horror film director can control audience responses, even to the point of having them (at least vicariously) participate in murder and other forbidden impulses that they would abhor in a fully conscious state.

All these psychoanalytical motifs assist in the displacement of political/historical reality in Caligari; in the final frame sequence, Caligari's optimistic prognosis –“Now I see how he can be brought back to sanity”– suggests that socially determined insanity can be cured on the individual level within the prevailing social matrix, without resolving the contradictions of the culture that may have caused the dementia in the first place. Indeed, the Social Democrats' house organ, Verwärts, specifically praised Caligari for its “sympathy for the mentally diseased and the selfsacrificing activity of the psychiatrists and attendants.”2 The polarization within the German body politic between bourgeois forces and a popular front leftism is masked in the text and remapped onto 1

Bellour, Reymond, “Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis”, Camera Obscura 3-4, Summer 1979, pp. 100-103.

2 Quoted in Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947, p. 71.

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the topography of an Expressionist landscape of inner turmoil and interpersonal tensions. The outer world in Caligari is determined and figured by the projection of inner states of mind onto that landscape.

Conversely, the characters internalize the conflicts of their social milieu, whose roots are still in totalitarian structures.

Caligari-as-Filmmaker “You all believe I am mad. That is not true. It is the Director who is mad!”

This self-reflexive bit of Francis's dialogue is doubly interesting given that Friedrich Feher, the actor who played Francis, insisted for years that he actually directed Caligari. The film is additionally self-reflexive in its meta-references to the conditions and forms of cinematic representation.

This is enunciated early on when we see two carousels revolving against a painted backdrop. A merry-go-round, of course, is a mechanical reproduction of the real experience of riding a horse. Thus the text announces at its outset not only that its images are artificial but that illusionism will be a central concern of the narrative. It is worth noting that one of the favorite subjects for the zoetrope (precursor of the cinematic apparatus) was the prancing horse.

Similarly, after Caligari obtains his permit (for his illusionistic sideshow act) we iris in on an arm cranking an organ in a steady circular motion. This cranking approximates in many ways the concentricity required by early motion picture cameras and projectors. The monkey in this scene entertains at the behest of the organ grinder, just as Cesare performs for Caligari. The monkey also accepts payment from the passersby, thereby enunciating within the text the conditions of production, distribution, and exhibition of entertainment. In this scene, Caligari is linked to both the monkey and a dwarf; the mountebank is thus associated with an animal and an anomaly, as well as the magister ludi figure, the organ grinder. Beyond this scene, however, it must be remembered that Caligari (like Caligari) puts on a show and delivers entertainment; the controlling figure within the diegesis, then, is linked to the controlling figure outside it, the filmmaker.3 3

For convenience, I use the term “filmmaker” (or “director,” etc.) to refer not to the actual real-life filmmaker (Robert Wiene) or filmmaking team (writers, producer, cinematographer, set designers, etc.) but, rather, to a textual function

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The issue of representation within the text is foregrounded repeatedly, making Caligari an early instance of the modernist cinema (despite other, more traditional figurations, such as theatrical frontality and tableaux, use of time within the long take, etc.). Our first view of Cesare, for instance, is a representation: his publicity poster.

But although the representation of space in Caligari represents a clear break with the illusionism of Renaissance perspective, the inscription of the subject is still along bourgeois lines in that the space for social struggle is displaced onto a level of individual subjectivity (within the diegesis) and onto a dimension of high-culture aesthetics (within the larger cultural context). Caligari 's spatial economy is still the locus of individual action and character identification.

The film's figuration of lighting and shadowing has provoked numerous exegeses, almost all on the aesthetic plane, yet the fact that shadow and light areas were painted directly on the sets is perhaps the most obvious inscription of the postwar German economy in the film.

Caligari 's producer, Erich Pommer, has explicitly explained the unusual lighting scheme in terms of economic determinants: Decla had used up its postwar ration of electricity, so shadows were painted to cut down on costs.

Image 3: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Doctors

analogous to Wayne Booth's concept of the implied author in literature. Wayne C. Booth, Wayne C., The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. 71-76.

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Two major narratological issues are usually raised in connection with Caligari: the Rahmenhandlung, or framing device (originally proposed by Fritz Lang), and the status of Francis as the film's narrator. The two questions are interrelated; indeed, the surprise inherent in the destruction of Francis's authority as narrator at the end results directly from the return of the framing structure. That frame is effaced throughout most of the central narrative, in part by the indirect discourse relating to Caligari's activities which Francis could not have witnessed directly (e.g., at the Town Clerk's office, when Cesare is first brought to the asylum).

If the expressionistic sets were meant to represent Francis's insanity subjectively, why for instance, is the asylum just as distorted at the end?

Can the “twist ending” be somehow inscribed into a radical reading of the film, as representing outwardly respectable forms (such as social democracy) masking tyrannical impulses and madness (the contradictions of capitalism, especially in its social democratic modification)? Or, rather, is the effectiveness of the text, to contain anxiety about the state of Germany by positing a solution on the level of individual adjustment?

Conclusion Seen through the respective grids of politics, psychoanalysis, and cinematic representation, the text's contradictions stand in bold relief. The various textual displacements are seen as attempts to close the discourse around by themselves. The “gaps and fissures” show, even if they are not finally resolved within the film. The ideological and gender contradictions of a genre film, especially when viewed in the context of the sociohistorical and political milieu they grow out of, are often irreconcilable.

This is often explained (or explained away) by invoking the concept of modernist ambiguity.

Works Cited Bellour, Raymond, “Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis”, Camera Obscura 3-4, Summer 1979.

Kracauer, Siegfried, From Caligari to Hitler, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947.

Booth, Wayne C., The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

CHAPTER THREE FROM SALO TO GOMORRA: THE INFLUENCE OF PIER PAOLO PASOLINI'S POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON INDEPENDENT ITALIAN CINEMA GIACOMO MANZOLI

It could be stated that Post-WWII Italian culture in its entirety is marked by three intellectuals who have been able to reach international stature: Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Umberto Eco. As is known, there is a sort of Italian passion towards “commedia dell’arte”: in this respect, every one of them has been capable of demarcating, within the internal debate, a well defined and personal cultural space, inside which each of them plays a key role.

Calvino has been identified as the “pure artist”, the one who has pushed the technique of writing toward unconquerable peaks through incessant experimentation; Umberto Eco is the well educated man, the philosopher who faces the present and challenges the patterns set for the interpretation of reality, updating them in the light of post-modernity, through which he moves with an extreme agility as well as within the cultural industry which produces it. Finally, Pasolini is the civilian poet, that is to say the intellectual who directly and dramatically faces the objective situation of his country, its contradictions and its transformations.

In confirmation of this hypothesis, it is useful to reference the interpersonal relationships which took place among these three figures; contact among them might appear to have been extraordinarily rare, if we take into consideration that we are talking about the three most influential thinkers of a quite narrow and constricted cultural debate. Moreover, they all came from a common political tradition –the Gramscian left, used (by

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necessity and by belief) to confront the heavy influence of the Catholic Church– and they all walked similar paths, such as reflecting upon mass culture, language and linguistics, and semiotics, and considering each as turning elements for the unveiling of the processes of the new media, and therefore cultural, scenery.

Between Pasolini and Umberto Eco, for instance, there was a brief polemical dialogue in the mid-sixties, when Eco lined up defending orthodox semiotics against the confident and heretic use of it made by Pasolini. Nevertheless, it is clear that this stemmed from Pasolini’s more general rejection of the so-called Neoavanguardia1. Pasolini confronted Eco with a certain dose of irony as his position consisted of an ideological rejection of modernity representing the very prototype of the apocalyptical approach theorized by Umberto Eco in one of his better known books2.

On the other hand, between Pasolini and Calvino, there was a series of contacts that were even less than incidental: in 1959, Calvino expressed his appreciation for Una vita violenta (A Violent Life, 1959) considering it preferable to Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi, 1955)3. In 1964, Pasolini was slightly provocative, claiming that the relationship between Calvino and the average Italian took place on the terrain of the “acceptance of normativity”. Calvino soon replied to Pasolini and the controversy lasted for a year through the pages of several journals; then Pasolini ended it with a statement discussed below4.

In 1973, Pasolini enthusiastically wrote a review of Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities, 1972), connecting its narrative structure with that of Il fiore delle mille e una notte (Arabian Nights, 1974). Calvino, though deeply touched, was severe in his negative response to Salò (Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975), describing it as a “confused and desperate” film5. In this interesting argument between them, it is significant that 1 Ferretti, Giulio Carlo. “Pasolini e l'avanguardia”. Rinascita. February 3, and Pasolini, 1967; Pier Paolo, “La fine dell'avanguardia”. Nuovi argomenti. 3-4: JulyDecember, 1966.

2 Eco, Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati, Milano: Bompiani,1964.

3 Quoted by Bazzocchi, Marco Antonio, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Milano: Mondadori, 1998, p. 63. About Pasolini's linguistics, also see Schérer, René “Langues et politiques mineures de Pier Paolo Pasolini”, Chimères. 2001, p. 43.

4 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Diario linguistico”, Rinascita. March 6, 1965.

5 Calvino, Italo. “Sade è dentro di noi”, Il Corriere della Sera. November 30, 1975.

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Pasolini’s main reproach to Calvino is for the latter’s rejection of politics.

A reprimand which helps to better define the problematic meaning Pasolini assigned to this term: in the linguistic dispute about “neo-italian” (neoitaliano), Pasolini charges Calvino with the accusation of not having a political perspective: The inter-regional international language, signage of the future, will be the language of a world unified by industry and technocracy (if Marxism loses the path of revolution) and literates, being men among other men, will undergo this same mutation6.

The responsibility of intellectuals is, therefore, that of informing the world of this mutation through the use of scandal, supporting the only alternative way to revolution. According to Pasolini, that was exactly what Calvino was not doing, or at least was not doing with enough belief. This issue arose again in 1975, when Pasolini wrote Lettera luterana a Italo Calvino7, in which he replied to an article by Calvino published by the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, about a sexual crime which upset Italian public opinion8.

According to Calvino, the sociological reasons for the crime were to be found in the underdevelopment of the Italian bourgeoisie, which had become wealthy without developing an adequate sense of civil values. In contrast, Pasolini’s interpretation was much more radical: the genocide of a traditional cultural heritage by the bourgeoisie (defined, in La Ricotta, 1963, as the “most ignorant in Europe”) had determined the rise of several blind and violent imitators among those who were still “people” (again in La ricotta defined as the “most illiterate in Europe”), without being anchored anymore to a strong idea of the Real. In Pasolini’s review of Le città invisibili9 he framed his divergence from Calvino in a wider, more general and more coherent manner. At some point Calvino embraced actuality, while Pasolini remained faithful to his rejection of it.

6

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Diario linguistico, Rinascita. March 6, 1965.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Lettera luterana a Italo Calvino”, Il Mondo. October 30, 1975.

8 For a comprehensive view of the controversy between Pasolini and Calvino and of the role of both intellectuals in the Italian society of that time, see Benedetti, Carla, Pasolini contro Calvino, Milano: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998.

9 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Le città invisibili, Tempo. Genuary 28, 1973.

7

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Yet, this stubborn rejection was extraordinarily fecund, underlining the entire career of Pasolini as a civilian poet, but still covering up an ideological matrix acutely reclaimed as heretical and which, somehow, determined Pasolini’s greatness as an artist as well as, at the same time, his inevitable loss. The same idea of rejection as something acknowledged as inevitable, fits the frame of a poetics well described by the figure of speech of “sineciosi”, that is to say of the confrontation of the incompatible, defined by Franco Fortini as a distinctive trait of Pasolini’s human and artistic walk10.

In fact, Pasolini faces the entire political revolution of Italy from postWWII to the seventies, undertaking an oblique position which allowed him to bring up the contradictions nestled under an excessively schematic debate. To summarise this revolution, we might say that the Italian republic was born from the ashes of Fascism and built up on the experience of the anti-fascist popular resistance movement. The scenery was marked by direct opposition which reflected what was happening in the world: that is to say the conflict between a group inspired by the religious traditions of the country (Democrazia Cristiana – Christian Democracy), supported and encouraged by the American military forces present in Italy, and a group which received economic and organizational support from the Soviet Union, the Italian Communist Party, which was inspired over a long period by a Marxist-Leninist outlook. Over this kind of internal tension –sometimes concrete but most of the time latent– the process of the modernization of Italy started to take place, followed by an irregular and troubled development11.

Pasolini actively got involved in politics after the death of his brother Guido, who was part of the popular resistance movement and was killed by members of a contending brigade close to Tito and to the Yugoslavian Communist Party. This event was traumatic for Pasolini, one he would go over for a long time. After that, Pasolini subscribed to the Italian Communist Party, from which he was ousted at the beginning of the forties because of his homosexuality. Nevertheless, his ouster never

10

Fortini, Franco, “Pasolini e le ultime illusioni”, Il Corriere della Sera. August 28, 1977.

11 Gundle, Stephen, Between Hollywood and Moscow. The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-1991. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. and Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

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compromised his adherence to Marxism, but it is clear that his relationship with the Party would be marked forever by unsolvable problems.

Not only had his biography shaped his perspective; in fact, Pasolini systematically rejected any consideration of himself as an intellectual intrinsically linked to the Party. He was characterized by an antiprogressive trait, which prevented him from identifying with even the more enlightened declinations of Marxist philosophy. To understand these contradictions, it might be useful to focus on his relationship with Gramsci. The great thinker, imprisoned by the Fascists, was one of Pasolini’s Masters as well as a source of inspiration for one of his most extraordinary poetical works, Le ceneri di Gramsci, and for one of his brighter essays, Dal Laboratorio12.

However, in the Antologia della Poesia Popolare13, Pasolini overtly declares he does not understand and he does not share the wide meaning Gramsci attributes to the word “popular”. Since the beginning of the thirties, Gramsci recognized the extinction of a group of people on an ethnical/anthropological basis and was worried about the literary forms the cultural industry produced for the lower classes (the people of the industrial culture, taking for granted the distinction between popular and folk). According to Pasolini, on the other hand, only what was deeply rooted in long tradition might be considered “popular” and only the corresponding group of individuals who adhere to this tradition as “people”.

Pasolini’s unconditional love for tradition induced him to keep an open dialogue –though rich in misunderstandings and contrasts– with the Catholic Church, an attitude often considered unacceptable in an environment marked by bitter, direct opposition. Below, an order will be attempted to be given for the fluctuations in this open dialogue.

At the end of the fifties, Pasolini was an homosexual, atheist and Marxist intellectual who had been expunged by the Communist Party and who had written two novels in which he stigmatized the modernization of the country and the increase in wealth for the lower class, which was in turn guilty of introducing a sensational process of urbanization and of 12

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Empirismo Eretico. Milano: Garzanti, 1972, pp. 51-77. The paper, Dal Laboratorio. Appunti en poéte per una linguistica marxista, was written in 1965.

13 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Introduzione”. In Canzoniere italiano. Antologia della poesia popolare, (ed.) Pier Paolo Pasolini, Milano: Guanda,1955, pp. 1: 15-143.

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separation from the peasant tradition he celebrated. Curiously, his means of expression were typical of the bourgeois novel (updated for the times), and his favourite references were those concerning the tradition of the well educated European. Pasolini’s purism did not prevent him from using expressive means more directly linked to the affirmation of an authentically modern European identity (Rossellini’s heritage is often affirmed, as well as his collaboration with Fellini, in tune with some of Antonioni’s research, especially as far as the “cinema of poetry” was concerned).

Yet, on the literary level, his polemics against the neo-avant-garde forces, which appeared as the literary equivalent of the experimental cinema (especially of Jean-Luc Godard’s, with whom Pasolini entertains a benevolent controversy related to the excess of meta-discourse, without hiding his admiration and interest14), are very harsh. The issue of the purity of language is overcome through the use of a trans-national code, “not arbitrary” and “not conventional” as it is cinema, but one for which at the theoretical level there is a deep rejection of literary proposals which seem to re-trace the same procedures. Cinema, as he describes it, looks like a natural language, but he often declares to be against any kind of naturalism: cinema is the written language of reality, but at the same time it is a “hypnotic medium”. It is analyzed as an audiovisual means, preserved by “obscure ontology”, but at the same time it is different from television because of its ideological affirmation which also ends up in an obscure ontological presupposition15.

At the same time, Pasolini is the one who gives a representation of the sub-proletarian class, exalting its purity with a humanist sensibility (unknown to Marxism) and representing it with an original style, disrespectful of any cinematographic tradition.

Pasolini had the possibility of expressing himself through cinema thanks to the loosening up of censorship between 1958 and 1959, mainly determined by the economic boom. But he himself is one of the more radical critics of this phenomenon and of its consequences. Being a 14

For instance, in Pasolini's introduction to the first publishing is in Italian of Jean Luc Godard's essays. See Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Premessa”. In Il cinema è il cinema, by Jean Luc Godard, Milano: Garzanti, 1971, pp. 13-15.

15 See Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Empirismo Eretico. Milano: Garzanti, 1972, pp. 167-87.

Il “cinema di poesia” was written in 1965 for a conference at the Pesaro Film Festival.

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provocateur and an iconoclast, he enters into a direct conflict with some particularly obtuse and conservative parts of Italian society, without having (as Fellini had) either the support of the establishment of the Catholic Church, nor that of the Communist Party. When La Ricotta was put on trial for offence to religion and Pasolini was condemned, only some reliable friends came to his aid and officially protested, while the Party remained silent. This might have been caused either by the embarrassment created by Pasolini’s homosexuality, or by his claim that the Gospels were the “most sublime texts ever written”. In fact, one year later, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964) was released. The film offers a description of Christ as the prototype of the revolutionary man, together with a representation of the Biblical text that is philologically unimpeachable and was agreed to both by the scholar and priest Don Andrea Carraro and the catholic community of Assisi which had been named Pro Civitate Christiana16.

This film has been read as a sort of rapprochement with the Catholic Church. Actually, the film has this spirit, being the result and product of a dialogue with the more advanced part of the ecclesiastic institution. But more scandal would soon be provoked by Uccellacci e uccellini (The Hawks and the Sparrows, 1966), where the transformation of the Italian left wing into a more modernist and European force is the object of an atrocious satire linked to the idealistically popular root of the Italian Communist Party (made evident in the re-proposition of the funeral of Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti). In the Franciscan episode –again agreed to, at least partly, by the Pro-Civitate Dei– nostalgia for religious feeling that has disappeared is noticeable, within a society which seems to have lost the sense of the sacred.

In the following years, Pasolini would sclerotize some of his most ancient battles on utopian positions. The end of colonialism was celebrated with the apparition of a sterile Third-worldism which clashes with a more complex and problematic reality. This is testified to by the failure of the Un’Orestiade Africana (Notes towards an African Orestes, 1969) project.

The myth of the Third World was soon followed by that of the free expression of physicality which was the basis for the Trilogy of Life (Trilogia della Vita)17. The first film in the trilogy, Decameron (1971), 16

Subini, Tomaso, Pasolini e la Pro Civitate Christiana; Un carteggio inedito.

Bianco & Nero, 2003, 1-3: pp. 253-262.

17 See Rohdie, Sam, The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bloomington-London: Indiana University Press, BFI Publishing, 1995.

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coincides with the literary text which celebrates the affirmation of the Florentine middle class composed of traders at the beginning of the Renaissance and is the sign of Pasolini’s opening up toward the bourgeoisie. This opening was further proven by the Manifesto per un nuovo teatro18, where the “Theatre of the Word” (Teatro di Parola) was aimed at the more advanced sectors of this social class (as the “elite cinema” in Medea); and yet Pasolini did not receive positive feedback in the way in which these works of art were welcomed and consumed.

At that time, Pasolini was the icon of the leftist intellectual, as he himself attests by taking part in the homonym performance by Fabio Mauri19. He was the one who wrote in the major national newspaper (Il Corriere della Sera) guiding the civilian consciousness of the country towards an event later defined as the “historical compromise” (compromesso storico), a non-belligerence pact between the Democrazia Cristiana and the Communist Party. This kind of role did not fit him right.

The catastrophic side of his reading of Italian society, the one expressed in Porcile (Pigpen, 1969) and other works in which he blames everything on the never-extinguished alliance between the neo-capitalistic structure and the fascist superstructure, ends up radically re-emerging in the last days of his life20. The indefatigable polemicist, used to expressing his thoughts on basically everything, from the death of Marilyn Monroe (in La Rabbia, 1963) to the murder of JFK21, to the whole Italian political and historical moment, Pasolini is the astonished witness of the consequences of the non-permeability of the bourgeoisie to the forces of the sacral celebration of the Sexual Revolution proposed in the Trilogy of Life. It is well known how these three elegant films, based on the same number of works of literature, were received and absorbed in a predictable

18 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Manifesto per un nuovo teatro”, Nuovi argomenti. 9: Genuary- March, 1968. About Pasolini's theatre, also see Van Watson, William, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Theatre of the Word. Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989.

19 The title of the performance by Fabio Mauri was Intellettuale (Galleria di Arte Moderna, Bologna, May 31st 1975) and Pasolini was the only actor/character.

20 See Joubert-Laurencin, Hervé, Le Dernier poète expressioniste. Ecrits sur Pasolini. Besançon: Les Solitaires intempestifs, 2005.

21 See Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Empirismo Eretico, Milano: Garzanti, 1972, pp. 23741. The paper Osservazioni sul piano sequenza, was written in 1967.

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but nevertheless unforeseen way. After the last ostracism by censors22 the films freely circulated and obtained some commercial success. Yet, from them a real genre developed: called the Decamerotic (Decamerotici), it would be the prelude to the legitimization of pornography.

For Pasolini this was simply unacceptable; another proof of the cultural genocide which led Italy to a radical change –that is to say a structural change– which he refused to accept. His polemics against the student movements, as well as the desperate accusation that the degeneration of the Sexual Revolution had converted the human body into a material good, these were the last issues he was concerned with. They were issues which would also be the prelude to his way out of a reality perceived as unbearable. The ambiguous position of the intellectual who tries to change the situation, though constricted by the rules of capital –already denounced at the time of La Ricotta– seemed to be an unacceptable alibi. Hence the suicidal project Salò, an indomitable and un-consumable film23, meant for a destiny of scandal, from which Pasolini partially escapes because of his own death. A death which came suddenly, but which had also been conceived as an inevitable cavalry, as demonstrated by Pasolini’s friend Giuseppe Zigaina24.

Pasolini’s death was therefore an important turning point for Italian cultural life in the ensuing years. His death was in fact the Italian equivalent of the murder of J.F. Kennedy: a trauma which deeply marked Italian society. On the one hand, besides the legal case, Pasolini’s murder was perceived as an unsolved homicide and therefore is destined to be an open wound on the civilian consciousness of the country. On the other hand, his death was immediately perceived as a political matter, according to what Alberto Moravia25 and other intellectuals26 stated right after his 22

Betti, Laura, Pasolini: cronaca giudiziaria, persecuzione, morte. Milano: Garzanti, 1977.

23 Barthes, Roland, Sade-Pasolini. Le Monde. June 16, 1975.

24 Zigaina, Giuseppe, Pasolini tra enigma e profezia. Venezia: Marsilio, 1989.

25 Moravia, Alberto, “Ma che cosa aveva in mente?”, L'Espresso. November 9, 1975.

26 For instance, Citati, Piero, “Tutta la vita per una morte violenta”, Il Corriere della sera, November 3, 1975. Schwartz, Barth David, Pasolini Requiem. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Bellezza, Dario, Morte di Pasolini, Milano: Mondadori, 1995. Bellezza, Dario, Il poeta assassinato: una riflessione, un'ipotesi, una sfida sulla morte di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Venezia: Marsilio, 1996. RyanSchehtz, Colleen, “The Sacred Self: Autogenesis and Creation in Pasolini's Cinema”, Studi Pasoliniani, 2007, p. 1.

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homicide. Of course, this is not the right place to discuss the obscure aspects of Pasolini’s death. What we care to discuss here, though, is the traumatic nature of this bereavement and the consequences of the crossing between the public trauma created by this dramatic event and that, more restricted, initiated by the inevitable and somehow desired shock and scandal of the posthumous release of Salò. That is to say, our aim is to propose some hypothesis about what is left, today, of Pasolini’s attestation. Moreover, we would like to consider the way in which some of the political battles we summarized in the first part of this paper have been revised and used, as well as the echo they have on contemporary literature and cinema.

First, we might say that Pasolini’s wide and contradictory positions have often been partitioned from the general framework of such a complex personality. This attitude favoured an appropriation of these positions even by groups mainly aiming to exploit his “auctoritas”. His controversial homosexuality made him become a sort of icon for gay rights movements.

His strenuous defense of dialects and local traditions made him a key figure for secessionist political parties, which, especially in Northern Italy have been exerting a strong influence over the past 15 years. Rightwingers tried to take advantage of Pasolini’s declarations against the student movement of 196827, mainly composed of sons of the bourgeoisie, thus shining a light in favour of the police forces mainly represented by sons of the working class. It is therefore clear that Pasolini’s extraordinary communication skills have worked for a perverse interpretation of his thought. What we have to underline, then, is the adverse use of his ThirdWorldist assumptions by the neo-global movements, as well as by the extreme left, which put intense emphasis on Pasolini’s fight against consumer society28.

Still, the Communist Party and its descendants remember his claimed political origins; radicals reclaim the sympathy Pasolini had for them – forgetting he was against the Abortion Law they supported– and the Catholic Church underlines the deep respect and the sense of the sacred of several of his works (The Gospel, of course, but also the praise of Pope Giovanni XXIII or the religious wedding in Comizi d’amore, Assembly of 27

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Il PCI ai giovani”, Nuovi argomenti. 10: April-June, 1968.

About Pasolini and '68, also see Leone De Castris, Arcangelo, Sulle ceneri di Gramsci: Pasolini, i comunisti e il '68., Roma: Datanews, 1997.

28 Sapelli, Giulio, Modernizzazione senza sviluppo. Il capitalismo secondo Pasolini. Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2005.

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Love, 1964). Even the followers of mass culture identify Pasolini as an icon, quoting his passion for soccer, pop music, and cycling, as well as his confidence in using some actors from popular cinema, such as Totò, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, as well as the singer Domenico Modugno or the Olympic athlete Giuseppe Gentile.

In sum, in the Italian political and cultural arenas, Pasolini’s figure has come to be exploited by anyone, regardless of his rough attitude and his ability to nourish controversies. Against this ecumenical celebration of Pasolini, it is quite hard to understand how he could pass through 33 trials, scrupulously documented by actress Laura Betti. Maybe it is more useful to identify a link between these two phenomena, assuming the second constitutes a sort of guilty conscience explaining and determining the clouded agreement we have described above. But even more relevant here, is the fact that Italian cinema keeps on dedicating to his figure direct and overt homage.

At the 2007 Venice Film Festival, Giuseppe Bertolucci (Bernardo’s brother), Pasolini’s first pupil and fraternal friend, showed a documentary titled Pasolini prossimo nostro (2006), dedicated to the making of Salò.

Giuseppe Bertolucci also made a video, titled ‘Na specie di cadavere lunghissimo (2006), in which he filmed the theatrical pièce he wrote with actor Fabrizio Gifuni to celebrate the death of the poet. Pasolini’s death had also been the subject of a 1995 movie by Marco Tullio Giordana and titled Pasolini, un delitto italiano (Pasolini, an Italian Crime, 1995).

Giordana also quoted a collection of Pasolini’s poems in the title of his film La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth, 2003), a detailed image of Italian society from the end of WWII to the seventies.

In 1997, director Aurelio Grimaldi made a film based on the last, posthumously released novel by Pasolini, Petrolio, which came out at the beginning of the nineties (Nerolio). In 2001, Pier Paolo Pasolini e la ragione di un sogno was released in Italy, a documentary directed by Laura Betti right before her death, while in 2006 one of Italy’s main publishers marketed a DVD of the film La voce di Pasolini, by Matteo Cerami and Mario Sesti. Moreover, Sergio Citti's movie, I magi randagi (We Free Kings), was inspired by Pasolini’s aborted project titled PornoTeo-Kolossal: Released in 1996, Citti’s movie was re-released in 2006.

But there is a more praised and famous homage to Pasolini and it is, of course, the trip with a Vespa motorbike toward the desolated monument

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erected in Pasolini’s memory as performed by Nanni Moretti in the film Caro Diario (Dear Diary, 1993).

The majority of Italian independent or auteur cinema of the last 25 years has been permeated with the influence of Pasolini. For instance, the search for poeticism in Roberto Benigni’s most recent movies, where he plays the role of the naïve similar to that played by Ninetto Davoli in Pasolini’s films, might be imputed to screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami, who was the pupil and brother in law of Pasolini. Even stronger is his indirect influence, a strong presence and authority on the ways of representation and the political perspective adopted by Italian films in the observation and description of contemporary Italian society.

Let’s take as an example some of the most representative films by the main Italian directors, such as Gianni Amelio, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Ermanno Olmi, Mimmo Calopresti, Silvio Soldini, Daniele Lucchetti, Carlo Mazzacurati, as well as younger directors such as Matteo Garrone, Emanuele Crialese, Paolo Sorrentino, and Ferzan Ozpetek (we venture to consider him Italian). In their works it is possible to find some recurring elements we can ascribe to a sort of widespread impotence to go beyond the poet’s influence.

Though we have made some random quotations so far, we might underline a constantly melancholic representation of the expression of alternative sexuality and a constantly negative representation of the bourgeois universe as such. This critique is also accompanied by a more general suspicion towards mass culture, considered a synonym for modernity and for the disappearance of traditions. On the other hand, tradition is to be praised evermore, with a rhetorical attitude not always corresponding to the issues at stake. The social chessboard is simplified as it were into a sort of apocalyptical theatre in which whatever existed before will be better than what is to come later.

Suburbs, marginality, psychological, moral and economic discomfort are to be praised anyway as emblems of ontological poetics in opposition to the materialistic cynicism of the leading groups, which appear abstract and stereotypical. With some exceptions, even in the best movies, the ability to isolate a problem or situation and to analyze its objective features seems to be lacking. The general tendency is that of building important metaphors, whose meaning pretends to reach universality and to systematically bypass any particular issue.

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That is to say, there is a sort of irresistible instinct towards becoming the carrier of a coherent vision of the world, very much anachronistic in a fragmented reality such as that of post-modernity. But at stake here is the fact that Pasolini does not bear a politically key reading. If politics is the art of the possible, Pasolini’s story is that of a vocation of martyrdom, of a painful witnessing and acceptance of an unavoidable loss, of forswearing, of failures. Modes, tones, issues are the same as in politics. The substance of Pasolini’s discourse is radically different though. It is a poetical substance, and the confusion between the two levels can generate devastating effects.

For instance, one of the features which makes, Pasolini’s positions so striking is their prophetical value. The deep hate he had for television is well known, and had been expressed on several occasions between 1970 and 1974, when he was proposing the abolition of television29. Television was for him the place where neo-capitalism finds its definitive achievement. He considers it a totalitarian and pervading form, which imposes its will, forcing its viewers to desire to follow its edicts. Reading his perspective again after what happened with the Italian political situation at the beginning of the nineties, with the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, makes Pasolini’s point even more convincing.

Nevertheless, if we compare his declarations with the situation of Italian television in the same years, we face a worrying anachronism.

Italian television in the first half of the seventies was in fact a government monopoly based on two TV channels, which transmitted in black and white only and which observed a very strict set of moral rules under the control of Catholic authorities –a TV model which did not allow for any kind of commercial exploitation. Advertising was confined to a 15 minute evening show: the opposite of hidden persuasion. It was a television which broadcasted shows and programs for not more than 8 hours a day, offering teleplays based on famous novels, sports, some entertainment shows and a whole lot of documentaries, political and cultural programs. Therefore, undoubtedly Pasolini was sensitive and smart enough to make a guess about the potential development of the medium as a tool for mass

29

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Aboliamo la Tv e la scuola d'obbligo”, Il Corriere della Sera. October 18, 1975a.

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persuasion and for the building of consensus. Nevertheless, the TV he was talking about was yet to come30.

Thus, his poetic provocations –misunderstood for political remarks– can be considered equally as self-fulfilling prophecies. If TV is ontologically evil, since it is impossible to ban, it would be better to take care of other nobler issues, regardless of what happens in the mass media landscape.

As a result of this prejudice there is a lack of interest and of cultural attention which can also be identified as a gap in the law, the prelude to monopolies, economic trusts and loss of contact with those layers of society who have been the main target of leftist political discourse. The outcome is evident. The TV discourse is only the tip of the iceberg for an attitude which affects all the manifestations of mass culture and of the cultural industry.

Italian cinema –often financed by the Government– seems unable to cope with a landscape perceived as definitely hostile. Consequently, there is a gap in the dialectic on which the idea of politics itself has been established, and this is perfectly coherent with Pasolini’s Marxist attitude and his rejection of the idea of dialectic itself.

A few weeks before Italian elections, Nanni Moretti offered his view of Berlusconi as a terrorist, someone ready to set the country on fire if he does not win the elections in Il Caimano (The Caiman, 2006). This offers, of course, a strong moral gratification to his audience, which seems to be close to the ferocious and noisy accusations Pasolini aimed at the then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti31. But at the same time, he again refused to make a literal political film.

Moreover, Pasolini’s article on Andreotti seems to have strongly influenced the historical-political perspective which contributes to a film like Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino, who won a special award at the Cannes Festival in 2008. Andreotti –today almost 90 years old and excluded by the political power circle– is described as a diabolical man, so powerful as to autonomously be able to determine criminal deviations in the regular development of Italian political life (through a relationship with the Mafia, 30

Manzoli, Giacomo, “La Tv di Pasolini”, Cineteca 6: December, 2002.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Che cos'è questo golpe?”. Il Corriere della Sera, November 14, 1974.

31

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corruption, homicides, nepotism). Though corresponding to a polarization which is typical of the Italian political debate and one that surely has an actual basis, this seems to be a reflection of the Pasolinian way of interpreting historical processes, far away from the theory of the complexity of social and political processes connected to tools of power that was being elaborated in France at that time32. Today, the same polarization is forcing the Italian political debate into an ethic-ideological opposition, which is paradoxically useful to the preservation of a comprehensive political and institutional balance, preventing the affirmation of radically different perspectives and the consequent replacement of a political class whom more evident and dramatic flaw certainly is that of having represented a gerontocratic block of power.

Moreover, at the same Cannes Festival in 2008, the award for best director was given to another Italian film, Gomorra (Gomorrah), by Matteo Garrone. It is important to clarify here that the critical perspective we are adopting toward these two films has nothing to do with an aesthetic evaluation. For instance, in Sorrentino’s film it is possible to trace an effective texture on the narrative level, together with the ability to unfold original choices on the visual level, corroborating the feeling of watching one of the most talented directors of his generation at work.

On the other hand, Garrone’s mise-en-scène is extremely interesting, since we can trace in it the development, in a post-modernist way, of the research on realism which marked Italian cinema history and that held Pasolini as one of its most important representatives33.

Given that the topic is that of the representation of the political framework, it is therefore significant to remember that Gomorra is based on one of the most successful Italian books in recent history. Before becoming a film, Gomorra was in fact an absorbing and touching book – suspended in between journalistic commentary and Bildungsroman – 32

I am referring here to Foucault, Michel, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard Editions, 1975. De Certeau, Michel, L'invention du quotidien. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. The distance of Pasolini’s positions from a polemological approach to power issues is very well captured by Roberto Saviano, when he affirms that Pasolini is the reference model for those who want to “chase the dynamics of reality, power affirmation, without metaphors and mediations, through the sole blade of writing”. Saviano, Roberto, Gomorra. Milano: Mondadori, 2006, p. 233.

33 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Empirismo Eretico. Milano: Garzanti, 1972, pp.242-7.

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published in 2006 by Roberto Saviano, a young writer born and raised in the land of the Neapolitan Mafia (called Camorra). At some point in the book the main character has the feeling of coming to a dead end, of being the hostage of criminality without any possibility of preserving his moral integrity. What does the character do then? He gets on a train and travels the whole of Italy in order to pay homage to Pasolini’s grave in Friuli34. Of course this act has strong political value35, and it is absolutely significant as far as understanding the use of Pasolini’s within the environment of contemporary Italian politics. The sanctification of Pasolini often has to deal with the psychical processes of monotheistic religions as applied to political life. On the one hand, there is Pasolini as a “superstar”; on the other hand, Pasolini as “patron saint” of part of the Italian left wing, unable to emancipate itself from the patterns of the interpretation of reality –which are, after all, tidy and linear– elaborated in the decades after WWII. These patterns of interpretation seem nowadays totally inadequate to frame the fluidity of our political situation: A fetish of the heroic defeat one faces in choosing an utopian political perspective. A choice rooted in social psychology factors we do not have the competence or the chance to analyze here.

With regards to this matter, the final part of a 2006 book by Francesco Piccolo, who was part of the screenwriting team for Nanni Moretti’s movie Il caimano, together with Moretti himself and Federica Pontremoli, is very significant. After a journey in the most noteworthy places of Italian contemporary pop culture –that is to say after having walked along the “mass culture boulevard” mentioned by Edgar Morin at the beginning of the 1960s36– Piccolo ends his research in Rome, during an event called Notte Bianca (Long Night or Nuit Blanche), organized by former Major Walter Veltroni, now leader of the main Italian left wing party (Partito Democratico–the Democratic Party). After a nocturnal wander in Rome, Piccolo writes: [...] I fell asleep. And I had a dream. I was living in a different Rome, with a different major [...], who gave the order to close several movie theatres and was indifferent toward the protests of a small group of outraged people [...]. When I woke up I was feeling well, better than I was when I went to 34

Saviano, Roberto, Gomorra. Milano: Mondadori, 2006, pp.232-3.

So it is in the book economy and the writer offers and excusatio non petita writing: “(Pasolini) is not my secular patron, nor my literary Christ...”. Saviano, Roberto, Gomorra, 233, Milano: Mondadori, 2006.

36 Morin, Edgar, L'esprit du temps, 27, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1962.

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bed. Everything had disappeared: anguish, panic, the effort I made the night before. I felt cheered up, comforted, even lighter. Also because in my dream I hadn’t voted for that fascist major, but I had voted for his opponent: cultured, smart, and with marvelous ideas. But, thank God, he had lost the elections37.

This is, in conclusion, the prevailing scenery in Italian cinema, which is dominated by a melancholic vision of politics that seem to be anything but “arts of the possible”, revealing itself, on the contrary, as a negotiation frame for mixed strategies to survive the impossibility of utopian forces.

In this articulated process, with a cynical aftertaste, Pasolini is still a sort of Dantesque guide, on the way to holiness.

Hence, the point is that the only way to really retrieve Pasolini within the problematic dimension of politics is that of exercising towards him a critical effort seldom made; in recent years, only by some intellectuals, such as the poet Edoardo Sanguineti, an opponent of Pasolini since the Neo-AvantGarde movement38 or by Walter Siti.39 Paradoxically, it is through his opponents –even if sometimes their critique is too harsh– that it is possible to keep Pasolini’s thought alive and to honour his memory by attributing to it the proper strong political dimension. This also depends on the reconstruction of an active, and therefore critical, relationship between cinematic representation and the Italian political scenery –a relationship that today seems to be more rarefied because of a reciprocal and radical non-involvement marked by mutual loathing.

Works Cited Barthes, Roland, Sade-Pasolini. Le Monde. June 16, 1975.

Bazzocchi, Marco Antonio, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Milano: Mondadori 1998.

Bellezza, Dario, Morte di Pasolini. Milano: Mondadori, 1995.

—.Il poeta assassinato: una riflessione, un'ipotesi, una sfida sulla morte di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Venezia: Marsilio, 1996.

37

Piccolo, Francesco, L'Italia spensierata, Roma: Editori Laterza, 2007, pp. 182-3.

Sanguineti, Edoardo, Radicalismo e patologia. MicroMega, 1995, 4: pp. 212-20.

39 In his afterword to the 10 volumes of Pasolini’s opera omnia he edited, Siti does not hesitate to underline – with great intellectual honesty – the most questionable aspects of Pasolini’s perspective on arts and politics, Siti, Walter, “L'opera rimasta sola”, In Pier Paolo Pasolini, Tutte le poesie, 2: 1897-946, Milano: Mondadori, 2003.

38

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Benedetti, Carla, Pasolini contro Calvino. Milano: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998.

Betti, Laura, Pasolini: cronaca giudiziaria, persecuzione, morte. Milano: Garzanti, 1977.

Calvino, Italo, Sade è dentro di noi. Il Corriere della Sera. November 30, 1975.

Citati, Piero, Tutta la vita per una morte violenta. Il Corriere della sera, November 3, 1975.

De Certeau, Michel, L'invention du quotidien. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.

Eco, Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati. Milano: Bompiani, 1964.

Ferretti, Giulio Carlo, Pasolini e l'avanguardia. Rinascita. February, 1967.

Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Fortini, Franco, Pasolini e le ultime illusioni. Il Corriere della Sera.

August 28, 1977.

Foucault, Michel, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1975.

Gundle, Stephen, Between Hollywood and Moscow. The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-1991. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

Joubert-Laurencin, Hervé, Le Dernier poète expressioniste. Ecrits sur Pasolini. Besançon: Les Solitaires intempestifs, 2005.

Leone De Castris, Arcangelo, Sulle ceneri di Gramsci: Pasolini, i comunisti e il '68. Roma: Datanews, 1997.

Manzoli, Giacomo, La Tv di Pasolini. Cineteca. 6: December, 2002.

Moravia, Alberto, Ma che cosa aveva in mente?. L'Espresso. November 9, 1975.

Morin, Edgar, L'esprit du temps. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1962.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, “Introduzione”. In Canzoniere italiano. Antologia della poesia popolare, ed. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1. Milano: Guanda, 1955.

—.Diario linguistico. Rinascita. March 6, 1965.

—.La fine dell'avanguardia. Nuovi argomenti. 3-4: July-December, 1966.

—.Manifesto per un nuovo teatro. Nuovi argomenti. 9: Genuary- March, 1968a.

—.Il PCI ai giovani. Nuovi argomenti. 10: April-June, 1968b.

—. “Premessa”. In Il cinema è il cinema, by Jean Luc Godard, 13-15.

Milano: Garzanti, 1971.

—.Empirismo Eretico. Milano: Garzanti, 1972.

—.Le città invisibili. Tempo. Genuary 28, 1973.

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—.Che cos'è questo golpe?. Il Corriere della Sera, November 14, 1974.

—.Aboliamo la Tv e la scuola d'obbligo. Il Corriere della Sera. October 18, 1975a.

—.Lettera luterana a Italo Calvino. Il Mondo. October 30, 1975b.

Piccolo, Francesco, L'Italia spensierata. Roma: Editori Laterza, 2007.

Rohdie, Sam, The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bloomington-London: Indiana University Press, BFI Publishing, 1995.

Ryan-Schehtz, Colleen, The Sacred Self: Autogenesis and Creation in Pasolini's Cinema, Studi Pasoliniani. 1, 2007.

Sanguineti, Edoardo, Radicalismo e patologia. MicroMega. 4, 1995.

Sapelli, Giulio, Modernizzazione senza sviluppo. Il capitalismo secondo Pasolini. Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2005.

Saviano, Roberto, Gomorra. Milano: Mondadori, 2006.

Schérer, René, Langues et politiques mineures de Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Chimères. 43, 2001.

Schwartz, Barth David, Pasolini Requiem. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993.

Siti, Walter, “L'opera rimasta sola”. In Pier Paolo Pasolini, Tutte le poesie, 2. Milano: Mondadori 2003.

Subini, Tomaso, Pasolini e la Pro Civitate Christiana; Un carteggio inedito. Bianco & Nero 1-3, 2003.

Van Watrson, William, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Theatre of the Word.

Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989.

Zigaina, Giuseppe, Pasolini tra enigma e profezia. Venezia: Marsilio, 1989.

CHAPTER FOUR POLITICS, REALISM AND KEN LOACH1 JOHN HILL

Partly due to the importance of the documentary movement in the 1930s and the emergence of documentary-influenced fiction features during the 1940s, realism enjoyed a privileged position within British critical discourse during the post-war period. Realist films were generally regarded as constituting the finest achievements of British cinema and evidence of “realism” within films was regarded as a virtue. During the 1970s, however, a new generation of critics began to query this privileged position and sought to champion works –such as Hammer horror, Gainsborough melodrama and the films of Michael Powell– that defied the norms of a realist aesthetic. Indeed, it could be argued that this “palace revolution” has now proved so successful that a suspicion towards –rather than a celebration of– realism has become the dominant strain within British academic film writing.

There were, however, two distinct aspects to the critique of realism that occurred during this period. On the one hand, realism was identified with aesthetic restrictions and an inability to deal with the world of dreams, fantasy and unconscious desire. Genres such as horror and melodrama, therefore, were championed because of the ways in which they could be seen not only to encourage artistic flamboyance (and even “excess”) but also to permit the expression of experiences and impulses that realism characteristically denied. The second criticism of realism also involved an argument about aesthetics but was much less concerned with its capacity to express fantasy than to reveal underlying social and political forces.

Although different in emphasis, both critiques of realism therefore shared the premiss that realism’s dependence upon surface observation 1

This is a revised version of a paper originally delivered at ‘The Realist Impulse’ conference, St Anne's College, Oxford, 12 July 2007.

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necessarily inhibited the showing of hidden realities (whether these be psychological or socio-economic).

These two forms of critique, however, also pointed in different directions. The first involved a turn towards genre cinema, and popular culture more generally, favouring the critical “redemption” of works often regarded as “escapist’. The second position, on the other hand, entailed a turning away from popular culture towards the avant-garde, or what became dubbed as “political modernism”, favouring self-reflexive works that encouraged a critical reflection upon, rather than simply the expression of, political ideas. It is particularly this second debate that I want to look at again and review some of the issues at stake. In doing so, I will use as my example the work of Ken Loach, the director who, within British cinema, is most associated with the political use of realism.

Throughout his career, Loach’s work has concentrated upon the lives of “ordinary” working-class characters and the problems that they have faced (homelessness, low-paid jobs, poverty and unemployment). He has also consistently pursued a sense of realist “authenticity” through the use of location shooting, semi-professional actors and a detached observational style indebted to documentary. However, as Raymond Williams has argued, much of his work also extends beyong the “observational” and belongs to a particular kind of realism that is “consciously interpretative in relation to a particular political viewpoint”.2 Particularly following his collaboration with Jim Allen from the 1960s onwards, Loach’s films have not simply sought to reveal the ‘realities’ of working-class life but also propose a particular form of political analysis rooted in Marxism (and Trotskyism in particular).

Debating realism The political critique of realism was particularly identified with the French journal, Cahiers du Cinema, and the British journal, Screen. Thus, as early as 1972, in a special issue of Screen on British cinema, Nicholas Garnham could be found denouncing the work of Loach (and his producer Tony Garnett) on the grounds that although they were making “films whose content is the need for political change” it was nonetheless made “in a style that cannot be other than reactionary”.3 It was, however, an 2

Williams, Raymond, ‘A Lecture on Realism’, Screen, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1977, p. 68.

Garnham, Nicholas, ‘TV Documentary and Ideology’, Screen, Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer, p. 113.

3

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essay by Colin MacCabe in Screen in 1974 that was destined to become particularly influential. This is, nevertheless, a potentially confusing essay as it does not deal specifically with films that would be commonly regarded as “realistic”. MacCabe is primarily concerned with the “transparency” or “illusionism” of mainstream cinema and thus defines “classic realism” in terms of a “hierarchy of discourses” in which the marks of “articulation”, or discourse, are absent.4 These arguments were intended to apply to the particular form of narrativisation characteristic of classical Hollywood cinema and, thus, for MacCabe, The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) should be regarded as much a work of “realism” as The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940).5 As such MacCabe had little interest in the specific form of realism associated with Loach (commonly regarded as being at odds with “classic realism”) although his essay did make passing reference to the political limitations of Loach’s famous television drama about homelessness (which he mistakenly refers to as a documentary), Cathy Come Home (1966), which he argues lacks “any perspectives for struggle due to its inability to investigate contradiction”.6 Loach did, however, get drawn into the debate more fully when Colin McArthur suggested, in response to MacCabe’s arguments, that a four-part television series written by Jim Allen and directed by Loach, Days of Hope (1975), concerning social and political events between 1916 and 1926, might nonetheless be regarded as politically “progressive” not only at the level of content but to some extent at a formal level as well. Although the debate partly focused on the capacity of realism –whether “classic” or “progressive–” to deal with “contradiction” (both within the film text and for the spectator), it also gave rise to a broader range of issues.7 In many respects, the formalist turn involved in the critique of realism was an appropriate one. Although the term “realism” suggests an aesthetic practice that asks to be understood and judged in terms of its relationship to external reality, realism, like other kinds of art, has rested upon the employment of conventions that, in this case, audiences come to accept as 4

MacCabe, Colin, ‘Realism and the Cinema: Notes on some Brechtian Theses’, Screen, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1974, p. 8.

5 Ibid., p. 12.

6 Ibid., p. 16.

7 Colin McArthur’s discussion, and MacCabe’e response, are collected in Tony Bennett et al, Popular Television and Film, London: BFI in association with the Open University Press, 1981, p. 305-13.

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“realistic”. In this sense, the realism of a text can never be absolute but is necessarily relative and intertextual in character, defining itself in relation to, or against, the conventions that other works employ. In this respect, realism has to be understood in terms of the aesthetic means –or formal conventions– through which it seeks to portray the real. However, the emphasis upon realism as a set of formal devices that occurred in the 1970s also involved a degree of abstraction such that all realisms tended to be subsumed under one great Realism (or one Realism with a few subvariants). In this respect the historical shifts and variations within realist forms tended to be flattened out and taken to be of little significance.

Furthermore the textual effects of realism (and the success or failure in generating “contradictions” for the spectator) tended simply to be assumed or to be assessed independently of the contexts in which films were produced and consumed. In some respects, this was also so of the way in which the realism debate was applied to Days to Hope. For, although there was some recognition that the significance of the series could not be reduced to the operations of the text, the substance of the debate nonetheless revolved around an assessment of formal features independent of the specific social and institutional contexts in which they functioned.

As noted, the model of realism adopted by Screen was very general, relating to nineteenth-century literary forms as well as contemporary media forms. However, as McArthur suggested, the circumstances governing film and television production may be regarded as distinct. The second episode of Days of Hope had, in fact, been intended as a feature film but proved unable to win the funding. It therefore became a television series partly as a way of getting made. Loach’s work for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) involved the blurring of the boundaries between cinema and televison through the use of film in the making of “Wednesday Plays” such as Cathy Come Home (1966) and The Big Flame (1969). The popularity of shooting television drama on film continued into the 1970s and Loach’s producer Tony Garnett, when questioned on why there were no political films being made for the British cinema, answered that the BBC was the only place where “regular and consistent filmmaking is done”.8

8

Mills, Bart, ‘“Days of Hope” - going to extremes’, The Listener, 11 September 1975, p. 338.

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However, as in cinema, working in television involved specific institutional and aesthetic constraints. In an interview, Garnett was injudicious enough to use the phrase “testing the BBC” in relation to his and Loach’s work and this became the subject of discussion at the BBC’s Board of Governors who clearly resented the notion that their employees might be testing their tolerance in some way.9 However, it is also clear that Days of Hope did create institutional unease and that the programmme was seen as very close to the limit of what it was possible to broadcast. This was both a matter of content and form.

The series was the object of attacks in the press (especially from the Daily Telegraph) and the BBC management was acutely aware of the revolutionary sentiments that underpinned the series. The BBC’s DirectorGeneral, Charles Curran, was drawn into the dispute and came to the conclusion that the difficulty that the drama posed was that its interpretation of the past, and explicit critique of “the parliamentary road to socialism”, was at odds with the prevailing socio-political “consensus” and thus fell outside of the political frame in which “balance” was held to operate. In this respect, the programme was seen to extend beyond the boundaries of what the BBC normally felt comfortable in broadcasting and the BBC management resolved to avoid commissioning a similar series in future. Thus, while Loach did go on to make The Price of Coal (1977) for the BBC, it did not possess anything like the same degree of political radicalism as Days of Hope.

The institutional anxiety within the BBC was reinforced by a lingering unease about the way in which Loach and Garnett had, from Up the Junction (1965) onwards, been involved in blurring the boundaries between drama and documentary, and “fact” and “fiction”, in their work.

Indeed, following the production of The Big Flame and other television work which the BBC was reluctant to show, the then Controller of Programmes, Huw Wheldon, had claimed that the Corporation’s reputation was built upon “a firm distinction between what is fact and what is not fact, what is real and what is not real” and that “hybrid” programmes that blurred these boundaries were unacceptable. As John Ellis suggests, the management of the boundaries between fact and fiction, and documentary and drama, has assumed greater significance for television than for film as a result of the “flow” of television’s programming and the institutional importance of maintaining trust in 9

Ibid.ȱ

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television’s “regime of factuality”.10 An aspect of Loach’s “testing” of the BBC, therefore, involved the deliberate incorporation into drama of elements conventionally used in documentary in order to challenge the claims to “objectivity” and “balance” made for television news, current affairs and documentary. In this respect, Loach maintained that his work provided a counterweight to the “imbalance” of the programmes surrounding it and helped to put into question the “objectivity” of the methods employed in “factual” programming. To some extent, this was a problematic tactic. For while Loach’s work for television may have sought to query the “authority” to which documentary laid claim, it also drew on the aura of “authenticity” associated with documentary conventions in order to legitimise its own political outlook. Nevertheless, because Days of Hope was based on actual historical events, and the series cultivated the look of documentary, it inevitably provoked questions not just about its content (its dismissal of labour reformism and advocacy of revolutionary socialism) but the formal means whereby these ideas were expressed. It is, of course, the case that the debate about its apparent confusion between “truth and fiction” gained added momentum because of the way in which the films’ interpretation of past events (such as the First World War, the first Labour government of 1924 and the General Strike of 1926) challenged political orthodoxies of the time. Nevertheless, the debate about “fact” and “fiction” was not simply a “smokescreen” for a battle of political ideas but also resulted from a genuine degree of anxiety within the broadcasting institution about the maintenance of generic categories.

What this institutional unease also suggests is how the politics of Days of Hope was ultimately neither a matter simply of content nor formal approach but a matter of context. Thus, while the left-wing writers associated with Screen tended to measure the programme’s politics according to the yardstick of a hoped-for revolutionary text, the significance of the films assumes a different complexion when read in relation to the aesthetic norms and institutional arrangements prevailing at the time. Indeed, although John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1974) has, on occasion, been identified as a more formally radical work than Days of Hope, it is interesting to note that, while its combination of drama, documentary material and political polemics did indeed provoke concern within the BBC, it does not seem to 10

Ellis, John, ‘Documentary and Truth on Television: The Crisis of 1999’ in Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (eds), New Challenges for Documentary 2nd edition, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 352.

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have unsettled the organisation to the same extent as Days of Hope.

Indeed, one of the oddities of Loach’s career is that while his early television work, such as Diary of a Young Man (1964), reveals a sustained engagement with Brechtian ideas of the kind championed by Screen some ten years later, Loach’s subsequent work involved a shedding of Brechtian features as his work becomes more overtly political in character.This is undoubtedly to do with the belief that realism, rather than modernist reflexivity, offered a vehicle for the communication of political ideas that would prove accessible, and engaging, to audiences (even if this might then impose limits on the ways in which these ideas could be expressed).

However, in terms of their dispositions toward the spectator, there was a certain degree of overlap in the views of Screen theorists and BBC management. Although the realism argument was primarily about formal features, it also depended upon assumptions about the spectator-position that the text implied. Thus, in the case of MacCabe, the realist text conferred “an imaginary unity of position” upon the spectator that prevented a genuinely critical engagment with the political issues raised by the text. Given its worries about the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction, the BBC was also concerned that the spectator would be deceived and led to political conclusions by foul means. In both cases, the model of the spectator was a relatively passive one, positioning the spectator (or viewer) at the apparent mercy of the functioning of the text.

However, as the BBC’s own research showed the responses of audiences were quite complex and varied (and certainly could not simply be “read off” from the text itself).11 Thus, while critics argued that audiences simply had the choice of accepting or rejecting the apparently transparent political perspective offered by the series, both the comprehension of the films’ political “message”, and the responses to it, were more varied, and more dependent upon pre-existing beliefs, than this argument suggested.

What this discussion of Days of Hope indicates, therefore, is that the ideological significance of the series cannot be reduced to purely “textualist” terms as was the case in the original realism debate associated with Screen. Rather the aesthetic and political significance of the use of realist features has to be understood in relation to the particular historical, political and institutional conjuncture in which it occurs. This emphasis upon socio-historical particularity could also be said to offer a more 11 ‘Communication: A Case Study of “Days of Hope”’, Annual Review of BBC Audience Research Findings, No. 4, 1978, pp. 63-71.

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general principle for the understanding of Loach’s employment of realism.

For while Loach has remained one of the most consistent filmakers in terms of both politics and style, the circumstances in which he has made films has changed dramatically. This has, in turn, changed the “significance” of the work that he has been producing.

New Times Loach’s work in the 1960s and 1970s grew out of a period of considerable political and social upheaval that witnessed the growth of the civil rights movement (initially in the US and then elsewhere), the intensification of national liberation struggles in the Third World, the rise of an anti-war movement prompted by US involvement in Vietnam and the emergence of a student movement and “anti-capitalist” counterculture. In the UK it was also a period of heightened industrial conflict and growing disappointment amongst the left with the performance of the Labour government and its perceived failure to pursue socialist objectives.

The election of a Conservative government, under Margaret Thatcher, in 1979, however, not only led to eighteen years in the political wilderness for Labour but also a radical re-structuring of the British economy (away from heavy industry and manufacturing towards services). Thus, by the time the Labour Party returned to power in 1997 as “new Labour” (or “Thatcherism mark two” as Loach himself would undoubtedly regard it), both the economic and the political landscape of the UK had been transformed and the revolutionary spirit, animating a production such as Days of Hope, had all but disappeared.

Loach himself, however, remained resolutely “Old Labour” and remained strongly attached to the continuing salience of class politics.

Nevertheless, given the re-structuring of the UK economy and willed destruction of much of its industrial base, his work also underwent changes. From Riff-Raff (1991) onwards, there was a much greater emphasis upon the decline of the traditional working class and the injuries inflicted upon it by de-industrialisation and unemployment. This, in turn, was linked to an increased pessimism about the possibilities for mass political action. Thus, while it was still possible in The Big Flame (1969), dealing with a workers' take-over of the Liverpool docks, and Days of Hope (1975), in the episode dealing with the General Strike of 1926, to envisage how organised, collective action might pose a serious challenge to the power of capitalism, Loach's films of the 1990s were forced to look elsewhere to discover the flames of revolutionary endeavour. In this

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respect, the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s in Land and Freedom (1995), the Nicaraguan revolution of the 1980s in Carla's Song (1996), the struggle of LA cleaners in Bread and Roses (2000) and the revolution in Ireland in 1921 in The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) have provided emblematic moments of revolutionary action that contrast sharply with the images of “defeat”, and individual acts of “defiance”, to be found in the film portraits of the working class set in contemporary Britain.

The increasingly international character of much of Loach’s cinema has also been linked to another shift, involving a move from television to art cinema. After the 1980s, Loach no longer made filmed dramas for television but was primarily involved in feature production funded from a variety of domestic and international sources. Unlike Days of Hope, which was fully funded by the BBC, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, for example, was an Irish/UK/Spanish/Italian/German co-production, involving over twenty financial backers from across Europe, and made primarily for the cinema. As such, Loach’s work has come to operate primarily within a system of arthouse distribution and exhibition. Unlike British cinema of the Second World War, British realist filmmaking, since the 1980s, has increasingly travelled, within the UK and elsewhere, as “art”, rather than as “popular”, cinema and, in doing so, has come to depend much more heavily on international, rather than national, cinema audiences.12 Thus, whereas Days of Hope was shown on national television at peak time, a film such as Riff-Raff was seen by more people in cinemas in France than in the UK. Land and Freedom was a big boxoffice success in Spain as was The Wind that Shakes the Barley in Ireland but neither achieved anything like the same impact in Britain.

The international circulation of Loach’s films as art cinema also places a particular premium on the sugnificance of the director as auteur. The films have been much more clearly promoted and reviewed as the work of Ken Loach than in the case of the films made for television (which were often more likely to be regarded as the work of the writer Jim Allen or the producer Tony Garnett). One consequence of this is that films such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley become much more likely to be read as representing an individual “personal” viewpoint rather than, as in case of Days of Hope, one that was partly linked to the institution in which it was 12

For a discussion of the way in which many British films, including those of Loach, came to be regarded as ‘art films’, see John Hill, 'The Rise and Fall of British Art Cinema: A Short History of the 1980s and 1990s', Aura: Film Studies Journal (Sweden), Vol. 6, No. 3, 2000, pp. 18-32.

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produced. Wind, for example, provoked considerable critical reaction in Britain where it was, like Days of Hope, attacked by the right-wing press.

However, the press’s fire was reserved for Loach (“why does Ken Loach loathe his country so much?” asked the Daily Mail) rather than an institution, as had been the case at the time of Days of Hope when the Daily Telegraph cited the series, however improbably, as evidence of “a Left-wing consensus” at the BBC.13 The circulation of film as art cinema has also had an impact on the way in which Loach’s realism is understood. At the time of Days of Hope, the BBC regarded the importation of documentary techniques into drama as an institutional issue that challenged the division between “fact” and “fiction” that, however problematically, it was endeavouring to maintain. In the case of Loach’s later work, however, the “realism” of the films has been much more likely to be read as a personal style with much fewer institutional ramifications (although the involvement of the state-funded UK Film Council in the financing of Wind did attract some attention). As previously noted, the argument concerning “classic realism” was that it relied upon formal “transparency” or “invisibility”. In Loach’s case, however, the films’ claims to “realism” (and “authenticity”) partly depend upon the spectator noticing, or being conscious of, the use of techniques that deviate from those of “classic” Hollywood. In this respect, the adoption of obervational techniques associated with documentary –such as unbroken takes, long shots, apparently “natural” sound and light– not only differentiate his films from the cinematic mainstream but also become a recognisable authorial signature, the very hallmark of his filmmaking approach.

This issue, however, is not entirely straightforward. For Loach’s cinema has not just circulated within a new mode of distribution and exhibition but also a changed set of cinematic norms. As I have argued elsewhere, there was, particularly from the 1980s onwards, a growing selfconsciousness within British cinema (and cinema more generally) about the status of “realism” as a set of cinematic conventions and an increasing willingness to mix realist devices with those of other aesthetic traditions.14 In a sense, the perception that realism, like other aesthetic forms, depends upon recognisable conventions has served to weaken its referential function (and heighten audiences’ scepticism towards whatever “truth13

Daily Mail, 30 May 2006; Daily Telegraph, 27 September 1975.

Hill, John, British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999, p. 136.ȱȱ 14

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claims” it may make). On the other hand, given the potential loss of connection to external “realities” posed by the “postmodernisation” of realism, Loach’s work has also proved itself capable of acquiring added resonance through its insistence on downplaying overt artifice and being clearly about something. It has, for example, been a constant source of irritation to Loach that critics have often dwelt on his filmmaking methods at the expense of content. As he commented at the time of the release of his film about ethnic divisions in contemporary Britain, Ae Fond Kiss...

(2004), “It amazes me that they [critics] pay so little attention to the subject matter. They’re always more interested in style and technique”.15 In some respects, Loach misses the point that discussion of “style and technique” is not necessarily a cinephiliac indulgence but also an issue that carries implications for the kind of politics his work can deliver. In this respect, the recurring empasis upon “betrayal” in his work, from Days of Hope through to The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is not simply the product of a political perspective that lays stress on the “failure of leadership” within social-democratic (and communist) parties but also of a realist form that encourages the dramatisation of political conflicts in such a way. Nevertheless, at a time when the project of a left-wing political cinema has been faced with its own crisis, there can be no doubt that Loach has succeeded in making films that continue to challenge prevailing orthodoxies and to provoke strong audience reactions. The Wind That Shakes the Barley, for example, not only created a degree of journalistic outrage within Britain but also encouraged a major debate within Ireland about the Irish Civil War (and its legacy for contemporary politics). Thus, while Loach’s recent films may have circulated primarily as “personal” cinema, they have also, on occasion, proved capable of distinguishing themselves from other forms of “art cinema” and contributing to debate within the public sphere.

Works Cited Colin McArthur’s discussion, and MacCabe’s response, are collected in Tony Bennett et al, Popular Television and Film, 2001.

Garnham, Nicholas “TV Documentary and Ideology”, Screen, Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer, Film, London: BFI in association with the Open University Press, 1981.

Ellis, John “Documentary and Truth on Television: The Crisis of 1999” in Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (ed.), New Challenges for 15

Daily Telegraph, 17 September 2004, p. 19.

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Documentary 2nd edition, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.

Hill, John “The Rise and Fall of British Art Cinema: A Short History of the 1980s and 1990s”, Aura: Film Studies Journal (Sweden), Vol. 6, No. 3, 2000.

—. British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

MacCabe, Colin “Realism and the Cinema: Notes on some Brechtian Theses”, Screen, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1974, London: BFI in association with the Open University Press, 1981.

Mills, Bart “Days of Hope - going to extremes”, The Listener, 11 September 1975.

Williams, Raymond “A Lecture on Realism”, Screen, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1977.

“Communication: A Case Study of Days of Hope, Annual Review of BBC Audience Research Findings, No. 4, 1978.

Daily Mail, 30 May 2006.

Daily Telegraph, 27 September 1975.

Daily Telegraph, 17 September 2004.

CHAPTER FIVE DOGVILLE AND MANDERLAY: IN WHICH WE ENCOUNTER LARS VON TRIER’S AMERICA ELøF AKÇALI

Introduction The stories of Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005), the first two parts of Lars von Trier’s USA trilogy,1 unfold as Grace (Nicole Kidman and Bryce Dallas Howard), a gangster’s daughter, happens upon different communities in America in the 1930s. While she is running away from her father, Grace finds herself in the town of Dogville where she is first welcomed as a refugee and gradually ends up becoming a slave for everyone. In the unexpected finale of the first part, Grace’s father and his men come to save her; they kill all the townspeople and destroy the town.

Grace’s next stop turns out to be the Manderlay plantation where slavery is still practiced. Determined to help the people, she decides to settle there with a few of his father’s men until they understand the concept of freedom and establish democracy. Disillusioned once again, Grace realises that the people of Manderlay prefer not to be free and runs away.

Narrated with a very ironic but authoritative voice by John Hurt, both films question the ethics and politics of these small communities as well as the ethics and politics behind Grace’s decisions. Arguably, the narratives are completed with the meaning that the choices in the style of narration add to them. It is only through some stylistic choices that the director imposes a point of view towards the fictional characters and stories he has created.

1

The final film in the trilogy, Washington, is still in production. It is announced to be released in 2009.

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Instead of shooting the films on real locations or on realistic film sets, Lars von Trier chose to create an impression of the settings for both films on minimally decorated soundstages. The most obvious constituent of the films is the existence of such a large but confined space as their single shooting location. The unusual approach to sets in the films directly influences how the other elements of style are used. The desired meaning of the stories is made apparent primarily through the use of these bare sets; camera, lighting, acting and other stylistic elements point to the existence of these sets to emphasise this meaning. In other words, the nature of the sets is a part of the story; it is as much a part of the narrative as it is of the style. Apart from sharing the same soundstage, the films have another common stylistic feature: At the end of both movies, the credits are accompanied by a series of photographs while David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ plays in the background. Although some images are the same, most of Dogville’s photographs depict the poverty and depravation of the Depression era whereas Manderlay’s are more recent, portraying racism and discrimination. Similar to the use of the soundstages, the credit sequences substantially contribute to the intended meaning in the films.

Both of these stylistic choices in fact form the backbone of the narratives and hint at Lars von Trier’s political point of view.

Scholars and critics have discussed the nature of the sets in both films through references to theatre.2 The photomontage sequences have been discussed in relation to the stories and the photographs’ recontextualisation in the films. This article will analyse how these two stylistic choices, the use of soundstages and the photographs, mutually contribute to posing questions on the two closed communities in which conformity and hypocrisy are among the latent fundamental values. The contradiction and the friction between binaries –such as the visible and the invisible, inside and outside, reality and fiction– are depicted through the nature of the soundstages and their juxtaposition with the photographs.

The absence of realistic sets and the use of photographs as stylistic elements help to portray the political structure of these fictional worlds and the construction of their fictive relationship with historical realities.

2

While critics have drawn attention to Dogville’s similarities with Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Lars von Trier explains that among his inspirations for Dogville were the song ‘Pirate Jenny’ from the Threepenny Opera and Trevor Nunn’s adaptation of Nicholas Nickelby. For interviews with the director on Dogville see Stig Björkman, Trier on von Trier, London: Faber and Faber, 2003 and Jan Lumholdt, ed., Lars von Trier: Interviews, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

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Lars von Trier’s controversial statement on the actions of Grace and the two communities brings into question the concept of perception in politics.

The Soundstages The most conspicuous stylistic element in Dogville and Manderlay is the absence of a realistic set. In both films, the names of the locations are written on the floors of the soundstages and their borders are defined by painted lines that allow the actors and the audience to separate inside from outside. When filmed from above, as they often are, these sets resemble a life-size map. The town and the plantation are physically present, but the spaces they occupy are confined to the soundstages; there is a point where they terminate. The use of soundstages as the films’ only locations has a direct influence on the films’ narratives. Grace’s initially coincidental visits to the town and the plantation turn out to be inner journeys that start as pursuits of a belief in goodwill, democracy and freedom, and end with cynicism towards mankind. Both stories depict closed communities whose corruptions are revealed via Grace’s intrusions. These sets grant us transparency and thus expose the reality of the characters and the incidents. The absence of a realistic set allows us to see everything at once and as it is, leaving no room for dissimulation; it explicitly makes a comment on the politics and ethics of the communities. Our partially omniscient position allows us to see things that the characters are either hiding from each other or that they themselves are unaware of. On the other hand, there are things that neither we, nor the actors for that matter, can physically see; but the characters in the fictional world can.

Talking about the sets in Dogville, Lars von Trier says, We found that this concept has many advantages. For example, as there are only symbolic walls, we can see through them and follow what the other townspeople are doing all the time. We concentrate on the characters completely, as there are so few other elements involved. When you have seen the film, you should know more about the town than if the film had been shot in a real town. The idea is that the town should take form in the audience’s imagination.3

Von Trier stresses three important points: as the audience, we have visual authority over the space; the absence of a realistic set allows us to 3

Kapla, Marit “Lars von Trier on Dogville” in Lars von Trier: Interviews, (ed.), Jan Lumholdt, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003, p. 207.

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pay more attention to the characters; and we are free to imagine a setting for this town. Similarly J. Hoberman writes, Dogville is less a narrative movie than the scaffolding on which a story might be constructed or the blueprint for a movie given form by the mind’s eye.4

Although Hoberman directly refers to the physical nature of the sets, arguably, the bare sets grant the narratives the possibility for multiple interpretations.

The nature of the sets in the films allows us to see what the characters cannot see. In one of the most disturbing scenes in Dogville, Chuck (Stellan Skarsgård) rapes Grace inside his house while the townspeople go on peacefully with their lives and the children play outside. In his article, ‘Where is the world?’, V. F. Perkins makes a distinction between our world and the fictional world referring to a scene from Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once as an example. He writes, It is not that these characters are oblivious to the camera. There is no camera in their world. Their situation is interestingly contrasted with ours as spectators. We are aware of the mechanisms of presentation and have to be so as to make sense of the movie’s devices.5

In Dogville and Manderlay Lars von Trier is pointing at the fine line drawn between our world and the fictional world to emphasise the meaning of the stories. The characters are in a town in the reality of the story world, so they cannot see what is happening. However the disturbance is more related to the fact that from our perspective, there are no walls to conceal anything and the actors can see just like us. The rape scene becomes much more powerful when, towards the end of the movie, we realise that the characters would react in the same way even if they knew the truth about the rape. Perkins writes, “That we can be present as an audience to witness the absence of witnesses is an index of the separation between our world and the world of fiction”.6 The rule of Dogville and Manderlay is that everybody is a witness. The films not only 4

Hoberman, J. “Our Town”, Sight and Sound 14:2, 2004, p. 24.

Perkins, V. F. “Where is the World?-The Horizon of Events in Movie Fiction” in Style and meaning: Studies in the detailed analysis of film, (ed.), John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 24.

6 Ibid., p. 19.

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put us in the position to witness and confront hypocrisy, brutality, violence and injustice; they also demand a reaction from us and feel responsibility as witnesses. Our knowledge of the ability of the actors to see in reality creates an inclination to feel contempt towards the characters because it foregrounds the way in which these kinds of characters might deliberately ignore what they know to be true.

The use of minimal sets in Dogville and Manderlay reveals the political, psychological and ethical values of the communities to be more significant to the construction of the stories than the physical presences of the town and the plantation. We know more about the people of the town and the plantation in this way than if the films had been shot on location.

Our access to the space is almost unlimited and it contributes to the intensity of the narratives. In other words, our relationship with the sets complements the stories. The absence of a realistic set becomes part of the story as well as a feature of the storytelling. As George Wilson argues in Narration in Light, “our troubles about film narration are compounded by the absence of clear criteria for sorting out what belongs to a film’s narrative, on the one hand, and to the narration, on the other”.7 Wilson refers to the ‘transparency of classical narration’ here, but even in Dogville and Manderlay, in which almost all mediators of narration are made manifest, it is impossible to separate narration and narrative. The soundstages construct a part of how the stories are told as much as what the stories are.

Lars von Trier calls attention to the fact that “the team of actors will be onstage all the time, because there are no walls between the buildings. We are going to live together, like a collective”.8 The absence of a realistic set affects the conventional working conditions as well. There is a possibility that the actors’ continuous collective presence on the set might also modify their performances. The rape scene in Dogville or the scene in which Grace whips Timothy (Isaach De Bankolé) in Manderlay are acted in the presence of all actors including the children.9 Shooting the scenes collectively for stories that are directly related to conformity and collectivism prepares the grounds for the roles of the actors. The feeling of 7

Wilson, George Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, p. 141.

8 Kapla, p. 212.

9 In the documentary The Road to Manderlay, Bryce Dallas Howard talks about the difficulties she experienced while shooting this scene. The documentary can be found in the double DVD release of the films by Zentropa Entertainment.

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discomfort that the stories create for the audience is created for the actors as well during the shooting.

Using the soundstages as settings for these two films also creates an awareness of the physical limits of the town and the plantation, which prevents us from doubting the credibility of the script. We never question why Grace does not run away from Dogville on foot. One way leads to the next town where she can easily be caught and the other way leads to the Rocky Mountains, which are too risky to cross. These are the two given alternatives for leaving the town. Anything that would look absurd and unnatural on a realistic set looks credible here. Both in Dogville and Manderlay the stories go to unexpected climaxes, but the outcomes remain unquestioned partly because of the abstract story world that the absence of a realistic set creates. The only unbiased or uninterpreted fact we know related to their settings, before we make any implications or inferences, is that Dogville and Manderlay exist on soundstages with spatial restrictions.

The narration may lead us to imagine what is beyond, but this is essentially a part of the narrative. As Stig Björkman argues, von Trier is “fascinated by the limits a given space imposes on” 10 people. The limits of these soundstages, however, provide us the directions to follow the gist of the story rather than doubt the credibility of the sets’ details. What we actually watch in the film is the recorded and edited material of performance on an almost-bare soundstage.

Overall, this aspect is the film’s main focus: all elements of style work to support the absence of a realistic set in both films and the meaning this absence contributes to the stories. Therefore, this absence has two main roles: it redefines the functions of other stylistic elements and it complements the stories. The implicit concepts of visibility and invisibility and their inter-changeability in the narratives are made explicit through the use of the settings. Von Trier questions the limits and differences of seeing, looking, knowing, ignoring, being blind or perceptive. The films are, in Thomas Edison’s (Paul Bettany’s) words, ‘an illustration’ of what a sharper sight of reality can lead to.

The Photographs The photographs in the credit sequences are works of various famous photographers. A selection of Farm Security Administration photographs 10

Björkman, Stig “Thieves Like Us”, Sight and Sound 13:7, 2003, p. 13.

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marks the ending of Dogville while Danish photographer Jacob Holdt’s works dominate Manderlay’s finale.11 Bo Fibiger talks about how ‘with the insertion of the American snapshots’ Dogville –and unequivocally Manderlay– “shifts from being a mythically founded metaphor to an analogy”.12 When contrasted with the minimal sets, the meanings of the photographs are emphasised, manipulated and altered. In both films, time and space in the setting have been dismantled: we are made to imagine and believe that it is the1930s as we see Nicole Kidman walk through nonexistent doors. As argued above, the absence of a realistic set grants the narratives the possibility for multiple interpretations. The setting of 1930s America, that does not exist, could simply be used for its familiarity and functionality; the stories could be interpreted as stories about humanity in general, free of any associations with the settings. While the photographs directly relate the fictional worlds to historical events, the selection, order and the framing of the photographs delineate the director’s point of view.

Holger Römers points to ‘the reciprocal relation of photos and film narrative in Dogville’ and suggests that “just as any reading of the narrative is inevitably influenced by the photo montage of the credit sequence, so, in return, perception of the photos is necessarily shaped by the preceding film narrative”.13 It is impossible not to compare the people in the photos with the fictional characters in the films. The people in the photographs may have been the people in the town and the plantation, similar to the ones imagined by von Trier. Lars von Trier creates the atmosphere for us throughout the films to react to these photographs. By contrasting the fictional world with the reality of the photographs he has a direct influence on our reading of the story. Lars von Trier’s choice of photographs at the end of Dogville has, in Römers’s words, ‘iconographic similarities’ with the town and the townspeople, which subtly leads us to compare these representations with his fictional worlds. However, one explicit intervention he makes is in the ending sequence of Manderlay.

While we hear ‘Do you remember your President Nixon?’ in the lyrics, Bush’s photograph is seen on the screen. Bowie continues, ‘Do you remember the bills you have to pay or even yesterday?’ and the following 11 Farm Security Administration (FSA), part of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, conducted a photography program funded by the government 12 Fibiger, Bo, “A Dog Not Yet Buried – Or Dogville as a Political Manifesto,” P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies 16, 2003, p. 62.

13 Römers, Holger, “‘Colorado Death Trip’: The surrealist Recontextualisation of Farm Security Administration Photos in Dogville,” Senses of Cinema 34, 2005, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/34/dogville_farm_admin_photos.html.

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image is of a black man sitting. What we soon realise is in the far right background, with the help of a zoom-in, are the World Trade Centre buildings in New York.

Apart from completing a photomontage created by Lars von Trier, each photograph has an author and historical context on its own. Susan Sontag rightly notes, Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience. The immensely gifted members of the Farm Security Administration photographic project of the late 1930s (among them Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee) would take dozens of frontal pictures of one of their sharecropper subjects until satisfied that they had gotten just the right look on film –the precise expression on the subject’s face that supported their own notions about poverty, light, dignity, texture, exploitation, and geometry. In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects. Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.14

With the montage of the photographs Lars von Trier reproduces another interpretation. The aim of the FSA photographs might have been “to demonstrate the value of the people photographed”;15 photographers might have had aesthetical concerns during shooting; through time the photographs might have become defining images for an era. All these associations are secondary to von Trier’s proposition: similar people, towns, hence stories, could have existed in reality.

Conclusion The absence of a realistic set in the two films together with the ending sequences shape the films’ narratives. Referring to the bare sets, Adam Atkinson writes, “This staged theatricality allows von Trier to eliminate the distinctions between public and private, inside and outside – if only for the viewer of Dogville. It is an attempt, perhaps, to bring the intimacy of theatre to film, but also a moment which opens more than a few questions

14 15

Sontag, Susan On Photography, London: Penguin, 1979, pp. 16-17.

Ibid., p. 62.

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regarding the intimacy and hospitality a film offers its viewer”.16 The stylistic choices in Dogville and Manderlay require us to complete the narrative, rather than presenting everything on the screen.

Dogville and Manderlay are about transparency and issues of visibility, invisibility, truth, lies, perception and misperception. It is no coincidence that the filmic style also hints at these concepts at the heart of the narrative. Style not only allows the spectator to look at the film in a different way, pushes and guides or forces him to see things that he would not have noticed otherwise; but it also, by its nature, adds on to the narrative itself. The films demand that we examine their styles and question why such a choice has been made. The soundstages in Dogville and Manderlay conspicuously point at the fact that these stories are fictional whereas the photographs force us to make links with history. Out of this controversy, Lars von Trier imposes his own point of view on politics in general, which does not provide answers but rather produces questions.

Lars von Trier’s own politics is very much based on provocation. Both stories are essentially about different perceptions and how ‘right’ and ‘good’ for the people can easily shift depending on interventions. Whether Lars von Trier’s depiction of America is ‘right’ or ‘good’ is another question, and perhaps an irrelevant one, but he unquestionably manages to show different perceptions through the use of soundstages and characters about whom we feel indifferent. The photographs he chose, on the other hand, are his interventions in the stories. His stylistic choices emphasise his political point of view and manipulate our construction of the narratives.

Works Cited Atkinson, Adam. “On the Nature of Dogs, the Right of Grace, Forgiveness and Hospitality: Derrida, Kant, and Lars Von Trier's Dogville.” Senses of Cinema 36, 2005, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/36/dogville.html.

Björkman, Stig. “Thieves Like Us.” Sight and Sound 13:7, 2003, p. 12-15.

16

Atkinson, Adam “On the Nature of Dogs, the Right of Grace, Forgiveness and Hospitality: Derrida, Kant, and Lars Von Trier's Dogville,” Senses of Cinema 36, 2005, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/36/dogville.html.

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Fibiger, Bo. “A Dog Not Yet Buried – Or Dogville as a Political Manifesto.” P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies 16, 2003, pp.

56-65.

Hoberman, J. “Our Town.” Sight and Sound 14:2, 2004, pp. 24-27.

Kapla, Marit. “Lars von Trier on Dogville.” In Lars von Trier: Interviews, edited Jan Lumholdt, pp. 205-212. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

Perkins, V. F. “Where is the World? The Horizon of Events in Movie Fiction.” In Style and meaning: Studies in the detailed analysis of film, edited by John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, p. 16-41. Manchester: Manchester University, Press, 2005.

Römers, Holger. “‘Colorado Death Trip’: The surrealist Recontextualisation of Farm Security Administration, Photos in Dogville.” Senses of Cinema 34, 2005, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/34/dogvillefarm_admin_ photos.html.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin, 1979.

Wilson, George. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins, University Press, 1988.

PART III: THE NEW EUROPEAN CINEMA: POLITICS OF MIGRATION, CREOLISATION AND HYPHENATION

CHAPTER SIX CREOLISED CINEMA: SERBIAN CINEMA AND EU INTEGRATION PROCESS NEVENA DAKOVIÇ

Creolized vs. hyphenated identity; Balkan vs. Europe In Europe, after the fall of the Berlin wall that marked the beginning of radical political change, the notions of national and European art changed accordingly. The post-1989 turn toward globalization and the restructuring of artistic, social, and cultural global-local relations has brought about a number of new identity models and their representations. The concern of this paper is to explore the ways in which Serbian1 cinema has engaged the politics and processes of EU integrations. I focus on a cinema of the turn of the centuries, looking for the ways films and their directors have often “pre-empted” political developments, which themselves have seen a turn from a politics of nationalism to one of Europeanization. The chaotic historical context defines the analyses of cinematic production as the search for traces that different endeavors of Europeanization and the shifting Serbian identy/ies have left on the post-Yugoslav cinema; i.e., the cinemas of the former Yugoslav republics that became independent states.

1

From the very beginning I am aware that I will frequently use ‘Serbian’ and ‘Balkan’ as interchangeable terms. However Serbia is and has always been paradigmatic for the Balkans, in terms of its intense civilization clashes, cultural hybridization and interactions, and overlapping identities; it is also emblematic of the Balkan Dystopia (of ideas and nonsense). Moreover in my other work I claim the existence of the Balkan genre as the expression of the collective, corporate, regional identity of ‘balkaness’ (Balkan as text, 2007). So to speak about Serbian, Bulgarian, etc. identity means to speak about Balkan identity and vice versa. Thus I could not have escaped talking about one without frequently mentioning the other.

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The key words describing identity and cinematic changes are creolization and creolized identities, which find their complementary expression in the creolized cinema and its aspects: productional, generic and theoretical. The choice of these terms from among other options reveals the essential nature of the political and artistic movement afoot.

Creolization is understood as the hybridization of a culture as it absorbs and transforms forces from outside; as well as how it encompasses the production of new local forms in response to globalization. Creolization in post-Yugoslavia and Serbia in the period between the hypernational 1990s and the Europeanized post-2000 era accordingly developed as a vacillation between Balkanization and Europeanization.2 Balkanization refers to the preservation of the isolation of Serbia and the insistence upon (pejorative) balkaness as its essential identity.3 Europeanization refers to the concept of Serbia proving itself as an active and full fledged member of the European cultural space.4 Moving between the poles, the chosen definition conveniently emphasizes creolisation as based upon an hybridization of the array of instances between the two points; and as linked with globalization in paving the way for the consideration of the global as the defining quality.

The possibility of describing the new cinematic forms as those of hyphenated identities like Balkan-Serbia or Euro-Serbia does not seem to fit the thesis of creolisation.

Read as a sign of hybridized, multiple, or constructed identity, the hyphen can become liberating because it can be performed and signified upon.

Each hyphen is in reality a nested hyphen, consisting of a number of other intersecting and overlapping hyphens that provide inter- and intraethnic and national links. The fragmentation and multiplication can work against essentialism, nationalism and dyadism. Faced with too many options and 2

Europeanization is defined in analogy with the concept of balkanization. Dina Iordanova (Iordanova, Dina. Cinema in Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and Media. London: BFI, 2001) describes balkanisation as the essential part of t concept of the ‘resistance to togetherness’ of the Balkan countries. It ‘connotes them as consistent only in their persistence to stay divided’ and as their ‘unwillingness to recognise the cultural closeness to the neighbours.’

3 From an outside perspective, balkaness is valued as negative, pejorative, barbarian while from the insider’s/local perspective it is (re)read – very much in sense of Said’s inverted mode and inversion of values – as a positive, unique, superior barabarogenius spirit that saves the world.

4 I would say broadly a member of the first world – the North Atlantic Cultural Space and its popular culture.

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Usage of the hyphenated identity implies the overt acknowledgement of the constant interactivity and involvement of two sides; the continuous “compound ethnic designation”.6 Creolisation implies the formative influence as important and decisive but never truly recognized. Tentatively it might be said that an hyphenated identity means permanent interference while creolisation implies transformation toward assimilation: the covering of one ethnic identity by the other and erasure of the hyphen. The influence of European on local, Balkan or Serbian identity could never be written as Euro-Balkan Euro-Serbian cinema because in the hybridization the hyphen disappears while Euro is hidden and overwhelmed by the evervisible single label. The outcome is not a compound ethnic designation but simply the same as the previous ethnic designation of Serbian, Balkan with inbuilt changes never overtly labeled. The role of the silent side in the “upgrading” of the one and only recognized identity complements the nature and positioning of European integration processes in official Serbian politics.7 The ways Europeanization is under erasure or discretely and cautiously manifested in the realm of real politics determines its nondeclarative presence in culture, art texts and identities.8 Eventually it is necessary to say that the term creolisation would be used in nuanced meanings trying both to cover and differentiate the degrees or phases of creolisation like pidginization, creolization, and post-creole 5

Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. p.16.

6 Ibid, p.16.

7 This is persuasively shown and commented upon in two films by Milutin Petrovic. His last film Petroviü, continues with an irony toward Europe and the thesis of its enlightening influence upon Serbia. The very title South by SouthEast/ Jug Jugoistok paraphrases Hitchcock’s political thriller North by North West.It explores paranoia as the dominant feeling of the twenty-first century, as schizophrenia was for the twentieth. Schizophrenia of the XXth century marked nationally split attitude –pro and contra– toward Europe. The new century paranoia is also shown to be dually generated: externally but also internally. The kidnapping of the illegitimate daughter of the Serbian high Government official is only the tip of the iceberg of plots and conspiracies orchestrated by State Security Service as well as by foreign services like CIA, Deuxieme Bureau, MI6 etc.

8 If we consider to accept the next case Naficy suggest and that is removing the hyphen as done by Scorsese’s Italianamerican (1974) we would come to only half acceptable claim that that there is no Balkaness/or serbianess that precedes or stands apart from Balkaness or Europaness.

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continuum/decreolization. It also comprises a number of interactions ranging from simple influence to total assimilation or restructuring transformation.

The brief history of the lasting tensions between Balkanization and Europeanization should help us understand the turn taken by Serbian cinema. In relation to art and culture, the politics of Europeanization has involved highlighting the cultural closeness of Europe as well as the recognition of Serbian as a European cultural identity. The promotion or repression of Europeanization depends on a political context. Milosevic’s hard line nationalism, which brought about the EU-endorsed bombing campaign that continued until 2000, was keen to distance itself from the EU. Europeanization became the proclaimed official politics only after October 2000, when the democratic block headed by Koštunica and Djindjiü came to power. On May 3rd 2006 the negotiations about the stabilization and EU integration of Serbia were officially suspended, only to be renewed more than a year later. However their successful ending was heavily determined by the fulfillment of the promise of arresting and sending Mladic and others to Hague. The process is still going on in small steps but it became clear that arts, media or education that have long been considered domains of secondary importance have turned into the most prolific domains. In these domains, the EU integration processes are progressing well and European standards and models have been widely implemented. Cinema has taken on the role of the elite, avant garde realm where the assimilated European models have made the national cinema into European (and American popular) cinema par excellence.

In contrast to the few films released during the Milosevic years that disseminated the state brand of patriotism and official anti-western attitude, most of the films today are confirmed as making up a rich analytical field examining the Serbian conceptualization of the West, one that eschews the rigid discursive structures of the state propaganda machine. These productions interweave multiple, ambivalent imaginings on different narrative levels, and engage with the broad traditions of representing the West that existed in ex-Yugoslav cinema.9 In the 1990s, 9

It should be said that the imagining of the West in Yugoslav cinema tended to be rare, literal and topical. A few narratives dealt with emigrant tales, and the encounter between bewildered Yugoslavs and the big world. These include stories about homecoming and cultural clash (Balkanski špijun/Balkan Spy, 1984, Božidar Nikoliü Dušan Kovaþeviü), and about the act of daydreaming about the promised land (Cuvar plaze u zimskom periodu/Beach Guard in Winter, 1976, Goran.

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such representational patterns developed dialectically. The West as a literal entity –as the obvious theme or topic– disappears from view, only to reappear in a figurative, or formal, way. In particular, the non-narrative figuration is conceptualized in the choice of genre and in the stylistic departure from standard cinematic practice. Directors express their views via new formulas which widen the rather narrow generic scope while simultaneously developing and cherishing the post-modern, eclectic styles of Western film.10 They use media clichés and popular cultural stereotypes disseminated through such modes as film, music and fashion to produce a sense of yearning and fascination for the West,11 an eclecticism that therefore frees the directors from the pressures of the heightened antiWesternism that marked Yugoslavia during the raging wars of the 1990s.

Their cosmopolitan acknowledgement of the positive formative influences of North Atlantic European and Hollywood cinema turns Yugoslav film texts into the site of political resistance. It subverts the traditional identification with nationalism through an articulation of an alternative, rebellious identification with ‘the Big Other of the world’.

Paskaljeviü). Sometimes, they depict a confused American or Western European coming to Yugoslavia for ‘business or pleasure’ (Nešto izmedu/Something in Between, 1982, Srÿan Karanoviü). It was only by the late 1980s that Yugoslav cinema began to be analyzed as a site for the imagining of the other, a result of the increasing global theoretical skepticism that a culture or nation could be defined only through self-reference. Cinema therefore became the representational machinery in which questions of identity ceaselessly arose and were debated (see Frederic Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World Cinema (1992)). In the wider historical context, however, this fascination with otherness helped raised the issue of nationalism and was one of the signs of the permanent identity crisis of the country, as well as a sign of its forthcoming disintegration.

10 This leads one to draw a connection to M. Epstein’s claim that post-communism is the (Russian) version of post-modernism (see V. Ellen, E. Berry, Kent Johns, Anesa Miller-Pogacar, Postcommunist Postmodernism-An Interview with Mikhail Epstein, 1993.ca Dejan Sretenovic, 'Umetnost u zatvorenom drustvu' in Art in Yugoslavia 1992-1995 (Beograd: Fond za otvoreno drustvo/Centar za savremenu umetnost, 1996), p. 3.

11 Structurally, this is analogous to those cinematic narratives dealing with the controversial decade of the 1950s. A number of films depict the 1950s as a period of absolute communist rule, when communist cultural models suppressed bourgeois metropolitan values, but also a period in which Western popular culture and lifestyle were discovered, particularly by the pre-war urban middle classes, who ‘smuggled’ popular culture into the country in the shape of films, jeans, music, and the like. History repeats itself, and the two periods of class, cultural, and civilisational clashes are expressed in the same cinematic way.

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Aspects of Creolisation The participation of cinema in the EU integration process is multifold, operating on structural as well as an aesthetic/thematic level. Creolization in cinema understood as the creation of the cinematic space of interaction of different cultures –European, North Atlantic, Balkan and Serbian– is visible in a threefold process: 1. The growing number of regional and European co-productions dealing with Balkans/ex Yugoslav topics and their place in the European context. The creolisation of the production is simple and transparent as the renewed production models copy the European joint ventures.

2. Genre hybridization, stricto senso, when developed as interstitial forms, develops between Serbian and the already existing local (Balkan) genres, as well as with the European and Hollywood cinema.

In a broader sense the creolized genre also means the basic Hollywood cinema is creolized due to the interference of Serbian and Balkan tones.

3. The creation of a border zone, a realm intertwining Euro-American first world cultures with regional, Balkan third world cultures. In the theories of Grzinic and Bay the body of films of creolized genres marks the very place of shift, change, transformation or the black whole that replaced the disappearing second world.

While multilateral communication between ex-Yugoslav republics was still a hot potato in terms of false myths, demagogic ideologies and religious confrontation, as it appeared in films such as Loving Glances (Sjaj u ocima, 2003, d. Srdjan Karanovic) and Borderpost (Karaula, 2006, Rajko Grlic) it served as a great example of transnational projects. The development of transnational cinema marks (paradoxically) the nostalgic return to the multicultural cinema of ex-Yugoslavia with the films made as the co-productions between ex-Yugoslav republics. The film texts offer innovative visions of the Yugoslav break up that manage to bypass the expected civil war stories. In Border Post, a group of characters from all over the former Yugoslavia are doing their military service at a lonely point along the border; the end stages a micro version of the collapse of the country. Loving Glances narrates the everyday life of a multiethnic group of refugees in Belgrade, while the latest film by Slobodan Sijan,

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Save our Souls (SOS, 2007) uses a collective hero to create a metaphor about the last days of the former country.

The structure of the coproduction is on the small scale European model within the South East Europe (SEE) or Balkan borders. In many cases funding is also secured at Euroimage concourses, since in 2004 Serbia (at the time SCG)12 became a member of Euroimages. At different points, the money was given to projects like Red Colored Grey Truck (Sivi kamion, crvene boje, 2004, d. Srdjan Koljevic), The Trap (Klopka, 2006 d. Srdan Golubovic), and Love Fair in Guþa (Ljubavni sabor u Guþi,2006, d.

Dušan Miliü). The political and cultural hegemony of the EU is clearly expressed in the thematic choices made. Of the four films mentioned above, two are about Balkan exotics (inevitable Gypsies and bizarre Kusturica like a story about the Bosnian war) and two are about social decay, urbicide and organized crime. The projects of the great “national” themes are financed from interbalkan resources. St. George Slays the Dragon (Sveti Georgije ubija azdahu, d. Srdjan Dragojevic) was made from the play by Dusan Kovacevic as the joint venture of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic srpska. It is one of the most popular theater plays based upon the glorious and glorifying image of the Serbian nation as victimized, suffering, martyred, and a heavenly nation within medieval confinements. It is shot all around the Balkans, set in the time of the Balkan War and World War I, evoking the whole region as underdeveloped, jet lagged, patriarchal, and on a medieval fringe. Insight into the broader Balkan/ex-Central European zone is offered in the film On the Beautiful Blue Danube (Na lepom plavom Dunavu) by Darko Bajic. With an episodic travelogue structure, very much like Cabaret Balkan (1998, d. Goran Paskaljevic), it recounts the two day journey from Vienna to Belgrade of assorted Central European, Balkan and ex-Yugoslav characters that participate in a literary orgy with obvious metaphorical meaning. The production is only nominally local since one of the TV companies (TV Pink) participating in both projects covers the whole region through a network of branches and sister companies.

The other type of creolized productions –not limited to Serbia or the Balkans– deals with creolized identities in times of transition; films like Lost and Found (2004), Traces of a Young Diaspora (2004), Visions of Europe (2004), or All the Invisible Children (2005). They are all made as co-productions by recent EU and not-yet-EU countries such as Bulgaria, 12 Loving Glances applied for and a Euroimages fund through Slovenian since Serbia was not able to use EU money.

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Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Serbia and Bosnia. The directors address stereotypical regional issues and problems such as exclusion, migration, depopulation, a lack of conflict resolution, stagnation, cultural pessimism, and corruption while the texts constitute a site of mediation between the non-EU minority and the EU majority. Despite being innovative, the films perpetuate most of the EU-held stereotypes and highlight the otherness of life in the Balkans. Eventually the texts suggest a new mediated representation of a possible European future by articulating the love- hate /attraction-repelling relation between the two entities.

Stefan Arsenijeviü (nominated for a short film Oscar in 2002) directs a Serbian story Fabulous Vera – in Lost and Found – about a runaway tram and the adventures of the passenger on board in what is an effective metaphor for Serbia's long and uncertain road toward a European future.

The lead female role is played by Milena Draviü, one of the most famous of the regional actresses known for her role in the films of Makavejev, Žilnik, Puriša Ĉorÿeviü, Hladnik and Petroviü. These filmmakers have often explored the same problems evident in Lost and Found – tense social relationships, unemployment, political unrest, earnest attempts at reform, and social instability. Jasmila Žbaniü's Birthday, which can be read as the prelude to her Grbavica, recounts the destinies of a Bosnian girl and a Croatian girl born on the same day in two Mostar neighborhoods divided by a destroyed bridge. The bridge, never shown in the film, either at the moment of its destruction or at the moment of celebration after it is reconstructed, becomes an absent symbol of a devastation and separation that suggests the rejection of the possibility of reconciliation. The notion is further subverted by the film's refusal to actually unite the girls, a fear accomplished by the official media through the editing of their separate images. This media illusion clearly offers no solution or even much hope in the eternally disintegrated margins of Europe. Blue Gypsy (Plavi Ciganin), Kusturica’s story in All the Invisible Children, as is clear from the title, is an exotic gypsy juvenile delinquent character who discovers that in the Balkans it is easier and better to live in prison than outside its ugly walls.

Creolising genres and identities Genre creolisation plays an important role in the critical redefinition of the (cinematic) representations of cultural, national, Balkan, diasporic identities. New texts and generations of directors reach for the appropriated and acculturated genre formulas while genre creolization

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involves two modes. The first refers to the gradually geographically widening hybridization/creolisation of the genres of the Serbian/Balkan cinema with other Balkan, regional traditions, then with the European and eventually Hollywood genres. A second refers to the “regentrification” of world cinema through interference/creolisation within the Balkans.

The creolisation of local genres has taken effect in different degrees and scopes. The first stage of creolization is the pidginization identified as the widening of the genre scope of local cinema that, in addition to partisan spectacles, popular comedies and social dramas, begins to include horror (TT syndrome/ TT sindrom, d. Dejan Zeþeviü, 2002; The Wheels/Toþkovi, d. Ĉorÿe Milosavljeviü, 1998; neonoirs (The Mechanism/Mehanizam, d. Ĉ. Milosavljeviü, 2000), zany comedies (Buy me Elliott/Kupi mi Eliota, d. D. Zeþeviü, 1998; Ringeraja,d. Ĉ.

Milosavljeviü, 2002 Little Night Music/Mala nocna muzika, d. D. Zeþeviü, 2002; works of Raša Andriü), and (meta)melodramas (Almost Totally Ordinary Story/Skoro sasvim obiþna priþa, d. Miloš Petriþiü, 2003). These texts are more of superficially acculturated than truly creolized forms and match the quality of pidginization through the several languages that “will blend both grammatically and functionally, though both the vocabulary and grammar are reduced when compared with the base languages (Holm (1988) 4-5)” Borrowed or imported genre formulas mechanically blend with the new chronotope and stay for the few who equally want and need to communicate in the innovative (but rather rudimentary) forms and ways13 in order to cope with different14 identities and worldviews. At this stage it is not a fully developed language yet; it has no native speakers but takes the best of the “dominant” languages/forms.

Fully creolized local genres imply the translation of the world genre into a local chronotope and the incorporation of pertaining elements of identity. This comprises literary absorption and transformation of the genre structures resulting in the rewritten and transformed local cinema that becomes the field of communication for the larger group of viewers/speakers. Morphology and syntax are better developed through cultural assimilation, hybridisation and additions. The films revaluate the 13

Compare with the original definition of pidgin. It develops as three or more different languages (different peoples) interact mostly for the sake of trade. If there are three peoples, and one of the three languages is dominant, the less dominant languages must still interact because they trade not only with the dominant people but also with each other.”

14 Different refers to marginalized (urban, generational) and new identities.

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myths blending them with the world context and world genres blending them with the local chronotope. Identity-shaping elements or “local color” are related with history, the past, and their interpretations that become new genre filters. The examples of genre creolization that are part of the local cinema history include (Balkan) westerns (Dust, 2001d. Milco Manchevski; Charleston Vendetta/Carlston za Ognjenku, 2007, d. Uros Stojanovic), (Belgrade) ghetto films (1:1, 2002, d. Mladen Maticevic; Absolute Hundred/Apsolutnih sto, 2001), (Serbian) dogma (Tomorrow Morning/Sutra ujtru, 2006, d. Oleg Novkovic), and horror films (Sheytan’s Warrior/Sejtanov ratnik, 2006, d. Stevan Filipovic) that above all reflect the new concept of a nation and its identity in the time of globalization. Bracketed ethnic/national provenance is not an obligatory part of the film label but an indication for tracing the relocation and creolisation. In Dust, the western is relocated in the Wild East as the last vestige of wilderness and becomes an “easterner” or Byzantine western.

Sheytan’s Warrior directed by a student of the Faculty of the Drama Arts, was greeted as the sign of the recovery of Serbian cinema, as well as an entertaining genre film, and thus an example of ‘healthy cinematography’. A bizarre genre venture, labeled as a fantastic comedy, this film combines a horror film and teenage comedy with visible sutures. It recounts the discovery of the old magical book that falls into the hands of a problematic teenager. Its magic liberates all mighty monsters, Sheytan’s Warrior who has survived centuries ever since the days of the Ottoman Empire. In present day Belgrade, three teenagers have to go into a final duel with this devilish creature. Unconventional history given in pop cultural idioms and cinematic world references underlines the global revisionist attitude of the new generation being able to express itself in the universal genre formulas and vocabulary of popular culture.

The notion of ghetto film was first used for the directorial debut of Srdan Golubovic’s Absolute Hundred. It was inspired by Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), a film itself made as a tribute to Scarface and vendetta films. The creolization is achieved through the textual work of meaning produced by the specific social circumstances. The film is creolized as a ghetto/gangster-/mafia themed crime drama stereotypical of the ex-EE in transition, and is structured around the story of two brothers. The specification of the genre combination that makes up “ghetto” and its placement as stereotypical ensures the film’s creolisation. Igor (Srdjan Todorovic) was an Olympic-hero marksman, but ended up using his sniping abilities in the Bosnian conflict. After the war he returns to Belgrade and quits shooting but is not able to quit heroin addiction and

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owes money to different local gangsters. His younger brother Sasa (Vuk Kostic) is already a junior champion and is training for the forthcoming World Championship in Paris. Sasa’s preparations are endangered when Igor has to sell their shooting gallery to a local gangster. The new owner limits Sasa's access to the gallery. Sasa takes Igor's rifle and thus takes the law into his own hands. The sniper rifle is the key for reading the coded turbulent history. Its transformations along the chain of signifiers maps out the changes of Yugoslav society. It was the emblem of Igor’s Olympic triumph –as seen on TV– and glorious in the time of Tito‘s Yugoslavia; in the 1990s it becomes a deadly weapon in the war; in Sasa’s hands, it is the weapon of revenge used against the mafia-type gangsters and for bringing the tragic world back to order.

The ultimate product of creolisation is the glocal film or genre that reveals local things of global appeal and value (comp. Virilio). Charleston Vendetta –which is to be premiered in January 2008– is widely advertised as a post-modern Gone with the Wind (1939, d. Victor Fleming). After WWI and when villages are left without men, two girls from a far away and remote region of Serbia set off for the big city in search of a husband.

The atmosphere is crackling with the energy of the rolling twenties in Serbian ethno style while the text is densely saturated with alo (cinematic) and ino (from other arts and medias) citations. Cinematically citing or rather paraphrasing everything from Zorro to spaghetti westerns, from the films about WWI to the horror vampire folklore tradition it also uses period essays and The Man of Steel already evoked in Makavejev s Innocence Unprotected (Nevinost bez zastite, 1968). In regard to the provenance of the citations, Charleston truly confirms the multicultural, creolized and hybridized world seen as realized concept of polycentric multiculturalism (comp. Stam: 271)15 –the networking of both minority and dominant communities and centers in the production of meaning. The romantic and melodramatic story stripped to its essence is wonderfully elusive and flexible as confirmed by variations of trailers each made with different styles of music– Mexican and Japanese styles for example –

15

Stam lists as characteristic of polycentric multiculturalism: “celebratory seeing so called minoritarian communities, as active, generative participants at the very core of shared, conflictual history; (…) sees identities as multiple, unstable, historically situated, the products of ongoing differentiation and polymorphous identifications. (…)” opening the way for informed affiliation on the basis of shared social desires and identification; (…) is reciprocal, dialogical.”

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which molds the image.16 The combination of hybridization/creolization and postmodern contamination –as close and interrelated but not identical processes– is within the frame of glocalisation or the fusion of global and local, of multiplying multiculturalism.

Eventually, according to Rick Altman at one point the evolution of the genre develops as regenrification, i.e. by adding adjectives to the main genre. “That is, a fresh cycle may be initiated by attaching a new adjective to an existing noun genre, with the adjective standing for some recognizable location, plot type or other differentiation factor”. With the adjective standing for a recognizable location that is Balkan we can describe the creolisation of the world cinema in terms of the involvement of the balkanized constituents. Creolization as recognized in the outside realm produces the array of films that topically, tangentially refer to the region. The regional qualification marks the thematic specification as creolization of the basic genre –the Balkan episode of E.R.; Balkan action film (Bad Company, 2001, d. Jerry Bruckheimer); Balkan war melodrama or Balkan thriller (Mask of Dimitrios, 1944, d. Jean Negulesco)– and creates a growing body of films about the Balkans made all around the globe. The newly created Balkan genre cycle legitimizes the growing body of films made about the Balkans or set in the Balkans, portraying the (Balkan) creolisation in international cinema.

Creolisiation as mediation between the first and third world Read through the theories of Hakim Bay, the creolized cinematic discourses mediate between the Third and the First World (Gržiniü 2005:16). As Gržiniü claims, interpreting Bay, instead of the erased and disappeared Second World – the former Eastern and Central Europe – there is a huge hole through which the Third World jumps directly into the First where the two interact. The First World identifies the Third World, through a set of ingrained stereotypes, as an inferior and underdeveloped one, confirming its own superior, narcissist and normative position. The Third World, on the other hand, articulates and renegotiates its own position. Defining the relation with the world, the national cinema(s) escape(s) from the political premises and backgrounds in an attempt to approach the medium through linguistic and stylistic common ground.

16 The same flexibility and adaptability is typical for the elusive Balkananess that I nevertheless claim to exist.

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Creolized cinema appears through various cultural hybridizations of locality with Euro-Americana models. Speaking the same cinematic language, it comes under the confinements of different first world popular cinema and first world European Cultural identity. Through dense intertextual weaving, the post modern creolized text becomes the site of the first world absent presence –since the tense political relations are replaced by stylistic assimilation and reverence. A new style bridges the gap between the Balkan fringes and big Other world, by confirming the hidden cultural fascination and desire for the Europeanized identity. Creolized cinema fulfills the desire for the Europeanized Serbian identity where Europeanization is an inbuilt quality and not part of the hyphenated identity label. The hyphenated relation is subsumed under the glo/bal– lo/cal confirming the much sought after global dimension of the local identity; of Serbia as a tiny piece of diversity in European unity.

Work Cited Barth, Frederick (ed.) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969.

Basso, Keith. “Stalking with Stories: Names, Places, and Moral Narratives among the Western Apache.” In E. Bruner, (ed.) Text, Play and Story.

Washington: American Ethnological Society, 1984.

Bjeliü Dušan. “Global Aesthetics and the Serbian Cinema of the 1990s” in Imre, Aniko (ed.) East European Cinemas. New York & London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 103-121. ûirjakoviü, Zoran. “Mesto ‘proklete mržnje’ in NIN, 2006.

Gržiniþ, Marina. Avangarda i politika: istoþnoevropska paradigma i rat na Balkanu. Beograd: Beogradski krug, 2005.

Holm, J. Pidgins and Creoles. 2 vols. Cambridge: CUP, 1989.

Iordanova, Dina. Cinema in Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and Media.

London: BFI, 2001.

Jameson, Fredric. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World Cinema. Indiana: Indiana UP, 1992.

Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.

Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. Malden Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

Todorova Marija. intervju “Drugaþiji Balkan”, Vreme, intervju vodila Jelena Grujiü, ,07/06/2007.

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Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema:The Logistics of Perception (Rat i film I: logistika percepcije) Beograd: Institut za film, 2003.

CHAPTER SEVEN VISUAL TRAVELS TO OTHER PLACES: POLITICS OF MIGRATION IN REEL LEVENT SOYSAL

This paper traces the shifts in our imagination and theories of migration through a reading of three seemingly disparate films: Otobüs (Bus, 1974), ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (What Have I Done to Deserve This? 1984), and Gegen die Wand (Head-On, 2004). Over the forty years since the first immigrants have arrived in Europe from the peripheries, immigration have been theorized and visualized first as a labor story—Turkish workers moving from peripheries to the center, Germany, for example, in search of their fortunes. In time, labor stories have been replaced by culture stories, put differently by stories of integration—the (mal) adjustment of Turks, for example, to the norms, values, and cultures of the West. Another significant shift in our renderings of immigration has been the move from narrating migration in/between national settings to transnational stories taking place both here and there.

Within this intellectual imaginary, Okan’s Otobüs represents the beginning, the move from the tranquility and comfort of village life to the confusion and mayhem of metropolitan centers in the West—laborers, seeking fortune but finding destitution and destruction. Almodovar presents a complete theory of migration as we know it: a migration story at the intersection of intra-nation and inter-national spaces of Spanish villages, Madrid and Berlin. Fatih AkÕn takes the migrants back, from Hamburg to Istanbul, and back to small town at the Mediterranean coast, on a transnational journey of apparent return. This return is a return to tranquility but not back to the origins; it is a return to a precarious new life in a new place. Thus Gegen die Wand figuratively completes the cycle of migration and signifies an end to the migration story. AkÕn’s film testifies in reel to what I have argued elsewhere: that further movements of peoples

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in the globalizing twenty-first century can no longer be understood and narrated as migration stories.

My reading of these three films as visual theories of migration relies primarily on my earlier writings on migration.1 My goal is not to review the complete genre of migration films—and the films under consideration could not be taken as ‘typical’ representatives of the genre. I take these three films as diagnostic narratives, allowing us to imagine our theories, reflect upon them and delineate the limits of our theoretical imaginations.

Finally, the migration story I am interested in concerns the migrations to Europe, whose beginnings are dated back to the early 1960s.

A caveat on my choice of Pedro Almadovar: What Have I done to Deserve This is neither an immigration film nor it is about Turks.

However, as I stated earlier and will explicate later in the paper, implicit in the story is a complete depiction of immigration lives qua nineteen seventies. I believe Almadovar perceptive narration of immigrant lives from Spain can easily be transplanted to other peripheries of Europe, Turkey, for instance.

Otobüs: The Journey Begins, to the Foreign Lands Like every story, the history of Turkish migration to Europe has a beginning and an end. 1960s is more or less the convention to mark the beginning as the first Turkish workers left their country for Germany, expecting to work hard, earn money, and then return home to build a good life. The end comes some forty years later, after the millennium, at a time when Europe is in the process of building a Union (and some of the sending countries already in the Union) and Turkey is negotiating the terms of membership in that Union. Through the medium of film, this essay retells that short history, which saw the establishment of Turkish and other immigrant populations in core, as well as in the larger geography, of Europe, amid much heated debate on migration and culture and integration within and without Europe.

1

For an extensive treatment of Turkish migration to Europe, see Levent Soysal, “The migration story of Turks in Germany: From the beginning and to the end,” in Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World, Reúat Kasaba (ed.), Vol. IV, 199-225, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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Migration to Europe begins with the signing of bilateral agreements between sending countries of the periphery and the receiving countries of the center. Across Europe, the protagonist in this migration history is the categorical international migrant worker, taking part in an institutionalized worker exchanges, then inappropriately called Guestworker programs.

Labour migration occurred between countries at the industrialized center of Europe (Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland) and the countries at Europe’s southern periphery (Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Algeria and Morocco), with the movement of workers from the latter to the former, from periphery to the center. At the same time, moving toward the center (Britain, France, the Netherlands) were migrants from (former) colonies (India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, Algeria, Surinam, Indonesia).

In this story the migrant leaves his home place (village) and tradition and settles in a foreign place (urban and modern Europe). He is a peasant on the way to becoming a worker, a family man entering the lonely state of singleness, and a rural native on the way to facing a new urban life. In this story, immigrant is also on a journey to separation, leaving his home to enter foreignness. Hence, in the persona of categorical immigrant, a labor migration story is set to motion, a story with a binary itinerary, between home (Turkey) and foreignness (Europe).

In the film Bus, the director Tunç Okan takes his migrants on a long journey, only to meet their end—and death—in a non-descript and hostile urban square in the West. he passengers of the bus, with their rugged faces and silences resemble the John Berger’s immigrants from The Seventh Man.2 They hardly say a word and seldom smile as if awaiting the (un)expected of unknowns of foreign lands and known of being away from home. This is a lonely journey to the unknown, through unpopulated geographies and vast open spaces. Bus driver’s glorifying remarks on how they will get rich once they arrive at their destination does not help alleviate the disquiet and anxiety on their faces. They smile a short-lived smile.

When the journey ends we find them—and they wake up—in a soulless and colorless square in the West. They cautiously open the door of the bus and cautiously walk into the unknown that is their fate as 2

Berger, John, The Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe. Baltimore: Penguin, 1975.

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immigrants. The Westerners, the natives, are cold and corrupt, their fear of foreigners readily apparent in their faces and actions. The natives run away from the immigrants, none shows signs of human closeness to the newcomers, and circle them and metaphorically dance around them, like White men dancing around incarcerated Indians in Westerns.

As the story moves forward, the newcomers encounter the seduction of the city life. The abundance and brightness in shop windows lures them into dreams of what they could own. They are tempted by possibilities of consumption and entertainment but disappointment is just around the corner. Behind the abundance of consumption lies the disappointing coldness and corruption of human relations. The natives stay distant.

When they get close, it is to exploit the unknowing foreigner. The city is not a welcoming but a cruel and corrupt place. One of them gets charmed into an unwanted homosexual encounter. Some are chased by the police, some gets lost in the labyrinths of urbanity, and some meet their end in death.

At the end of the long journey to the land of capital and abundance, the fates of the immigrants of the Otobüs are sealed in destruction. Their story of migration does not (cannot) have a happy end. More fiction, with such titles as Abschied vom falschen Paradies (Farewell to the False Paradise, 1987), Almanya AcÕ Vatan (Germany, the Bitter Country, 1979), Umuda Yolculuk (Journey to Hope, 1990) Yara (The Wound, 1998) has followed this lead and provided the visual conventions for understanding the ‘human’ cost of immigration.

¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! : A Visual Theory of Migration The formal policies of labor recruitment in Europe ended in the midseventies in Europe (in Germany in 1973). By this time, the number of the foreign-born populations in Europe had risen substantially.3 In 1976, there were about 12 million foreigners in the above-mentioned European countries, whereas in 1960 this number had been only 5 million.

3

The term ‘foreigner’ refers to persons belonging to a wide array of membership categories, including third-country (non-European Union) citizens, European citizens (holding citizenship in a country other than their host country), asylum seekers, dual citizens, holders of various temporary and permanent residency permits, and illegal aliens.

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Germany’s share of the number of foreigners in 1976 was close to 4 million, about 6.4 percent of the total population of the then-Federal Republic.4 The end of formal recruitment did not mean the end of migration.

Through family reunification programs and political asylum laws, the influx of foreign populations, including Turks, continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By 1990, the foreign population in Europe had reached 14.5 million.5 In Germany, the number of foreigners amounted to 7 million in 1994, 2 million of whom were from Turkey.6 Since then, the number of foreigners in Germany, as well as in Europe, has remained stable, despite restrictive immigration legislations popularly enacted throughout the European Union.

This movement of labor in and into Europe necessarily involved massive internal rural to urban migrations in the sending countries, the scope and effects of which had been radically transformative for the countries implicated in the process. As the peasants had left their villages in exceptional numbers, the European cities, London, Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, have become home to diverse populations migrants and their cosmopolitan attributes have come to fore. As their counterparts who traveled to foreign lands, the new residents of the cities were also unwelcome and regarded as the uncivilized masses, devoid of codes of conduct, manners, and culture—even though they were natives and moving in their own country and culture.

It is safe to say that in the two decades following the end of formal labor recruitment, the foreigners in Europe have been solidly ‘incorporated’ into the available legal, political, economic, social structures and institutions in their countries of residence.7 The same goes 4

Nuho÷lu Soysal, Yasemin, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Post-national Membership in Europe, University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 22.

5 Ibid, p. 23.

6 Muenz, Rainer & Ulrich, Ralf “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1995,” in Rainer Muenz and Myron Weiner, (ed.), Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign Policy: U.S. and German Policies toward Countries of Origin, Providence: Berghahn Books, 1997, pp. 84 - 93.

7 In Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Nuho÷lu Soysal defines incorporation as “a process whereby a guestworker population becomes a part of the polity of the host country,” independently of the degree of the individual migrant’s adaptation “to the life patterns of the host

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for the new residents of cities who have moved from rural places. They have become part of the labor and investment markets, educational and welfare systems, and policy discourses and regimes. They have attained and exercised as foreigners’ rights and privileges that are conventionally reserved to national citizens. They have been extensively involved in public life through associational activity, union membership, party politics, electoral practices, and arts and literary production. They also have been part of existing regimes of income inequity, social differentiation, and ethnic and racial discrimination. In short, the migrants have become subjects in a complex terrain of exclusions and inclusions, contention and accommodation, and disenfranchisement and membership.

In What Have I Done to Deserve This, Almadovar maps out this expansive geography of migration within Europe, between villages, urban centers, and foreign lands and metropoles, a tremulous movement that has changed the constitution of postwar Europe forever. The migration story narrated in the film traverses a route originating from a village at the central plateaus of Spain, ending up in Madrid’s concrete urban periphery, and moving back and forth over the borders of Spain to Berlin’s foreign spaces. This is the definitive picture of migration of the seventies.

First the family migrates to the city. The grandmother dreams of return and good days back in the village in the midst of concrete and perilous Madrid—though Almadovar’s take on urban perils can only be called hilarious. She finds a small park, if that is to be called a park, in that a stick and a lizard that harks her back to her imagined village. The mother is the homemaker, sniffs chemicals to survive the day, and comes home to do household chores and serve the family. The children, two boys, have no discernible expectations for their futures. The life that awaits them includes drugs and gangs, and potential despair and destruction. The goodfor-nothing father drives a taxi, earns nothing, daydreams his happy days in Berlin, driving around while listening to Nazi songs recorded by his exemployer, a singer of fame from Nazi times, herself living in a world of hallucinations of good old times of the Third Reich. The father imagines his return, return to Berlin of his immigrant days abroad. Their neighbor, a young woman dreaming about crossing over the Atlantic to the movie land of Los Angeles prostitutes herself and dresses up like movie stars.

society” (p. 30). In this sense, incorporation is different than integration and assimilation—the other two terms widely used in immigration debates and research.

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Some dreams are realized, some we learn are dead ends. First, the grandmother goes back to the village, taking with her—and saving—one of the boys. The other boy is given to the care of a gay dentist, who promises a good future for the boy. Then we learn there is no return to Berlin—thus no future—for the father (his mistress in Berlin is found dead). Finally, the mother kills the father and we leave her watching over the city from her balcony, emancipated with uncertain prospects. Of course, the neighbor never crosses over the Atlantic, Hollywood is always a dream.

At the end of the film, as the camera distances itself from the urban landscape of social housing, growing in front of our eyes block after block, a typical migration story that has started in a village and occasionally crossed borders to Germany ends with the typical bleak depictions of urban condition, austere concrete high-rises that will be blamed for human misery in the decades to come.

Gegen die Wand: The Return and the End of Migration As the mid-eighties approached, Europe entered the world of ‘multiculturalism’ and the predominant mode of thinking about migration became centered on culture and identity. With cultural turn, the Gastarbeiter was re-signified as a person, a total being with feelings and culture—not simply a worker and no longer a guest. The Turk (the other) became the main character in migration stories and her identity was analyzed vis-à-vis the German (the native)–within the conventions of cultural otherness and difference. Labor statistics no longer dominated the migration texts, but instead attributed credence to identity stories.

In the same period, policy debates have moved away from the economics of labor migration and focused on integration question and border controls. While integration involves the ‘adjustment’ of those who are already in the country, border controls regressively focus on limiting further immigration into the European Union. The integration policies, if they exist, reify supposed ‘integration problems,’ which are never defined but circularly deployed as proof for the need to integrate migrants to their new society, along with obligatory recitations of cultural differences such as being Muslim or Turkish.

With the cultural turn in migration, that is, with the increased emphasis on culture in terms of rights, duties, and membership of immigrants,

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women came to the fore of the immigration question. In the cultural story, immigrant was no longer male alone, and women had a role to play. As categorical Muslims, immigrant women from diverse places (such as Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, Surinam) and with different social, educational, and cultural backgrounds, have become subjects of foulard affairs, or headscarf debates. In media representations, they have been typically portrayed as ‘beyond the veil,’ thus silent.

At this juncture Fatih AkÕn’s Gegen die Wand hits the screen, the story of two misfits, one man, one woman, who appears to be the stronger character, if not the lead. Though different, AkÕn’s characters are ordinary, in that one could easily meet them on the streets of any big city in Germany. What makes them different is their migrancy. Sibel comes from a traditional family, expectedly ruled by a conservative father and served by a silent homemaker mother. She has a brother who is assigned the role of keeper of the family honor. She desires to live her life as she wishes; the family longs to keep her within the bounds of the tradition. Cahit, whom Sibel marries to escape her family and destiny in tradition, is a lost soul— lost in marginality and alcohol.

Sibel and Cahit meet in a mental clinic (both were there because of their suicidal tendencies), they marry, and move to Cahit’s rundown apartment. For a while we get a glimpse of a happy life: a joyful wedding, visits to friends and gossiping about sex, and wonderful scenes of Sibel cooking Turkish food for her new man. Then, not surprisingly the dream collapses. The brother follows them, hinting the potentiality of honor killing, Cahit kills one of Sibel’s lovers and is sent to prison, Sibel leaves Germany and seeks her future in Istanbul. Reminiscent of conventional migration films, dreams come to an end in ruin.

In the second part, the story moves from Hamburg to Istanbul, a place more urban and modern than their hometown in Germany, where tradition rules lives. Sibel finds her way up, in the metropolitan jungle of Istanbul, to a middle class marriage and motherhood. Cahit gets out of prison and comes to Istanbul after Sibel. They meet but the new city, and their love for each other, is not enough to bring them back together. Sibel has already started a new life and it is time for Cahit to do the same. At the end of film we see Cahit in a bus heading for his hometown, a place we sense that he does not know. Like the mother at the closing scenes of Almadovar’s film, we leave the protagonist heading for the unknowns of a new a beginning and we are sure the future that awaits him does not

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involve destruction, as was the case for the protagonists who embarked a journey to the West in Okan’s Bus. Cahit’s journey is back to home, to the East.

As the bus leaves the terminal and moves away from the camera on a generic highway that can be encountered anywhere in the world, we, in the audience, realize that return to home (Turkey) is, neither the ideal corrective to the disruptive forces of migration (as in a narrative of ‘going back home’) nor the disruption of a life built in Germany (Cahit may very well return to Germany). We should not however confuse the figurative completion of the journey, which was set to motion in the Bus, with return in the conventional sense. Return is only temporary in a world that permanently connects Turkey and Germany in ways beyond the linear narrative of leaving home and settling in foreign places.

Today amid heightened but undue attention to the cultural ‘problems’ associated with migration opinion and policy-maker, as well as the public at large, tend to disregard the processes of incorporation and the difficulties of maintaining foreignness in a globalizing world. What we end up with is an elementary story of integration, in which the parameters that create difference and identity are taken to be national/ethnic/religious– as in Turkishness, Germanness, and Islam. Rather than attending the complex layering of inequities and affinities within and without the nationstate, the incessant debate on integration concerns itself, with apocalyptic cultural fragmentations, parallel societies, and Islamic ghettos. In the end, “ironically, as immigrants are increasingly incorporated into the membership schemes of European host polities, the debate over how well they ‘adjust’ intensifies, and their cultural otherness is accentuated.

Guestworkers become symbolic foreigners” in Europe.8 The representational and discursive schemas we employ today confine contemporary immigrants to unyielding pasts—the past of their home and culture—and a persistent present, the present of their host country and their Otherness. They are considered to be bounded by their nation (or religion) in nations of others, and in this boundedness they live in permanent diasporas. Lost in these representations are their futures, dreams, and competencies, along with the possibility of having more than one home, and living with/out nations. In this respect, AkÕn’s Gegen die Wand is an apt corrective to the conventions we take for granted when talking about and visualizing immigrants. With their blissful joy and 8

Nuho÷lu Soysal, p.135.

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familiar troubles, Cahit and Sibel belong to the contemporary world we are occupying, a world overburdened with travel, consumption, and culture, and invite us to join them in that new world of immigration, with returns that do not return home.

Works Cited Berger, John The Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe. Baltimore: Penguin, 1975.

Muenz, Rainer and Ulrich, Ralf “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1995,” in Rainer Muenz and Myron Weiner, (ed.), Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign Policy: U.S. and German Policies toward Countries of Origin, Providence: Berghahn Books, 1997.

Soysal, Yasemin Nuho÷lu Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Soysal Levent, Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World, Reúat Kasaba, editor, Volume IV, 199-22., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

CHAPTER EIGHT TURKISH CINEMA AND THE NEW EUROPE: AT THE EDGE OF HEAVEN

DENøZ BAYRAKDAR

In 2003 I had the opportunity to give a lecture in Belgrade for which I made a Turkish Cinema compilation highlighting the work of transnational directors like Fatih AkÕn, Ferzan Özpetek, YÕlmaz Arslan and Sinan Çetin.

The presentation was about the films made by German and Turkish directors on Turkish guest workers and their representation from the 70s onwards in Germany. The stories of the 70s guest workers evolved into multicultural essays in the 80s and transnational examples in the 90s.

From the 90s onwards Turkish Cinema took off. There were several reasons for this; the first of which was changes in the political milieu.

Turkey began a new journey on several layers at once. AKP (Justice and Development Party came to power, which gave rise to debates on secularism, and at the same time, democratization and entry into the EU came to the foreground. The Turkish economy underwent a large fluctuation in 2001. New recipes and formulas, especially those of the IMF, were applied one after the other to slow down the crisis. Media, especially the newspapers and television, were affected by this economic crisis. Most journalists and members of the media could not enter the buildings of the media conglomerates. The intellectuals were torn between attacking and supporting the second Republicans and the Kemalists. Each comment and step the military took caused a panic in the economy and the whole population swung between left and right, or better formulated as between beliefs and facts.

We have gone through turmoil, the after effects of the 1998 earthquake’s leftovers combined with the enigmatic situation of the 2000s

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created a new air full of night and fog. (A good work on this issue is the film Küçük KÕyamet (The Little Apocalypse, 2006)).

Another important fact was the rapid flow of knowhow and hard- and software imports. First, it came to revolutionary steps in telecommunications during Özal’s period in the 90s and then the immense market of mobile communication and the Internet opened up. Chaos was created by virtual exchanges, as well as the mobilization of the self and mind through the Internet and the manias of the middle class for travel and the novelties of credit cards and mortgages, all of which ended up damaging everyone’s lives.

Nearly all European film movements have been at times of economic crisis –followed by wars or preceded by political changes– which were accompanied by flourishing intellectual creation. The first decade of the twenty-first century for Turkey, despite all the difficulties faced, are a time of motivation in the cultural and social milieus: International film awards (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, øklimler/Climates, 2006), achievement in literature (Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2006) and, of course, the promise of becoming a member of the EU. People have again come onto the streets and wanted to watch movies in between shopping hours in grandiose shopping malls on every corner and the directors got the trick. They are either art house directors aiming at international audiences via film festivals with new narratives and production styles like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Zeki Demirkubuz, and Derviú Zaim, or they have found the key to the cinema business as producer/directors like YÕlmaz Erdo÷an and Sinan Çetin (who has long known this key) while others stay in between, using global PR tools and marketing, like Ezel Akay. This group of directors were the ones who started using digital technologies in their new narrative forms. Another important development after 2000 is the increasing support of Eurimages.

On the other hand, ‘high culture’ in Istanbul has flourished with the opening of new museums, exhibitions, film festivals, and the expansion of the biennale. The consumption of cultural goods has created an Istanbullite identity as part of the New European look.

After 2000, popular locally-made films have challenged the box office success of Hollywood blockbusters and this era has become the most

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glamorous of times for the Turkish Cinema. The prevailing themes of the first decade of the twenty-first century have been: Fathers and sons/history and the present: Babam ve O÷lum (My Father and Son 2005).

The underworld/ordinary people and supermen/the ethics of globalization: Organize øúler (The Magic Carpet Ride, 2005) østanbul and the Southeast (with no focus on the rest of Western Turkey; I cannot remember a single film shot in Ankara, for example) Anlat Istanbul (Istanbul Tales, 2004).

Nationalistic motives (Mafia, soldiers, police and supermen) Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak (Valley of the Wolves, Iraq, 2005), and Islamic motives Takva (Takva: A Man's Fear of God , 2005).

If we look at the box office results during 2000-2007 we can easily follow these themes, sometimes by their titles alone.1 Valley of the Wolves, Iraq, G.O.R.A (GORA, 2003), Babam ve O÷lum (My Father and Son 2005), Vizontele (Vizontele: the reverse of television, 2000) and Organize øúler (The Magic Carpet Ride, Turkish title is: Organised Business, meaning the network of today’s exchange between the underworld and ordinary people), Hababam SÕnÕfÕ Askerde (Hababam Class is in the Military, 2004), EúkÕya (The Bandit, 1996), Kahpe Bizans (Wrotten Byzantinien, 1999), etc.

The new directors after 2000 in the Turkish Cinema questioned Yeúilçam’s narrative forms, the 80s atmosphere after the military intervention, and the swing between East and West. At the same time, transnational and hyphenated directors projected their identities onto the screen. Their attempts were internationally acclaimed and followed.

Especially Fatih AkÕn’s work showed the traces of a New Cinema which could be addressed as the New European.

AkÕn’s filmography consists of a mere questioning of his and his characters’ identities. His characters are not only second and third generation Turks but also, Serbian, Greek and Albanian people in their ghettos in Germany. Similar to Makavejev’s Montenegro (1981) he plays with the bitter themes of being the ‘other’ in Germany and promotes the ‘otherness’. He deals with the idea of New Germany, and more than this, the New Europe. We could say that he is the answer to the question: 1

Sinematürk Database (Table 1)

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What’s new in the New Europe? He has made the transfer from multicultural to transnational and global. His hyphenated identity is an answer to the question of a New European Cinema. With his GermanTurkish film, The Edge of Heaven (2007), he won the best screenplay at the 60th Annual 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

A film situated on both sides: Germany and Turkey. Ali, an elderly Turkish man –first generation– from the Black Sea Coast meets Jessy, a Turkish widow named Yeter in a bordello, in Germany. Yeter has a daughter in Turkey to whom she sends money but has no contact with.

Ali’s son Nejat, a Germanic Studies professor, meets Yeter, his father’s partner. After having a heart attack, the father (Ali) gets paranoid and accuses his son of having a relationship with Yeter and assails her. Yeter dies and the son Nejat leaves Germany for Istanbul as the father is put in prison. Nejat puts up Yeter’s picture everywhere in order to find her daughter, Ayten, who is a political activist; however, just before Nejat comes to Istanbul, Ayten has to migrate to Germany after hiding a pistol fired during a political protest. In Germany, Ayten meets Lotte who becomes her lover; they live in the house of Lotte’s mother, Susanne.

Susanne cannot accept Ayten. Ayten gets deported from Germany and, after arriving back in Istanbul, she is put in prison. Lotte goes to Istanbul to find her and meets Nejat who gave up his position as a professor in Germany and now runs a German bookstore in the Beyo÷lu neighbourhood. Lotte meets him incidentally, and neither finds out that they are searching for the same woman, Ayten. Lotte rents a room in Nejat’s house and continues to search for Ayten. Lotte finds Ayten in prison and tries to help her and gets the gun Ayten hid before leaving for Germany. Running with the gun in the alleys behind østiklal Street, Lotte is attacked by child glue sniffers and dies. Her mother Susanne comes to Turkey and finds Nejat, Lotte’s roommate. She stays in his house and visits Ayten, whom she takes for her new daughter. Neither Nejat nor Susanne knows of their connection to Ayten. Meanwhile Nejat’s father Ali is freed from prison and returns to his hometown on the Black Sea. Nejat decides to visit his father and the film is sown together through a flashback scene of a gas station towards the end of the film, for the film’s journey began in this very gas station. Here, we assume that Nejat is the subject with whom we are travelling through the layers of this narrative. The film ends with Nejat looking at the Black Sea; from behind him, we encounter the point which is not an end.

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This open-ended story gives us a look at the sea like the womb from which all identities derive. The older generation –Ali, Yeter and Susanne– are in search of their children, and the children are torn apart from their mothers and fathers by their attempts to find new identities in their journeys between Germany and Turkey, namely across Europe. Istanbul, as the centre of the film, is the bridge between two continents.

Most of the transnational films have this kind of journey as a basic tool in the search for identity. There is another Ayten in the film Yara, (Wound, 1996), and all characters are outsiders in KÕsa ve AcÕsÕz (The Short and Sharpshock, 1998) and many other, similar films. The search ensues after the loss of the mother/fatherland, and leads to the urge to suture this loss with the New Europe which exists in railways, airports, hotel rooms, and borders.

Throughout these films, homely scenes are very rare and mostly interrupted with sudden changes in the lives of the characters. The loss of the mother/father and home equals a wipe in the knowable (heimlich= which has two meanings, hidden and homely) and what remains are the spaces of the unheimlich (uncanny= prisons, undefined hotel rooms, little shops of bordellos, the frames of dark windows). Ça÷lar points out that a growing number of people define themselves in terms of multiple national attachments and feel at ease with subjectivities that encompass plural and fluid cultural identities. Attempts to theorise the lifestyles pursued by such people, bearers of hyphenated identities, highlight the inadequacy of commonsense assumptions about culture as a self-contained, bounded and unified construct.2 Fatih AkÕn, a German-Turkish director, is a good example for a hyphenated identity, as are his characters. These hyphenated identities’ urge to find the lost one are projected on another. Posters and post-its stuck on the walls, and maps function to bring the lost parts of the puzzle together in order to create a new identity out of the search process. Ça÷lar poses the question: How to study the complex cultures and identities of

2

Ça÷lar, Ayúe, “Hyphenated Identities and the Limits of ‘Culture’” in Tariq Moodood and Pnina Werbner (ed.), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe, Racism, Identity and Community, Zed Books: London, 1997.

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trans-nationals in a globalising world?3 She thinks that for such persons there are no self-evident cultural truths or subjectivities. She adds that on the social formations and ‘disjunct’ subjectivities of persons with multilocale and trans-local attachments, a number of concepts like hybrid, creolized, hyphenated and diasporic are applicable.4 Although she sympathizes with the concepts of creolisation and hybridisation as revolutionary antidotes to essentialist constructs of culture, identity and ethnicity, she finds the concept of hyphenation problematic in the case of German-Turks’ cultural formations since the term limits the heterogeneity of these formations into two cultural wholes: Turkish and German Culture.5 Looking at the film from this perspective, I would describe it as hyphenated, especially for German-Turks since they still search for a soil in their hometowns and try to settle down in Turkey. The only exception is Nejat, who tries to find the answer of a soil in the sea, which is a fluid and endless space.

YaúamÕn KÕyÕsÕnda is based on a continuous loss, longing and search which itself becomes the new identity of these “postmodern cultural nomads”6 whose ‘otherness’ is more visible in their contact with state institutions, like the German court.

The relationships in the film are portrayed ‘at the edges of the triangle of three pairs’ which intermingle temporally and spatially, and the spectator becomes helpless and lost and identifies her/himself with the search itself. The chaotic nature of the relations in the film playing against the hierarchical order of Western narrative discourse is a kind of new knowledge. This perspective is presented in a quote from Bauman, Chaos, "the other of order," is pure negativity. It is the denial of all that the order strives to be. It is against that negativity that the positivity of order constitutes itself. But the negativity of chaos is a product of order's selfconstitution: its side-effect, its waste, and yet the condition sine qua non of

3

Ibid., p. 170 Ibid., p. 170 5 Ibid., p. 172 6 Ibid., p. 174 4

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Fatih AkÕn celebrates the chaotic nature of the triangle which consists of three pairs in his film: Ali and Nejat (Turkish father and son, living in Germany) Susanne and Lotte (German mother and daughter) Ayten and Yeter (Turkish mother and daughter, living apart in Germany and Turkey) Two mother and daughter pairs and one father and son experience ‘hinundzurück’, as in one of the titles of Edgar Reitz’ serial film Heimat (1984). They oscillate between Germany and Turkey in search of their lost daughters and mothers in order to find themselves.

This search, I think, becomes the identity of the New Europe: A Europe that constructs a new home/mother/fatherland of a fluid nature.

Free movements even with restrictions function as the essence of this identity. The freest movements are the slantwise transfer of the coffin into the airplanes –Yeter’s coffin is sent from Germany to Turkey, then Lotte’s from Turkey to Germany– and the deportation of Ayten and Ali after being freed. The film shows that institutions on both sides are becoming more stabilized and stagnated whereas ordinary people do their best to find a common ground for this new identity, restraining themselves from national, cultural and religious differences, appreciating the difference of the ‘other’.

New European films directed by German-Turkish directors have continued the use of transnational spaces –as defined by Hamid Naficy– since the 90s. Jacqueline Bhabha’s comment on these new generations enlightens the scene which these directors have created: “As second - and third-generation immigrant populations become established within Europe, the look and sound of Europeans is changing”8.

7

Bauman, Zygmunt, cited in Gregory Feldman’s article, “Development in Theory; Essential Crises: A Performative Approach to Migrants, Minorities, and the European Nation-state”, Antropological Quarterly, 78.1, 2005, p. 171.

8 Bhabha, Jacqueline, “Get Back to Where You Once Belonged: Identity, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Europe”, Human Rights Quarterly, 20.3, 1998, p.

598.

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Throughout the film we see highways and subways, stations, borders and bordellos, hospitals, prisons, trains and ships, maps and schematics, state institutions, bars and cafes, gas stations. Since identities of the new Europe cannot be fixed to their ghost images or representations they have to flow unwillingly between borders.

In her article ‘Back Projection: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in Zentropa’ Rosalind Galt underlines that the film’s narrative and form elaborates the questions of how to imagine a European history, a European space, and a European subject. She continues; What this example makes clear is the cinematic distinction between a national space -which can be represented visually- and the international space of Europe, which cannot be ‘Germany’ appears to exist at the level of the image (seen in rail yards, houses, fields, etc.), but ‘Europa’ exists only via the disembodied voice. European space is invisible, existing as a political idea, not as a coherent location.9

This can be applied to Fatih AkÕn’s representation of Europe. Hence, the image of the New Europe is beyond national imagery, in Zentropa it is to hold in the disembodied voice. In At the Edge of Heaven it is in the search, in “der Aufklaerungsreise” or the Journey of Enlightenment. The triangle of the pairs encounter one another, they dissolve in loss in several layers (Yeter and Susanne have lost their daughters, Ayten and Lotte have lost each other), and a new understanding between Susanne, Ayten and Nejat begins. This is a hopeful idea of the New Europe. “From striving for order’s sake to get lost in the chaos” and find new ways through the replacement of spaces and figures (Susanne begins to live in Turkey, Nejat reaches the Black Sea Coast). The margins of the New Europe reach the other end of Turkey, at least mentally.10 Galt’s comment, which poses a question on the so-called New Europe, is ‘This is what makes Zentropa such a compelling case study for the question of whether there was —or could be— a European cinema at the

9

Galt, Rosalind, “Back Projection: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in Zentropa”, Cinema Journal, 45.1, 2005, p. 6.

10 He stipulates this ending in his film Denk ich an Deutschland - Wir haben vergessen, zurückzukehren (We forgot to go back, 2001) which was awarded the best documentary film at the Nürnberg film festival in 2003.

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moment of inception of the so-called the New Europe.’ She finds the answer in the same article: Zentropa structures the impossibility of creating a truly European image, but in staging the collocation of the continent's disjunctive historical spaces that it begins to imagine the stakes in the idea of a Europe outside the dominant Western discourse.11

I think, Fatih AkÕn’s narrative needs a closer and more detailed analysis to find out how he places Europe different than Lars von Trier, so that as a spectator I get a different feeling about the New Europe. The signified problem of the ‘affect for the yet-to-be produced European subject’ finds an optimistic solution in Nejat, who is the carrier of the narrative. AkÕn uses the genealogical network to construct and cure the European subject. Nejat (as a Germanic Studies professor) functions as the director’s alter ego in igniting the access: the genealogical matrix of mothers/fathers/sons/daughters is the basic set-up= the womb for a New Europe. The understanding among the new generation is the first layer, and the supranational communication between the Eastern patriarchy (for example, Ali, Tunç Okan’s master Turk in the Bus (1974); the rebellion of the fallen Turkish woman (Yeter); and a WW II-based German feminist with a touch of the Beat generation (Susanne, played by Hanna Schygulla, the unforgettable figure of Die Ehe der Maria Braun and Petra von Kant

by Fassbinder) build the second layer; lesbian partners (Lotte and Ayten) are on top of these in the third layer. These layers could be aligned like ‘Butterbrot’.

The inter-textuality of this narrative with its references to New German Film, the first examples of Turkish emigré directors and a European history embodied in Hanna Schygulla and the open ending at the sea like Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups’s young Jean-Pierre Leaud –the director’s alter ego– works in a different context than Zentropa, which could be a milestone for a New European Cinema.

With intentions clear even in the titles of his films, Fatih AkÕn is, in my opinion, much closer to his home than other Turkish directors living in Europe. He is continuously questioning the problem of “hin und zurück”.

On the other hand other prominent Turkish-Italian director Ferzan

11 Galt, Rosalind, “Back Projection: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in Zentropa”, Cinema Journal, 45.1, 2005, p. 18.

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Özpetek’s films began as orientalistic tableaus and his recent films are more European than New European.

Fatih AkÕn, who has lived in Europe since his childhood, has not finished his journey yet. I think this is parallel to Turkey’s journey in Europe since the Ottoman Empire “hin und zurück”, or the idea of being part of it but the difficulty in belonging to it or being accepted by it.

Europe despite its different definitions now needs a new personification.

The idea of the New Europe, even as it gives more opportunities to Turkey, is only a waiting lounge via which politics sway, while concrete mobilization is restricted.

Kavafis’ poem ‘Ithaca’12 captures well the starting point at which we now stand.

When you leave for Ithaca, may your journey be long and full of adventures and knowledge.

Do not be afraid of Laestrigones, Cyclopes or furious Poseidon; you won’t come across them on your way if you don’t carry them in your soul, if your soul does not put them in front of your steps.

Works Cited Bhabha, Jacqueline. “Get Back to Where You Once Belonged: Identity, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Europe”, Human Rights Quarterly, 20.3.1998. Ça÷lar, Ayúe. “Hyphenated Identities and the Limits of ‘Culture’” in Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner (ed.), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe, Racism, Identity and Community, Zed Books: London, 1997.

Feldman, Gregory. “Development in Theory: Essential Crises: A Performative Approach to Migrants, Minorities and the European Nation-State”, Anthropological Quarterly, 8.1, 2005.

12 Thanks to Nabi AvcÕ for providing me the idea of Ithaca, after reading my paper, http://www.vagablogging.net/ithaca-by-konstantinos-p-kavafis.html.

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Galt, Rosalind. “Back Projection: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in Zentropa”, 2005, Cinema Journal 45.1, 2005.

Ithaca. http://www.vagablogging.net/ithaca-by-konstantinos-p-kavafis.html, (27.07.2008).

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Table 1: Sinematürk, Database

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Film Kurtlar Vadisi Irak G.O.R.A Babam ve O÷lum Vizontele Vizontele Tuuba Titanik Organize øúler Hababam SÕnÕfÕ Askerde EúkÕya Kahpe Bizans Hababam SÕnÕfÕ 3,5 AsmalÕ Konak - Hayat Yüzüklerin Efendisi:Yüzük Kardeúli÷i Hokkabaz Truva O ùimdi Asker Hababam SÕnÕfÕ: Merhaba The Matrix Reloaded Yüzüklerin Efendisi: øki Kule AltÕncÕ His

Release

Distributor

Week Viewers

03.02.2006 Kenda 12.11.2004 WB

26 29

4.256.566 4.001.711

18.11.2005 Özen Film 02.02.2001 WB

61 49

3.830.294 3.308.320

23.01.2004 WB 20.02.1998 Özen Film 23.12.2006 Kenda

23 0 29

2.894.802 2.844.022 2.617.452

14.01.2005 Özen Film 29.11.1996 WB 21.01.2000 Özen Film

31 57 38

2.586.132 2.572.287 2.472.162

06.01.2006 Özen Film

24

2.069.720

17.10.2003 WB

22

1.790.197

21.12.2001 20.10.2006 14.05.2004 21.03.2003

53 22 0 16

1.757.620 1.707.148 1.692.458 1.657.051

16.01.2004 Özen Film

24

1.580.535

16.05.2003 WB

0

1.470.316

20.12.2002 Umut Sanat 04.02.2000 UIP

41 0

1.457.120 1.428.659

Umut Sanat Kenda WB WB

PART IV: TURKISH CINEMA: POLITICS OF HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL MOBILITY

CHAPTER NINE DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDINGS OF MODERNITY IN HALIT REFøö’S BIRDS OF EXILE (GURBET KUùLARI) ZEYNEP KOÇER Introduction This paper will discuss the different understandings of ‘modernities’1 in the 1930’s and 1950’s by providing a textual analysis of Halit Refi÷'s Birds of Exile (Gurbet KuúlarÕ, 1964). I will compare its characters, Fatoú and Ayla, in order to demonstrate the significance of gender identities in constructing the idea of nation. There are two reasons why Birds of Exile is the center of this analysis. First, it is the first internal migration film ever made in Turkey and secondly it is considered as the first example of the Nationalist Cinema Movement (Ulusal Sinema AkÕmÕ).

The Definition of Modernity in the 1930s and 1950s ùerif Mardin argues that ‘religion in the Ottoman Empire was the mediating link between local and social forces and the political structure.’2 Social cohesion, social justice and overall social structure in the Ottoman Empire came from Islam. Therefore, in order to change the function of Islam in society, the first step of the modernization project was to overthrow the Caliphate and the Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire and 1

Modernity in this paper is not understood as a linear line of development but rather as different modes that change according to the sociopolitical and economic life of Turkey.

2 Mardin, ùerif “Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 2, 1971, p. 205.

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replace it with a secular nation-state. Consequently, instead of Islam the idea of the nation became the ‘mediating link”. The place of women specified a very strategic point in the modernization project since women were considered as the face of the new republic. Providing education and employment opportunities for women were regarded crucial. Therefore, after the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk made reforms toward the secularization of the state and the equality of sexes such as the acceptance of the Civil Code in 1926 and the Education Bill in 1924. Women’s status progressed a great deal with the reforms and soon, women became ‘a prominent figure in the iconography of the regime; parading in shorts and bearing a flag, in school or military uniform, or in western evening dresses in ballroom-dancing scenes.’3 The debate over the nature of these reforms is still ‘a hot issue’4 which is beyond the scope of this paper.

Turkey was led by the Republican Peoples Party until 1950. The party was formed during the Ataturk era and was the sole ruling agency. In 1950, Turkey experienced the first free elections, which resulted in a change of power from the Republican People’s Party to the Democrat Party. Immediately after the election, Turkish politics and economy started to undergo a structural change. In the 1930s, Turkey’s economy was heavily dependent on agriculture. The Democrat Party, however, favored foreign investment for industrial development over supporting agriculture.

Modernization in agriculture and industrialization were encouraged.

Simultaneously the understanding of modernity changed a great deal.

According to Alev ÇÕnar, in the 1950’s ‘the notion of modernity took technological and economic development as the primary defining mark of

3

Kandiyoti, Deniz “Patterns of Patriarchy: Notes for an Analysis of Male Dominance in Turkish Society,” in Women in Turkish Society: A Reader, (ed.), ùirin Tekeli, London; Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Zed Books, 1995, p. 311.

4 Many scholars such as ùirin Tekeli call this State Feminism because women’s rights were not gained through social movements but were allotted in a gradual expansion of civil rights by the State. . Suffice to say that even though the modernization reforms of the 1930’s ‘did not start as an organic process evolving out of local social, economic and cultural dynamics,’ (Alev ÇÕnar, Introduction, Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, (Minneapolis: London, University of Minnesota Press, 2005) as Alev ÇÕnar suggests, they were still part of an ideological revolution which targeted the influence of religion both on the public and the private spheres.

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modernization.’5 The United States of America replaced the West, especially France, who was championed as the bearer of modernity in the 1930’s. As industrialization and modernization in agriculture changed the cultural and economic life of the peasants, a new bourgeois class started to emerge.

Birds of Exile tells the story of a migrant family who comes to Istanbul from a small village in Kahramanmaraú, in search of better life. There are two leading female characters in the film. Fatoú is the daughter of the migrant family and Ayla is a born and raised urban girl who comes from an upper-class family and pursues a career in medicine. The former is portrayed along the definition of modernity of the 1950s and the latter along the modernization project of the 1930s. Throughout the analysis I will explore the director’s attitude to both of these types of modernities as well his approach to nationalism with respect to the endings he chose for his female characters.

The construction of a nation depends on the construction of a national identity which ‘involves some sense of political community.’6 This ‘imagined community’7 conceives nation as a ‘deep’ horizontal comradeship’8 which needs certain collective rights, duties, and responsibilities. Ayúe Durakbaúa argues that Kemalist ideology and modernization project defined a new identity for Turkish women in the 1930s. The aspects of this new identity were ‘a new kind of morality in male-female relationships, a modern father-daughter relationship which depends on respect and trust, employment, a great wish to serve the new regime and the Republic and finally a sincere appreciation toward the Republican reforms.’9 In Birds of Exile, Ayla is portrayed as the modern image of the new Turkish women, the newly- emerging Turkish Republic 5

ÇÕnar, Alev Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, Minneapolis: London; University of Minnesota Press, 2005, p. 6.

6 Smith, Anthony D. National Identity, Reno: Las Vegas: London; University of Nevada Press, 1993, p. 9.

7 Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities, London: New York; Verso, 1991, p.

7.

8 Ibid, p.7 9 Durakbaúa, Ayúe “Cumhuriyet Doneminde Modern KadÕn ve Erkek Kimliklerinin Olusumu: Kemalist KadÕn Kimli÷i ve Münevver Erkekler,” in 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, (ed.), Ayúe Berktay HacÕmirzao÷lu, Istanbul: Tarih VakfÕ YayÕnlarÕ, 1998, p. 46.

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and the idea of female comrade. She is represented as educated and sophisticated with her degree in medicine. She follows fashion and yet is modest about her appearance. She is allowed to date the youngest son of the migrant family, Kemal. The scene at Ayla’s house offers a clear understanding of Durakbaúa’s argument as well as the importance of serving the new republic.

The New Identity of the Turkish Women in the Context of the Modernization Project of the 1930s The scene takes place at Ayla’s house where Kemal is invited to meet her parents. Since Ayla and her father are portrayed as having a modern father-daughter relationship, welcoming his daughter’s boy friend in their home does not present a problem. Along the lines of the new definition of modernity during the Democrat Party administration illustrated earlier, mid-way through the scene, Ayla’s father tells Kemal that he will send Ayla to the United States after her graduation. Devastated by the idea of losing Ayla, Kemal asks her to marry him. Ayla accepts and tells him that after they graduate, they can both go the United States. Nevertheless, Kemal tells Ayla that it will be best if they stay here and work for their own country. This leads to another aspect of Kemalist modernity, the great wish to serve the new regime. As a result, Ayla is torn between the choice of moving or staying. In a way, she is left to choose between her personal interests and her nation’s benefit. At the end, Ayla not only chooses stay in Turkey but also agrees to go to Kemal’s home city, Kahramanmaraú, and work there as a doctor. Her decision is quick and filled with enthusiasm since she realizes the greater good in her decision. She is reminded that her nation needs her and she has to stay here and ‘heal’ her society as much as she can. This is a type of nationalism which is unique to Turkey. It can also be considered patriotism since a person’s loyalty to her country is measured by her desire to serve her country.

Staying in Turkey is not the only change Ayla experiences. Mid-way in the film, Ayla argues that peasants lack the decorum appropriate for a chance to live among urban dwellers and hence derides them. However later she herself makes a complete U-turn and marries Kemal. She buys a Qur’an, covers her head and visits Kemal’s family. Kemal’s background as the son of a migrant family is crucial here since one of the critiques of the modernization project of the 1930s lies in its negative approach to the rural parts of Turkey which is considered to be backward and needed to be educated and saved. The director here not only chooses to portray Kemal

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as a doctor which is an occupation very much valued in the 1950s but also critiques the attitude of the modernization project of the 1930s by suggesting a more positive attitude toward the people living in the rural parts of Turkey in the public discourse. Simultaneously through Ayla’s decision to stay in Turkey, choose to go to Kahramanmaraú, marry Kemal and become interested in religion suggest a unified national identity, a definition of modernity, which not only puts the nation above social and economic class differences but also above religion.

The Definition of Modernity in relation to the Women Question in the 1950s The other leading female character is Fatoú, a young girl with a taciturn nature. She has three brothers who are very rigid about her social life.

Mualla is her only friend from her neighborhood. Unlike Fatoú, Mualla loves to hover on the fringes of the bourgeoisie by attending parties with her revealing dresses and heavy make-up. In order to take Fatoú to one of those parties, she tells Fatoú that she needs to transform her traditional appearance to a more ‘modern’ look with a new hairstyle and some make up. Here, the film becomes a platform where the definition of modernity in the 1950’s is questioned. The director Refi÷ makes an analogy between the newly emerged bourgeois class and capitalism in the party scenes of the film.

Allured by the life Mualla is leading; Fatoú gives in to Mualla’s suggestions and accepts to adopt a new hairstyle, a new dress and an overall new appearance to be able to attend the party. The camerawork and the mise en scene have a moral tone that highlights the major corruption in the bourgeois society: sex and alcohol. The camera pans slowly across the apartment revealing the types of partygoers, girls with heavy make up and short skirts, drinking with guys who stare at them. The ostentation of the house is evident in the lavish decoration and the amount of expensive drinks. Through Fatoú’ character, the film depicts the fundamental abyss that divides the nationalistic values and the bourgeois life style. This abyss is represented as an artifact of capitalism. Juan R. I. Cole argues that capitalism which encouraged Middle Eastern counties to industrialize quickly ‘has remade the class structures and infrastructures of these

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societies.’10 In the film, even though, the newly emerging bourgeois class is perceived as the fundamental reason for this change and corruption, there is no obvious class antagonism; because both Mualla and Fatoú are depicted as envious social climbers who wish to dress, talk, and act like the bourgeois. Therefore, it can be argued that the film does not merely attack capitalism but rather provides a moral message which underlines the consequences of excessive westernization through Mualla and Fatoú.

After the party, Orhan, a man Fatoú meets at the party, offers her a ride home. Unfortunately, Fatoú’s brother, Murat sees them together and is furious. Deniz Kandiyoti argues that ‘male honor is dependent on the behavior of their womenfolk and women can only enter the public arena by emitting very powerful signals of their respectability and nonavailability as sexual objects.’11 According to Murat, Orhan could only be interested in Fatoú due to her ‘availability’ as a sexual object. Therefore, Fatoú’s personal relationship with Orhan becomes the triggering force for Murat to abuse her. Murat beats Fatoú, calls her a prostitute, and cuts her hair. According to the tradition in some parts of Anatolia, girls do not cut their hair short until they get married. The hair, in other words, symbolizes virginity. When Murat cuts Fatoú’ hair he not only castrates her but also tells her that he no longer respects her since she is caught with a man whom she is not married to. This is a very different understanding of morality in comparison to the scene, in which Kemal goes to Ayla’s house to meet with her parents. It is made clear with these two scenes that welcoming Kemal in their home does not present a problem for Ayla’s family whereas seeing Fatoú in Orhan’s car is devastating for Fatoú’s family.

This is the kind of morality that many scholars suggested needed to be challenged more by the Kemalist reformers in the 1930’s. However as Sirin Tekeli cogently suggest, ‘cultural values, attitudes and value-oriented behaviors change more slowly than do social structures.’12 Therefore in addition to criticizing the founding fathers for ‘emancipating the women,

10

Cole, Juan R. I. “Gender, Tradition and History,” Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity and Power, (ed.), Fatma Müge Göcek and Shiva Balaghi, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, p. 28.

11 Kandiyoti, p. 315.

12 Tekeli, ùirin introduction, “Women in Turkey in the 1980s,” Women in Turkish Society: A Reader, (ed.), Tekeli, London; Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Zed Books, 1995, pp. 3-4.

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‘but only to the degree that the founding fathers saw fit,’13 the momentum of the reforms on women after the Kemalist era should also be questioned.

The norms of patriarchy together with the impact of Islam on women provide Murat with a justification of violence toward Fatoú. Therefore in melodramatic form, chastity becomes the locus in which the ideas of patriarchy are defined. Director Refi÷ takes a stand against these norms with the scene, in which Orhan leaves Fatoú after having sex with her.

Refi÷ points to the assumed threats capitalism poses in relation to consumerism since in a way Orhan ‘used’ Fatoú and later moved on to another woman. Fatoú, no longer a virgin, feels she has no option other than prostitution because she knows that if she goes back to her home, her brothers will punish her for shaming her family’s reputation. As a result, she accepts her destiny as a fallen woman and vanishes from her family’s life. Later, Fatoú’ brothers find her at the house where she was prostituting herself. Provoked by what they see, they run after Fatoú, as she starts to climb the stairs to the roof. She runs to the edge of the roof and sees the angry expression on her brothers’ faces. The next shot is a close-up to the terrified look on Fatoú’s face followed by shot-reverse-shots between Fatoú and her brothers. Knowing how obdurate her family is on the issues of honor and sexuality and that no amount of persuasion will change their mind, Fatoú commits suicide.

Conclusion According to Janey Place, a typical femme fatale has ‘something her innocent sister lacked: access to her own sexuality.’14 Even though Fatoú is represented as a fallen woman, she is also portrayed as a victim of the industrialized society of Turkey in the 1950’s where modernity was synonymous with capitalism. She is a victim because the mise en scene of her suicide scene is dramatic. Director Refi÷ places his sympathy on Fatoú with full close-ups to her terrified face and the depiction of her brother’s sorrow over her suicide with the next two scenes on the roof of the building. In other words, the narrative and direction suggest a critique of the understanding of modernity in the 1950’s which favors capitalism and industrialization since in many cases it breaks the bonds between the 13

Arat, Yeúim “From Emancipation to Liberation: The Changing Role of Women in Turkey’s Public Realm”, Journal of International Affairs, 54:1, 2000, p. 109.

14 Place, Janey “Women in Film Noir,” in Women in Film Noir, (ed.), Ann Kaplan, London: British Film Institute, 2001, p. 49.

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individual and his nation and can lead to excessive Westernization. In other words, Fatoú is used as a metaphor to underline the threat to the community, if the boundary between the national identity and westernization is not kept well. Her suicide becomes a metaphor of the possible collapse of society. She dies because in between her traditions and Westernization, she does not have the nation as the mediating link.

Since she cannot hold on to the idea of a nation and national unity, she was overly westernized. She is the victim who needs to be saved in order to save the nation.

Alev ÇÕnar suggests, after the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, the definition of modernity took ‘secularism, Turkish nationalism and a West-oriented modernity as constitutive principals upon which societal and political institutions were formed and the public and private spheres evolved.’15 However the modernization project of the 1930s was more than just blindly imitating the West but rather forming a creative adaptation of nationalism which is unique to Turkey. It is not ethnic nationalism but rather patriotism which is measured by a person’s desire to serve his country. Ayla is portrayed as the example of how individuals should consider the well-being of their nation more than their personal achievements and gains. In her decision to stay in Turkey, she does not hesitate since she knows she is going to serve her country. Ross Poole argues that: ‘It is the nation –not religion, political principle, local community, or social class– which demands its own state. And it could not sustain this claim to priority unless national identity was experiences as more fundamental than others.’16

Through Ayla and Fatoú, the film allows imaging a national identity as a single body. While Fatoú’s character represents the possible threats to this community if individuals start to cross certain boundaries, Ayla’s character is a representative of how national values should be put before individual gains. The direction is in tune with the modernization project of the 1930s in constructing a new Turkish identity however it also critiques it for its class-bound structure. Rather, the film suggests that nationalism in the form of patriotism can unite all parts of Turkey and every citizen to

15

ÇÕnar, pp. 4-5.

Poole, Ross, Nation and Identity, London: New York; Routledge, 1999, p. 1516.

16

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each other by elimination all kinds of socio-economic and religious differences between the urban and rural.

Nowadays Turkey is witnessing another change in the understanding of modernity. Simultaneously the understanding of nationalism is also being reshaped. We are witnessing an era where different ideas of what modern and national should be are coexisting within each other. As the understanding of modernity and nationalism as it is portrayed in Birds of Exile still exist, with the Islamist Justice and Development Party government, religion is becoming a new modernization project that reconstructs the definition of nation for Turkey. As Alev ÇÕnar suggests every modernization project has a ‘common goal to transform society toward an ideal future.’17 The definition of this ideal future was integration of Westernism and nationalism in the 1930. It changed to industrialization and capitalism in the 1950s. Later in the 1980s, the definition of modernity was synonymous with globalization and consumerism. Now, it is Islam.

The Birds of Exile offers a construction of a nation which is above cultural, economic and religious differences as an answer. It suggests a unification of all values under nationalism which is not ethnic but driven by one’s desire to serve his country. The question of how Islam addresses the nationalist values, gender dynamics and socio-economic differences in Turkey are still being debated from almost every perspective.

Works Cited Anderson Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: New York; Verso, 1991.

Arat Yeúim. “From Emancipation to Liberation: The Changing Role of Women in Turkey’s Public Realm.” Journal of International Affairs 54:1, 2000.

Cole, Juan R. I. “Gender, Tradition and History,” In Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity and Power, edited by Fatma Muge Gocek and Shiva Balaghi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. ÇÕnar, Alev. Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey. Minneapolis: London, University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

17

ÇÕnar, p. 7.

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Durakbaúa, Ayúe. “Cumhuriyet Döneminde Modern KadÕn ve Erkek Kimliklerinin Oluúumu: Kemalist KadÕn Kimli÷i ve Münevver Erkekler.” In 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, edited by Ayúe Berktay HacÕmirzao÷lu. Istanbul: Tarih VakfÕ YayÕnlarÕ, 1998.

Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Patterns of Patriarchy: Notes for an Analysis of Male Dominance in Turkish Society.” In Women in Turkish Society: A Reader, edited by Sirin Tekeli. London; Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Zed Books, 1995.

Mardin, ùerif. ‘Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 2, 1971.

Place, Janey. “Women in Film Noir,” In Women in Film Noir edited by Ann Kaplan. London: British Film Institute, 2001.

Poole, Ross. Nation and Identity. London: New York; Routledge, 1999.

Smith, D. Anthony. National Identity. Reno: Las Vegas: London; University of Nevada Press, 1993.

Tekeli, ùirin. Introduction to Women in Turkish Society: A Reader.

London; Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Zed Books, 1995.

CHAPTER TEN YILMAZ GÜNEY’S BEAUTIFUL LOSERS: IDIOM AND PERFORMANCE IN TURKISH POLITICAL FILM MURAT AKSER

The Problems of Defining Political Film in Turkey The phrase political film embodies a variety of concepts such as the word politics itself which is a derivative from polity, i.e. governing people.

It is this function of the Turkish state –to govern people– which has created one of the main tensions in the writing of the history of political film in Turkey. Cinema in Turkey from its start has had a difficult relationship with the state. As a modern and capitalist invention that was produced in the industrialized countries of the world, cinema arrived as a controlled art in Turkey. Although the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is said to have referred to cinema as the most important art (resonating V.I. Lenin), cinema did not prosper in the single party era between 1923-1950. In this period, filmmaking was controlled by the state and placed in the care of a single person, Muhsin Ertu÷rul, who preferred to produce melodramas or patriotic epics. The production of political film by necessity required a polity, a nongovernmental group of individuals who freely express their opinions. The control of film production in Turkey during the time of Atatürk and the ensuing one-party era had its roots in the modernizing ruling elite’s intolerant attitude towards the liberal media for more than a century. The Turkish traditional ruling elite has always been the military and civilian bureaucrats since modernization efforts began in the 19th century; the poor people of Anatolia could only respond passively to these modernization attempts by either ignoring these developments or by seeming to affirm them through participation in newly organized civic life. In the absence of strong opposition and democratic expression of dissent until the Democrat party

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came to power with free general elections in 1950, Turkish cinema was ideologically/politically very much controlled by censorship (the state censorship board had to approve a film before its release) and the control of the flow of film material (like the quotas imposed on importing film negatives). Until the 1970s there were films that had elements of politics in their narrative but one could not easily call them examples of political cinema in Turkey. Turkish political film was restrained until one visionary actor, writer, producer and a practicing real-life revolutionary himself, YÕlmaz Güney, arrived on the Turkish political and filmic scene. Like all countries with state-sanctioned censorship, the polity found different ways to express their opinions. Yilmaz Güney personified such expression through the characters he created wherein he used a combination of anticapitalist idioms and rebellious performances.

To scholars of Turkish cinema the phrase ‘political film’ brings YÕlmaz Güney to mind. Over the last three decades there has been substantive the critical acclaim of Güney's films by both Turkish and foreign film critics and scholars. Starting with Umut (Hope, 1970) and continuing with Sürü (The Herd, 1978), Yol (The Way, 1981) and ending with Duvar (The Wall, 1983) there has been much international scholarly writing on Güney’s cinema. However, both Turkish and foreign critics did not have access to over 100 films made between 1963-1971, where Güney is the lead actor playing the rebellious common man. These films were lost for a variety of reasons both economic and political. The economic reason was that Turkish film distribution and the system of exhibition was poorly organized and distributors did not want to keep previously exhibited films in an archive, as there were no means for further profit from them.1 The political reason came after the military coup of 1980 when YÕlmaz Güney and his legacy was banned by the junta leaders. His films were all collected and preserved under poor conditions and these film negatives and prints eventually deteriorated over time.2 After the year 2000, social and technological developments made it possible for film critics to view these long lost and forgotten films that made a name for Güney as the ugly king (Çirkin Kral) of Turkish cinema. The 11 films directed by Güney had been secretly taken abroad by YÕlmaz Güney’s wife in the 1980s. The remaining lost and burnt films lived through the video revolution of the 1980s in the shelves of Turkish guest workers’ video stores in Germany.

1

KÕrel, Serpil Yesilçam Öykü SinemasÕ (Yeúilçam Narrative Cinema), østanbul: Babil YayÕnlarÕ, 2005, p. 42.

2 Özgüç, Agâh, Bütün Filmleriyle YÕlmaz Güney (The Complete Films of YÕlmaz Güney), østanbul: Agora KitaplÕ÷Õ, 2007.

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The longing these workers felt for their country as they left Turkey in the 1970s created a cultural need to see those Turkish films banned in Turkey but available in video markets throughout Germany. These films featured Güney the actor and after the lifting of all bans concerning Güney in 1992 and with no censorship law in effect, these videos have now been transferred to VCD and DVD. There are some 22 films unaccounted for but we have around 100 films with Güney as an actor before he started directing. In these films Güney was the anti-capitalist folk hero who rebelled against his fate. Most of the characters he portrayed were vagrants. Through these characters, Güney criticized the capitalist system and its ills in Turkish society.

YÕlmaz Güney represents a breaking point between the popular cinema and political cinema in Turkey. His stories, characters and themes reflect the political ‘angst’ of the 1970s. He also has a unique place in Turkish cinema as the unattractive lead. The characters he portrayed were people on the margins: unemployed, poor vagabonds. Güney portrayed these lonely anti-heroes who resisted the capitalist system in Turkey through their hanging on to life. In creating these heroes Güney leaned on the Turkish popular folk tales and their rebel hero, the urban lumpen proletariat, as a loser character with a specific body language and a peculiar vocabulary. In his later films Güney’s lumpen characters took on a darker political tone. They were no longer lonely Robin Hoods in the slums, the members of the lumpen proletariat who stole from the rich to give back to the poor. They were now rebels who fall victim to both the conservative traditions of society and state oppression during the military coup between 1980-83. Hence this paper will discuss a typology of Güney’s characters’ relating the effects of his political message to two elements –that of idiom and that of performance– in relation to his political approach.

Yılmaz Güney: A Rebel Against the Capitalist State Here I claim that the idiom, the vocabulary which Güney’s characters use, is a representation of the common man’s rebellion to state-sanctioned capitalism in Turkey in the 1970s. The individual’s role and position with respect to the capitalist system and the state apparatus that protested the interests of the capitalist class is the main target of criticism in Güney’s films. Güney’s idiom is anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian. Here I use the word idiom in a different sense from the word discourse. Sociologist Anthony Giddens refers to idiom as “the stocks of knowledge routinely

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drawn upon by members of the society to make a meaningful world.”3 Such knowledge is the product of hundreds of years of Anatolian resistance to centralization by the Ottoman Empire and later to the authoritarian bureaucratic rule of the Turkish Republic. There is a bureaucratic state tradition in Turkey that is patriarchal and protective.

This type of administration was borrowed from the Ottoman Empire where all land belonged to the sultan and people were managed thus. This is a different mode of organization compared to feudal Europe and later to the capitalist bourgeois organization of European societies. In the Anatolian system, the ruled are the subjects. They are protégés of the sultan and the state. People are part of a greater whole, a community whose best interests are managed by the sultan and the military-civilian bureaucracy. The lives and properties of common folk are secondary to serving and saving the state, a tradition that loosely continued into the newly created Turkish Republic.4 Against such a powerful state and its ruling elite, the common people created oral narratives of dissent, rebel tales that valorized the lonely hero that takes to the mountains and puts up a good fight until the very end. The two word-concepts common folk use in these stories are mazlum (innocent but suffering due to wrongdoing), and ma÷dur (the victim of wrongdoing).

Turkish folk stories like those about Köro÷lu, a common man oppressed by the mighty governor of Bolu in the thirteenth century, are still relevant as there have been films made recently in Turkish cinema about his rebellion.

As a popular tool of mass communication, cinema in Turkey could not stand still without expressing the dissent of the common man. National cinema movement directors like Memduh Ün, Metin Erksan and Halit Refi÷ produced heroes from common men in films like Üç Arkadaú (Three Friends, 1958), YÕlanlarÕn Öcü (The Wrath of the Snakes, 1962), Susuz Yaz (A Dry Summer, 1963) and Gurbet KuúlarÕ (Birds of Exile, 1965). The heroes of these films are ordinary peasants or poor immigrants in big cities who want to go on with their simple lives but are oppressed by either a government official or the local landlord and eventually they fight back.

These films valorized the common folk and presented them as tragic heroes. Throughout these works this tragic hero puts up a noble and a 3

Giddens, Anthony, The New Rules of Sociological Method, London: Hutcheson 1976, p. 52.

4 Mardin, ùerif, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?”

Deadalus, 1973, p. 170.

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lonely fight. This character, and the narrative elements around him, later became a golden formula in Turkish cinema, so that the righteous and just hero wins against all odds and beats the villainous landlord or corrupt ruler of the land.

Until YÕlmaz Güney’s characters arrived in the Turkish cinema, the popular imagination of a screen hero was of a different type of hero, presenting a different use of idiom and performance. Turkish cinema had a bourgeois, educated and an elite hero addressing the audience’s need to imagine a better life for themselves in the rapidly changing economic environment of the 1950s and ‘60s. The white-bred, golden haired, gentle and handsome hero expresses the desires of the urbanites for upward mobility and decorum. Throughout films in the 1960s this urban elite hero overcame all obstacles set in front of him with his bourgeois values instilled by a good family and neighborhood. This type of hero was dubbed the jön (the lead actor adapted from the French term jeune), coming from the French term for the lead actor. Actors like Göksel Arsoy, Ayhan IúÕk, Orhan GünúÕray were the clean-shaven urbanite gentlemen of Turkish cinema in the 1960s. It was at this point that YÕlmaz Güney debuted as an actor with a different background, manners, lifestyle, and political standing and the type of characters he portrayed were entirely different from those of the rest of the actors mentioned above.

Güney was known as the ugly king, a nickname he gave himself during an interview with journalist Agah Özgüç referring to Ayhan IúÕk’s nickname as the king. Why should Güney want to name himself this? It is because the heroes he portrays are not positive characters, they are antiheroes. These characters are mafia bosses, vigilantes, transients – people who live on the edges of society bending and breaking or simply ignoring the laws of the state. These anti–heroes, lumpen bourgeois characters, Güney portrays are constantly appearing in Güney's cinema thought his career. Moreoever, Güney’s heroes get more and more active towards the second half of his career as a director. After three military coups the hopes for a peaceful change in Turkey are drowned and the only way to stand up, as a person, is to rebel against the state of things as Seyid Ali does in Yol (The Way, 1981).

To give examples from Güney’s idiom I will focus more on the period where Güney was a lead actor, from 1963-1971; his above-mentioned ugly king period. Such political cinema that uses a rebellious idiom against capitalist oppression is not unique to Turkish cinema. There are similar

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cinematic movements in the west that parallel Güney's political and independent cinema approach: Third cinema and American independent cinema. Third cinema, as coined by Solanas and Gettino, is a cinema of the cheap and dirty and its subject matter is people and their struggles. The idiom and performance in these films present their characters with the realistic, harsh and esthetic use of real places and includes common people as actors. Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966) is a case in point.

The other cinematic approach where the actor-director presents an idiom and performance attacking capitalism is the American independent cinema. In terms of production, John Cassavetes’ control as the actordirector over the creative aspects of the film overlaps Güney’s second phase as the actor who financed his own films and made political statements. In terms of aesthetic choices John Cassavetes and Güney differ a lot, but their political attitudes and financial and expressive freedom are parallel. The two actor-directors belong to the same period in their countries. They came to fame as rough looking anti heroes. Cassavetes rose to fame and received his Oscar nomination with The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) and became known internationally for Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1967). Both men used their money and fame to produce a political persona and a revolutionary, independent cinema. The Peter Falk character as the lumpen worker in American society is the type of character Güney manages to portray in Turkish cinema. But why does Güney choose these characters to portray? It should be noted that in both third cinema and American independent cinema, realistic performance is the key, whereas Güney has no pretensions to being a realistic actor; quite the opposite, for he presents an emotionless and larger than life performance.

Yılmaz Güney’s Idiom and Performance: The Lumpen Proletariat in Turkish Cinema The creation of Güney’s anti-capitalist message is a combination of his idiom and performance. In the two films I will discuss below the idiom/key words used represent the common man’s stand against capitalism. In the performance, since they are stereotypical, the body language and emotional expressions are kept to a minimum. There is also play in the performance, as Güney’s characters make fun of the capitalist villains in a variety of ways. Here I define performance as restricted (or double performed) behaviors. Performances are social roles that we act out in everyday life as we take on certain roles.

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Güney’s performance is marked by his physical expression and body language –his idiom in the creation of his anti-capitalist lumpen revolutionary. Güney’s performance is symbolic and reflective. The cinema allows Güney to represent his ideas in both an aesthetic and social ritual codified to represent the common man’s point of view. It is almost a play as it is not bound by the bourgeois rituals of 1960s Turkish cinema. It is in fact anti-ritual in a Quixotic sense. This type of codified acting creates a new level of charisma in an almost ritualistic manner. Paul Ekman classifies body language and facial expressions to explain acting fundamentals.55 As there is no real concern for realistic acting in Güney’s cinema, Ekman’s six basic expressions for the actor’s face to create target emotions do not apply to Güney’s lumpen character.

So who is Güney’s lumpen character? The commonly used word lumpen to refer to a certain type of person comes form the Marxist term Lumpen proletariat. This word was first used by Marx and Engels in German Ideology, published in 1845. The pair uses the word as a derogatory term to mean the refuse of all the classes, referring to the idle, unproductive beggars often found in brothels. The word has an additional meaning in Turkish; that is, depicting a lower class person. Dictionaries define the term as: “the type of person who is on the margins of society and mistreated by others as he pretends to be knowledgeable and to have proper manners”. For the poet and essayist Selim øleri a typical example of a lumpen proletariat in Turkish cinema is the ‘Ömer the Tourist’ character created by Sadri AlÕúÕk. Ömer the Tourist is a poor man who does not forget to make fun of his living conditions. Even as he is mistreated he still hangs on to life with hope.

The noble savage characters in Güney's films react to the wild capitalism in their idiom and performance. The lumpen proletariat created in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was due to displacement caused by rapid industrialization in the cities. Rural peasant laborers lost their jobs as machine oriented farming started. They had to leave for the cities in search of industrial jobs. The new environment had opportunities but also threats.

Since land ownership came late to Turkey compared to western countries, state-owned unoccupied land was seized by new comers. Squatter housing erupted. A new suburbia was born outside cities where the poor, oncepeasant workers had to toil all day and then return to their uncomfortable 5

Schechner, Richard, Performance Studies: An Introduction, London: Routledge 2006, p. 2.

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homes. Their families and hopes were to be integrated into urban life but that did not happen. State services could not meet the health and education needs of these people. Generation after generation, the immigrants were underpaid and became the hard-working under class. Their hopes diminished slowly and some who were left out by the system or ignored the rules of the system became vagabond cons.

These people have a different code of conduct and jargon in their daily lives. They have no jobs. They go to cafés to hang out and gamble, drink tea and coffee, and talk about soccer and women. They name their common code of conduct (in terms of both idiom and performance) as racon, meaning the method, the way. The secondary meaning of the word is showing off, or boasting. Associated with racon is the word delikanlÕ, or young blood. A delikanlÕ is a Young Turk, a wild one, one whose blood boils. DelikanlÕ is a person who is a man of his word, he is honest and honorable.

In recent Turkish cinema, Gemide (On Board, 1998), Dar Alanda KÕsa Paslaúmalar (Offside, 2000), Barda (In the Bar, 2006), Laleli’de Bir Azize (A Saint in Laleli, 1998), A÷Õr Roman (Cholera Street, 1998), Tabutta Rövaúata (Summersault in a Coffin, 1990), Camdan Kalp (Heart of Glass, 1990), and Düttürü Dünya (Singalong World, 1986) had such lumpen characters as anti-heroes. This type of character owes a lot to Güney’s films made in the 1960s. Film critic Agah Özgüç calls the rough anti-hero character in Güney’s films the ever unshaven lumpen. These characters represent the bottom of society; they are looking for a paying job, yet try to look at life from the brighter side. Güney’s such characters appear in films directed by others like økisi de Cesurdu (Both were Brave, 1963), KurbanlÕk Katil (Killer for Sacrifice, 1967), and Ben Öldükçe YaúarÕm (I Live as I die, 1965) and some of the films directed by himself like Umut (Hope, 1970), A÷Õt (Elegy, 1971), Umutsuzlar (The Misfortunates, 1971).

The first example I will discuss for how this character personifies Güney’s political construction of an anti-hero is Blood Will Flood/Kan Su Gibi Akacak.

Kan Su Gibi Akacak (Blood Will Flood, 1969) Blood Will Flood is a remake of the earlier film, Vengeance Fire/ øntikam Alevi, starring Ayhan IúÕk –the leading actor in Turkish cinema, nicknamed the king– and written and directed by veteran director Osman F. Seden in 1956. The film’s storyline is almost exactly the same as its predecessor but as we will see the idiom and performance differs: Ali

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escapes from prison and takes refuge with a friendly fisherman, Temel. Ali was wrongfully accused and sent to prison for a crime he did not commit.

Ali used to be an idler, but he gives up his ways and becomes an honest, hard working person.

Ali has a job in a small machine shop and earns the love and trust of the owner. He is happy with a fiancé and planning to be married. Just then his enemies set in motion a plot to get rid of him. To get to him they set up a rape scene involving his brother and force Ali to marry that woman instead. His jealous son next kills Ali’s boss and Ali is blamed for the murder. Eventually Ali runs from prison and takes revenge, losing his fiancée in the process.

Ali is referred to as delikanlÕ, a key word throughout the film. The other characters are portrayed as schemers, rapists, and crook capitalist murderers. The reason these people do evil deeds is their greed related to capitalism and consumerism, both in their idiom and performance. We see them talk about their want of more. Ali only wants to have what he earns justly. In the end Ali is the one rejected by society –by these greedy people.

Both male and female characters are decadent as a result of capitalism in the film. Women characters are shown at the end of moral decadence.

The two evil women in the film are Gönül and her mother. The mother wants to sell off her daughter to someone wealthy and her daughter does not mind. The male characters are also devoid of morals. The son can kill his father for greed and jealousy. He can frame an innocent man with rape and murder. On the outside, the urban capitalist characters look cleanshaven with nice clothes and smiling faces in contrast to Ali's rugged looks. But inside they are schemers and cold-blooded murderers. Ali and Elif, as modest, honest and emotional people, are the antithesis of the capitalist characters.

Ali loses against the capitalist state mechanism and an unjust justice system which favors the rich and powerful. Ali is now ma÷dur; this is a much more complex concept used to express innocence in the face of false accusation and mistreatment. The capitalist system does not offer control mechanisms to prove Ali’s innocence. When Ali’s brother is tricked with a sleeping pill and framed for rape, no one stands up for Ali and his brother.

Ali is never the source of any wrongdoing; instead all evil comes to him by way of the capitalist greed surrounding him. Ali has to marry a woman

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he does not love and he has to go to prison for a murder he did not commit.

Ali then becomes mazlum, the word for a person who suffers due to wrongdoing. Ali does not resist this wrongdoing; instead he faces it with quiet dignity. The movie then makes a critical turn. Ali decides to take the law into his own hands, risking death. He escapes from prison and takes revenge on his enemies one by one. Ali loses Elif, one thing he built his hopes on, and pays the price of being a lone protester against the system.

Ali is one tragic lumpen character Güney portrays; another type is that of the comedic lumpen character Güney creates in his other films, the most notorious of which is Recep From KasÕmpaúa.

KasÕmpaúalÕ Recep (Recep From KasÕmpaúa, 1965) Recep, the protagonist in Recep From KasÕmpaúa (1965), is a young immigrant who is penniless. He does not have any of the benefits the capitalist system offers yet he wants them all. He desires the pretty urban girls waiting for their boyfriends. He constantly expresses his fondness for one of the girls and as a result is beaten by urban boys on motorcycles regularly every week. Once again, in this film bourgeois youth both male and female are shown as decadent consumers lacking morals. The urban women use their femininity in a seducing way giving them an almost demonic air. Suat the leader of the rich urban kids is a total snob who wears leather jackets, roaming through the streets of Istanbul on his motorbike. Yet Recep is separate from this kind of life. Voice is also given to the difference between the lifestyles of Recep and rich people: “look at yourself! Do you look anything like us?” This question is voiced most recently in films like Barda (In the Bar) and Mutluluk (Bliss, 2007).

Recep is a man of fun and belongs to that realm hoodlums claim as their own, alem. Alem is that social sphere of the playful hoodlum where Güney’s characters bring performance and play together. Alem brings with it village culture and adapts those living conditions to the urban environment: coffee chats with best buddies, drinking alcohol and eating all day – this is the real world for Recep. This world even has a lumpen king; the former ruler of the realm of fun gives a symbolic throne to Recep in one of their dialogues over alcohol. “Feel that power in you then you will be a king” says the veteran king of street hoodlums. Such transfer to lumpen power exists in Cholera Street as well.

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After this ceremony Recep starts shaking things around and upsets the urban lumpen relations that turn toward rudimentary capitalist greed. He starts disturbing the organized crime scheme of KaçakçÕ Mustafa, another lumpen who has set up a business of collecting protection money from local stores. First Recep beats Mustafa's men and then Mustafa himself.

Recep redistributes the money he collects from the rich storeowner back to the poor. Recep calls this the bridge, earning his living by upsetting the balance of wealth from the rich to the poor. He introduces himself in every store before asking for money with the line: “We are building a bridge I hope you can help us”. Once again just like it happened to Ali in Blood Will Flow, Recep's enemies unite against him. Meanwhile the rich spoiled girl falls in love with Recep. (A similar melodramatic turn is found in previous films like Bitter Life (AcÕ Hayat, 1961)). Recep beats all his enemies through a variety of antics (play). He is crazy as he enters his enemies’ layers palming a hand grenade. His enemies are always weak cowards. The capitalist woman gives up her greedy urban capitalist ways to become Recep's woman.

Conclusion YÕlmaz Güney’s early career as an actor produced a stereotype of twodimensional characters, which we will call lumpen proletariat characters.

These characters have been the representation of the on-screen persona of Güney presented through an anti-capitalist idiom and performance. Güney was heavily involved in the creation of these films as a shadow producer and screenwriter. These characters portray rural immigrant former peasants who cannot adapt to the capitalist consumerist norms in the big city. This person rejects being an individual in the capitalist western sense; he is a man of community, a common man who wants to belong to something bigger.

Güney's heroes resonate variety of concepts in the discourse of the lone anti-hero. These are delikanlÕ, mazlum and, ma÷dur. This person does not resist and accepts his fate in the beginning, but later on fights back alone against all odds. He expresses his discontent with anger, even using violent and illegal means such as theft to balance social justice. The lumpen character is happy when he has a full stomach, a woman he loves, and an okay-paying job. This is similar to today’s immigrant needs in Turkey.

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YÕlmaz Güney's special place in Turkish political cinema of the 1960s is due to his charismatic portrayal of lumpen characters as anti-heroes. By carrying these heroes to the very people they portray Güney puts himself against the entire Turkish bourgeois cinema of the period, and he has done it in over 100 films. However, as Agah Özgüç has stated, 22 are still not available. A larger project would include character comparisons and discourse analyses of all these films. This writer hopes this article is, nonetheless, a small step in the right direction.

Works Cited Daldal, AslÕ. Art Politics and Society: Social Realism in Italian and Turkish Cinemas, Istanbul: ISIS Press, 2005.

Giddens, Anthony. The New Rules of Sociological Method, London: Hutchenson, 1976.

KÕrel, Serpil. Yesilçam Öykü SinemasÕ (Yeúilçam Narrative Cinema), Istanbul: Babil, 2005.

Mardin, ùerif. “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?”

Deadalus. Vol.102, No.1 (Winter 1973) Özgüç, Agah. Bütün Filmleriyle YÕlmaz Güney (The Complete Films of YÕlmaz Güney), Istanbul: Agora, 2007.

Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies: An Introduction. 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2006.

Teksoy, Rekin. Turkish Cinema, Istanbul: O÷lak, 2008.

CHAPTER ELEVEN ALLEGORICAL FAILURE IN SÜRÜ (THE HERD) AND YOL (THE WAY) EYLEM KAFTAN

This article looks at the latent content of YÕlmaz Güney’s Sürü (The Herd, 1978) and Yol (The Way, 1981) in terms of their allegorical qualities. My main reference point is Friedrich Jameson’s concept of allegory in ‘Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’. According to Jameson, what distinguishes all third-world texts from the first world is the fact that they are allegorical in a very specific way: they are to be read as what he calls ‘national allegories’1.

Although I adopt Jameson’s concept for national cinema, I argue that ‘allegory’ should be used in historical and cultural contexts consisting of specific power relations as well as strategies of resistance. In Güney’s films allegory often refers to a failure in which the nation fails to be modern and democratic. Since modernity and democracy are often best signified by women’s level of freedom and equality, female voices and bodies play a significant role in the ‘national allegory’. Whereas Sürü points to the economy as one of the roots of this failure and places the main female character Berivan right in the center of the exchange of currencies, Yol, on the other hand, portrays a country which has become an ‘open prison’. The men’s incapability to communicate with their wives or female relatives is, again, central to the film.

Sürü Sürü depicts Turkey’s traumatic passage from feudal to capitalist relations right before a coup d’etat hits the nation. The failure to establish 1 Jameson, Fredric, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational”, Social Text, Capitalism.1986, p. 65,

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a modern, cohesive nation manifests itself through a feminine body, the body of Berivan.

Made under extraordinary circumstances (Güney directed the film from prison), Sürü engages with issues like the politics of the currency exchange system in Turkey’s passage to capitalism. The nomadic tribes living in a remote part of Turkey are oblivious to modern relations of production and the commodity system which goes along with it. The only access they have to commodities in the tribe is through a merchant who comes to them with a donkey loaded with food. The bargaining shows us that the nomads aren’t good at measuring the value of their goods and distinguishing them from each other. As a result, they are not able to keep up with inflation and the ramifications of the market and end up selling their Sürü at a very cheap price.

Instead of following the conventional path and imposing a vendetta between two tribes into a dramatic structure, Güney focuses on telling the story of a society in transition. A large part of the film chronicles the journey of the nomads from their tribe to Ankara. The film contrasts the vast, empty landscapes of Eastern Turkey with the busy, urban landscape of Ankara.

The long train sequence is Güney’s leading metaphor standing for the slowness and eventually the failure of the transition to a modern Turkey in the west. It represents a dynamic Turkey which is still not settled and in search of itself. The train, like the nation has some leaders but they are as corrupt as the sheep they are leading. As the journey progresses, nomads keep losing their sheep and their property. Even the conductors of the train try to steal the sheep of the nomads. Still unsatisfied, they relentlessly try to destroy ‘Sürü’. Ironically the sheep and the nomads share the same characteristics. They are interchangeable (as is the main female character Berivan –see below), they can easily lose their destination, they can be easily deceived and they are literally speechless.

When ùivan takes his wife Berivan to the hospital in the town, there is a highly disturbing scene of a group of sick and old people who are in great pain and misery. As ùivan glances at the suffering people, his eyes catch a poster of Turkey on the wall. Obviously addressed to tourists with its attractive Mediterranean coast, the poster creates a painful contrast with the ‘third world’ images of suffering people in the hospital.

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Berivan as the Enemy Inside Berivan is given as a gift to the Veysiyan tribe. She is a commodity and investment for the tribe but she is not fulfilling her function within her society because of her sickness and infertility. A subtle parallel is drawn between animals and women in the scenes when the nomads are still in the mountains. Women sowing milk, making yoghurt and food, intercut with images of sheep are scenes shot in cinema verite style, Güney reminding us that these are ‘real nomads’ we are seeing.

The ‘law’ of the father (the head of the tribe, Hamo, who is also ùivan’s father) is all-pervasive in Sürü. Hamo, Berivan’s father-in-law, has absolute power over his sons. He tries to exert the same power over Berivan. When ùivan protects Berivan against his father, Hamo tries to ‘define’ Berivan. ùivan says ‘Berivan is sick.’ Hamo disagrees, he says ‘No, Berivan is a Halilan’, referring to the rival tribe. In other words, Berivan’s ‘otherness’ almost becomes her sickness. Although Berivan doesn’t respond to Hamo’s disdainful words, she expresses herself with her powerful gaze and her reticence. ùivan constantly tries to communicate with Berivan but she refuses to speak to anyone.

Berivan still acts in an ambivalent way in her reaction against her husband. She seems to love ùivan but frustrates him with her refusal to speak. A very interesting moment occurs between the two as ùivan tries to speak to her. In the beginning he is very loving and caring but his patience fades as Berivan doesn’t utter any single word. At this point ùivan acts in a way which is very similar in nature to the action of Seyyid as we shall see in Yol, who beats his wife so that she won’t freeze and die. ùivan beats Berivan hoping that she will make a noise, groan and in some way speak to him. The scene reflects a kind of twisted intimacy. It demonstrates the incapability of Kurdish men to express themselves and the fine line between the expression of violence, power, intimacy and love.

Another significant moment reflects this twisted intimacy when ùivan forces Berivan to open her mouth as if opening the mouth of an animal. He performs the same gesture to ascertain whether the sheep are healthy later on in the film. As we will see, a similar scene is played out in Yol when Seyyid’s wife shares the same fate with the horse. Thus both films draw parallels between the state of animals and women. They are equally indispensable for the subsistence of the community, yet they are both circumscribed by their speechlessness. They are the most subordinate, and

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the furthest ‘other’ in the hierarchical system of power. Thus, Berivan’s silence seems like the only way she resists against what Hamo and the tribe have imposed on her. Her refusal to speak is her resistance against the controlling effects of power.

Allegories of Nation and Gender in Yol Whereas Sürü depicts Turkey mostly in terms of the transformation of economic relations, Yol narrates the political situation right after the coup.

The film chronicles the contradictions Güney sees in Turkish and Kurdish society, which were heightened in the oppressive political climate shortly after the coup. Whereas in Western Turkey the coercive state apparatus becomes more brutal, in Eastern Turkey feudal relationships are equally oppressive. Like Sürü, in Eastern Turkey, the Law of the father and the discursive space he occupies play a vital role here. Indeed, the Law of the State complements the Law of the feudal tradition in a configuration similar to that was seen in Sürü.

It is no coincidence then, that through the personal tragedies of five men, Turkey is portrayed as a country where prisoners end up finding out that there is not a significant disparity between the inside and the outside of the prison. Indeed, Yol depicts a country which gradually becomes a huge prison as you go east. Although the controlling eye of the everpresent army creates a social climate whose influence far exceeds its time, it is not the political situation which defines the story and subordinates all the remaining conflicts. Rather it is the crisis in masculinity constituted in a feudal culture that dominates the film. Of the two oppressive forces, state and tradition, the latter has a wider influence over the lives of the prisoners. Just like the Law of the authoritarian state, the Law of the traditional father can imprison its accused subject, withhold food and finally execute.

I will utilize Michel Foucault’s theory of power to understand the constitution of subjectivities in Yol. What is particularly relevant to my study here is Foucault’s analysis of the working of the specific discourse of modern disciplinary power, in the context of the emergence of discipline and punishment in prisons, in ‘normalizing’ citizens and turning them into subjects.

In Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison, Foucault suggests that the panopticon introduces a new form of power which is ‘essential to

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the functioning of modern power’.2 I will borrow the concept of the panopticonic gaze of military power to understand the patriarchal solidarity of fathers, brothers, and husbands in Yol which is also a significant and decisive factor in the circulation and fortification of power.

Suffusing every interaction, the panopticon is an optical system which is consistent with the preoccupations of feminist film theory, namely, the gaze. By introducing the panopticon as a controlling eye, Foucault highlights the seemingly insignificant instruments of power. In Yol, the regulation of gaze and the question of who is allowed to see, to look, is highly important for the operation of power.

The Journey to the ‘Other’ When prisoners travel across Turkey to visit their families, they encounter another institution similar to the first that can decide to kill, imprison, or to execute like the first: that is the power of feudal patriarchy.

As our characters arrive in their hometowns, we see a number of fathers representing the Law, portrayed as complex characters in their relationships with their daughters and their sons. This is nowhere more visible than in Seyyid’s dilemma. Seyyid has to order the execution of his wife who had escaped from her father-in-law’s house and become a prostitute. Seyyid confides to a passenger in the train that his heart is torn between ‘hatred and pity’. The Law of the father and his own desire to use his free will and actualize himself conflict with one another.

Seyyid’s wife, Zine, has been imprisoned in a room, deprived of food and water. Referring to his mother, Seyyid’s son says ‘Do not take her with us. She is sullied.’ Seyyid remains silent when his father says ‘She has been tied up like a whore that is what she deserves.’ Chained by the feet, the woman symbolizes the state of the Kurdish woman.

When Seyyid starts his journey back to his brother-in-law’s house, his wife follows them from behind. Seyyid and his father make an unspoken deal which assumes that Zine will freeze to death during the journey because she probably won’t endure the cold after having been deprived of food for so long. The vast and empty landscape buried in snow as well as the silence signifies the difficulty of communication and the growing distance between husband and wife. Appearing tough, Seyyid and his son walk ahead.

2

Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punishment, 1975, p. 197.

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While Zine begs her husband for help, both Seyyid and his son pretend that they don’t hear. They continue to walk until Zine collapses. Zine sees the dead horse which is abandoned on the land. The horse has been eaten up by vultures. She is worried that she will perish like the horse and she won’t be buried properly, just like the horse. This scene draws a parallel between the landscape and women’s bodies. Men, on the other hand, are cut off from their natural side, namely their feminine side, to be a part of the patriarchal power play.

When Zine quietly drifts towards a freezing death Seyyid realizes he doesn’t want her to die. With a twisted intimacy, similar to the scene in Sürü, Seyyid tries to wake her by slapping her and whipping her with his belt. Violence and sympathy fuse into each other as Seyyid ultimately comes to the realization that Zine is a victim of the society which also limits his own freedom.

The use of landscape to symbolize gender divisions is also quite striking in the scene when Mehmet arrives at his in-law’s house in DiyarbakÕr. When he enters the courtyard of his wife’s parents’ house, the family is already slaughtering a sheep for the Islamic feast. All the men are in the courtyard outside, and all the women are inside. Mehmet wants to kiss the hands of the ‘Law of the Father’ (father-in-law) who rejects this sign of respect. His wife looks through the window. The depiction of women looking through the window is a recurring image in the poetry of YÕlmaz Güney. While it is a familiar image in Western cinema as well, it has particular connotations in Güney’s films. Here it speaks not only of women’s domestic space but also to the imprisonment of women.

Mehmet asks for his wife’s words and whether she forgives him or not.

The wife remains silent for a while. She stands right on the threshold of her house. This signifies the ambivalent position of the women in the household. She represents the inside. Though she wishes to go out, the brothers and the father all block her way. She does not move at all. She stands there and asks her husband whether he caused her brother’s death or not. The courtyard is the space of the men, inaccessible to her.

In the courtyard, during this confrontation, the military airplanes pass above them. The Law of the State overlaps with the Law of the Father.

The children also look through the windows. The network of power is depicted in all its contradictions and its different aspects. The youngest brother tries to attack Mehmet, yet the Law of the Father slaps him in the

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face. He is to become a ‘man’, and in that way rise up through the levels of patriarchal power play.

In a later scene, on the train, Emine and Mehmet provoke an outburst, when an attempt is made to lynch them after they have been caught trying to have sex in the washroom. The camera emphasizes the children looking at their parents. I have commented earlier that the crowds in trains often represent Turkish society in its diversity. Likewise, in this scene Mehmet and his wife are accused by the passengers who represent the society.

They place themselves under surveillance in a very Foucaultian manner as there is no space that is safe from that gaze.

The Crisis of Masculinity in Yol Yol discloses the vulnerability of its male characters, precisely by exposing their failures to deal with the subjectivities imposed on them by the Law of feudal patriarchy as well as by the state’s power, which is embodied by the military. It suggests a realist understanding of human relations structured within a traumatic social and cultural period of Turkey’s history. It is above all, the interrogation of the constitution of manhood within the very specific political and cultural climate of Turkey.

Nobody is simply innocent and simply victimized in Yol. Seyyid considers killing his wife but he is filled with agony in his recognition of her death. When he tries to wake her up from her sleep, he hits and whips her. Violence and love, friendship and enmity are hand and hand. Mehmet tries to face his cowardice. He had left his brother-in-law to face death, yet the dead man is not innocent either. We find out that he wanted to stage a robbery and asked Mehmet for his cooperation.

Innocence as is most commonly associated with childhood is taken away from them too. Children and young people take on the roles of manhood or womanhood at a very early age, learning to damn the ‘sullied woman’ even when it is their mother.

Yet in its portrayal of women Yol appears to hardly move beneath the surface reality of women and give them voice. Symbolically standing for the major failure of the nation, women in Yol appear as highly voiceless characters and submissive. There is no space left for them to act. Whereas in Sürü, Berivan’s silence becomes her resistance, it is difficult to argue the same for the women of Yol.

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On the other hand, another zone is opened up precisely in this problematic portrayal of women. It raises a fundamental question for us: is this erasure of female subjectivity caused by the fact that woman in this highly feudal/patriarchal society does not have her own voice at all or is this the way our protagonists perceive them and see them as enigmas since they can’t have any genuine interaction with the Other?

This lack of interaction with the other is inextricably bound up with the specific historical failure presented in Yol. Almost all the women represented in the film ultimately represent the failure of Turkey.

Women’s bodies are the main surface over which the desire for change and the preservation of tradition is inscribed simultaneously.

In this article I have tried to analyze Yol and Sürü through a feminist and Foucaultian perspective. If we define national allegory as a precarious, contingent identity, a void embellished with certain practices, institutions, social and political interrelations, Yol and Sürü suggest an allegory of Turkey contextualized in the traumatic years, right before and after the military intervention. The main characters continuously deal with the controlling effects of an omnipresent army or economic system. However, their biggest failure is demonstrated in their families and homes. They are oppressed by older male relatives yet take the role of the oppressor when it comes to dealing with their own female relatives. Their crisis in masculinity is harder to heal, recover and resolve. Their inability to build a genuine and equal relationship with their partners and their traumatic family structure is almost incorrigible and irreversible. In the latent content of both films this crisis of masculinity seems to signify almost the root cause of all the other power systems. Considering the fact that violence against women in southeastern Turkey is nowhere close to dropping despite all the advances in economy and politics, what seems to immortalize both films is the fact that what has been stated almost thirty years ago still seems to be valid.

Works Cited Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory. Verso, 1994.

Akbal, Tül. ‘Allegori ve Temsil’. (Allegory and Representation) 25. Kare.

Cinema Culture Journal. January- March 1999.

Foucault, Michael. ‘Panopticism’. In P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader, Pantheon Books. Newyork, 1984.

Jameson, Fredric. ‘Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.’ Social Text. 15, Fall 1986.

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Silverman, Kaja. The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema.

Indiana: Indiana University Press 1988.

PART V: NEW TURKISH CINEMA: POLITICS OF NATIONALISM

CHAPTER TWELVE REPRESENTATIONS OF IMPERIALISM IN TURKISH CINEMA WITHIN A PENDULUM OF NATIONALISM AND ANTI-EMPERIALISM KAYA ÖZKARACALAR

Nationalism has always been a significant component of the dominant ideology in the Republic of Turkey. While the roots of Turkish nationalism lie in the late Ottoman period, having crystallised around the Young Turk movement,1 it was unable to flourish until the Republican Revolution. One of the most essential aims of the founders of the Republic was building a Turkish national consciousness and this aim was pursued vigorously as a state policy.2 In 1937, nationalism would also be enshrined in the constitution as one of the six ‘principles of the Turkish state’ (along with republicanism, populism, etatism, secularism and reformism). Feroz Ahmad notes that of these six principles, nationalism was one of the least contested ones (together with republicanism) which enjoyed the widest possible consensus.3 It can be argued that there should lie a inherent tension between such a strong emphasis on nationalism on the one hand and the professed goal of westernisation guiding the reform process in general on the other hand. It is true that nationalism cannot exist without situating itself vis-à-vis an Other. However, the West was not the main Other of Turkish nationalism. On this point, the highly controversial arguments of Baúkaya are illuminating. Baúkaya sets out to demonstate that the Turkish national struggle had not been anti-imperialist in character as it had not, in actuality, emerged as a struggle against the Western

1

Kongar, Emre, ømparatorluktan Günümüze Türkiye’nin Toplumsal YapÕsÕ–1, 1979, p. 129.

2 Ibid., p. 88 and p. 126.

3 Ahmad, Feroz, Demokrasi Sürecinde Türkiye (1945-1980), østanbul: Hil YayÕnlarÕ, 2007, p. 19.

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imperialist powers, but rather as a nationalist movement per se born out of the need to wrestle Anatolia away from the Greeks and the Armenians.4 Hence, at its origin, the other of Turkish nationalism was the other ethnic populations of Anatolia. Furthermore, during the Cold War, Communism would become the outstanding hate-object of Turkish nationalism. Hence, the threat conceptualisations against which Turkish nationalism consolidated itself were either ‘internal’ or, if ‘external’, still non-Western. However, one of the significant changes visible in the Turkish politico-cultural environment in recent years has been precisely in this regard. In the aftermath of the US occupation of Iraq and the stalemate in Turkey’s accession process into the EU, an increase in anti-American and anti-European sentiments can be observed in Turkey and it can be said that the ‘hate object’ of nationalism is now the US and Europe; in other words, the West in general.

The new political climate has its reflections in cultural production as well. This study will first put forward the representation of imperialism in prominent examples from a set of new nationalist movies and problematise it. Next, the representation of imperialism in an exceptional Turkish movie from a different era will be examined and these two representations will be compared with a view to linking the differences to different approaches to imperialism.

Valley of the Wolves - Iraq Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak (Valley of the Wolves–Iraq; 2006, dir.: Serdar Akar) is an action movie set in contemporary northern Iraq that has become a box office hit in Turkey and ended up as the highest-grossing Turkish film of at least the past 20 years;, that is, since reliable box office returns began to be compiled in this country. It is a spin-off from Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of the Wolves), a popular television series with very high ratings. The TV series itself, featuring the exploits of Polat Alemdar, an undercover ‘special forces’ officer for covert operations, was criticized for its high dosage of violence emulated by children, and, more specifically Alemdar has indeed been idolised as a role model by far-right wing youth gangs who harass their left-wing and Kurdish contemporaries. However, the movie itself had a far greater impact than the series ever generated, due 4

Baúkaya, Fikret,

ParadigmanÕn øflasÕ: Resmi ødeolojinin Eleútirisine Giriú,

Istanbul: Doz YayÕnlarÕ, 1991, pp. 29-50.

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to its unprecedented box office success and its subject-matter. It was discussed in several high-profile editorial columns outside the cinema pages and, in one instance; a well-known radical-liberal writer was eventually sued by the filmmakers after she slammed the movie.

Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak takes off from a factual event, the detention of a group of Turkish undercover military personnel in northern Iraq by the American forces in 2003; in particular the news that the Turkish detainees were hooded, that is their heads put in sacks, by the American captors had caused an outcry in Turkey at the time. The movie then tells the fictional story of the heroes of the TV series going after the American officers who humiliated their compatriots. At a basic level, it is a crude revenge fantasy to heal hurt national pride.

The film not only entails a dramatisation of the 2003 incident in its prologue, but, throughout its near 2 hour-long duration, brings to the screen dramatisations of almost every single atrocity known to have been committed by the occupation forces in Iraq, including the notorious ‘human pyramid’ torture at Abu Gharib prison. In other words, it is saturated with anti-American imagery now already engraved into the public consciousness. It must be acknowledged that there are onscreen remarks by the protagonists as to the US interest in Iraq being related to oil and the US military being on the ‘payroll’ of American capitalism. And yet, despite these remarks on the sidelines, the movie fails to qualify as a progressive anti-imperialist text, because the motivations of the protagonists are driven not in the least by such concerns, which appear as peripheral observations, but simply by nationalism, and of an extremely chauvinistic variety at that. (Actually, there is one very interesting scene where the movie seems to deconstruct itself when the American antagonist questions the shallowness of the protagonists’ nationalism, but the hero retorts that he is not a politician.) For instance, in the prologue, the narrator says that of all forces who had ruled these lands, that is Iraq, throughout history, each one oppressed the people, the only exception being ‘our ancestors’, that is the Ottoman Turks. It goes without saying that the anti-Americanism by a mentality which elevates its own imperial heritage cannot truly qualify as anti-imperialist.

Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak also features an ambivalent and problematic treatment of the Kurds. One of the protagonists from Turkey is a Turkish Kurd and there is a pointed remark by him that one should not be prejudiced against Kurds in general. The local Iraqi Kurdish forces are,

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naturally, shown as the collaborators of the hated Americans. It is indeed a contemporary reality that the Iraqi Kurds are collaborators in the occupation of Iraq, but when taken out of its historical context and without a slight hint of such a context, such a bare-bones presentation of this mundane reality serves to reinforce nothing but prejudices. Indeed, the movie is full of sarcastic, arrogant and outright hostile remarks against the aspirations of the Iraqi Kurds; and from these remarks it is clear that what is being targeted is not only the Iraqi Kurds’ collaboration with the Americans, but in essence their whole national aspirations.

Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak even includes anti-Semitism in its repertoire, with a ludicrous subplot of a Jewish doctor who is serving in Abu Gharib and at the same time running an organ transplant franchise; the filmmakers toss in this depiction which wouldn’t seem out of place in Der Ewige Jude into its mix of ‘objects-of-hate’. Christianity is not spared either. The main antagonist, the American officer in charge of the local occupation forces, is portrayed as viewing himself as an instrument of Christ. Pointing to the religious undertone in American neo-conservativism giving shape to and/or running US global policies would have in principle been a point well-made, but the way this motif is presented in Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak serves to bolster the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis with the American officer’s zealous monologue as the camera pans across an altar holding a figure of Jesus being soon followed, and contrasted, by an Islamic sheik’s peaceful monologue during an Islamic ceremony.

Hence, this mentality moves away from anti-imperialism not only because it has internalized its own imperial heritage into its self-identity, but also because it subjects identities outside its own to an otherisation. In other words, what is being represented is no doubt true concerning American imperialism, but it is being brought to the screen not with antiimperialist but with nationalistic motives.

A Hero in Limbo: Cemil the Cop Before going on to look at the other main but contrasting case from an altogether different era scrutinised in this chapter, it would be beneficial to look briefly at a pair of movies from what can be labelled an interim era.

The mid-1970s had also seen a rise of popular anti-American sentiments in Turkey, at that time against the backdrop a US embargo imposed on Turkey after almost two simultaneous conflicts with this super-power, one regarding Turkey lifting its ban on opium production despite heavy US

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pressure and the other regarding Turkey’s military intervention in Cyprus despite US opposition. The movies in question are Cemil (1975, dir.: Melih Gülgen) and its sequel Cemil Dönüyor (Cemil Returns; 1977, dir.: Melih Gülgen), featuring the exploits of an honest cop, played by Turkey’s top action-movie star, Cüneyt ArkÕn, who fights a lone battle against corrupt businessmen and politicians with ties to the Americans. This pair of movies stands out as some of the most overtly politicized products of Turkish popular cinema in their day and they reflect the ideological hegemonic discourse in Turkey as shaped by the political constellation of the country in those years.

First of all, Cemil is a police officer and the protagonist of Kurtlar Vadisi (as noted in the introduction) is an undercover ‘special forces’ officer. In other words, both are functionaries of the state apparatus.

Actually, this is a trend whose precedents were the medieval swordcarrying, horse-riding hero pictures of the 1960s and early 1970s, such as Tarkan, Malkoço÷lu or Kara Murat, who were, with few exceptions, warriors serving the throne, a manifestation of the privileged status of the State in the hegemonic discourses in Turkey.

Moreover, just like Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak, the anti-American sentiments reflected in the Cemil movies were also integrated into a chauvinistic nationalist, rather than anti-imperialist per se, hegemonic discourse, which manifested themselves in, for instance, the hero’s nostalgic remarks about the Ottomans’ imperial heritage. However, a significant difference from Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak is how the chauvinistic nationalist discourse in the Cemil movies is remarkably blended with ‘populist’5 elements, such as onscreen sentimental displays of the miserable conditions of the downtrodden elements of Turkish society. Furthermore, in the radically polarised political landscape of the late 1970s, Cemil, a maverick figure in the police corps, has found himself in an involuntary, reluctant and very uneasy –but not altogether unbeneficial partnership –with a group of revolutionary left-wing students (in the sequel Cemil Dönüyor).6 On the other hand, populist rhetoric is completely absent in Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak. In its place, as pointed out previously, Islamic sensitivity is 5

In order to avoid confusion, it should be noted the term ‘populist’ is being used here not in its deragotary usage but as a translation of the official Republican tenet of halkçÕlÕk, that is a stated concern for alleviating the problems of the ‘people’.

6 Özkaracalar in Derman, Deniz (ed.) Türk Film AraútÕrmalarÕnda Yeni Yönelimler -2, Istanbul: Ba÷lam YayÕnlarÕ, 2001, pp. 113-120.

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present in that movie, with the heroes being on the same side with an Islamic sheik, albeit where the Islamism depicted is carefully designed to be of a ‘moderate’ (and not of an ‘extreme’) variety. In other words, chauvinistic nationalism has been a constant, but its companionship has changed from secular populism to moderate Islamism. Needless to say, this changing of the guard perfectly reflects the change of the political constellation in Turkey from the 1970s into the first decade of 2000, when Turkey has seen the rise of political Islam to power.

Those Who Wake Up in the Dark The last movie to be covered in this chapter is from the 1960s, an era when the political status quo was being challenged in Turkey by a newly vitalized Left and discourses autonomous from the hegemonic ones were beginning to have some sway in society. The movie in question is KaranlÕkta Uyananlar (Those Who Wake Up in the Dark; 1964, dir.: Ertem Göreç), shot from a script by veteran Communist author Vedat Türkali hiding behind a pseudonym and produced by an actor with the support of the Turkish labour unions; in other words as an independent production outside the economic relations of the Turkish film industry.

The plot of the movie, which could be released only after a long process of wrangling with censors7, is about the workers’ struggle in a paint factory. However, this workplace, which is the site of the workers’ struggle, is a factory targeted by a hostile takeover operation carried out by paint importers in partnership with US businessmen. In order to ruin the factory, this partnership of importers and foreign capital first blocks raw paint materials in the market. Their aim is to first weaken and then takeover the factory and turn it into a packaging workshop for imported paints. At the end of the movie, it seems they appear on the verge of achieving their aim. The old owner of the factory leaves the scene. The film ends with a scene of the new owners and their American partners face to face with the striking workers and their supporters shouting ‘it is us who stands against you’.

The American imperialism which is being represented in this movie is not an imperialism which comes to occupy with its uniforms and guns, but the imperialism dressed in chick suits and which is given a roaring 7 Özgüç, Agah, Türk Filmleri Sözlü÷ü: 1914-1973, østanbul: SESAM YayÕnlarÕ, 1998, p.239.

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welcome by the mass media. The national pride in KaranlÕkta Uyananlar is upheld not by an elite covert operations officer throwing a sack over the face of his counterpart as in Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak, but by a worker mending a broken machine which an American expert had claimed to be of no use anymore. In KaranlÕkta Uyananlar, even though there is one Jew among the Turkish businessmen who have set up a partnership with the Americans, it is more striking that the presence of non-Muslim workers among the strikers is highlighted.

In this movie, imperialism is presented not as a military force but as a force of capital. Moreover, it is an integrated force of local and foreign capital. Local capital which could not integrate into this larger capital system leaves the scene and the force remaining against this integrated power is nothing but labour. When the dichotomy is set up this way, it is obvious that there is no place for otherisation along ethnic or national identities.

Concluding Remarks The bottom line for the difference between KaranlÕkta Uyananlar and Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak is that when imperialism is presented as an integral force of capital, it follows that its opponent would be the working classes.

On the other hand, the protagonists of Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak are figures from the shadowy structure embedded in the deeply hidden, invisible underbelly of the state apparatus. In reality, the genesis and the rationale for the emergence of such covert outgrowths of the state apparatus has historically been crushing the one force which has opposed imperialism as an integrated force of capital –and that they have been initiated by covert US engineering in the first place.8 Non-chauvinistic, internationalist, anti-imperialist impulses have not been completely absent in the Turkish context –they have never been hegemonic but they have never ceased to exist either. The blocking of non-chauvinistic anti-imperialism by chauvinistic nationalism has not occurred only discursively but ‘on the field’ as well. And it is precisely that shadowy structure, to which the real-life counterparts of the heroes of Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak belong, that has carried out the task of physically

8

Dündar, Can, and Kazda÷lÕ, Celal, Ergenekon: Devlet øçinde Devlet, Istanbul:

ømge Kitabevi YayÕnlarÕ, 1997, pp. 79-80.

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crushing and exterminating internationalist whenever and wherever they are seen.

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seeds

Works Cited Ahmad, Feroz. Demokrasi Sürecinde Türkiye (1945-1980). østanbul: Hil YayÕnlarÕ, 2007.

Baúkaya, Fikret. ParadigmanÕn øflasÕ: Resmi ødeolojinin Eleútirisine Giriú. østanbul: Doz YayÕnlarÕ, 1991.

Dündar, Can and Celal Kazda÷lÕ. Ergenekon: Devlet øçinde Devlet. østanbul: ømge Kitabevi YayÕnlarÕ, 1997.

Kongar, Emre. ømparatorluktan Günümüze Türkiye’nin Toplumsal YapÕsÕ – 1. østanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1979. Özgüç, Agah. Türk Filmleri Sözlü÷ü - 1. Cilt: 1914-1973. østanbul: SESAM YayÕnlarÕ, 1998. Özkaracalar, Kaya. “Cüneyt ArkÕn’Õn Polis Cemil Filmlerinde Milliyetçilik ve HalkçÕlÕk veya Milliyetçi Sol.” In Türk Film AraútÕrmalarÕnda Yeni Yönelimler – 2, edited by Deniz Derman, pp.113-120, østanbul: Ba÷lam YayÕnlarÕ, 2001.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN FILM AS THE MEDIA AND THE “MEDIATOR” IN CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION MÜBERRA YÜKSEL

Introduction “Yesterday at dawn I talked to myself. I have always been a hill confronting myself. There was an enemy on top of the hill. I went to shoot it; I shot at myself…”

—Özdemir Asaf

The Cyprus conflict has been on the agenda for a long time and the two communities are victims of each other and each other’s motherlands with different perspectives on the island’s history. The dividing line and the buffer zone, which has kept the two sides apart for over thirty years, have made Cyprus an odd case of conflict prevention and transformation. The framework in relation to Cyprus might help us explain, if not understand, conflicts that stem from ‘in-group/out-group feelings’ at the intra group level.1 When recounting the recent history of the island, members of each group tended to mention only their own glories and sufferings, and blame the other side and to refer to the other group only as the perpetrator. Both sides have suffered injustices and massive deaths in their past which have become a living part of the present problem. The two sides have been divided both politically and economically. The Turkish Cypriots have been isolated from the rest of the world for about four decades. Any durable solution should accommodate the needs of both communities and their

1

Cockburn, Cynthia, The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus. London: Zed Books, 2004, pp. 1-21.

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respective motherlands and take into account the widely agreed upon norms of international law.

The United Nations Mediation has released several reports and prepared plans to promote peace—the final draft plan was the Annan Plan.

Conciliation and prevention seemed to have paved the way for later stages of the mediation process. Having kept peace for years, the time had come to go further: making peace and later building peace so that once disputed issues were resolved, then relations would be easier to develop. With the opening of the buffer zone and simultaneous referenda scheduled for each side of the island of Cyprus on April 24, the UN-sponsored Cyprus peace process had seemingly entered a new phase. At that time, goals and political aspirations with sharp differences had seemed to converge. It was seen as a hope for peaceful reunification. However, with the Greek Cypriots rejecting the ‘Annan Plan,’ another period of stalemate started and increased contact between the two communities has not yet created a complete reconciliation.

Conflict Resolution/ Transformation Theories “Conflict transformation represents a comprehensive set of lenses for describing how conflict emerges from, evolves within, and brings about changes in personal, relational, structural, and cultural dimensions, and for developing creative responses that promote peaceful change within those dimensions through non-violent mechanisms.”

—John Paul Lederach.

I have employed the theories of VamÕk Volkan, John Paul Lederach and John Burton, all of which aim at ‘an optimum degree of generality’ in linking theory and practical tools. Both Burton and Volkan use the term ‘conflict resolution’ to incorporate ‘transformative’ processes. Regarding intergroup conflict as pathological; they use prevention in the sense of preventive care. Burton uses the term ‘prevention’ to imply taking steps to remove root sources of conflict and to promote contexts where collaborative civil initiatives influence behavior patterns (Burton, 1990).2 My brief overview of large group comparisons is largely guided by Volkan’s theory on the psychology of neighbours. Volkan states that when neighbouring large groups are in conflict, most of their political, social, 2 Burton, J. W. and F. Dukes, eds., Conflict: Human Needs Theory. (vol.2 of the Conflict Series). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990a , pp. 1-13.

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economic and ‘real-world’ issues are distorted with psychological emotions. He focuses on context and poses such questions as: x x

How are individual and large-group identities intertwined?

What is the role of massive shared trauma in modifying a largegroup identity?

He explains the determinants of large group regression and analyzes the inhibiting role of guilt and/or victimization along with ways to overcome them.3 Each community sees itself as ‘the mirror image’ of the other. One can infer, therefore, that each group must be in some sense quite similar to the other. But, there appears to be another psychological factor, besides the substantial cultural differences and important similarities that influence intergroup relations: “The rituals or the narcissism of minor differences.”4 These differences are observed in cases of intergroup conflict where the two opposing groups may seem alike but they have minor differences. According to Volkan, these rituals are for maintaining these differences; thus, keeping a psychological gulf between the opposing groups. They absorb the flow of aggression and keep them from killing each other. Violence occasionally may erupt “when playful ritualization of the preoccupation with minor differences is no longer maintained.”5 According to Volkan, when neighboring communities are in protracted conflict, most of their ‘real world’ concerns are contaminated with psychological issues of their inner world and they are poorly framed due to distortions and misperceptions. People have a deep-rooted psychological need to have a ‘core identity’ through which they simplify and establish enemies and allies after their ‘chosen glories and traumas’. This phenomenon happens on individual and group levels. This is an unconscious need, which feeds conscious relationships in our group lives.

This often plays an important role in forming ethnic or national self and group identities.6 Volkan’s therapeutic approach is based on the concept of ‘Chosen Trauma and Chosen Glories’, i.e. on the subjective perception of 3

Volkan, V., “Psychoanalysis and Diplomacy Part II: Large-Group Rituals”, Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol.1, No.3, 1999, pp. 223-227.

4 Ibid, pp. 227-238.

5 Ibid, pp. 238-247.

6 Ibid, pp.103-107.

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participants’ own (collective) identity. These ideas play a major role in ethno-political conflicts as they often block constructive approaches to conflict transformation. The purpose of Volkan's workshop methodology is to explore these patterns of perception consciously and thus open them up to discussion. His psychodynamic approach rests in part on the application of psychoanalytic defense mechanisms such as externalization, projection, and identification that individuals use to protect themselves from perceived psychological threat along with social identity theory.7 Victimized groups do not see beyond their own pain and anguish without their own wounds being healed. These groups do not take responsibility for victims created by their own actions out of revenge or feel guilt about the violence committed in the past. The egoism of ‘victimization’ is ‘the incapacity of an ethno-national group, as a direct result of its own traumas of war history, to empathize with the suffering of another group’. The last psychological mechanism is the inability to mourn according to Volkan. He describes mourning as the reaction to real or threatened loss or change.8 John Burton, however, focuses on the generic root causes of conflict and fundamental human rights. For Burton, conflict avoidance is not resolution. He uses the term “provention” to imply taking steps to remove sources of conflict and to promote contexts where collaborative relations, cooperative training and civil initiatives and mediations control behavior patterns. He explains that there are fundamental universal values or human needs that must be met if societies are to be stable. Then, a non-ideological basis for the establishment of institutions and policies can be argued.

Unless prospects for the pursuit of all societal developmental needs are possible, conflict is inevitable regardless of context.9 The first theory examines the source and motivational factors through the individual subconscious. The purpose is to reflect long-held feelings of alienation as a result of individual’s worldview and sense of identity in terms of his/her relations with the other. That way, by facing the personal and interpersonal reality and coping with it or adapting, one can focus on common grounds for a shared future rather than dwelling upon the bitter past. The latter theory suggests that there is a need for a paradigm shift away from hegemonic power politics towards the psychological reality of 7

Volkan, pp. 33-43.

Ibid., p. 125.

9 Burton & Dukes, pp. 13-55.

8

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individuals. Burton has suggested that the rights for security, identity, and recognition underlie most deep-rooted and protracted ethnic conflicts.

Besides, such conflicts are not interest-based conflicts and hence core issues can neither be managed nor negotiated. Therefore, only by restructuring and transforming the society so that all groups' fundamental needs are met, conflicts can be resolved.10 In protracted conflicts, borders are not solely the objects of conflict.

The dividing line often has a higher symbolic meaning for the recognition of group identity. Social identity refers to the way people see themselves —the groups they feel a part of, the significant aspects of themselves that they use to describe themselves to others. Burton emphasizes personal identity over a collective or social identity of the community and emphasizes the universal human rights of individuals.11 ‘How do you help people overcome their version of the past and work toward a future they can share now?’ Volkan asks. ‘They must create a vision of the future that takes into account the needs of both communities’ is the answer. He opts for reconciliation programs that allow a society to face its tragedies openly, healing the psychological wounds of the conflict rather than denying it through various defense mechanisms.

By and large, the two complementary theories are both used in practice by ‘track two diplomacy’ with a ‘pluralist discourse’ on issues concerning civil society of both sides. The processes —‘of problem-solving conflict resolution workshops’ or ‘therapeutic diagnostic dialogues’— of both theories have been applied to various settings, including Cyprus.12 I have employed Lederach’s concept of conflict transformation since it is both relevant and appropriate in ‘high context’ and ‘implicit’ cultures.

Conflict transformation is being used to refer to a change (usually an improvement) in the nature of a conflict —a de-escalation or a reconciliation between people or groups. Unlike conflict resolution, which denies the long-term nature of conflict, or conflict management, which assumes that people and relationships can be managed as though they were physical objects, the concept of conflict transformation reflects the notion 10

Ibid., 1990b, pp. 159-172.

Ibid., 1990c.

12 Cunningham Jr. William G., Conflict Theory and the Conflict in Northern Ireland an unpublished MA Thesis: The University of Auckland, 1998.

11

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that conflicts go on for long periods of time, changing the nature of the relationships between the people involved, and themselves changing as people's response to the situation develops over time.

Conflict transformation, as described by Lederach, suggests that we recognize and work with the ‘dialectic nature’ of conflicts. By this he means that social conflict is naturally created by humans who are involved in relationships, yet once it occurs, it changes (i.e., transforms) those events, people, and relationships that created the initial conflict. Thus, the cause-and-effect relationship goes both ways —from the people and the relationships to the conflict and back to the people and relationships. In this sense, ‘conflict transformation’ is a term that describes a natural occurrence. Conflicts change relationships in predictable ways, altering communication patters and patterns of social organization, altering images of the self and of the other.

Conflict transformation is a prescriptive concept that suggests that conflict can have destructive consequences. However, the consequences can be modified or transformed so that self-images, relationships, and social structures improve and become constructive as a result of conflict instead of being harmed by it. Usually this involves transforming perceptions of issues, actions, and other people or groups. Since conflict usually transforms perceptions by accentuating the differences between people and positions, effective conflict transformation can work to improve mutual understanding. Even when people's interests, values, and needs are different, even non- reconcilable, progress has been made if each group gains a relatively accurate understanding of the other.

The way one frames a conflict is based on many factors beyond what ‘actually’ happened. ‘Framing’ of the problem is often the starting point for making both parties see the bigger picture and realize it does not have to end in a zero sum game. It is used to mean the process of describing and interpreting an event to focus attention in conflict resolution just like framing in a film or a painting. It is used by both theories since it is a cognitive road map that enables us to process information in patterns. It helps the parties understand and interpret what the conflict is about —what is going on and what they should do about it.

Method: Selected Films as the Mediator The films have added value in terms of breaking the ‘spiral of silence’ about such a deep-rooted conflict in Turkey. They have made the

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audiences question the accepted norms of the old paradigm, which were taken for granted. Rather than acting as an agent that reinforces the status quo and mainstream, they have both acted partially as change agents and have given momentum for promoting peace-building activities.

A Turkish-Cypriot, Derviú Zaim, and a Greek-Cypriot, Panicos Chrysanthou, as both directors and producers have joined forces to make a shocking documentary called Paralel Yolculuklar (Parallel Trips, 2004) about their divided island. It was the first joint Turkish-Cypriot movie ever made which revealed the similar experiences and emotions of Turkish and Greek Cypriots. By engraving a common perspective, the film reveals a shocking map of the sentiments and pain of the Island’s residents of both sides. It enhances self-reflexivity along with empathy since fairness is possible if it entails the willingness and ability to imagine what it is to be someone other than yourself.

Zaim and Chrysanthou have formed a partnership that defied the ‘frozen politics’ of the island. The documentary is shot with two parallel perspectives within the framework of the same structural format. The plan was to weave the two narratives into a feature length documentary called Paralel Yolculuklar. ‘Our film is about trying to find why —why we did this to one another. The border opening did not change that,’ says Zaim.

He continues: ‘Because for so long, despite what ‘politicians’ and nationalist ‘historians’ who say there were always problems, and the divisions the British created, we did live together well. Put two Cypriots together and they will eat, drink and dance.’13 Paralel Yolculuklar’s objective is to represent the human drama of the island in a balanced oral history format and a parallel narrative structure whereby respective Cypriot narrators reveal similar tragic experiences of both sides. Experiences of villagers who had been subject to massacre, and have their family in collective graves, dislocated women and children who had waited for their lost husbands or fathers in refugee camps, stories of missing people and looting, crippled soldiers who have not lost their hope and attachment to life after having suffered so much are some examples from the documentary. The most significant role of such a film is in making the audience become aware of the similar feelings and emotions as people from either side. Even the melding of music that of

13

Zaim, Derviú, 2004. (interview with the director at Bilgi University on April)

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Byzantine Church Chorus with the voice of the Imam, in Paralel Yolculuklar, superimposes the reciprocal sentiments of each other.

There are numerous contemporary concerns, but it is clear that the past traumas live on. ‘Young people are fed a lot of propaganda about the other community in schools and media. That keeps bitterness alive,’ says an academician. ‘How much longer are we going to make these young people suffer due to a past they are not responsible for?’ Hence, deinstitutionalization of socialization might enhance frame-breaking.

Zaim concentrated on the notorious slaughter of the Turkish-Cypriot men, women and children of three villages on the central Cypriot plain; while Chrysanthou focused on the killings of Greek Cypriots by their neighbours in Palykythio. ‘I wanted to drag their stories back from the hands of the nationalists, from those who have used these people for propaganda,’ says Zaim. ‘We know we can live together, but we still have to ask why we did this to each other. If you leave things unsaid they will become the bad dreams that haunt us and will again be exploited by the nationalists’ states Zaim in Guardian.

The whole problem is with the paradigm of revenge instead of forgiving says a widow narrator. Both sides state we will not and cannot forget our sufferings and pain. Yet, one of the biggest problems is that people tend to forget what the others suffered and remember only their own sufferings. Overall, voice over is used seldom and commentary or the directors’ voice are heard rarely since quoting as many voices as possible has been at the heart of the film.

Towards the end of the film, both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots cross over the border to go to the ‘other side’. They quickly overcome the remnants of bitterness when meeting people from the other side and become strong proponents of ‘reconciliation’ in spite of criticism and attacks from extremist elements. Some have realized once more that the Turkish and Greek Cypriots are in the same boat and they have decided voluntarily to sail against the tide together. Finally, we see Hüseyin and Patros —residents from different sides that we were introduced to in the beginning of the film— together with both of their families, rejoicing, eating and dancing together as Zaim had said in his interview.

Paralel Yolculuklar is a thought-provoking film that is funded by ‘bicommunal development program’. The documentary demonstrates that

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both Greek and Turkish Cypriots are rediscovering that they share many common features after so many years of stressing their differences in the documentary. Lay people along with scholars and journalists in the film have all expressed that forgiveness is not forgetting, but is rather an acknowledgment of the shared past and a willingness to move on in a new way for the benefit of both sides. This is claimed to be superior to revenge since revenge only continues the pain, prolongs the conflict and enhances the divide instead of recovery.

Hope and long-term reconciliation efforts have to be born form the tragedies of the past so that we can move on, civilians and unofficial people say in the film. In Cyprus, freedom for one group has often been purchased at the expense of the other’s freedom as depicted in the documentary. As Isaiah Berlin stated: ‘If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral.’14 The documentary employs a multi-perspective approach. Portraying the convergent and divergent worldviews by recounting of daily events, the directors have aimed at changing both the frame (reframing) and the script of conflict resolution. In understanding intractable conflicts, as Allan King has suggested about his film The Dragon’s Egg that was released in 1999 (2006): “You don’t expect to change people, you hope that people will hear something or recognize something that will allow them to change or modify their behavior, to have a broader capacity for feeling, to feel for others.”

In other words, the films may only disclose the social wounds and appeal to both the shared thoughts and sentiments so that the public may find a way by discussing various stances. Zaim has made a feature film that uses film images metaphorically, while the documentaries revealed multiple viewpoints about Cyprus. His film is a fiction film and it won the Unesco Award last September. Zaim as the director, and Mark Müller as the producer, worked together on Çamur (Mud, 2002), a powerful surrealist allegorical tale about a conscript soldier's search for a cure, which was shown at the Venice film festival in 2003 and at the Istanbul film festival in the April just before the referenda in Cyprus.

14

Bryant, Rebecca, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004, p. 244.

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The plot revolves around the subconscious or unconscious trauma, the malady and the recovery process. It is rather complex because the chain of coincidental and chaotic events have symbolic meanings. Ali, a late conscript soldier, Ayúe, his sister who is a gynecologist, her lover Halil, along with their close friend Temel who are all over the age of forty, are haunted by the violent past of the divided Cyprus. Temel wants desperately to confront his past and to confess about the bodies buried in the mud of a dried up salt lake. Yet, his fear keeps him from even going near the mud. Halil would rather keep the past buried so he is indifferent to his friends’ anguish.

Zaim has critically distanced himself from the particulars of the issue and highlighted the universal human side. Instead he has emphasized the psychological aspects of human nature by using the conflict within and between his fictive characters in a rather abstract setting that is set apart from social dynamics. Zaim’s film seems to be in line with Volkan’s theory about coping with trauma such as the need for mourning and along with numerous examples of positive and negative defense mechanisms.

Both principles relate to the fact that people in one large group have a tendency to ‘externalize, project, and displace’ certain unwanted elements onto the other. As described earlier, ‘mud’ is thrown onto the ‘other’s’ canvas, and it sometimes leaves a ‘stain.’ There is, however, also anxiety and fear that the ‘mud’ could be hurled right back at the sender. The two principles exist to prevent the ‘mud’ from coming back, thus, following Volkan, helping each projector’s identity remain cohesive.

Finally, the name of the film —Mud—was a metaphor both about hope and suffering; it suggests creation of new forms and rebirth on one hand, and covering up, burying and forgetting on the other. The sight of people with mud for healing their wounds is a visual display of collective pain and despair. The films may be solely analyzed as the reflections of the ‘social, political and cultural context’ and the work of art might be viewed mainly as an ideological phenomenon, on one hand. On the contrary, an ahistorical and romantic approach with an all-embracing humanistic assumption may overlook the particular yet profound issues, on the other hand. A balance between two simplifications and extremes is essential, yet not easy.

Zaim’s Çamur, for instance has been criticized for his disregarding the ethnic or class basis of conflict and the political history of

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Cyprus. Indeed, he has focused on the workings of the subconscious due to the psychoanalytical framing of his film. He has also narrowed his emphasis to the soul searching and in-betweenness of the characters.

As in other deep-rooted conflicts, the awareness, apology and forgiveness of both parties are found to be essential for conflict resolution.

As long as both sides blame each other for their problems and avoid looking at their own crimes, healing the wounds cannot occur. Hence, relationships based on mutual acceptance and trust cannot be formed.

Apology is often difficult, as it requires acknowledging guilt. National pride and discourse usually block it. However, lack of apology suggests to each side what had happened in their past was appropriate and fair. This creates the fear that the opponent’s unjust or violent behavior will continue for the other side. An apology is a signal that mutually both sides regret the past actions and want to rebuild a new relationship on a stronger foundation.15 Forgiveness is also critical for reconciliation. Many people refuse to forgive, feeling that forgiveness is essentially acceptance and forgetting the past. Or rather, they think that it will mean giving up or letting the enemy get away with their actions. The assumption is that justice is achieved by revenge or punishment. Yet, the need for revenge or punishment can prohibit the resolution of a conflict as fear of retaliation can keep opponents from accepting guilt and apologizing. For this reason, it is often superior to forgive opponents’ past deeds to stop further atrocities from happening.16 The two films are all about conflict sensitive witnesses that lay out the efforts of building peace through recovery of both people and relations.

The documentaries have helped in changing the frame and the script of conflict resolution of the audience. Films can be used as a metaphor that helps to clarify general considerations of processes and reframes our vision. They seem to illustrate Michéle Lagny’s17 observation:

15

Papadakis, Yiannis, Echoes From the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide, London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.

16 Giannakaki, Angeliki, The Cyprus Problem: Obstacles and Chances for the Implementation of Kofi Annan’s Plan, University of Vienna, an unpublished Master’s Thesis, 2003.

17 Lagny, Michèle, “L'histoire contre l'image contre la mémoire”. De l'histoire du Cinéma : Méthode Historique et Histoire du Cinéma. Paris, 1997.

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“History resembles an image, as it requires as in photography or the moving picture the selection of framing and lighting options. As with film, it requires an editing and reflecting process.”

Concluding Remarks “If a man does not keep peace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”

—Henry Thoreau, Walden, 1854.

As the evidence depicted in the films along with the theories have indicated, prolonged border conflicts cannot be resolved without a paradigm shift or a corrective lens. In this vein, transformation is accomplished by viewing and grasping the world from an entirely different frame and organizing it accordingly. The aim is to move away from the ‘the freeze’ that encourages calling each side ‘alleged’ or ‘pseudo’ in order to widen the communication gap toward a vision of transformation and dialogue.

Reflective processes either through the impact of media or direct experiences are necessary to broaden one’s perspective or to integrate one’s practical experiences with theoretical knowledge of conflicts. Can films enable or enhance a process for sharing and learning about another group's beliefs, feelings, interests, and/or needs in a non-adversarial, open way as third party? The answer from our query is yes. Although multiperspective films cannot play the role of a mediator to reach a resolution, they can help us improve interpersonal understanding and trust. In short, although films may not provide us solutions or answers, they can assist us in asking the right questions and in searching for alternative frames. Films as third parties are themselves frames rather than messages and they either act as ‘alternative social accounts’ or help maintain a civil dialogue when mediation is not an accepted option, according to Gray (2005).

On the whole, we need cooperative studies with multi-perspectives against double standards and distortions that probe into cultural values and socially shared ideas about what is desirable in communities, i.e. social norms and perceptions about both themselves and the other. In our efforts at short-term management or resolution of complex conflicts, we may continue to respond to intractable conflicts in simple and often ‘technologically-neat-and-smart’ systematic manner and forget about the

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people concerns and their human needs. Otherwise, if we only focus on the humanitarians issues and forget about the political equality in partnership or security issues that are serious and sensitive, we may not comprehend the conditions and the consequent climate.

An entire generation on each side has grown up on the divided island and extremist elements constantly stir up trouble and increase divergence between the particularistic cultures. Both sides have much ground to cover and many years of hatred to overcome, still they might see how cooperation could benefit them for a more secure future, once they stop looking back in anger. In this vein, the transformation is possible only if conscientious and informative media instead of advocacy and propaganda that verifies ‘the other as the historical enemy’ backs up the rapprochement by the motherlands along with civil initiatives. Independent and/or collaborative films, be it documentary or fiction, may pave the way for us as the audience to understand the ‘whole’ picture.

Cypriots, having been deprived of their mobility and communication by the line, have bridged the ‘hostility gap’ by shared values and increasing trust-building endeavors after April 23rd of 2003. Probing into the nature of citizenship within the framework of the universal discourse of human rights and identity, i.e., ‘personhood and membership’ and ‘postnational’ models, pluralist discourses and a socio-political theory of neighbourliness are possible areas to be studied in near future.18 What we should seek is freedom that starts with a responsibility to others rather than the security of ourselves and ends with an effective universal discourse of human rights. In that regard, the quality of leadership at all levels will determine the state of the world that future generations will inherit. Peace journalism for building dialogue is not always about being right or presenting accurately events and developments. It is also about matching the opposite narratives of the two sides. Often mainstream approaches and orthodox methodologies strengthen adversarial confrontation and heighten the existing tensions as a consequence of which making the situation more difficult to resolve.

There are no absolute norms or points of reference from which to comprehend or judge the others’ existence: there is no neutral or absolute 18

Soysal Nuho÷lu, Yasemin, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

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ground. However, the standards are relative to each other and they are connected. Obviously, there are simultaneous commonalities as well as differences between and among us. When we focus on identities that differentiate us from ‘others’, we believe that our position is the sole truth. To transcend and go beyond polarization and differentiation, we need to see the whole picture.

Lately, there is another window of opportunity for reconciliation similar to the optimistic climate on the island on both sides five years ago.

Coproductions may be a leverage to make a target audience become aware of the human sistuation at large. Yet, truth must always be understood in terms of how it is made as a process, for whom it is made, and for whom and at what time it is ‘true’.

Work Cited Bryant, Rebecca, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

Burton, John. W. Conflict: Resolution and Provention. (vol. 1 of the Conflict Series), New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.

Burton, J. W. and F. Dukes, (ed.), Conflict: Human Needs Theory. (vol. 2 of the Conflict Series), New York: St Martin's Press, 1990a.

Burton, J. W. and F. Dukes, eds., Conflict: Practices in Management, Settlement and Resolution. (vol. 4 of the Conflict Series), London: Macmillan, 1990c.

Burton, J. W. and F. Dukes, (ed.), Conflict: Readings in Management and Resolution. (vol. 3 of the Conflict Series), London: Macmillan, 1990b.

Cockburn, Cynthia, The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus, London: Zed Books, 2004.

Cunningham Jr. William G., Conflict Theory and the Conflict in Northern Ireland an unpublished MA Thesis: The University of Auckland, 1998.

Deutsch Morton and Peter T. Coleman, (ed.) The Handbook of Conflict resolution: Theory and Practice, CA: Jossey- Bass, 2000.

Fisher, R. J., The Social Psychology of Intergroup and International Conflict Resolution. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990.

Galtung, Johan and Carl. G. Jacobsen (2000). Searching for Peace, A Road to Transcend, London-Sterling, Pluto Press in association with TRANSCEND, 2000.

Galtung, J. et al., Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization, London, New Delhi Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2002.

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Giannakaki, Angeliki, The Cyprus Problem: Obstacles and Chances for the Implementation of Kofi Annan’s Plan, University of Vienna, an unpublished Master’s Thesis, 2003.

Gray, Barbara, Mediation as Framing and Framing within Mediation, article presented at the IACM 18th Annual Conference, Seville June, 2005.

Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, 23rd International Film Festival: April 10-25, Istanbul: Mas Pub. 2004.

King, Allan http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/csmhi/estonia.cfm and http://www.allankingfilms.com/index2.html, 1999, (March 5th, 2006).

Lagny, Michèle, “L'histoire contre l'image contre la mémoire”. De l'histoire du Cinéma : Méthode Historique et Histoire du Cinéma, Paris, 1997.

Lederach, J. P. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Washington, DC: United States Institutes of Peace Press, 1996.

Papadakis, Yiannis, Echoes From the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide, London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.

Soysal Nuho÷lu, Yasemin, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Volkan, VamÕk D. Cyprus –War and Adaptation: A Psychoanalytic History of Two Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Charlottesville, VA: Univ.

Press of Virginia, 1979.

Volkan, V. “An Overview of psychological Roots of Ethnic and Sectarian Terrorism” in Vamik Volkan, et al .eds., The Psychodynamics' of International Relationships: volume 1: Concepts and Theories.

Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990.

—. Bloodlines. From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997.

—. “The Tree Model: Psychopolitical Dialogues and the Promotion of Coexistence.” in The Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence. (ed.)

Eugene Weiner. New York, NY: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1998.

—. “Ethno nationalistic Rituals: An Introduction,” Mind and Human Interaction,Vol. 4, 1990.

—. Psychoanalysis and Diplomacy Part II: Large-Group Rituals, Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, vol.1, no.3, 1999.

—. A Psychopolitical Approach for the Reduction of Ethnic and Other Large Group Regression , Bonn: ZEF, 2000.

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—. Blind Trust, Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror, Charlottesville, Virginia: Pitchstone Publishing, 2004.

—. What some monuments tell us about mourning and forgiveness, in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation, eds., Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Zaim, Derviú interview with the director at Bilgi University on April, 2004.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN SON OSMANLI YANDIM ALø (LAST OTTOMAN YANDIM ALø) AND KARA MURAT; THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE IMAGE OF INVINCIBLE TURK FROM COMIC STRIP TO MOVIE SCREEN HANDE YEDøDAL

This article aims to make an analysis of the manner of presentation of the heroes dished up to audiences initially in comic books and afterwards at the cinema through the characters of Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali (The Last Ottoman YandÕm Ali, 2007) and Kara Murat within a constructed national identity, and the characteristics of the atmosphere they are presented in as well as the idiosyncrasy of the idealized characters within the framework of the socio-politic conjuncture of the era in which they were put on the screen. From the Kara Murat films shot in the 1970s to Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali (2007) shown recently in the cinema, in addition to the transportation of the unaltered traits of heroism after a period of thirty years, the different conception of a hero has also been fleshed out, one which has been brought forward by the cultural, social and political components that emerged within this period. Amongst the cultural products addressing the national memory that have been utilized for the shaping and protection of national identity, the visual products have attracted great interest at all times owing to the ease of conception.

Historical comic strips taking a nationalistic approach have also found similar consideration in the Turkish cinema (Yeúilçam). Within this framework, social memory and national identity construction may be examined through the historical heroes put forward primarily with comic strips and afterwards also through the films produced in a process, in which some illustrators were also involved.

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In his book Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson defines the nation as an imagined political community –imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign– and says: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”1 During the transition from the multi-cultured Ottoman Empire to the Kemalist Nation-State, firstly this image mentioned by Anderson was shaped for the creation of a national identity. A modern, western, secular national identity, identifying its ties with the community and the past through Turkism, instead of Ottomanism and Islam, was established as the foundation of all reforms and state structures. In parallel with this desire of creating a tradition based on Turkism history instead of Ottoman history, a folk culture was the desired form, one “purified” from all components which would spoil this construction.2 Umut Tümay Arslan details this as follows: “‘One heart, one wrist’ this project aiming to create a public unity is based on creating a homogeneous nation by trying to close all kinds of differences both in class and ethnic sense and turn into unity, and to replace the difference with unity, and sometimes even by externalizing it.”3 Within this identity framework, the process of formation of belonging and group consciousness is conducted through the normalization of cultural homogeneity in a manner contrary to the expression of cultural variety.4 Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy explain this effect with the concept of the ‘deep nation’ which they set apart from the ’deep state’ term.5 Within the framework of this deep nation concept, the construction of ‘national identity’ was carried out through a one-sided treatment of historical events on an as-necessary basis and they were quite often cussed methods.6 1

Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism, London, New York: Verso, 1991, p. 20.

2 Robins Kevin and Aksoy, Asu, “Deep Nation: The National Question and Turkish Cinema Culture,” in the Cinema and Nation, (ed.), Scott MacKenzie and Mette Hjort, London and New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 205.

3 Arslan, Umut Tümay Why Are These Nightmares Cemil? Manhood and Meerdom in Greenpine, Istanbul: Metis Publications, 2004, p. 30.

4 Simpson, Catherine “Turkish Cinema’s Resurgence: The ‘Deep Nation’ Unravels,” Senses of Cinema Vol 6:39, 2006. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/39/turkish_cinema.html.

5 Robins and Aksoy, p. 205.

6 Sancar, Mithat “Facing the Past: A problem of Justice and Freedom,” Birikim 211 p.18, 2006.

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It is not possible to create an identity without memory; hence, in order to create a desired national identity, it is necessary to initially create a national memory. Social memory is not adequate in this sense, because social memory is shaped through the coexistence of the personal past and history of the individuals living in that society with all its dimensions and colors. Whereas national memory, according to the definition of Mithat Sancar, refers to “a construction imposed on society from the top and targeted as largely homogeneous and unchangeable/eternal. In this construction, historic events are viewed only from a single angle, and different patterns of conception/interpretation are not tolerated.”7 Mithat Sancar states that a heroic history or heroic legends in history are taken as references for the foundation of this single angle, and hence a collective ‘social capital’ is obtained. Yet in those countries which have experienced complicated and dark periods, as the heroic legends by themselves are not adequately convincing during the creation of this capital, these legends need to be strengthened either with sacrifice or victimization myths.8 Thus whatever route is drawn, however dark the events that are experienced, they would have been experienced in order to be saved through this victimization. In other words, a ’clean’ national identity and ‘national memory’ would be created for self-defense in a way.

The history, constructed in the name of creating a national memory and strengthening the sense of belonging, is given to the members of society in many different forms but with the support of heroic legends containing victimization and only a construction along the lines of this pattern would have found acceptance by the society. Mithat Sancar explains this situation as follows; “As the individuals, the society also prefers to remember the periods which they can look at proudly without experiencing any feeling of guilt or shame, in other words, without throwing any suspicion on but on the contrary strengthening their self-esteem. Just like the individuals, the societies also try to bring the past and the present closer to each other, harmonize them instead of questioning their apperceptions by manipulating the memory when a discrepancy exists between their personal perceptions and historical events, more explicitly try to adopt the history to present day needs. In this way, they affirm their apperceptions.”9

7

Ibid.

Ibid.

9 Ibid.

8

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Heroes and hero status are especially important for those countries which have experienced dark and complicated periods; because feelings of unity and belonging are strengthened by continuously being reminded of this unjust treatment experienced in the past and the “salvation” feeling arising from this damnification. Fethi AçÕkel defines this continual spirit of damnification as ‘Holy Meekness’. Holy meekness is defined as ‘an authoritarian political instrument and neurotic will-to-power’ coming into being.10 Arslan, while explaining that Turkey in the capitalization process has tried to mitigate disappointments, frustrations, despair and feelings of damnification caused by emerging social problems by directing them towards the cravings of violence, grudge and revenge, he states that this concept of ‘holy meekness’ was strengthened in the 80s, and has been transformed into a vengeful will-to-power rather than to overcome and transform the meekness through the will to equity and justice.11 In other words, not overcoming the frustration with inequity but transforming that expression of frustration into power expression became the main target.

Also, for the Turkish public, this continual damnification feeling remaining alive in the memory along with a state of mind of being continuously under real or unreal ‘internal and external threats’, has led to the need and desire for a hero and heroism –a desire that shall also survive long enough to strengthen and concretize this power expression.

Outside history books, heroes and legends of heroism relating to national identity are always presented to the society also through visual and printed cultural products reaching even larger audiences. Whereas in Turkey, the national identity –especially in comic strips and at the cinema– is strengthened initially through the import of western products (especially in cinema, films are by being ‘Turkified’, as discussed by Savaú Arslan12, initially through translation and afterwards through dubbing), the efforts towards shaping a national and nationalistic cinema and the emergence of these types of comic strip heroes became more pronounced by the 60s.

While the historical comic strips pioneered by Ratip Tahir Burak rose with the interest shown by the newspaper, Karao÷lan created by Abdullah Ziya Kozano÷lu and young cartoonist Suat Yalaz showed great success.

Karao÷lan, as the sequel to Kaan created by the same team, is the hero of a Turkish History Thesis, in other words the hero of a secular nationalist 10 AçÕkel, Fethi “Kutsal Mazlumlu÷un Psikopatalojisi” (Holly Meerdom Psychopathology), Toplum ve Bilim 70, p. 157, 1996.

11 Arslan, Savaú “Hollywood Alla Turca: A History of Popular Cinema in Turkey.”

PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2005, pp. 45-46.

12 Ibid.

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expression purified from its Islamic characteristics, according to the definition offered by Levent Cantek13 Through the path opened by Karao÷lan, the other heroes Malkoço÷lu, BahadÕr, Kara Orkun, Tarkan and Kara Murat found their way initially into newspapers and magazines and finally into the cinema.

While the historical comic strips first took place under the name ‘Costume Adventure Films’ in the Turkish cinema, Fikriye Karado÷an lists the virtues relating to these heroes as follows: “[These] Heroes… can smash down an army single handed, surpass meters of high castles and walls in a single jump, put to the sword dozens of enemies at the same time and with a single blow, hitting the targets in five different directions with five arrows shot at the same time, charm the women of all world for himself, with a strong heart and wrist.”14

Among these heroes, Kara Murat created by Rahmi Turan and, before this, Malkoço÷lu drawn by Ayhan Baúo÷lu, distinctively separate from their Central Asian counterparts as Muslim Ottoman heroes. In this fictional, historical and nationalistic expression, even though the Turkishness and Manhood of Kara Murat are two of his most dominant characteristics, it can be said that he is a just swordsman, friend of the aggrieved, intelligent, witty and more gentle towards women in comparison to the others. Even though Kara Murat in the comic strip and on the movie screen share these virtues of fundamental character, they are separate from each other in some important aspects in terms of the values they bear, the adventures they live, and the concepts they present to readers/audiences.

Kara Murat as a comic strip hero is a person not attached to anybody, his past and future undefined, figuring out his own solutions and having his own adventures in situations and locations in a particular era according to the story telling tropes of this kind and the general nature of the valid characteristics of a hero. He keeps his distance from any political side; in whatever territory he might be in, he is neither on one side nor against any person who is a member of a specific language, religion or race. Rather, he 13

Cantek, Levent “Türkiye’de Çizgi Roman” (The General Outlook of the Comic Strips in Turkey) in Illustrated Guide for Life; Heroes, Magazines and Genres, (ed.) Levent Cantek, Istanbul: øletiúim YayÕnlarÕ, 2002, p. 32.

14 Karado÷an, Fikriye “The Greenpine Adventure of the historical Comic Strips” in Illustrated Guide for Life; Heroes, Magazines and Genres, (ed.) Levent Cantek, Istanbul: øletiúim YayÕnlarÕ, 2002, p. 66.

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is on the side of the good, the just, and the ethical and of course of the aggrieved people within those lands –and always against the evil. He does not live in a certain place; he is sometimes in a European city, sometimes in deserts and sometimes in marshlands. Generally, the theme relies on one or more than one woman. Kara Murat fights against kings, armies or pillagers for the sake of saving the woman he loves. He finds himself being thrown into new adventures right at the point where the obstacle that is the unjust treatment of the woman he loved has been removed. The only information about his past is that he is a Turk, and all the individuals he meets, whether good or bad, respect the strength of this emergent Turk.

Sometimes, the kings, queens or influential people do their best to draw this Turk over to their own sides, but Kara Murat never makes any concessions for his independence, even if the woman he loves is in question… His reputation is always spread far and wide, no matter which parts of the world he goes to, and his friends amongst the aggrieved always welcome him. He never gets caught up in a state of continual collective purpose or responsibility; rather he is interested in saving the aggrieved persons and solving the problems within the situation he is in at that moment.

For example, in the ‘Kara Murat’ magazine published in June 1982, his ‘King’s Mistress’ adventure passes in France during the reign of King Charles II. The woman loved by both the king and Kara Murat (comic book Kara Murat the Bodyguard of Fatih, 1982), Catherine, is abducted by the jealous queen. Kara Murat (comic book Kara Murat the Bodyguard of Fatih, 1982) first of all goes to the hideouts of vagabonds to search for Catherine; he first fights with the King’s soldiers in order to save his innocent friend the king of the vagabonds. Afterwards he realizes that Catherine is not there and goes to the hunting chalet of the king, and fights against the evil queen. Saving the woman he loves from dungeons and the cruelty of the queen, he ensures the pardon of the king by earning the latter’s respect with his valor.

Kara Murat on the movie screen is a duty-bound person; he is the protector of the Turks and the Fatherland. Kara Murat is always wary of all internal and external threats spoiling the integrity and unity of the country, as presented many times in every film. When the Empire’s unity and integrity is in question, whenever necessary, he is daring enough to even stand up to Mehmed the Conqueror, to whom he is faithful, body and soul. Furthermore, one characteristic not encountered in the comic strip shows itself: Kara Murat is a Muslim who worships at every opportunity.

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And the enemies are generally minorities, from different nations, and more importantly from another religion, and this religion is Christianity.

It may be perceived that these differences are resulting from the fact that Kara Murat comic strips take place in a weekly magazine of 15 pages on average, sharing the second half of the magazine with the story of another historical Turkish hero. Aimed at developing the audience by making the Reader able to follow the story even if it carries over from a previous issue, the Kara Murat magazine had to achieve a publishing consistence that in, itself made for the basis of a generally valid comic strip culture. But even if all this is taken into account, the adaptation of Kara Murat to the cinema entailed the tailoring of a different identity and values for this hero in a deliberate manner.

In the cultivation of these kind of films, the inconveniences, lack of sense and abnormalities are another dimension of great importance for the interpenetration of these filmic texts by wider audiences and from generation to generation. In addition to the technical inadequacies and carelessness, these inconsistencies are also caused by what the subtext desires to tell conflicting with history. So much so that, in the film titled Kara Murat Devlere KarúÕ, in the era of Mehmed the Conqueror, Kara Murat Devlere KarúÕ declares his loyalty not to the Empire but to his “nation” which would only emerge as a concept two centuries later. The Kara Murat series was brought to audiences in a period during which elevated nationalistic feelings in terms of the socio-political point of view were rampant, due both to the problems in the time in Cyprus and the emerging left-right conflict in Turkey itself. In Kara Murat The Fight of the Giants, Kara Murat sets off to save the tormented Turks from the Greeks in Mora, similar to how Turkey invaded Cyprus to save the Turks humiliated and persecuted after the Greek coup; of course Kara Murat returns after a great victory.

On the other hand, even though YandÕm Ali of Suat Yalaz is a tough character with similar characteristics with these historical heroes (especially the status of being an Ottoman), he attracts attention as a hero of a different era having a rather different profile. Compared with the sultan’s bouncer, Kara Murat, who is truly duty-bound, YandÕm Ali is a hoodlum before anything else. Another reflection onto the movie screen from a comic strip, YandÕm Ali demonstrates different characteristics.

Being published in Sabah newspaper in 1985, this comic strip series was published in a book called ‘Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali; New Adventure

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Canal Expedition’ by Karao÷lan creator Suat Yalaz in 2007. As described in this book, YandÕm Ali is a responsible soldier loyal to and fighting for the Ottoman Empire. Even as YandÕm Ali is a brave soldier, of vision and honesty (to such an extent as to even stand up to his commanders), his conscience is also fore grounded in the text. Naturally, the soldiers are in a war where the parties are known, but he makes friends with people from every race and nation as long as they are brave and ’good’ and stands against malevolent people even if they are allies. He goes to Damascus with KuúçubaúÕzade Eúref Bey who took part in the First World War as an attaché to Enver Pasha, and was brought by ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ there, and afterwards he eludes him and flings off the Englishman through various adventures, participating at the same time in the cruel war of the Suez Canal. While allied with the Germans in fighting against the English, when he sees that the Turkish soldiers are being killed by the application of bad strategies, he confronts the German Officers and for this stands for court marshal. Yet the officers in charge of the court are affected by YandÕm Ali’s bravery and honesty and desert the front with him. Together they set off to inform the Minister of the Navy of that era about the situation. Of course, even under these difficult conditions, YandÕm Ali does not fail to steal the heart of pretty nurse Helen at the English hospital, and this leads to a brief adventure with her; but he does not touch the Muslim Indian nurse Nergis, though he joins forces with her to fight against the English.

However, at the cinema, YandÕm Ali was given a different profile than this. Gambling, drinking alcohol, attracted to women partly on the basis of their glamour, not being on good terms with religion, and attaching importance to ’bravery’ rather than justice, YandÕm Ali is a hoodlum who gets his strength not from his intelligence and agility but from his brute force and uncontrollable temper. He is not at anybody’s disposal; he is only meek towards his true friends. Despite living in a period on the eve of the Independence War when all ideas and feelings have been presented as straightforward, and being of Turkish descent and extremely loyal to his country, YandÕm Ali is confused between his individualistic and pragmatic attitude on the one hand and being faithful to his country on the other. If we look at this situation through the cinema version of Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali (d. Mustafa ùevki Do÷an, 2007), it is possible to say that as Kara Murat is the legacy inherited by Cüneyt ArkÕn from Malkoço÷lu, YandÕm Ali is the legacy inherited by Kenan ømirzalÕo÷lu from the character of Yusuf Miro÷lu in Deli Yürek films.

Miro÷lu, as the pioneer of a certain kind of recent hoodlum-mafia hero,

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fights as a Turkish, nationalistic, enraged, hot-blooded hero; not for any person, institute or ideology but for the women he loves and for the honor of chivalry. But just like YandÕm Ali, eventually he gets rid of his confusion and finds the ’true path’, and, finding himself in the midst of the Independence War, Miro÷lu also somehow ends up fighting against terrorism in the Southeast in the movie Deli Yürek: Bumerang Cehennemi (Crazy Hearth: Boomerang Hell, Osman SÕnav, 2001).

The cinema version, in terms of epoch, in fact portrays a period subsequent to the era of the comic strip. While no information relating to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is encountered in the comic strip, instead of this the “just and heroic” struggle of the Ottoman Secretary of the Navy Cemal Paúa is depicted alongside the story of YandÕm Ali; yet in the cinema version, Mustafa Kemal and the commencement of the Independence War is depicted as an important secondary story, and this parallelism merges at some point and determines the main story. The path to be selected by YandÕm Ali, in fact, was shown to us at the very beginning of the film.

The film opens with a quote by Mustafa Kemal, gazing at the English warships in the Bosporus and saying ’They go as they come…’, which is embedded in the collective Turkish memory through having read it in the history books of our primary school education. In order to ensure a homogenous national memory, initially the government agents are to establish and spread the official history, and the textbooks are constructed within this framework. Thus the determination of the preferences of that society relating to what is to be remembered, to what extent, and in what form is undertaken through the decision made at the centre.15 In his article titled ‘Public Discipline and Transformation of Rituals into Media Texts in the Construction Collective Identity’, Levent Cantek says the following concerning the starting point in the national memory: “…Virtually everything constructing the collective identity functions as formalist and memory supporting instruments. Ritual resurrection is experienced while giving a starting point depicted as sanctified, and given together with the prototyped individuals.”16 Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy, again in their article titled ‘ Deep Nation’, while discussing the problem of the subject of personification of Atatürk’s life, refer to the existence of an apprehension that the image, to 15

Sancar, Mithat “Geçmiúle Yüzleúme: Bir Adalet ve Özgürlük Sorunu” (Facing the Past: A problem of Justice and Freedom) Birikim 211, 2006, p. 20.

16 Cantek Levent, “Public Discipline and Transformation of Rituals into Media Texts in the Construction Collective Identity,” Folklor ve Edebiyat. 4 1994, p. 18.

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be created by an actor in personifying Atatürk, would weaken the legendary posture of the ‘Father of Turks’. Perhaps it is due to the combination of this apprehension and the desire to address the communal memory mentioned by Levent Cantek that in Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali, Mustafa Kemal is a character who only repeats the catchwords of the history books and appears in the posture captured by the extant photographs of him in these books. The visual likeness with the photographs was especially given such importance that when the make-up put on Alican Yücesoy personifying Atatürk as in these photos together with their shadows, it was so heavy that it became estranged from realism.

Thus while the audience experienced on the one hand the recollection in a collective manner, on the other hand they experienced a two-dimensional character left in the air on screen.

One of the most significant differences between the Kara Murat films and Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali is that while Kara Murat is the savior and hero, the savior and the main hero in YandÕm Ali is Mustafa Kemal.

Whereas YandÕm Ali runs after debauchery, money and loyalty until the final frame of the film, and at the final moment abandons his illusion of running away to Vienna together with the girl he loves, and goes to the war in Anatolia, responding to the seed sown by Mustafa Kemal, he takes the girl he loves along with him.

These films also address the socio-political sensitivity of the periods when they are shot; Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali’s director Mustafa ùevki Do÷an describes the film as follows in his interview on the Özen Film web page: “Even if you remain as the last representative of your values and correct rules of living; the blood you shed until its last drop when necessary for the sake of those you love, your nation and the land you feed from is the banner of all the beautiful feelings you ‘nourish’”.

This is expressed in a very strong way in both the previews of the movie and its introduction in movie programs through the scene where, as an English soldier is getting ready to pull down a Turkish flag that was hung to support the Turkish resistance, YandÕm Ali appears and defeats all the soldiers. In a period where the sensitivity towards the flag is strongly observed in both the recent republic demonstrations and also in the promotion of various political parties, it can be clearly seen how this movie is accessing and reinforcing such feelings.

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While the wave of nationalism and the taking of sides, which has been continuing for a long time, arose as a result of the presidential elections and re-emerges with firefights in the southeast of Turkey, the society has come to be symbolized through the flag. And this movie does not neglect to present this symbol together with the feeling it symbolizes. As for the minorities, this movie visualizes the minorities, except for a few small characters, as characters who are organized to divide the country during the last days of the Ottomans and the staging of the independence war on the movie screen; the minorities are also depicted as trying to personally benefit from this chaos, acting unethical and threatening Turkish traditions and customs, regardless of their social status.

In addition, in order to understand the perception of the movie Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali and its effect on audiences, it would not be enough just to say that more than 1 million viewers watched the movie. Suat Yalaz was awarded the ‘Service to Turkish Culture Award’ by the Turkish Education Union’s Yesevi Foundation as well as Izmir’s Turkish Word Culture and Human Rights Society, the Big Lawyers Association and Ufuk Newspaper, for his studies in ‘Endearing and Teaching Turkish History’. Following this interest for the movie, Yalaz announced that the second YandÕm Ali movie would be in cinemas soon.

In conclusion, these two movies of the characters Kara Murat and YandÕm Ali, with two characters adapted to the movie screen from comic books after an interval of thirty years, contain important information about the sensitivities of the period they were shot, the forms of heroism to be imitated and the ‘best’ way to remember the period they characterize.

These heroes, which were characterized in different forms in the comic books and the movies, are symbols that reinforce the feeling of belonging and identity. They are parallel in terms of their Turkish identity, invincibility, masculinity and nationalism. These heroes, each of which has been portrayed as a man of duty loyal to his state thirty years ago, are now being shaped as men loyal to the nation playing by hoodlum’s rules.

These are heroes of a nation comprised of Turks, where minorities are only portrayed as an enemy or not portrayed at all, and they become the favorite and lover of all women regardless of religion, language or race, when their manhood is on display. The cartoonists and directors have stated that they fashioned these productions with a feeling of national responsibility while at the same time paying attention to commercial concerns, which gives us an idea, even if small, of how a society creates the perception of its own history. This is very important, because the

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perception of history calls up memory and a national memory determines the identity of a nation, the most important part of a nation. As Anthony Smith said, no memory, no identity and without identity, no nation.17 (Smith; ed. Hjort and MacKenzie: 2000, 45-46)

Works Cited AçÕkel, Fethi. “Kutsal Mazlumlu÷un Psikopatalojisi” (Holly Meerdom Psychopathology, Toplum ve Bilim 70,1996.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1991.

Arslan, Savaú. “Hollywood Alla Turca: A History of Popular Cinema in Turkey.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2005.

Arslan, Umut Tümay, Bu Kâbuslar Neden Cemil? Yeúilçam’da Erkeklik ve Mazlumluk (Why Are These Nightmares Cemil? Manhood and Meerdom in Greenpine) Istanbul; Metis Publications, 2004.

Cantek, Levent. Comic Strips in Turkey (Türkiye’de Çizgi Roman).

Istanbul: øletiúim Publications, 1995.

—. “Çizgili Hayat KÕlavuzu; Kahramanlar, Dergiler ve Türler” (The General Outlook of the Comic Strips in Turkey)“Türkiye’de Çizgi Roman’Õn Umumi ManzarasÕ” in Illustrated Guide for Life; Heroes, Magazines and Genres, edited by Levent Cantek,. Istanbul: øletiúim Publications, 2002.

—. “Kolektif Kimli÷in ønúasÕnda Halk Terbiyesi ve Ritüellerin Medya Metinlerine Dönüútürülmesi”, (Public Discipline and Transformation of Rituals into Media Texts in the Construction Collective Identity) (lit.) Folklor ve Edebiyat 4, 1994. Online at: http://derinhakikatler.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html (05.05.2007).

Karado÷an, Rukiye. “Tarihi Çizgi RomanlarÕn Yeúilçam Serüveni: Kostüme Avantür Filmler” (The Greenpine Adventure of the historical Comic Strips) in Illustrated Guide for Life; Heroes, Magazines and Genres (Çizgili Hayat KÕlavuzu; Kahramanlar, Dergiler ve Türler), (ed.) by Levent Cantek, Istanbul: øletiúim Publications, 2002.

Robins, Kevin and Aksoy, Asu. “Deep Nation: The National Question and Turkish Cinema Culture” in Cinema and Nation, (ed.) Scott MacKenzie and Mette Hjort, London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

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Smith Anthony, “Images of the Nation; Cinema, Art and National Identity,” Cinema and Nation, ed. Scott MacKenzie and Mette Hjort, London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 45-46.

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Sancar, Mithat “Geçmiúle Yüzleúme: Bir Adalet ve Özgürleúme Sorunu” (Facing the Past: A problem of Justice and Freedom,) Birikim 211, 2006.

Simpson, Catherine. “Turkish Cinema’s Resurgence: The ‘Deep Nation’ Unravels.” Senses of Cinema Vol 6:39, 2006. Online at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/39/turkish_cinema.html (05.05.2007).

Smith, Anthony. “Images of the Nation; Cinema, Art and National Identity,” in the Cinema and Nation, (ed.) Scott MacKenzie and Mette Hjort, London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

YÕldÕz, Ahmet. Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene Türk Ulusal Kimli÷inin EtnoSeküler SÕnÕrlarÕ (1919–1938), (How Happy for the One Who Can Say I am Turk: The Ethno-Secular Borders of the Turkish National Identity) Istanbul: Iletiúim Publications, 2001.

Interview Do÷an, Mustafa ùevki. Interview. Özen Film, 2006. http://www.ozenfilm.com.tr/?op=megamovie&id=7 (05.05.2007)

Comic Books Kara Murat the Bodyguard of Fatih “Fatih’in Fedaisi Kara Murat” Weekly Youth Comic Strips. Story: Rahmi Murato÷lu, Illustrations: Abdullah Turhan. Istanbul, 1982 Issue: 436–460, 1984 Issue: 547, 548.

Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali; New Adventure Channel Expedition (Son OsmanlÕ YandÕm Ali, Yeni Macera Kanal Seferi). Story and Illustrations: Suat Yalaz. Istanbul: SY Resimli YayÕnlar, 2007.

PART VI: NEW TURKISH CINEMA: POLITICS OF EPHEMERAL IDENTITIES

CHAPTER FIFTEEN CRITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE NEW TURKISH CINEMA ZAHøT ATAM

The heritage it takes over from the past The Yeúilçam period of the cinema in Turkey, which lasted nearly fifty years, came to an end in 1990, at a time when the New World Order was announced, and then our cinema fell into one of the biggest crises in its history. Spectators no longer (a) went to the cinema in general, and (b) when they did, they especially avoided Turkish films. The ontological and sociological discourse of the Turkish cinema, being part of its historical heritage, no longer interested domestic spectators. At the same time, a general tendency to humiliate and to despise all that was related to the past was being felt in the discourse of both the press and public opinion, first and foremost in the discourse of cinema professionals.

The term New Turkish Cinema began to be used from about 1994 onwards, after the appearance of Demirkubuz’s film C Blok (Block C, 1994) and Ustao÷lu’s film øz (The Track, 1994). In reality, this term is used as part of a simple and pragmatic discourse, rather than as an appropriate term to characterise the new cinema in Turkey that is becoming increasingly crystallized and asserting itself for recognition. It is true that certain things have changed in the history of our cinema; spectator behaviour has altered radically, the concretization and classification functions of criticism have become modified structurally, award systems have entered a completely different orbit, the organizational modes of film making and screening have completely severed contacts with the past and have come to flow in a different stream.

At the same time, the film-makers of today are in most cases members of the new generation; the number of people who have been directing films for at least 25 years is not even five. Nevertheless, since what is new today

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will in a short time become established and commonplace, and since the term new does not include any qualification of the new, the term new cinema will not be appropriate within the next decade. However, the term New Turkish Cinema has already established itself so as to define the current Turkish cinema in general. Therefore, we should ask: What is it that is ‘new’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘Art Cinema’?

First of all, we have a new cinema that shows a break with the mode of narrative of the past and rejects it in certain respects.

Secondly, the word Turkish ‘Türk’ in this definition sounds like something that is allied to Turkey, that is done in the Republic of Turkey and that is culturally related to Turkishness. When this term first began to be used, leftist Turkish writers suggested the term New Cinema of Turkey instead of New Turkish Cinema in order to avoid the dominant nationalist and at times fascist discourse; however, this expression did not find acceptance in general. Although our cinema has become more and more popular and accounts for more than 50 % of today’s box-office receipts, although our art cinema is completely detached from the general nationalist cinema, the psychological reflections of the nationalist and racist discourse have indeed been effective in the boom of interest in ‘Turkish’ films.

Turkey after 1980 the coup d’etat –From the economic crisis to the violations of human rights, and the changing ideological discourse of the society– by 1980, Turkey had entered a deep economic-political-cultural crisis, and in this process art production had positioned itself generally within the socialist idea.

Meanwhile the working class had reached a serious level of organization and real wages had reached their peak in 1978 for the whole history of the republic.

Inflation rates exceeded 70 % and there were black markets in the economy. The IMF program proposed that real wages be seriously curbed, customs duties be lifted, and exports be encouraged and that an attempt should be made to integrate the economy into the world capitalist system.

In the words of Prime Minister Demirel, ‘Turkey was in need of 70 cents’.

Imports were to be realized by foreign debt. This was necessary for industrial production. Foreign debt was around 2.5 billion dollars in 1980, [today total debt (foreign and domestic, most of it foreign) is over 400

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billion dollars]. In these conditions a new program, supervised by IMF, had been launched.

The new program, including earlier demands that the IMF had not been able to enforce, opened Turkey unilaterally to foreign capital and the economy began to be governed by a series of constant interventions. It was impossible to enforce these decisions in Turkey before the coup d'etat; because the society was well organized in terms of its production, and there was an organized opposition in the spheres of art and culture as well.

The coup d'etat was staged under these conditions…

Under these conditions the number of cinema spectators continuously went down, besides the general indifference and apathy, as a result of the combination of constantly falling real wages, rising unemployment, high costs of living, systematic destruction of the social security system, going to the cinema became a form of luxury spending. Whereas cinema in Turkey had pursued a cheap pricing policy right from its beginning and received revenues from the quantity of spectators, now both the number of spectators was falling and the price of tickets was rising. Ticket prices did not exceed 30 cents until 1984 from then on they have increased constantly and today are around 7 to 10 dollars. Therefore, today more than half of the population has either never gone to a film or economically is not in a position to go.

In the 1980's national identity also began to change in Turkey. The monopolised and centralized media was under tight control, becoming more and more conservative and religious. Media authorities and experts changed, military spending soared while the last traits of the social state gradually vanished. (In today's Turkey, the annual budget of the Ministry of Religious Affairs is bigger than any other ministry.) Religious publications were openly in defiance of the law spread all over Turkey in due time. Religious sects were set free and openly encouraged by the state to get organized. Religious discourse found the discourses of art and culture in Turkey immoral and labelled all kinds of mass art as misbehaviour. Under these conditions, populist and opposition cinema was replaced by a mass production of statist –exhibitionist– arabesque films.

Depolitization had reached such dimensions that no activity in the country gained mass support. In these conditions, the relations of the left with Turkey that was seen and reflected in the media were severed and extrajudicial executions followed one after the other. “In the 1980s two different looking national realities were constructed without any

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possibility of transition or communication between each other. On the one hand an ideology of relative freedom and consumption that came out with a discourse on economic liberalism, a Turkey of opportunities where private lives were much talked of and ground in the mill of the media…

Especially in metropolises, it was a Turkey which was separated by thick walls that appeared suddenly, where on the one side there were extrajudicial killings and on the other side, advertising panels with naked women; where everything was consumed relentlessly, where the other side of the wall was hidden by trivial news, documentaries on the National Liberation War, hysterical tales of inseparable integrity and heroism, screened just a few meters beyond the killing fields and applauded by people in the balconies...”1 Consummating this picture was an Islamic rise (as became clear from documents that came out later), progressing deeply below, always supported by the state, openly violating laws, encircling all educational institutions, openly condemning in the name of sheria and morality, all the laws of the republic, and its founders as well. Religious sects continuously got organized in the outskirts of metropolises, in town centres, villages. And they are generally against the “arts based on the image and impersonating”, consequently, the number of cinemas fell from the peak point of 3,000 in 1968 to 300 in 1990, and the total number of spectators in Istanbul fell from 50 million to less than one million.2 Performers had no venue to reach society; theatres were closing down one after another.

The bourgeoisie are now as famous as pop-stars, they have a say in all critical decisions in the country, and their private lives are now openly and pompously related in the media. The timid, inconspicuous bourgeoisie of the past has now become the indispensable appraisers of the media, some of them even being used as advertising stars; yuppies are now being shown as the ideal successful youth of our times. “While the capital owners of the past were worried over hiding their wealth, the life of the rich is now lived in exhibitionist and arrogant tones due to the freedom from the worries to

1

Atam, Zahit and Alper, Emin.“1990’lÕ YÕllar ve Türk SinemasÕ”, Görüntü-4. Bo÷aziçi Üniversitesi Sinema Kulübü yayÕn organÕ. Winter 1995-1996, p.29 2 I have composed this data from three sources; the first one is Nijat Özön’s book entitled Türk Sinema Kronolojisi, Bilgi YayÕnevi, 1967, østanbul, the second one is from a monthly cinema magazine of 70’s 7. Sanat (Seventh Art) and the last one is from Antrakt scanning the monthly magazine which have been published regularly the box-office sales in Turkey, from 1990 on.

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justify it”3. The Ministry of Religious Affairs is preparing fatwas on many issues in an Ottoman fashion; it has become an authority to look to for wise counsel. Under these conditions, in 1990-91 cinema was at point zero in Turkey, domestic films were not watched by the spectators, cinemas did not show them, national contests were left without prestige, cinema criticism –which from the 1950's onwards appeared in the press and increasingly became indispensable in daily newspapers and in politicalcultural journals had now disappeared– and the existing ones were full of news of American films. Discussion runs on how cinema survives crisis in Turkey.

On the Newness of Turkish Cinema In a sense, the period between 1990 and ‘94 was the lost and the transition one, when Turkish cinema flourishes from its ashes, it was restructured, reformed, and highly changed in the hands of a new generation in a different political climate.

Our cinema has moved away from the primitive forms of narrative and extremely rough techniques of the past and has attained a definite standard in Turkey. In the last decade, there has been a debate in Turkey under various occasions on what art is and what is not. The representatives of commercial cinema have defined art cinema in the press again and again as ‘intellectually made –depressive– too personal to interest anyone – far from the people’ and they have claimed that true cinema is what they do.

This discourse has become widespread and generally accepted in the public space. Apart from this, there are many other forms of change that justify the term new, there are radical changes in all spheres such as the structure of the censorship, state subsidies (incentives), the cultural policies of governments, the attitude of the media towards Turkish cinema, the total economic scale of our cinema, the importance of festivals and the place they occupy in public life. Therefore there are objective reasons that justify the term new, however there are also novelties in all and even the tendency in most cases to reject the past in such topics as epistemology, themes, forms of narrative, modes of perception of our artists in society, awards and the ability of the artists to reach and affect the society, and the relation of the press with the cinema. For this reason, it is meaningful to describe the period after 1994 as new. But then what can we say on a 3

Bora, TanÕl & Erdo÷an, Necmi. “Zenginlik: ‘Zengin’ Bir AraútÕrma Gündemi, ‘Yoksul’ Bir Literatür”, Toplum ve Bilim 104, 2005, p. 10.

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national scale, can we talk of a ‘National Cinema’ in terms of the everyday life of a society, its sensitivities, characters, vital questions, areas of interest, expectations, forms of thought and behaviour, its own modes of narrative? In this context, this article will analyse the nationalness and political discourse of the New Cinema, especially focusing on Zeki Demirkubuz and Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

How the culture of nostalgia coincides with the deeprooted social loss of memory In present day Turkey two different tendencies stand deep-rooted: 1) one of these is an increasingly felt nostalgic tendency or desire to know one's past or to take refuge in the works of the past. This tendency has two sub-categories: i) taking refuge in the past in the sense that now we have lost our values and the unifying elements that make us; us ii) on the other hand, as part of a nationalist discourse in the sense that we are different from the Western world and also distinct from Islamic countries, and that we are the descendants of a noble and exalted nation. 2) The occurrence of a social loss of memory that has already become widespread among ordinary people, in the sense that people who have a very scattered, superficial knowledge of the past and who don't know their past –who are unaware of their own history– are prevalent in society. In Turkey our society has been so radically torn from a scientific knowledge of its own past, that we even witness people who define themselves as antigovernment utter in the form of absolute truth judgements that come from the pseudo-moralistic approach of the outright lying, falsifying, conservative discourse of the government. Turkey has become a society with established judgements about its past without however knowing its own past and without ever questioning how we reached the present day. In the words of the late reporter U÷ur Mumcu, Turkey is a country where ‘people have opinions without having knowledge or information’. Let us now on the one hand turn to its past, and on the other, search for answers to the questions of why the art cinema of today finds spectators only in a structurally limited arena and why our artists feel alone and unsafe. In so doing, let us synthesize the two headings above together with these explanations and reach a dialectical conclusion.

In the above mentioned period, while all these violations of human rights occurred and the authorities resorted to irrational methods and while reactionary ideas arose, there appeared in the republic of Turkey a social segment that codified Turkey as unreliable, its politicians as slippery and

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back-stabbing, its people as ignorant and reactionary, and its art as underdeveloped and uncultured. Vis-à-vis such a government that became so alienated from its own citizens and intellectuals, it has been seen that this segment that was also alienated from its state and its people, consisted of mainly well-educated people who criticised Turkish society with powerful ridicule, usually by means of cynical discourse. It is impossible for an official history not to appear as prone to national raving and untruth, interested in militarism, worshipping power, exalting its own past. In a country where for at least the last twenty years any act of reading was disdained and ignorance was widespread and dominant, it is not surprising to see easily excited power-worshippers to come to the surface. Such a very wide tendency has already taken place. Accordingly, a definite cinema language had also been formed for the youth who were watching American films and serials since the mid-1970's and who played American computer games, anything that was contrary to this was seen as fake – backward –incomprehensible– depressing. Therefore the New Turkish Cinema was from the moment of its birth isolated, confined to certain limits and its potential spectators were limited materially and spiritually to a small group, and its area of existence was also limited. For this reason, the New Turkish Cinema in most cases depicted anxious, unhappy, stressful, broken lives. Once Balzac said: “People want beautiful pictures from us, but where are the models?: Your ugly dresses, your unfinished revolutions, your talkative bourgeois, your dead religion, your degenerated power, your uncrowned king... So these are the poetical things to be depicted? We can only ridicule them!” (cited by Atam and Görücü: 43; 2001). The New Turkish Cinema, however, inserted the tragic instead of the ridicule in these words, and derived the sad portraits of distressed people and of the society from the frustrated lives of its characters in a deeply pessimistic discourse. The following words of Beckett, which Zeki Demirkubuz quoted in the final scene of his film Masumiyet (Innocence, 1997), in a sense became the launching words of the New Turkish Cinema: ‘You always tried. You always lost. Let it be. Try again. Lose again. Be a better loser’. Now the general discourse of this cinema has become a deep-rooted sense of insecurity, a chronic timidity, and a state of being suspended, deterritorialization and a dominant unpredictability.

Thus the New Turkish Cinema has found neither beautiful pictures nor impressive models in Turkish reality. It either chose to ridicule, or to find the beautiful portraits of already losers, the lack of communication among their models, insecurity for the future, lost loves, desperate searches, unreliable people, repressive officers of law-enforcement, bourgeois political figures to be ridiculed... But it never found the popular support

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with which to share these, instead it found awards at festivals, a doubtful success story in the press, international respectability, and material support from Euroimage, the ministry of culture of Turkey, and producers. They became each like a touching, heart rending bard who is not to be listened to; they are respected, but when their ‘songs’ are screened, they are limited to a handful spectators.

A nostalgic feeling of remembering and of knowing and a deep-rooted social loss of memory with regard to the recent past are just two interrelated results that complement each other. Why? The coup d'etat of 1980 always presented a falsified and oversimplified image of the past in institutions of education, in the media and in its political manoeuvres, accusing it and mounting a campaign of defamation against it. In the face of extreme pressure, the society has shown extreme efforts to hide and cover its past, and as it was forcibly torn away from its past, Turkey was also forced to get rid of all of its collectivist values that came from the past. Thus any sociological thesis about the past was swept under the rug.

Today a significant portion of university students and alumni are totally ignorant on the important turning points of our history. The Americancentrist and popular point of view that replaced this and the knowledge of the past presented by the intellectually guided experts of Turkey is not consistent nor does it affect people. Such an active collective ignorance has so penetrated the genes of this country that even a warm humanly touch leads our people into a nostalgic atmosphere, in the face of today's lack of values and egotistical individualism. Indeed what happens is not a nostalgic atmosphere geared to rediscover our past, but to remember a past that is under control by the powers that be, in a ‘limited-censoredchanged’ way so as not to disturb the authorities. Thus the resistance culture of the past is today being used for nationalist ravings. The past is remembered but in a different guise and an important part of it is being denied. There is a real social loss of memory in Turkey; the ensuing nostalgic desire to learn about the past is not a desire to learn the past as it was, with all its contradictions, but it is the tendency to remember the past in accordance with the vision of the authorities. Some argue that Turkey was liberated from the censorship that was imported from Mussolini’s fascist Italy towards the end of the 1980's; on the contrary, now either nothing has remained to be censored, or now censorship is applied not through laws but through institutionalized reaction and civil looking institutions with direct, one to one threats. However, what is more frightening is that in today's Turkey, except for a few opposition voices, criticism in art, sufficiently intense and of a high standard to really disturb

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the political power is either not practised or when it is done, these works remain in wearying isolation and marginality. Many members of our society are devoid of a formation to understand these. The last killing point is that art production has already a very limited clientèle and the artist's channels of access to the peoples of Turkey are closed to a great extent, therefore the artist is powerless and timid in front of the political authorities.

Two examples from the New Turkish Cinema: on the cinema of Demirkubuz and Ceylan Zeki Demirkubuz started his first film on the eve of the 1994 crisis, which had great effects in Turkey. On the one hand, there was a deep political crisis, on the other hand, there was a great identity crisis at the intellectual level, and the existing social violence and helplessness were not explainable. We were passing through a period when none of the forms of narrative and the themes of stories from the past bore credibility any more, when the cinematographic language was insufficient, derided, and discredited. Even award-winning films at domestic festivals gathered less than fifty thousand spectators. Under these conditions Demirkubuz took loans mainly on a foreign currency basis and directed the film C Blok.

When he finished the film, his debt was tripled due to the historical devaluation of the Turkish lira. When his first film was awarded the second prize in the International Istanbul Film Festival, he did not accept the decision and rejected the award, making a controversial speech: ‘I reject this award because after the 12 September 1980 military coup d'etat, the sufferings of people in Turkey, and most of all the suffering of one million among them, was much marketed and ignored’ (interview with Demirkubuz; 1995). This speech was a big surprise and created much debate. Later the film passed through a successful process of screening, first of all in European festivals, and the advent of a new creative director was greeted... However, as he himself admitted in our interview, he could develop an original language of cinema and human conception only during and after the shooting of Masumiyet (Innocence, 1997) two years later.

Indeed the story of C Blok included a collage of different social segments, the story developed in leaps and bounds and without causal links, the director's editing was so decisive that it was not able to construct a reality of Turkey, and the finale of the film was strange and striking. However, in general the first film was a success it brought recognition, material gains and a confidence to embark upon new projects. The characters of the film, both the upper-intermediate class and the employees who serve them,

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together with the lumpen proletariat –generally aimless people who have nothing in life to hold on to, entirely detached from the world of production and struggle, living in a dominant state of lack of communication and helplessness– did not constitute a totality. At the same time, all the components of the political power were depicted as people who should be intensely suspected and feared. The representatives of the political power and the officers of law-enforcement are depicted in all the films of Zeki Demirkubuz as unreliable, aggressive, and sometimes even so wild as not to recognize any law.

In his two later films, the speeches of the public prosecutor take place at the beginning of Masumiyet and at the end of YazgÕ (Fate). Masumiyet is the first and one of the most successful of the New Turkish Cinema. It has been based as a whole upon unpredictability –frustration– helplessness.

Yusuf is a person who has just got out of prison, who has lost all his family in an earthquake, who has no profession or craft, who does not know what to do outside prison, and who, therefore, does not want to get out, because he cannot play life according to the rules of the game.

Although Bekir is the son of a decent family, he is obsessed with the woman U÷ur, and he has lost his struggle with himself, he cannot admit his own situation and he is the faint figure of a life that ends in suicide.

U÷ur is at once a mistress and a passionate lover who sings in cheap night clubs and is a prostitute for notable persons. She is beaten while pregnant and as a result her daughter Çilem is born deaf. Çilem is unaware of the outer world, her future is dark. While narrating the heart-rending, melodramatic network of relations of these people in a dramatic manner without turning it into a melodrama, the director finds traces of innocence especially in Yusuf and in Çilem and produces a pathetic story out of the hopeless course of their lives and so is respectful to down-trodden people.

With the release of Masumiyet, the director's reputation was enhanced and the number of his fans increased. It was understood that this was the story of the Other Turkey, which is a new concept that became established in the 1990's, a story that stated a greatly helpless –unconscious– irresolute process in a narrative of certain innocence as a whole. It paved the way for an approach to the drifting of these people's lives, which in public discourse is usually described as ‘immoral, unconscionable, unreliable, aggressive...’ with other adjectives such as ‘warmness, humanity, innocence, strong woman, good will, victims of fate’.

In the years 1995-96, departing from a story of Albert Camus, Zeki Demirkubuz tried to tell the story of a leftist teacher working in a Kurdish

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province.4 Demirkubuz talked with French producers, he thought over and over what he could present and to what extent. He planned to make a film, typically struggling ‘between the permissible and the impermissible’.

When this plan became impossible for factors that were out of his control, he focused on an adaptation of Camus's Outsider to Turkey, centred on a fatalist character. Therefore, it got out of the circle of Masumiyet and Üçüncü Sayfa, (The Third Page, 1999) and turned into a hypothetical film, under similar social conditions, but this time under the preoccupied theme of the director. When we analyse YazgÕ, (Fate, 2001) it is seen that although the director thinks of breaking certain limitations, he shrinks from this as a remnant of earlier times, and ultimately the film is transformed into a story that is sometimes far from plausibility for our people. Its framework was borrowed from Camus, some domestic small events and character types were added, but the story had lost its vital energy, in a deep submissive mood the characters accepted all that happened to them without objection and as a result the story became implausible The good reception that had started with Masumiyet entered a process of recession for spectators and critics. After two stories that depended on the director’s ability as an observer and his interpretations upon the observed, when the director based the film’s story wholly on his imagination (YazgÕ), he met with the important problem of plausibility.

When he returned to real events in his next film øtiraf, (Confession, 2001) this was much more plausible and impressive for many people. Yet in Bekleme OdasÕ, (The Waiting Room, 2003) he again returned to abstract thought (speculation) and instead of taking nourishment from life, he resorted to imagination and again encountered a problem of plausibility and effect. Thus this film became the least successful in all his filmography. While the film had not yet participated at festivals and had not yet met spectators, he talked of it hopefully, nevertheless the film in his own words turned out to be –after screening– ‘not well-done’, ‘better to be forgotten’, due to many additions and extractions and due to the bad plot. Thus when he realized that in YazgÕ and Bekleme OdasÕ the films lost the qualities of plausibility and of being pathetic, and when the number of spectators fell below 15,000, Demirkubuz wanted to return to the successful line of Masumiyet, and tried to shoot Kader (Destiny, 2006). As a riskless and simple project, he took refuge in the period of youth of Bekir in Kader, the suicidal character in Masumiyet, returning to the dramaticised long story of the two –Bekir and Yusuf– in Hidden Heaven, 4

I was in the process of translating the synopsis of Demirkubuz and had often talked with him face to face in the mid-90s.

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thus hoping for a repeat of his old successful days in terms of awards and number of spectators. In conclusion, both because Demirkubuz’s stories are distorted to a certain extent due to Turkey’s conditions, and because he could not renew himself and his world of thought effectively as an intellectual, he began experiencing problems of originality and creativeness in a time period of ten years. Beginning with his second film, he easily financed his films with the support from the Ministry of Culture and with awards from festivals. Although he has directed seven full-length films up to now, and although he has given numerous interviews in the press, the total box office sale for all his films has not exceeded 200,000.

However, his name is perceived in public as a story teller of a certain cinematographic language, of processes of tension, with leaps and bounds with regard to time, of processes when one’s intentions become invalid due to one’s own weaknesses, when one is beaten by his own fate.

Demirkubuz’s career has been over-determined by a certain process of distortion and refraction due to a great extent to the objective conditions in Turkey; in short, fate, which he has chosen as a title for two of his films (YazgÕ and Kader (The Fate and Destiny) has also directed his life and art beyond his control and as a result of social impositions.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan first began filming by investing some 15,000 dollars which he had earned from photography in his film Koza (Cocoon, 1995).

This short film which he shot in colour, but printed in black and white, was without dialogue or a definite story. Focusing on old people (his parents) and a child in a town or village, Koza attracted attention with its successful moments and photographs and it was invited to be screened at Cannes. In fact, the director himself has pointed out that he did not know beforehand what he was trying to say during filming, that afterwards he edited pictures of human lives from the filming. This approach continues in his later films Kasaba (The Small Town, 1997) and MayÕs SÕkÕntÕsÕ (Clouds of May, 1999). Both films include many sensitive moments, observations and comparisons on the urban / rural contradiction; however, an analysis of his stories gives us problematic relations in general. These three films on town or village life greatly differ from traditional and conventional Turkish or Oriental narratives. Our cinema, theatre and literature depend largely on story, they demand events, and people evaluate the story, drama or film by relating to these events, by focusing on sensitive points in these events, and what is more important, by focusing on the finale. From this point of view, these three films attracted limited interest, spectators admired the photographs, viewed with a pastoral pleasure the director’s warm approach to people, but they could

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not find strong ties between these films and their own lives. However, what is more important is that these three films had found an answer to a very important question of our cinema. Our cinema had mostly been suffering from a problem of plausibility apart from YÕlmaz Güney’s films such as Umut (Hope, 1970), Sürü (The Herd, 1978), Düúman (The Enemy, 1979), Yol (The Way, 1982), and Duvar (The Wall, 1983). Although these films of Güney were not documentaries, and although they endeavoured to set up an atmosphere which is not felt by those who live the life of those whom the director takes as his subject matter, they were able to make the spectator feel that they reflected these people to a great extent ‘as is’. In this sense they bore the traces of a return to naturalism (that is realism) in our cinema. Ceylan’s admiration of Chekhov and the latter’s influence are seen openly in the structure of the stories in these films, as if the dramatic moments in one’s life were captured largely while life was running in its own natural movement. Therefore people thought that they were witnesses of the people they were watching, thinking over their lives, and seeing very successful photographs of these moments, instead of watching the stories of a director. Despite Turkish cinema’s general failure in visual compositions, the sensitive dramatic moments and photographs of this trilogy were manifestly distinguished and occupied a unique place. In all three films the existing balance is never disturbed by any extraordinary development, there are only small changes in the conditions and the rhythm of life that look as if they will never change while they flow on in their own tranquility. People think about their lives, struggle with the hardships of life, carried away with their hopes, experience frustration, approach all human relations and particularly people who preach change with some scepticism. Everybody has his own ideas opposing others which he then hides from those others. These films seem as if the rhythm of life has forced these people to sit down and chat, to yearn for other places beyond their living places, to take part in a contest of wisdom, after having performed their necessary acts of living. These people living in unchanging conditions are unaware of what is beyond the town; they have a yearning for what is beyond the town, they contend with each other within the town, they look as if they are lost in their small worlds which they don’t leave, unless it is obligatory. In contrast to this is the relation to the rural life of the newcomer to the town; this university graduate (the director) has changed to a great extent, he is full of a longing for nature as a result of an overdose of urban life, yet he is insensitive to a certain extent to human lives, and he has acquired a different character as a result of the individualistic effect of the city. Although he has captured pictures of the traces of the struggle with nature, he is full of the protective measures of

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the city against nature, he puts certain distances in human relations, he is generous with his promises but more realistic when required to fulfil what he has promised, and he is stingy in protecting his living conditions.

However, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is able to focus on the whole of the rural vs. urban relationship only in his third full-length film, Uzak (Distant, 2002) where Ceylan will obtain a full cinematographic story with total internal consistency, much more powerful with its observations and axis of conflict, with all the details well thought out. Uzak is the peak of all his films, this film where all relations from his earlier films are shown with much more conflict and much more nakedly, where the material living conditions of people are given much more realistically. The film was made after the 2001 economic crisis in Turkey; its story was based upon two persons that cannot come to terms with each other. There is an intense intertextual relation between MayÕs SÕkÕntÕsÕ and Uzak. In MayÕs SÕkÕntÕsÕ, Yusuf, who works in a factory in town, had left the factory with dreams of going to Istanbul and participating in the shooting of a film. However, when his dreams were condemned by his father and when the ‘director’ met his idea of settling in Istanbul with no encouragement, he had no choice other than to return to the factory. However, when the factory is closed down due to the economic crisis, he is left with no choice other than seeking a job in Istanbul. Uzak is based upon this effort and the tragic character of this effort.

Uzak begins with the view of a journey from the town to the city on a snowy day, and then we pass over to Mahmut’s life. His presence together with a woman is given in a blurred view, and then he takes some photographs and goes to a ceramic company. He seems tranquil and no signs of happiness are seen in his life. Yusuf comes and waits in front of the outer door until evening, for Mahmut has forgotten that Yusuf will come. Mahmut finds him napping at the door. They have a chat and drink some beer, the crisis has closed the factory, and about one thousand people have been fired and left unable to earn a living. He hopes to work as a mate or steward on ships. His situation is the very widespread case of ‘I will do any job’. He does not know the job; he has only hope in a state of hopelessness. The traces of cultural difference begin to be seen on the day he arrives at Mahmut’s apartment. The conflict between Mahmut and Yusuf is not just an urban vs. rural conflict. Mahmut is a person who lives in the city, who has experienced a certain alienation and has some values of his own, in his life that is full of frustrations, on the one hand he holds on to life, on the other hand, he takes refuge in a shallow and hopeless

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hedonism. His past ideals now seem distant to him and he has given up, either because those ideals and aesthetic passions no longer seem to be plausible and realizable or because he cannot find in himself the strength to run after them. In this process he feels the weight of everything, from Yusuf’s foot stench to his uncouth behaviour. However, what is more important, after recent difficulties in his private life, he wants only to relax, to bear someone else’s burden seems now too heavy a burden. On many occasions he realizes how difficult a situation Yusuf is in, and he helps Yusuf as much as he can, but Yusuf’s case is hopeless, it does not look solvable in the given period. He does not want to put up with Yusuf all the time, along with his own powerlessness. The fact that Yusuf's plight is not to be overcome in the foreseeable future sharpens the conflict. Their relationship becomes increasingly tense and, after some shaking events in Mahmut’s private life, it breaks apart. Communication stops between them after a gloomy dispute that turns into a real face-off and helplessness.

Mahmut’s voluntary intensification of the tension after some point with a clock that he will use in his photographing makes Yusuf more depressed.

The view of a small mouse that struggles hopelessly on a glue trap reflects Yusuf’s state; Mahmut cannot touch the mouse and refers the matter to the doorman, but it is Yusuf himself who does the cleaning after he learns how. In a sense, Mahmut sees in that little mouse that got stuck Yusuf’s situation as he is squeezed and can do nothing. However, Mahmut also can do nothing and doesn’t have the strength to put up with it; when he tells Yusuf to leave the mouse so that the doorman can take it in the morning, in a sense he discloses his attitude towards Yusuf. The simple sentence ‘I did not want it to be so, but there is nothing to be done’ finds its expression in the rolling of the ceramic egg that he photographed, the egg stops at a cleavage. Yusuf leaves the mouse to its death at midnight, but when cats gather around him, he kills the mouse in order not to give it alive to the cats.

Mahmut looks on the whole situation sadly and hopelessly, and in a sense, although he would not speak it aloud and would avoid facing it, Mahmut shows his attitude towards those millions of people driven by the economic crisis of Turkey into deep hopelessness, even though he probably put up with Yusuf less than he might do, because of some troubles in his private life. In fact, because he has been deprived to an important extent of his own intellectual heritage, of human ideals in general and self-sacrifice, because he wants to set himself free from traditions, modes of thought, responsibilities of the society he lives in, from bearing the burden of this harsh fate, felt deeply by the people living

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in this society, he connives hopelessly at the crash of Yusuf's personality, his return home, and his heart broken remembrance of him (of Mahmut).

What is hopeless are the conditions they are in, millions of people are in the same situation, the crisis is not only in town, it is everywhere in Turkey. The very attitudes of these people, who do not strive to change their lives, do not make any efforts to educate themselves, are the source of the hopelessness of those like Mahmut. In the past, Mahmut and his like risked their lives in the struggle for the good of these people, now they have accepted defeat and live in a rootless nihilism and hedonism and far from their ideals. Rather an intellectual of our times, Mahmut is hopeless because he does not strive for a social solution. Yusuf is unqualified, he does not think that millions of people are in a similar situation, he does not think that they have been defeated together, his basic ideological attitude is to save himself by the help of some acquaintance, some elder brother. In that case, both from his own point of view and from the point of view of Yusuf's qualities and style of life, Mahmut does not have a reason to tolerate Yusuf for a long time. Once Yusuf has returned to the village, Mahmut can now worriedly take a deep sip from the sailor's cigarette left

by Yusuf and get the blues at the seaside. It is not his own behaviour that is not acceptable; on the contrary, it is the impositions of our lives, our reality that drives unequal people into naked conflict without providing a ground for bearable compromise. Uzak has become a powerful link in our realist cinema tradition; it has kept its social realist line in a naturalist way, but with a desperate atmosphere and without linking itself to a struggle for a hopeful future. Since it is based upon the conflict of people whose lives have been disturbed by the traumatic effects of Turkey's reality, and not upon people living in the ordinary and spontaneous atmosphere of the town, since it includes a real theme, a real axis of conflict, a powerful finale and an impressive objectivity, it has become an important film both for Ceylan and world cinema. Once again we are face to face with a real result of the history of cinema in Turkey; it bears testimony to the conflicts imposed by reality in a deep and objective way, rather than through the imagination, and in so doing plays the main role in the making of a real work of art. Life defeats imagination, life itself is much more striking when it is reflected in art without intermediaries.

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Two Successful Films Essential to Understanding the Social Reality Turkey Finally it is compulsory to make certain political evaluations about two New Turkish films; these two films are Güneúe Yolculuk (Journey to the Sun, 1999) and Takva (A Man’s Fear of God, 2006).

Güneúe Yolculuk, directed by Yeúim Ustao÷lu, is remarkable as an exception to the established rule in our cinema, which for decades has not been able to keep alive the way of telling and world-view of YÕlmaz Güney who left the country in 1981. Besides its cinematographic success, it has given hope to the people that expect the cinema should tell the social reality of Turkey, because it is a film that tries to think with love and sensitivity over the lives of people in the east who have been subject to oppression for a long time. It is a film that goes beyond the tradition of the 1980's of seeing and showing the struggle of the poor, the oppressed and the resisters as a criminal police event; a film that derives the cruelty of life totally from the material reality of people living in concrete conditions.

While the first part of the film is based quite simply upon human lives and their intersections, the second part includes events around a utopian, impractical journey into nature with a coffin, undertaken in a revolt against one's self, and at the same time with a feeling of fidelity. The film ends in a reversion of the public perception of the relations of the authorities vs. the oppressed, of those who apply terror and those who resist. The rising sun must be seen as an expression of respect for peace, for revolt and resistance. It is a film that approaches in a humanist framework from the left; a process where many mass revolts took place, tens of thousands of people died, where a real war was waged, and this process is now decided in the responsibility of terrorists by the mass media. Güneúe Yolculuk reversed all the propositions of the authorities and the artificial reality of the mass media in a very realist, down-to-earth way and is still the only film that in a sense has saved human honour on the cinematic front despite many hindrances in the screening process.

Takva (A Man’s Fear of God, 2006) is another very important section in the same process. We have said that in the 1980s, in accordance with the project of the USA with regard to Turkey, the authorities and the socalled ‘deep state’ (the secret core organization within the state) consciously fed and raised Islam as a counterweight against the left, this time in conformity with imperialism. If we go back further, we see that Islamists were making films in the 1950s, 1970s and from the end of the

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1980s on to today. However, until now, except for small episodes, cinema in Turkey could not create a living, pious Muslim character and could not reflect the relations between his beliefs and his material conditions of existence. In this sense Takva has for the first time created this living, real, pious Muslim character and has been able to show him in the totality of his inner world, morals, conditions of social existence, his approach to people not thinking like him and his tragic end. It is important because it has also shown a Muslim character with the contradictions of his beliefs with objectivity and in the inevitability of his contradiction with himself while he lives on gradually compromising his beliefs. The film shows the dissolution of the character of a sectarian Muslim in the course of his real relations in a nearly documentary fashion, in a way that can be analysed and understood scientifically. It shows how the beliefs and forms of organization of the pious Muslims in Turkey have gone through a dirty compromise and it also shows that when an individual struggles not to compromise his beliefs, he hits against the concrete wall of reality and loses his personality and character. ‘This dissociation of personality is seen not as a catatonic depression of the Islamist but as a totally antiscientific attitude and evaluation as in rising toward God. This belief is underlied by irrational and anti-scientific evaluations and for this reason they find themselves in many unacceptable compromises despite their moralizing discourses.’ Takva is a film within our New Turkish cinema that carries this tradition a step further, and it is one of the most important films of the last decade, with its visual world and with its power of reproducing an important social point of conflict. It is also an important artistic creation that needs to be discussed in further detail because of the largeness of the social question it takes up as subject matter and because of its aspects that affect everybody's life more and more. The abovementioned films of Demirkubuz and Ceylan are not comparable with Takva and Güneúe Yolculuk in terms of reflecting Turkey's basic questions and handling them.

In Lieu of a Conclusion The heritage of the Turkish cinema from the past includes important tensions, disintegrations and the violence of social problems that have not been spoken of for a long time. By the mid-90's Turkish cinema could not construct the way of life and struggle of people as a social reality in its films. Social reality and the themes, characters, human relations of the films diverged to a great extent, and because of this, Turkish cinema had lost its social ties to a great extent.

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After that period, Turkish cinema succeeded in relating the stories of its people, in catching their sensitivities, but this time Turkish cinema had largely lost its ties with traditional Turkish narration, in some sense, it was far away from the way of thought and of feeling of the majority of people.

Directors are far from and beyond the reach of the dominant and conventional discourse and they are loyal to their starting points and personal concerns. The difference of this success from the previous ones is its having lost the social support of the filmgoers, and having gained the support of critics and festivals both at home and abroad. While the general cultural level of the Turkish people largely decreased, directors and scriptwriters (in most cases the same people) made significant progress in their original narrative styles and in the authenticity of their chosen subjects. And this tension caused the New Turkish Cinema to be watched and respected by fewer people, but at the same time it affected this limited group more profoundly. This situation resembles the sorrowful fate of other cinema movements of the 1960's in the Third World, like that of Cinema Novo of Brazil.

Works Cited Atam, Zahit and Alper, Emin.“1990’lÕ YÕllar ve Türk SinemasÕ”, Görüntü4. Bo÷aziçi Üniversitesi Sinema Kulübü yayÕn organÕ. Winter 19951996.

Atam, Zahit & Görücü, Bülent. “Komser ùekspir ya da Bay Çetin’in Küfür SinemasÕ”, Yeni ønsan Yeni Sinema no:9, Gelenek YayÕnlarÕ, Spring 2001.

Bora, TanÕl & Erdo÷an, Necmi. “Zenginlik: ‘Zengin’ Bir AraútÕrma Gündemi, ‘Yoksul’ Bir Literatür”, Toplum ve Bilim 104, 2005.

Boratav, Korkut. 1980’li yÕllarda Türkiye’de Sosyal SÕnÕflar ve Bölüúüm, Gerçek YayÕnlarÕ, 1995.

Görücü, Bülent & Güven, Yusuf. “Interview with Zeki Demirkubuz” Görüntü-3, Bo÷aziçi Üniversitesi Sinema Kulübü yayÕn organÕ, Winter 1995.

Onur, Özalpmete. “Takva” essay presented in the Psychiatry Conference in the Hospital of Mental Disorders of BakÕrköy, 2007.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE GLORIFIED LUMPEN ‘NOTHINGNESS’ VERSUS NIGHT NAVIGATIONS ZEYNEP TÜL AKBAL SÜALP

Societies and the representation of the ‘social’ inhabit both trespasses and smooth transgresses in between actual, cognitive and virtual borders, where ‘appearances’ are multiplied and where even different appearances might be sought out. Yet there are borders which could even be conceived of as cells with well-built separations that are hard to transgress.

‘Borderlessness’ is a fabrication of the long narration of globalization and postmodernism. However it seems that we have all accepted the global flux in which capital, labor, people and places, images and symbols all flow; and our ‘experiences’ of the rearrangement of international divisions of labor has drastically shattered the life of the ordinary men and women at street level. For them, globalization or the ‘post’ suffix mean lives squeezed at the corners –celled, bordered, vacuumed and sealed. So they carry their borders with their bodies. They dwell in the city and so do their borders. Hence I suggest people who are surviving in this era –the ones who are lucky enough to be safe from war, hunger, abundance and famine and/or violence of all kinds from above– have become vacuumed and sealed image subjects. That they are not living in a war zone and deprivation does not keep them from being hunted by another trap in which they become out of focus and visually image-made subjects.

These precise experiences stand for fractured urban practices, multicultural confrontations distrust of unknown others, strong discomfort in material life caused by the rearrangement of the division of labor, and trouble in configuring gender positions. These conditions produce and embrace specific chronotopes in daily culture. This is a worldwide phenomenon after the 1980s’, yet within the context of a brief comparative study of films after the 90’s, I will basically focus on Turkey’s cinema as a specific chronotope.

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After the mid 90s we come across diverse and conflicting directions in Turkey’s cinema. Some of them seem to be significantly apolitical, individualistic, self oriented films. However, we also observe a considerable number of films seeking answers to the silent tension of a loosened society and the mounting of nationalistic, fascistic ‘post-’ times.

On the one hand it is the cinema of the vacuumed and sealed image subjects of the city with glorified, alienated, remote and lumpen ‘Nothingness’. On the other hand, it is a search for confrontations and encounters that I like to call night navigations and dream stalking.

After the 80s, what I will call the ‘cinema of the new arrivals’ has changed the screen persona of the cities, bringing unfamiliar sounds and appearances into the cinema around the world. Their camera detours and walkabouts are at the street level. The well-known spectacles of the cities have been fading and are becoming distant. We now have different scenes and different mappings originating from alleys. The looks and sounds seem to be those of a different gravity, seeing the ‘not shown’ and speaking the ‘untold’. These are films that inhale and exhale the city of those who are insignificant, speaking softly of minor histories. And there is another emergent course of films searching for new looks and poetics from this geography and history, creating their own way of telling and showing.

When we focus on the films of the 90s and beyond, I think this cinema of new arrivals is based on the horizons of all diverse forms of survival, struggle, resistance and negotiating the experiences of everyday life. They are coming from the experiences of the other side and telling the stories of morphing encounters and habitations, and of passengers who stand by for some time and/or coexist simultaneously.

This cinema of new arrivals is about the terminal chronotope of today.

It is basically related to new experiences under the re-organization and redistribution of labor.1 The tragic experiences of gluttonous capitalism greedily eating its children are clearly witnessed in many films coming

1

As stated in North Wind (2004), Berlin is in Germany (2001), Brassed Off (1996) Late Full Moon (1996), Maria (2003), Marius & Jeannette (1997), My Name is Joe (1998), Struggle (2003), Time Out (2001) Navigators (2001) Blame it on Voltaire (France)), Life Kills Me (2002). I intend to use the English translation of the title unless stated otherwise and I will use the same for Turkish films together with their Turkish titles.

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from different countries.2 These portray scenes of the outcasts of the city and the human leftovers, as I prefer to call them, trying to survive and struggle within the experiences of inner city conflicts.3 Again ‘speech’, ‘human touch’ and ‘the meaning of being a part of society’ have all faded out, especially in Ponds’ films4 but also, with different components, in Haneke and Demirkubuz’s films. The films mentioned above are just a few examples from the cinema of new arrivals. We can call this new tendency the look of outsiderness. Obviously this state of ‘ outsiderness’ does not come from national, ethnic or diasporic identity positions. It is more related to the situational stand made in the life experience of these particular time and space relationships, which create an eye-level look at people walking on the streets. These films belong to the ‘outsiderness’ of deep insiders, whose origin of geography, nationality, region and/ or their ethnic and even religious identities or boundaries do not matter. These new arrivals’ directors are the aliens of the juncture and keep producing awkward perspectives from different points of view. Some of them are like night navigators; they walk in the darkness, showing the dark and gloomy world of these cities.5 In Turkey, some are not only filmnoirish but also attach themselves deeply to the violent, lumpen world and glorify it.6 Some are the stubborn storytellers of nightmares in the age of dystopias such as Haneke and Seidl’s films.7 We have become wide awake and susceptible to our immunization to alienation when cold, merciless, brutal capitalism and its bourgeois’ class manifest themselves. Demirkubuz’s 2

Hi Tereska (2001), Purely Belter (2000), Ratcatcher (1999), 4Ever Lilya (2002), Child Murders (1993), Engel & Joe (2001), Stolen Childhood (2004), 2:37 (2006), A Children's Story (2004), The Year After (2006), The Invisible Children (2005), This is England (2006), Nobody Knows / Daremo Shiranai (Original Foreign title) (2004), The Tracey Fragments (2007).

3 As in Blame it on Voltaire (2000), Journey to the Sun (1999) Color Turkish (2000), Elephants and Grass (2000), Fat World (1998), Hate (France, 1995), Head-On (2004), Hejar (2001), Lovers on the Bridge (1991) Paths in the Night (1999), Perfect Circle (1997), Purely Belter (2000), Raining Stones (1993), RiffRaff (1991) Short Sharp Shock (1998), Somersault in a Coffin (1996), Struggle (2003), The Third Page (1999), Town is Quiet (2000).

4 Caresses (1997), Anita Takes the Chance (2001) To Die or not (2000).

5 Naked (1993), Fat World (1998,) Frankfurt – Millennium (1998,) Night Shapes (1998), Paths in the Night (1999).

6 Mixed Pizza (1997), On Board, (1998), A Madonna in Laleli, (1998) Destiny (2006), In the Pub (2007) are just a few that should be mentioned.

7 The Seventh Continenent (1989), Benny’s Video (1992), and 71 Fragments of Chronology of Chance (1994) Code Unknown (2000,) and Seidl’s film Dog Days (2001).

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films from Turkey murmur of alienation and never-ending boredom in the daily dystopias of the lower classes, often in the same scene. Interestingly in both Demirkubuz and Haneke’s films, TV is on as a background text almost all the time even as wild and uncanny things are happening. The main difference between Demirkubuz and Haneke is the blaze of the former’s stubbornly indifferent attitude to society, to class conflicts and to the political background of his stories and the political consciousness of Haneke. However, some filmmakers insist on the possibilities and space of hope. Godard declares, in each of his films, where to look to see hope. We can find some hope in Kechiche’s, Guediguian’s, Ulucay’s Akay’s, AkÕn’s Aksu’s and Özpetek’s films.8 So the narratives of culture, history and literature, both centrifugal and centripetal, have become present in these maps and, as Bakhtin renders: “behind each static multiformity, there is multitemporality.”9 Dynamic and changeable space is interrelated with time and society in a dialectic relationship. We have the opportunity to comprehend the chronotopes of the 90s and beyond, and follow up on the differences and similarities.

What is striking in the films of the 90s, and the first decade of this century, including Turkish cinema, is that this specific chronotope is now widespread. When we look at the dark, crowded, poor streets of different parts of Europe, we sense whose territory is defined, who is excluded and how. Darkness and poverty encapsulate the invisible and through this veiled ‘reality’, we might be seeing the off-screen spaces of different experiences holding out the possibility of a dialogic encounter.

After the 80s but specifically from the 90s on, directors have adopted a style in which they have been able to capture the ongoing movement in the emergence and alterity of time in space. The unspoken or the empty text in heteroglot, dialogical space is re-presented and re-produced as off screen spaces in cinema: the vast zone of the social leftovers and untold/invisible experiences lay beyond the screen stories. This has become the preferred approach for the last two decades in the Turkish cinema for it becomes detectable in the cinema of a large and diverse geography. It is easy to see that it is not a national base understanding of chronotope but it is a 8

Some of them are L’esquive (France), Marius & Jeannette (1997), The First Night of my Life, (1998), Brassed Off (UK), Where are you, Firuze? / Neredesin Firuze? (2004), Boats Out Of Watermelon Rinds / Karpuz Kabu÷undan Gemiler Yapmak (2004), Ice Cream, I Scream / Dondurmam Gaymak (2006), His Secret Life (2001), In July (2000), Vizontele (2001) 9 Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, Austin, TX: UTP, 1994, p. 28

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particular chronotope, one which is transnational, depends on certain histories of human experiences in capitalistic social formations, its material conditions and social forces creating multiformity and multitemporality.

The wholeness of the world system has made itself alive in the daily experience of conflicts and the co-existing struggle of binary oppositions.

Altogether, it is a space in which some need cognitive mapping to locate themselves in the rapidly changing, cosmopolitan spatial oddness of this shifting outsideness / insideness according to the questions raised in Minhha's discussion (1989). For some others, it is the moment that we can not wait to question –the writing and/or re-writing of history– while some, in shifted space and temporality, try to find a way to re-locate the ‘self’ in schizophrenic experiences in relation to the ‘self’, the ‘spatial’ and the ‘temporal’ in order to produce something.

This altered film experience now has a larger geography and multilayered temporality and there are many worlds in each, experienced and coded differently. Even in the same city, diverse experiences abound and none of them is familiar to the other; they become foreign countries to each other. Yet the ones in different countries living under the same conditions are capsulated and scattered across the vast horizons of the incomprehensible common experiences of the ‘ citizens of nobodies-land’.

Coming from different parts, having different looks and voices, some directors intend to uncover the veils of the city and capture the visions of the division of labor, poverty, unemployment, and the life of the underclass of the differently-located but polarized cities all around. So, one city speaks for all, as Lefebvre would say (1991). We can see that the directors challenge convention by capturing the atmosphere of the world smashing, scattering and disorientation of the ordinary people, yet they pull out ordinary heroes and center them in their stories. They tell us of the long and uneven struggle of ordinary people. Not only does their camera lower its eye level, getting into the heart of experiences and showing us that their characters are not alone, but we also witness the different regimes of filmmaking, from the aesthetic to the mode of production, that create a horizon for film making in which gays and lesbians, feminists and the left-wing work together.

They also ask for us to look, not gaze, at the polarized city, in which the unemployed underclass, either quietly and with hesitation survive

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being inconvenient in the deserted corners of the city or become the ones pushed away and reserved for the projects in which the city keeps its myth of ‘beauty’, and ‘civilization’ for the older myths and powers. While they are challenging these old myths they also demystify the stylized city through the production of time and space in their films. The new protagonist is a non-hero; s/he looks for sharable street life, which might have been lost somewhere on the street or in history, in this vast land where lives are something disposable. They find their utterance and look in non-spaces. These are significant examples of making films on the border, on the thin line between unity and dissension, altering our views about temporality and spatiality.

Although I keep stressing the common ground of the latest chronotope in the cinema of the new arrivals, we can also witness something specific to some of the films in Turkey. We can say the great majority of the directors who came after the 90s have started to make their films with this street-level camera, telling the minor stories of small people who are squeezed and smashed by the system without getting into an analysis or questioning of the system. Yet directors like Derviú Zaim, Yeúim Ustao÷lu, Handan øpekçi, and Reha Erdem have always stressed their social and political consciousness.

Yeúim Ustao÷lu and Handan øpekçi have questioned the social conflicts and bravely dealt with the question of ‘others’ and nationalism.10 Recently new directors Ça÷an Irmak and Ömer U÷ur have committed to question the era of September the 12th, which is the strongest recent wound in society, and told the stories from the silently unremembered era which has been left behind as a far away world from another time, another place.11 With the upheavals of the student and workers’ movement, strikes and demonstrations on the one hand and the violent attacks of radical rightwing youth, along with imprisonment, detention, torture and the alleged or confirmed lost or dead on the other hand that led to the brutal coup of 1980, the 60s and 70s were a different world in Turkey from the 10

Yeúim Ustao÷lu with: BulutlarÕ Beklerken (Waiting for Clouds) 2004, Güneúi Beklerken (Journey to the Sun/,1999), øz (Traces 1994) and Handan øpekçi with: Hejar / Büyük Adam Küçük Aúk 2001.

11 Eylül FÕrtÕnasÕ, (After the Fall) (AtÕf YÕlmaz from the 60s generation of directors; 1999), Vizontele Tuuba (YÕlmaz Erdo÷an, 2003), Babam Ve O÷lum (My Father And Son) Ça÷an Irmak, 2005) Eve Dönüú (Home Coming, Ömer U÷ur, 2006) Beynelmilel, (International, 2006), Fikret Bey (to some extent related with September 12th; Selma Köksal, 2007).

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rest of the world. All the opposition movements and the left were shut down and the sour, poison memories were postponed and put into boxes.

Then we jump to the era of 80s, ‘to the winds of desire of the liberal economy’ in Turkey as it is all around the world. Is it any wonder that today’s films try to recall the years of the late 70s.

In the first decade of this century, Derviú Zaim and Ezel Akay have both started searching for new forms of looking and showing and different ways of storytelling. Zaim has been studying the archeology of history, society, time and space in his specific film poetry as pronounced in his trilogy: paper marbling in Elephants and Grass (Filler ve Çimen, 2000), miniatures in Waiting For Heaven (Cenneti Beklerken, 2006) and calligraphy in the forthcoming movie with the working title Dot. He has also been dealing with the problems of a filmmaker as a person and his responsibilities toward his personal and social history, the problems of looking and representing the source of the story, the reason of the story, and storytelling and framing (Fango/ Mud/ Çamur, 2003). Ezel Akay started with the grotesque work in his first film Where's Firuze?

(Neredesin Firuze?, 2004) and went into the very innovative film Killing the Shadow, aka Who Killed the Shadows (Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü?, 2006). Killing the Shadow is a saga about an early folk version of a stand-up duo. He questions all official story telling and dominant narration of cultural history. Moreover he offers a different reading of the establishment era of the Ottoman Empire and its multicultural carnivalesque surroundings. Another remarkable pioneering example is Ahmet Uluçay’s film, Boats Out Of Watermelon Rinds (Karpuz Kabu÷undan Gemiler Yapmak, 2004) which describes the down-to-earth relationships of a small town.

These films all actually talk about minor histories yet in a ‘long shot’ of ‘History’. Their search for novel and genuine film making is, as I describe it, not only night navigations but also dream stalking, since they try to crystallize their analytical look in these dark and gloomy times of confusion and offer that some different looks and comprehension are possible.

Actually under the uneven development of long history there is an emerging need to find new ways to talk about experiences and to forget and remember for the future, as Huysen suggests (2004). Derrida describes this history as being a cut-out from a larger photograph that bleeds all the time. In Godard’s latest film, Our Music, Goytisollo appears as himself,

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underlining that nothing really passes by once you have experienced violence; the wounds are always alive and victims are altered on the way.

The victims become victimizers.

Obviously some considerable films after the mid-90s have gradually distanced themselves from conflicts centered around class, society and gender issues and reproduced a kind of ‘philosophizing’ of the culture of the glorification of the lumpen attitudes toward life and of sensations of pure ‘nothingness’. I believe that the refusal and disregard for criticism, the disgraceful approach towards knowledge and production and the socialization of knowledge, the appreciation of apolitical, illiterate and prosaic daily demeanors, the sublimation of nationalism and racism in the era of the 80s have all fed this phenomenon. A little man’s shattering life is now full of drama and they are the aliens of urban space. No woman, no class conflict or social analysis is included in these ‘weepy male’ films, which praise the growing tendency to appropriate the dominating and official ideologies.

Traumas over a long period with no mourning nor healing after each leftist turn or opposition, and the brutal fall of the left after coups, followed by profound stillness, are one of the main effects we even hesitate to question. Moreover, the strapping and economic crises one after another followed by a high unemployment rate and rapidly mounting poverty, bringing about the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness among mainly male silent majorities, are all crucial when we focus on Turkey’s specific conditions. The migration from agricultural areas and particularly from the South East, crowding the big cities with insecurity and desperation within the zones of industrialized and/or postindustrialized urban life that have been shaped by the rearrangement and redefinition of labor divisions, have created a turmoil in social life and class consciousness. I think this conjuncture brings about not only strong discomfort and even hate toward ‘the others’ among whom women have taken their part but also the silent denial of the whole society about the violent coups that result in uncomfortable and never confessed feelings of shame and disgrace. A broken social wholeness and a disabled public of everyday life have become an intense nuisance. New cognitive maps for crowded space need to be sorted out. The male ego has to deal with unemployment and confront this newly-shared space with others. Fear and fantasy restore the forms of representation of specific genres and aesthetics.

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Since man’s crushing life on the street is now full of drama, the brutality in attitude and in tone of these male characters has become the dominant story. No woman is included. They are either not present or faintly represented as shadows or acting as film noir dummies that bring in all the menacing things in the life of male characters. Sharing the interrelated scripts in Gemide (On Board, 1998) and Laleli’de Bir Azize (A Madonna in Laleli, 1998), the directors, Serdar Akar and Kudret SabancÕ, introduce us to the bewildered gang of lumpen heroes. They look for fights, drinks and women. Directors idolize this world. A bunch of hooligans with their ‘blessed’ lumpen attitudes drink alcohol, then kidnap and rape a foreign prostitute who is also the victim of the same world system, with no language and no expression. Directors promote and polish this hurt and wounded underclass male ego without being critical of their real problems and/or the meanings and experiences of unemployment, poverty and deprivations in life. Standing in for all ‘the Others’, the unknown, threatening women have taken their part in fulfilling the fear and fantasy.12 The angst and dullness do not come from an inability to be productive in a system like this but from not being successful in this world of lust and consumption. Barda (The Bar, 2006) by Serdar Akar is the latest example of this kind of film equating consumption with corruption. He assaults and terminates everything around with an ‘out off focus’ and ‘lost in space’ camera eye. While Akar declares that he is willing to show the faces of violence, he actually reproduces violence with hostility. We, the spectators, are expected to enjoy this epidemically reproduced cruelty.

Now, the individual who is the object of desire learns and enjoys all torment and discomfort s/he experiences while s/he passionately consumes.

These particular directors, but above all Demirkubuz, claim existentialist references in their films to the major Existentialist writers; yet notwithstanding their references the stories’ narration itself and the characters of their films become at once the anticipated nightmare of those writers they refer to. It seems that the main difference and/or the 12

øtiraf (Confession, 2002), YazgÕ (Fate, 2002), Bekleme OdasÕ (Waiting Room, 2004) and Kader (Fate, 2006) by Zeki Demirkubuz; KarÕúÕk Pizza (Mixed Pizza, 1997), Mele÷in Düúüúü (Fall of the Angel, 2004), Balans ve Manevra (Balance and Maneuver, 2005) and Gemide (On Board, 1998), Dar Alanda KÕsa Paslaúmalar (Offside, 2000), Barda (In the Bar, 2006) by Serdar Akar and in some deep reading øklimler/ (Climates, 2006) by Nuri Bilgi Ceylan.

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resemblance between the referrers and the ones they refer to is ‘the existentialist nightmare coming through’ the characters, who are floating through the dark and gloomy world of irresponsibility; and male melodramas are also falling behind the reasoning of their state of ‘indifferent, lost in space’ being. The reckless characters’ acts are not about the angst which is originating from the individuals’ responsible desperation and disturbance from the system and/or the state of the world they live in; above and beyond this they have no will to risk anything.

They do things just because they want to, with no responsibility for their actions. They easily surrender themselves to the stream of fate without questioning. We do not understand why they are so angry, so lost. No spatiality, no temporality of diegesis who tells us this. Since these films have very classical narration and everything is woven in the course of continuous order, we cannot put the blame on the absurd or broken story line.

Besides, when we consider Dostoevsky’s little people –little losers– we grasp the heaviness of the world surrounding them and feel the squeeze of life which has put them in the corner. There are many voices and utterances while the events and the stories get thicker around his ‘simple’ but multilayered characters. As Bakhtin stressed, Dostoevsky’s writing is polyphonic and dialogic.

If we look at Ömer Kavur’s films, as recent examples from the same culture and geography, we can see all the traces of society, history and the individual incorporated in his filmic space and time delicately in such a way that space and time work independently and open up a space for us, for our inner film where we can comprehend the alienation and anguish of his characters.13 All bleeding cuts search for remedy. Who wants to remember, to forget, to question, to survive, to hate and to put the blame on ‘the others’, to create and recreate ‘others’ all existing together in the same boat in which people in Turkey and in the world on a larger scale experience a very similar mixture of puzzlement, confusion, hope and comprehension of society and history? Rendering options is also in the hands of our new arrival directors, as it is for the rest of society. This depends on whether this task is going to be undertaken along analytical or reactionary lines.

13

His most famous film is best related to our discussion: Motherland Hotel (Anayurt Oteli, 1987). But if we talk about same examples from the 90’s we should also mention: The Secret Face (Gizli Yüz, 1991), Journey Of The Clock (Akrebin Yolculu÷u, 1997).

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Works Cited Bakhtin, M.M., Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, Austin, TX: UTP, 1986, 1994.

Huyssen, A., Present Pasts: urban palimpsests and the politics of memory Stanford, Califf: Stanford University Press, (AH), 2003.

Lefebvre, H., The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell., 1991.

Min-Ha, T. T., “Outside In Inside Out”, J.Pines & P.Willemen, (ed.)

Questions of Third Cinema, London: BFI., 1989.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN YAZGI OR KADER: NOT OF GREAT IMPORTANCE, OR TAKING A STAND AGAINST KADER ASLI KOTAMAN

Freedom of choice alone doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a person’s choices will be put into practice; neither do freedom of action nor freedom of will. Take the hero in the film, Kader (Fate, 2006), who leaves his family and work behind and sets out in search of his beloved, living a life of poverty; how is it possible to understand or give any meaning to his actions? Is this what we call freedom of choice? Or, as in YazgÕ (Destiny, 2001), is a choice not taken when we give answers like ‘it doesn’t matter’ to all questions, as the character Musa does? Musa understands that making a choice would be of no benefit while Bekir takes a stand against Kader –which one can be described as more of an individual? Bekir uses his own willpower within the boundaries of changing circumstances; yet Musa also uses his own willpower in choosing not to change the situation, in a way refusing to be the stereotyped individual that has been dominantly imposed upon him. Demirkubuz’s films circle around the same topic. Is life driven by fate or free will and to what extent is the decision to let fate decide for itself actually a choice? Where does freedom come into it? This article will seek an answer to these questions in terms of the films YazgÕ and Kader. The titles of the films refer to a central, recurring motif in Demirkubuz’s cinema: fate and destiny. Both of these words signify destiny while ‘fate’ especially underlines predetermination. ‘Written on my forehead,’ a frequently used colloquial saying in Turkish, signifies a mode of thinking connected to the more Islamic way of resigning oneself.

The gist of the film lies in its interpretation of the discourse of apathy and socially detached individuality found in Camus’s The Stranger as an

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unchangeable destiny. For Demirkubuz, the darkness of the underground is a fate to be borne by human beings in life.1 Zeki Demirkubuz has been one of the most prolific directors in Turkey.

Kader (Destiny, 2006), his seventh feature-length fiction film, premiered in September of 2006 at the Antalya Film Festival in Turkey. His filmography is versatile; he has written and directed intimiste films such as Bekleme Odası (Waiting Room, 2004) and big productions like Masumiyet (Innocence, 1997), yet there are salient themes and motifs that permeate his body of work —the most striking of which is the literary power of his scripts, often inspired from masterpieces of modern fiction.2 Demirkubuz was jailed at the age of 17 for alleged communist ties. Judging from his films, his freedom regained three years later seems merely relative.3 In Yazgı —the first film in his ‘Tales of Darkness’ trilogy— Musa is a middle-aged man who has largely given up on the idea of free will and is resigned to living without a sense of direction or designated course. As fate would have it, that course includes death, marriage and imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. Take Camus’s “ennui”, Bresson’s soul and the unwavering gaze of Kiarostami and you might get something like Zeki Demirkubuz's Fate.4 Yazgı exercises hardcore existentialism with an ironic oriental–modernist twist.5 Musa is a a clerk in a shipping office, living with his elderly mother. Demirkubuz's version departs from Camus’s in that the hero is framed for a double murder and gets married. But generally the film is faithful to Camus' notion of Meursault as a seemingly conscienceless man, who is in fact at odds with society (and condemned) because he speaks the truth about the essential meaninglessness of life.

The film is not without interest, but in attempting to capture the novel's laconic prose it becomes flat and unvaried in its rhythms.6 The power of Fate comes from Demirkubuz’s confrontation with his audience’s 1

Durmuúo÷lu Övül, AltyazÕ Journal, http://www.moonandstarsproject.org/fests/2007_zekidemirkubuz_yazgi.shtml 2 Interview by AydÕn Bal (translated by Zeynep KÕlÕç), published on the website of the Bosphorus Art Project, and an interview by Jamie Bell, Sight & Sound, February 2006, http://www.arteeast.org/pages/cinemaeast/series/z-demirkubuz07.

3 Möller, Olaf “Prison As Metaphor is the Guiding Light of This Turkish Director’s Austere, Literary Vision”, Film Comment, Mar/Apr 2003:39, 2; ProQuest Direct Complete.

4 Ibid. p.2 5 Ibid. p.2 6 French, Philip, “Turkish Cinema News Letter”, The Observer, February 5, 2006.

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expectations, both morally and cinematically. In a long dialogue near the end of the film, Demirkubuz explains his stance on developing a film such as this, and through Musa’s words he challenges the audience by asking them the source of Musa’s guilt: Is Musa guilty of homicide now or of not being sad about his mother’s death? Demirkubuz persistently escapes the clichés of psychologically-oriented films. While escaping them, he uses seemingly under-elaborated visual aesthetics that never overwhelm his effective storytelling, but instead nourish it. In the end, it is impossible not to react to what he does in Fate. He thrives on the fundamental question of what is beyond good and evil, and urges the audience to look into their own darkness through his controversial, archetypal character of modernity, coming this time not from France but from Turkey.7 In YazgÕ, Musa’s detachment from his own isolation surprisingly imparts a sense of trustworthiness and the viewer comes to appreciate him as being small and harmless while the character Bekir, in following his passion, also awakens the viewer’s tolerance; in other words, the characters’ unexpected reactions to their situation give the film a radical element. Musa’s casualness is completely different from the active complacency of Camus’s character, Meursault. Moreover, Demirkubuz’s YazgÕ, in contrast to the novel, gives the viewer hope, and offers a happy ending. Musa’s complacency, with his irresistible personality and unbearable denial of sentiment is, at the very least, not just a fabrication of denial; there is a paradigm shift and, as Jameson says “exceptions don’t break principles[;] existence mends non-existence and is once again corrected.”8 Presented as the prequel to Masumiyet, Kader resurrects the characters and drama of the feature film that earned Demirkubuz international recognition. Bekir is mad for U÷ur. U÷ur is enamored with Zagor and Zagor can’t help committing crimes. Zagor is released from jail. On a sultry summer night, one mishap follows another and a murder is committed in the neighborhood. That same night, U÷ur vanishes. Although foreboding of the dark and cruel days awaiting U÷ur's young and pretty mother, his paralyzed father and his little brother who have lived under the wing of an affluent young man named Cevat until then, this homicide becomes the hope for deliverance from his mad love for Bekir. He marries the girl his family has picked for him and sets forth on a new life. Some 7 8

Durmuúo÷lu, 2007.

Jameson, 2006.

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months later, Zagor is jailed for killing two policemen, and U÷ur returns to Istanbul. Bekir is, again, hopeful. A deadly chase of merciless love begins as U÷ur trails behind Zagor and Bekir follows his beloved U÷ur through nightspots, cheap hotel rooms and dope parties in town after town, for years. Hearths and homes are destroyed and children orphaned, but innocence is never lost.9

Yazgı and Kader (Fate and Destiny): The individual fights against life’s rules with rules of his own At first glimpse we see individuals making their own choices and fighting according to their own rules against the rules of life. Another characteristic of Turkish films is that the frequent use of ‘kader’ as a theme is hidden and it only becomes apparent by inference and association.

According to Bauman, the free person is someone who makes his own decisions, decisions of his own choice, choices that are sometimes not approved of by the community –he is often punished because of his decisions– on the whole, can we really call this freedom? Kader: People struggling with the same aims, sometimes for an existing prize where, for example, the amount may be limited. When the amount of the prize is lower than the number of contestants, the prize in this situation offers the individuals only a ‘restricted’ choice –can this really be a liberal way out?

Freedom of choice alone cannot guarantee that a person’s decisions will be put to practice. Until attained, intentions of freedom cannot be factually assured. Acting freely and the power of freedom need other sources.10 In YazgÕ, Musa is a clerk in a shipping office, living with his elderly mother. Musa's motives and feelings are not explored in Fate. At the very end of the film we get to see him talk a little about his philosophy on life but we get no indication of what it feels like to be Musa. Many reviews of Fate have referred to the film as ‘existential’ but this isn't exactly true. Musa doesn't think about his existence, or if he does, we as viewers know nothing of his thoughts. Camus’s Meursault spent some time coming to terms with his existence in prison, and he experiences great surges of passion for life and existential revelations.

Musa on the other hand, displays no passion for life and appears 9

Ibid.

Bauman Zygmunt., Thinking Sociologically, Translation: Abdullah YÕlmaz, østanbul: AyrÕntÕ Publishing, 2000, pp. 32-36 10

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indifferent as to whether he lives or dies. 11 A person’s freedom of choice is not always tied to their ability in making choices, as in the case of an individual who doesn’t force their creativity and chooses to live with what they have. At this point, all that remains is the approval of the individual: ‘It’s either this or that.’ Yet Gündüz Vassaf got the attention of those supporting freedom of choice by proposing that ‘it’s either all or nothing,’ and by siding with night against day, hell against heaven, quiet against speech, madness against intelligence, and disagreement against agreement; against heroism in defense of traitors.

I have observed the characters in the films of Demirkubuz, and as I mentioned before, in the short time before the making of a choice, simply having a choice in a postmodern-consumer society is presented as people’s Kader. But the reality of ‘true’ choices is very different. This is why the source of presentation has been differentiated. According to Bauman ‘the thing shared out here equally is the responsibility of preference’ but ‘acting according to his responsibilities isn’t an ability that every individual has on an equal basis’– in a sense, individuals are sentenced on equal terms to be ‘obligatory choosers’ (some are less obliged and some much more so).

For instance, in the film YazgÕ, Musa chooses not to make a decision.

While the film is made from Camus’ novel The Stranger, the director doesn’t try to make an exact match but benefits from Camus’s themes12: Happiness and fate, life and death, darkness and light. Many sources have commented about Camus’s novel not for its content but for its absurdity.

Some of these critics have classed the book as nihilistic. The Stranger is, according to some critics, a novel that was written under the influence of Camus’s absurdity and in which the main character, Meursault is antiheroic.

In the Demirkubuz film, there are three main characters, Yusuf, Bekir and Musa, none of which show heroic qualities. However, Musa’s reason for not making a choice is not a case of indecision in the face of the system’s multiple choices; rather this lack of a decision is simply not based 11

A Review on “Fate”, http://www.camus-society.com/camus-thought.htm, 08.08.2008.

12 http://www.camus-society.com/YazgÕ-demirkubuz-review.htm, date of attainment: September 2007.

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on reason.

The same novel was filmed by Visconti in 1967 and that version was actually more accurate and utilized a more successful setting in terms of the book. In contrast, Demirkubuz’s unorganized statement against existentialism was influenced mainly by Dostoyevsky’s novels and maybe even Kafka.

Demirkubuz’s films YazgÕ and Kader have one thing in common, their reference to nihilism: A person with his own willpower taking his life into his own hands, not just mentally but at the same time through his own actions, using his instincts. Keeping in control and being happy with one’s YazgÕ does seem like a Nietzschean approach but Demirkubuz’s characters are not actually showing resistance to life in the beginning; it’s as if the director is trying not to present their resistance against ‘YazgÕ’ but their surrender to it instead. Arguments with no answers, long and cold lonely scenes, platonic love, all caught up and lost in the whirlpool of Kader.

Choosing not to make a decision is also a choice. Musa chooses not to make a decision in this film, and if there’s a sentence to explain his behavior it would be ‘it doesn’t matter’, so of course not deciding is a choice. As numerous critics have written in a plethora of articles on countless films, not making a decision and presenting the lack of any real difference in the choices faced is not actually taking a stand against life’s problems. In Musa’s case, we frequently witness him not making decisions for no apparent reason. At this point it’s quite possible to say that this theme of YazgÕ is truly absurd. When events are left to YazgÕ alone and have no effect, when events can be blamed on YazgÕ –is this actually a way to blame something when in fact the reason is unknown. In Demirkubuz’s films Kader and YazgÕ, the use of the preordained and changing events of the unknown and the characters’ struggle against the unchangeable are really most of the time a means of surrendering.

It’s possible to say that in modern society, an individual’s existence is tied to, and limited to, relations of power. If many of the elements which define the individual develop externally then maybe the theme of Kader, where events happen and are connected to a person’s existence, is one of the main elements of a utopian vision.

The Kader found in Demirkubuz’s films in terms of the individual’s choice not to choose is, at the same time, a stand against the monotony of

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daily life. I will borrow a comment on the subject made by Arus Yumul: In a materialist society, where the spell has been broken, the trick is to charm the world yet again. Where sacred values have been lost struggling to impose sacredness, where modern life is normal, taking a pure stand against alienated elements are utopian answers in daily life and may well lead to the theme of Kader in these films, because there are no Achilles or Hectors in heroic films anymore; the heroes of modern times are at one time rebels and submitters.13 Just like Joseph K., Kafka’s famous character in The Trial, these are stories of rebellion and surrender, such that Demirkubuz’s three characters raise their voices against authority even as they bow their heads.

Works Cited Bauman, Zygmunt. Thinking Sociologically, Translation:Abdullah YÕlmaz, østanbul: AyrÕntÕ Publishing, 2000.

Cook, Pam & Bernink, Mieke, editors. The Cinema Book, 2nd edition, UK: BFI Publishing, 2005.

Durmuúo÷lu Övül, Altyazi Journal, http://www.moonandstarsproject.org/fests/2007_zekidemirkubuz_yazg i.shtml.

Monaco James, How to Read a film?, Translation Ertan YÕlmaz, østanbul:O÷lak Publishing, 2002.

Möller, Olaf “Prison As Metaphor is the Guiding Light of This Turkish Director’s Austere, Literary Vision”, Film Comment, Mar/Apr 2003:39, 2 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, translation: Mustafa Tüzel, østanbul: øthaki Publishing, 2006.

Performance Research 8 (1), Taylor & Francis Ltd., 2003.

French, Philip, Turkish Cinema News Letter, The Observer, February 5, 2006.

Spence, Louise. Watching Day Time Soap-Operas The Power of Pleasure, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.

The Albert Camus Society UK, YazgÕ, (http://www.camussociety.com/YazgÕ-demirkubuz-review.htm, September 2007.

Yumul, Arus “Türk SinemasÕnda Aúk ve Ahlak”, Türk Film AraútÕrmalarÕnda Yeni Yönelimler IV, editor: Deniz Derman, østanbul: Ba÷lam, 2001.

13 Yumul, Arus “Türk SinemasÕnda Aúk ve Ahlak”, Türk Film AraútÕrmalarÕnda Yeni Yöntemler, edited by Deniz Derman, østanbul: Ba÷lam, 2001, pp. 47-55.

PART VII: NEW TURKISH CINEMA: POLITICS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ISLAMIC WAYS OF LIFE REFLECTED ON THE SILVER SCREEN ÖZLEM AVCI & BERNA UÇAROL KILINÇ

Introduction The appearance of Islam in the public sphere in Turkey picked up speed after 1980; subsequently, boundaries of privacy in religion and congregational structure started to become gradually ambiguous and, at the same time, to disappear. In this manner, thanks to the religion’s conservative congregational structure, the individual in the area of the private/privacy has started to appear in the public sphere and his or her way of life together with the differences between these lifestyles have started to be represented and embodied. The areas where these ways of life have been represented in the most effective way are the cultural and public spheres. In these areas, forms of religious life (often described as alternative) have started to be represented and expose a Muslim’s daily, ordinary life, especially in music and the cinema, in literature and in other cultural areas. These cultural areas have been described as Islamic literature, Islamic music, Islamic cinema, and so on. Furthermore, the most widely-read novels have been adapted into movies, while soundtracks have been composed by music bands described as Islamic bands even as film productions have been sponsored by groups of investors contributing ‘Islamic’ capital.

Religious ways of life have also started to take their place on the silver screen rising through what was called ‘National Cinema’ in the 1970s, later ‘White Cinema’ in the 1990s and what is now known as ‘Green Cinema’ and‘ Wise Cinema’. Naturally this definition of Islam in movies has carried with it the main problem of what these ways of life depend on in their presentation and how a reality rather than a fiction is represented.

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Moreover, it is also important in the way it is represented within a realistic structure and, simultaneously, how it can make reality into a story.

This article focuses on an analysis of the discourse of how Islamic ways of life change in combination with altering social, political, and economic development and in particular what kind of aspects these take on in the public sphere in parallel with the political fortunes of Islamic parties and what kind of realistic understanding of this situation is carried onto cinema screens. A further area of focus is the meaning carried in the articulation of ‘National Cinema’ which started in the 1970s, as well as the personalisation of political identity during the late 1980s and 1990s in the cinema in terms of what kind of discourse language has been formed. This begs the question of what kind of development arises through the transformation of religious truth into politics as it was presented particularly in the decade of the 1990s and how are these presentations interpreted by intellectuals and especially by Islamic intellectuals? In addition to these questions, this article poses the following: How are religious items used and how are Islamic ways of life explained in the movies in the period leading up to the February 28, 1997 economic crisis and also how are the period’s problems expressed from the Islamic viewpoint?

This article attempts to deal with how Islamic ways of life and the change seen in these ways of life are presented and represented in the art of cinema while relying on their own conception of reality in recent films.

This existing change and public appearance of privacy will be discussed within the historic and political framework and studied comparatively.

After the 1990s, together with pre-existing changes, utilizing a critical discourse analysis methodology that concentrates on post-1990s events (while taking into consideration transformations in the field prior to the 1990s), the cinematic presentation of how Islamic action has spread in cultural areas and especially in recent movies and the lifestyles presented in film will be examined in detail.

In this article, an attempt has been made to emphasize both the change in the discourse after the confrontational position of the 1990s and the simultaneous transition towards a dialogue which compromises between a modern lifestyle and Islamic ideas and ways of life and one which depends on the coexistence of identical differences in the language of film. In this context, a discourse analysis will be done thoroughly on one of the latest

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movies by øsmail Güneú, ‘The ømam’ (2005), which best expresses a conciliatory approach to dialogue.

Political Islam's Rise: The Period After 1990 Sign, symbol, action and intentions in social life reflect themselves in a natural continuity; however, they can come to have a deep meaning in daily life. Some actions regarding the analysis of social patterns of action in daily life and codes of behaviour reveal some new structures through which they lose their common meaning as they decompose. Daily life persistently continues to arrange values repeatedly for which the social structure grinds on even if the objects, places and symbolic meanings making up daily life seem independent from politics.1 Considering the sociology of Turkey in its history of modernization, in fact an essential transformation seems to state itself expressly in the structures of daily life. Even if daily life is a production of a fiction or of an ordinary reality, as a result it is a representation and it is a sum of potential patterns that is usually troublesome to interpret while simultaneously charting a course through life.2 Thus the lifestyles are presented in daily life and change in proportion according to time and place. Besides, one of the most important areas where these changing styles of life are presented is on movie screens.

Despite shifts in the positions of confrontation, the main social and political problems of the 1980s and 1990s remained the same throughout each decade; yet their main features and lifestyles had different qualities from each other. When we look at the 1980s for the purpose of identifying efforts in support of specific conflict- and political dynamics, individualism was the main motivation. However, when we look at the 1990s, identity formation defines individuals again in terms of their rights and freedoms.3 Social experiences have supported first of all attitude changes relating to the visibility of Islamic society. That the Islamic identity has become visible in all fields outside of state institutions has started to be accepted as a fundamental right and freedom and as a natural 1

SubaúÕ, Necdet, “Gündelik Hayat ve Dinsellik”, European Journal II: Berlin, 2001 p.239 2 Ibid., p. 258 3 Bayramo÷lu, Ali, Ça÷daúlÕk Hurafe KaldÕrmaz: Demokratikleúme Sürecinde Dindar ve Laikler, østanbul: TESEV YayÕnlarÕ, 2008, p. 136

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development.4 While perception depending on the human element and time defends the identity of the doer, it postpones the identity within identity, and not only has it reinforced the practice of reconstitution but also it has laid the groundwork to make secularized lifestyles and Islamic symbols and identities rest one within the other.5 Table 1 is related with the subject and can be useful in explaining the positioning of Islam in the political arena: PERIOD 1

A MODERNIST APPROACH OR HARMONY

Getting techniques from the West and Protecting Islamic Culture

PERIOD 2

REGRESSION

Tilting towards Sufism in response to authoritarian modernization

PERIOD 3

BEING ARTICULATED

Overlapping/being articulated with the right-wing politics of the 1950s

PERIOD 4

BECOMING PURE

A modern political movement presenting a confrontational face to the world until February 28, 1997 after which it becomes more and more visible

Table 1: The Islamic Movement’s progress in Turkey6 To sum up, the following are characteristics of the political environment before and after 1990 in Turkey: -The building up over the preceding years the 1990 Islamic Movement (strengthening its grassroots in the 1980s), which was symbolized by the earlier Prime Minister Turgut Özal and his liberal ideology; simultaneously becoming more visible in the public sphere, accelerating efforts, and occupying an effective position in politics maintained in a confrontational way. (The confrontational approach, which differed over 4

Ibid., p.122 Ibid., p.122 6 Kentel, Ferhat, Journals of Islamic thought of 1990s and new Muslim Intellectuals: Knowledge and Wisdom Umran, Tezkire”, Political Thought in Modern Turkey, østanbul: øletiúim Publications, 2004 5

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the 1990s, can be observed directly in the movies of this time: Conservative/Modern, veiled/ non-veiled (that is, the woman with/without a headscarf), Villager/City-dweller, and Easterner/Westerner.)

-The Islamic movement long rested on its confrontational political identity, but then lost this confrontational identity and the reliance on it during the process brought on by the events of February 28, 1997, out of which the movement started a new period; in other words, Islamic discourse retired into itself, through a process of self-effacement and self criticism following February 28, 1997.

All of this oddly parallels the crisis brought on by enlightened positivist modernism’s inability to answer religion’s pointed questions on the search for meaning. That is, the fracturing of devotion and the break up of the unity of religion led to a centerless structuring, a new language, and new ‘religiosities’ in the search for belief. Neither is religion a world of meaning providing a unity for premodern societies nor a system of belief which modernism made marginal.7 That new forms of religious life moved to the public sphere and got a new political language here is one of the most distinctive features of the period after 1990. This political language started to flourish in cultural areas from literature to cinema, from music to the press. Consequently, at that time a fast concentration of discourse started to appear. This concentration of discourse has been clearly observed in the films coming to the big screen especially in the 1990s (actually both in cinema and on television). Finally, bestseller novels were (and continue to be) adapted to the screen (with soundtracks composed by musicians described as Islamic), and these film productions were financed

by Islamic capital.

Accordingly, it is possible to mention a specific modernization converging on religiosity in our social structure. A great many areas from fashion to patterns of consumption, from intellectual works to artistic works reflect combinations of religion and modernity formed in terms of a Muslim paradigm.8

7

Ibid., p. 86 SubaúÕ, Necdet, “Müslüman Modernleúmesi ve Türkiye Örne÷i” (ed.)

Gönül Pultar, øslam ve Modernite, østanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2007, p. 91

8

Islamic Ways of Life Reflected on the Silver Screen

245

Movies of the Period This fast concentration of discourse seems to crystallize in the films coming onto the big screen in the 1990s. In this period, directors identified as Islamic or who identified themselves as such, seem to have adapted the most widely read novels by Islamic society into films. In addition, these movies seem to have been sponsored by groups of Islamic capital, and yet more of their productions can be recognized to have been made by filmmaking companies founded by Islamic capital. This situation is clear especially in films like: Sonsuza Uçar: øskilipli AtÕf Hoca (Butterflies Fly to Eternity: AtÕf Hodja from øskilip, Mesut Uçakan, 1993), YalnÕz De÷ilsiniz (You Are Not Alone, Mesut Uçakan, 1990), Minyeli Abdullah I (Abdullah From Minye, 1989) and Minyeli Abdullah II (Abdullah From Minye II, Yücel ÇakmaklÕ, 1990). Moreover, these are the movies which directly present Islamic lifestyles and approach the problems faced by the characters in an exaggerated manner. Salih Diriklik, the author of the book Flaúbek: Alternatif bir Sinema Tarihi: Türk Sinema-Tv’sinde øslami Endiúeler ve Çizgi DÕúÕ Oluúumlar ( Flashback: An Alternative History of the Cinema: Islamic Worries on Turkish Cinema and TV and Their Unnatural Formation, 1995) said in an interview that he liked the film ‘Kelebekler Sonsuza Uçar’ (Butterflies Fly to Eternity). This was one of the most important movies at that time and Diriklik made the following comments on the movie: “The most important reason I like this movie is that the expression in the movie is fluent as it should be contrary to the usually sluggish movies of Mesut Uçakan and also mise en scene was used in the proper place and the presentation of current and historical events collaterally was essentially clear. The Cinematic-emotional atmosphere formed by the scene in which Ferit (YÕlmaz Zafer) goes to øskilip and kisses HacÕ (Hajji) Yakupzade’s (Devrim Parscan) hand, in the Istiklal Mahkemesi (Independence Tribunal) the dialogue on the flag-rag of AtÕf Hoca (AtÕf Hodja, Haluk Kurto÷lu) or the scenes of one night where Kel Ali (Bald Ali, Haluk Kurto÷lu) goes mad and runs through the streets barefoot, are the scenes that send shivers down one's spine when they are remembered in spite of the passing of so many years. The oppositions like city-dweller/villager are facts experienced in the pace of life. You cannot expect city people to be strongly religious, nor can you find comfort in a five-star hotel in a village, nor can you find a coffeehouse or a lobby in which a son isn’t singing when you go to a district like øskilip. The experienced facts of life in a village are still the same and everybody growing up in a city has this dilemma when they go to such a place. In fact, this difference in these villages is not a condition imposed by Islamic life but an entire atmosphere which is kept alive through traditions. The same people may

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Chapter Eighteen make concessions to do some things unfit for the city when they somehow come to a city but they are definitely keeping the same atmosphere of their villages, their neighbourhood and houses”.9

Diriklik’s comment portrays the congregational structure that is directly presented in the movies of this period. Furthermore, he states that the ways of Islamic life presented in these movies reflect reality directly and therefore are successful.

On the other hand, in Mesut Uçakan’s film ‘YalnÕz De÷ilsiniz’ (You Are Not Alone) the problem of women students with headscarves not being allowed into universities (one of the most important problems of the period) is expressed once again in a comparison between modern and traditional values with a congregational discourse.

Another of the most important movies of the period is Yücel ÇakmaklÕ’s ‘Minyeli Abdullah’ (Abdullah From Minye). The content of the movie once more reflects the conflict between traditional (devout) and modern values. Religious Abdullah, living in Minye in ‘Westernized’ Egypt, expresses his opinion on socialism, modernization and westernization. Moreover, he tries to offer a solution to the existing problems by means of concepts like jihad, Islamic economy, and Islamic order; Egypt should get rid of the slavery of the West and advance by its own values of tradition and religion.

In addition to these, beyond the ethic of converting or seeing the light in the Islamic movies of the 1990s, a political discourse began to take over in this sector of the cinema. While this political discourse criticizes the exiting system by anticipating a lifestyle analogous with the change in Islam in Turkey, it has sometimes replaced solely ``conservative`` and sometimes ‘liberalistic conservatism’.

9

Diriklik, Salih, Flaúbek: Alternatif bir Sinema Tarihi: Türk SinemaTV'sinde øslami Endiúeler ve Çizgi DÕúÕ Oluúumlar II, 1995 http://www.diriklik.com/gulistan/sinema/flesbek.htm, pp.88-96

Islamic Ways of Life Reflected on the Silver Screen

FILM TITLE DIRECTOR

KELEBEKLER SONSUZA UÇAR

MESUT UÇAKAN

WORK

MESUT UÇAKAN (SCRIPT)

øSKøLøPLø ATIF HOCA (Butterflies Fly to Eternity: AtÕf Hodja from øskilip) YALNIZ MESUT ÜSTÜN DEöøLSøNøZ UÇAKAN øNANÇ (NOVEL) (You Are Not Alone) MøNYELø YÜCEL HEKøMOöLU ABDULLAH ÇAKMAKLI øSMAøL (ÖMER (Abdullah OKÇUFrom Minye) NOVEL)

247

SPONSOR / NUMBER PRODUCTION OF VIEWERS

ATLAS PRODUCTIONS

(The first 4 months) 403.000

YøMPAù HOLDøNG

250.00

FEZA FøLM

92.000 (I)* 191.000 (II)

*The movie Minyeli Abdullah (Abdullah From Minye) was made in two parts

Table 2: Three important movies of the period The most important source in movies of this period is novels with an Islamic focus. The genre of these novels is Hidayet RomanlarÕ (the books of conversion, or seeing the light) is based on an Islamic struggle against westernized lifestyles. Along the way, Islamic lifestyles are symbolized by the virtuous Muslim characters that are often alienated and wronged by modern life but remain undeterred. At the same time, there are miserable stereotype characters that become westernized degenerates and lead a modern life. The westernized way of life is represented as ‘drinking alcohol’ and ‘flirting and dancing’. The ambiance is usually modern city

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spaces like universities and the period is mostly the 1980s. The writers create dialogues with a specific Islamic understanding, and modern lifestyles are presented in a stereotypical, degenerate way through the comparison of two different lifestyles/characters by any means. In this fiction, many debated subjects of the period like modernity, obscurantism, secularism and the head scarf are taken up by the novelists.10 Consequently, the contents, given messages, and senses of these novels are visually re-created on cinema screens.

In these movies, the other identities (non-Islamic identities) have been excluded and negated. Alternately, the characters adopting westernized lifestyles in these movies finally choose Islamic lifestyles.

The presented concentration of discourse of Islamic lifestyles since the February 28, 1997 economic crisis has started to slow down, bit by bit.

Works presented in cultural areas from cinema to literature have started to decrease, and later the fields in which ways of Islamic life have been displayed and the creators in these fields have retreated.

The agents of ‘National Cinema’ returned to film sets after 2000, and have started to use a new political discourse, a political language in favour of dialogue instead of the congregational discourse of the 1990s. In other words, this political language has tried to make modern and religion come together in common points by dealing with both instead of setting them against each other. Therefore, the traditional approach has started to modernize and form a new identity by adhering to its base and by including both tradition and the modern. In this period, the film, ‘’The ømam’, directed by øsmail Güneú is one of the most important representatives of the current situation.

A Sample Analysis of ‘The ømam‘ Moving from the language of congregational expression in the films that deal with Islamic lifestyles in favour of improving the language of propaganda against modernism and western lifestyles is an example of the break which started in 2000. In this context, ‘The ømam’ (øsmail Güneú, 2005) will be analyzed.

10

ÇayÕr, Kenan, “øslami Edebiyat”, Milliyet Sanat Dergisi, A÷ustos, 2005, p. 88.

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This study will attempt to analyze ‘The ømam’ via the main characters.

The movie focuses on three ømams and, as the style of representing each imam corresponds to the typecasting of ømams in the movies, it introduces us to a new kind of ømam typecast as well: that of the character Emrullah.

The movie utilizes language around this imam typecast. The emphasis on the coexistence of modernism and traditionalism invigorates the personality of Emrullah.

One of the typecast imams is Feyzullah: Feyzullah’s behavioural pattern is his ill humour against the villagers. His wish to continue traditional lifestyles in the village causes him to develop an attitude against the encroachments of modernity. Up to this point, Feyzullah is a stereotypical imam in Turkish cinema. His support of tradition and conservatism against the lifestyle which modernity requires, and his endeavour to impose his opinions on the villagers, correspond to an image of ‘the bad village imam’. However, one of his features does break the stereotype; Feyzullah never talks behind anyone's back, nor does he drive a wedge between villagers with his opinions, nor does he see any harm in explaining his conservative ideas clearly to the villagers.

The second imam is Mehmet, whose role is that of the ‘good imam’ from the ‘National Cinema’, the first movies of which came at the beginning of the 1970s. Mehmet feels responsible for the villagers, devotes himself to his village and is also a good and soft-hearted religious leader. We cannot find any evidence of what kind of manner a good religious leader like Mehmet adopts towards modern lifestyles. In this sense, Feyzullah and Mehmet give us an opportunity to see two different examples of representations of a religious leader at the same level in the Turkish Cinema.

The third ømam is Emrullah. The language of congregational expression (conservative/modern, veiled/unveiled, villager/city-dweller, and Easterner/Westerner) dealing with the Islamic lifestyles in the cinema have tried to be broken and the promise of a connection between reality and representation are made via this character. This promise seems likely to be fulfilled in the character’s presentation as both this and the other, both traditional and modern, thereby creating a new identity.

Emrullah is a character with traditions based on family and education.

He graduates from an ømam Hatip high school, that is to say, an Islamic

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divinity students’ high-school (which has a curriculum of mainly religious education) and follows this with a secular education at university after which he then becomes a computer engineer. Emrullah lives in a city and is a part of the general socio-economic system of Turkish cities in that he is a business partner of a computer company. His partner, Mert, does not know about Emrullah’s past. Emrullah keeps the fact that he is an alumnus of an ømam Hatip high school from Mert. In one scene, the fact that Emrullah has hidden his past creates a tension in their relationship.

Emrullah background comes up at work because ømam Mehmet comes from the village to visit him, at the sight of whom Emrullah is surprised, as ømam Mehmet is a friend from the ømam Hatip high school.

Mehmet has stomach cancer and has to be treated in Istanbul. The duration of his treatment coincides with the holy month of Ramadan. The village will be without the ømam during this sacred month for Muslims.

However, HacÕ (Hajji) Feyzullah will replace ømam Mehmet when he is not present. But Haci Feyzullah is a person who the villagers do not love and ømam Mehmet does not want HacÕ Feyzullah to be the ømam for the village during Ramadan, as ømam Mehmet thinks people may avoid coming to worship because of HacÕ Feyzullah’s ill humour. Thus, the reason for ømam Mehmet’s visit to Emrullah becomes clear: he has come to request Emrullah to officiate for the people in the village during Ramadan.

After a period of self-doubt, Emrullah decides to go to the village and be the ømam for a while. We understand that his journey will help his old friend, as well as what the stages of this journey will be seeing as how it is a journey to his roots -an inner journey.

Upon Emrullah’s arrival in the village of Malatya, at first the villagers have difficultly in understanding that Emrullah is the new, acting ømam.

Emrullah’s image is the opposite of what they are used to: He has long hair and wears city clothes, has a different style of pronunciation, and rides a motorcycle. They regard Emrullah as a stranger, but, after a while, the villagers start to behave towards him as if he is one of them. The only person to regard Emrullah as a stranger and keep him at arm's length is HacÕ Feyzullah. At this juncture, there is a conflict between these two characters. While Emrullah speaks to us through the view of ``both this and the other``, HacÕ Feyzullah speaks from a position that is closed to dialogue; he adheres to traditions and remains against modernism.

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Emrullah officiates during Ramadan. Apart from officiating, he improves his communication with the villagers, especially with the children, and he trains the children on computers in the mosque, and also shows them around on his motorcycle. HacÕ Feyzullah is put out of temper by the children’s interest in the motorcycle -a fact that is further complicated by the Hajji’s own childish desire to get on the motorbike. In the movie, the motorcycle and computers are used as symbols of modernism. We can see HacÕ Feyzullah’s harsh reaction against the motorcycle and its embodiment of the concepts of speed and freedom.

Towards the end of Ramadan, the death knell of ømam Mehmet is heard, and then his corpse is brought to the village by Mert. Emrullah claims responsibility for washing the corpse as the ømam of the village.

After this duty, Mert and Emrullah leave the village and return to Istanbul and so Emrullah’s journey to his traditional roots finishes.

The movie tries to speak out of the language of congregational expression from the Islamic movies of the 1990s, and gives a message about being able to hold onto both the old and the new in the same identity without breaking away from the traditional lifestyle and having a conflicted soul.

In ‘The ømam’, we do not encounter intensive religious messages and the propaganda of the Islamic movies of the 1990s. In the movie the representation of religion is formed by the preaching scenes, the call to prayer, and the ritual performance of Islamic prayer. The emphasis on negating the western lifestyle found in the movies of the 1990s and the message that this lifestyle corrodes the traditional lifestyle is brought up in the conflict between West and East in the movie with a metaphor presented by the screenwriter and director: ømam Mehmet has stomach cancer. In this sense, cancer takes on the role of the sickness of Western Civilization. Concordantly, the language of congregational expression in the movies of the 1990s reappears. ‘‘The ømam‘ is the first movie to deal with the social reality of alumni of ømam Hatip high schools. However, Emrullah having graduated from an ømam Hatip high school and his hiding this from his social environment is not seen as realistic by graduates of ømam Hatip high schools and caused target audiences to be less interested in the movie.

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The movie has been watched by 108,611 people over 13 weeks (SinemaTürk database). In an interview with the director øsmail Güneú, he indicates that he did not make a film dealing with the problems of the people from ømam Hatip high schools in society; rather, it is a movie that operates on three levels, dealing with the real journey as well as the journey back to one’s roots and an inner journey. In this sense, the fact that Emrullah is from an ømam Hatip high school is a compressed theme.

Moreover, according to øsmail Güneú, ‘The ømam’ is the story of a person who lives in hiding, whose story has fallen on deaf ears and been ignored.

Conclusion In the 1990s, in the face of the liberal ideological discourse, political Islam gathers speed and continues its existence as a confident political movement. This manner of self-confidence can be easily perceived in many popular cultural productions of the time (from cinema to literature, from media to music) and a concentration of discourse starts to take place via these productions. As a matter of course, the place in which this political understanding is most visible is on the silver screen. Bestselling novels with religious themes from the period have been adapted into films and these film productions have also been sponsored by groups of Islamic capital. The congregational discourse is made clear and stresses the identity differences in the period, as can be directly perceived in many films, from Minyeli Abdullah (Abdullah from Minye) to Kelebekler Sonsuza Uçar (Butterflies Fly to Eternity) to YalnÕz De÷ilsiniz (You Are Not Alone).

-

In this congregational political identity, political Islam, which rapidly developed self-confidence and became a candidate to come to power, was broken up in the process of February 28 and started a process of self examination during which the proponents of the congregational approach disappeared or transformed. At that time, the production of Islamic cinema fell off, and demand and needs were provided by television series and films in which Islamic discourse was not prominent. Also, this transitional period has become a bridge between the congregational discourse of the 1990s and the current reconciliatory discourse.

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-

The community mentality hasn’t disappeared, but the ``Muslim individual`` has been articulated within the community mentality.

-

In this period, the emphasis on individual/subject within the community has allowed the Islamic discourse to renew itself in the direction of modernism. Efforts to coexist with the traditional structure in the modern world have accelerated the process of accommodation.

Certainly, the desire and endeavour for traditional values to continue to exist within modern values appears at the heart of this accommodation effort.

In contrast to the congregational expression of modern and traditional lifestyles in the ‘National Movies’ of the 1990s, such as Kelebekler Sonsuza Uçar (Butterflies fly to Eternity) and YalnÕz De÷ilsiniz (You Are Not Alone), ‘The ømam’ bends this congregational expression through the presentation of Emrullah ømam’s appearance; however, the integrity of the film’s content is called into question at this juncture in the conflict between Modern Islam and Traditional Islam.

Consequently, the wish to build a style in the degenerated structure of the modern world is also consistent with this effort. When considered from the point of view of Henri LeFebvre, in terms of looking for a completeness which aims to assemble pieces and differences under the same roof, what ‘The ømam’ presents can be seen as a sample for looking for an ‘integrative’ human structure: the effort it is making is to convert the differences of urban/rural, traditional/modern, native/migrant, new/old into a whole and assemble them under the same roof.

The movie presents audiences a final assembling of differences, pieces and conflicts and a compromise between all these differences. As a result, this shows the transformation of daily life in terms of religion as well.

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Appendix 1 Films with Islamic Sensibilities on the Silver Screen 1989-1996 YEAR

MOVIE

DIRECTOR

1989 (Ocak)

REøS BEY (Sir Reis)

MESUT UÇAKAN

1989

MøNYELø ABDULLAH I

YÜCEL ÇAKMAKLI

(Abdullah from Minye I) 1990

MøNYELø ABDULLAH II

YÜCEL ÇAKMAKLI

(Abdullah from Minye II)

WORK

PRODUCER

HEKøMOöLU FEZA FILM øSMAøL (MEHMET (ÖMER TANRISEVER) OKÇU-Novel)

1990

YALNIZ DEöøLSøNøZ (You are not alone)

MESUT UÇAKAN

ÜSTÜN øNANÇ (Novel)

FEZA FILM

1990

ALMAN GELøN

MEHMET TANRISEVER

ABDULLAH SADIK (Novel)

FEZA FILM

øSMAøL GÜNEù

ÖMER LÜTFø METE (Novel)

FEZA FILM

MESUT UÇAKAN

MESUT UÇAKAN

ATLAS / NEHøR YAPIM

(German Bride/daughter in law) 1991

ÇøZME (ølk Ezan/Ezan Günü)

SPONSOR

NECøP FAZIL ATLAS/ TVS KISAKÜREK (Theatrical Production) HEKøMOöLU FEZA FILM øSMAøL (MEHMET (ÖMER TANRISEVER) OKÇU-Novel)

YøMPAù

BOOT (the first Azan/ the day of Azan 1991

SONSUZA YÜRÜMEK (Walking to endless)

ÜSTÜN øNANÇ (Film script)

YøMPAù

Islamic Ways of Life Reflected on the Silver Screen

1991

SAHøBøNø ARAYAN MADALYA

YÜCEL ÇAKMAKLI

TARIK BUöRA (Novel)

AJANS 1400

HASAN NAøL CANAT SALøK DøRøKLøK (Film script)

ATLAS / NEHøR YAPIM TGRT

MESUT UÇAKAN

MESUT UÇAKAN (Film script)

ATLAS YAPIM

NURETTøN ÖZEL

NURETTøN ÖZEL (Film script)

EMEL FILM

(The Medal looking for its owner) 1992

ÇÖKÜù (Collapse)

MESUT UÇAKAN

1993

DANøMARKALI GELøN

SALøH DøRøKLøK

(Danish Bride/daughter in law) 1993

KELEBEKLER SONSUZA UÇAR

255

TÜRKøYE DøYANET VAKFI (Turkish Religious Affairs Foundation)

(Butterflies fly to Eternity) 1993

GARøP BøR KOLEKSøYONCU (a bizarre collectioner)

1993

BEùøNCø BOYUT

KOMBASSAN HOLDøNG

FEZA FILM øSMAøL GÜNEù

ESRA FILM

(The fifth dimension) 1994 KANAYAN YARA BOSNA

YÜCEL ÇAKMAKLI

ÜSTÜN øNANÇ (Film script)

MESUT UÇAKAN

MESUT UÇAKAN (Senaryo)

øHLAS HOLDøNG

(Bosnia bleeding wound) 1994

ÖLÜMSÜZ KARANFøLLER (Immortal gillyflowers)

ESRA FILM

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1994

BøZE NASIL KIYDINIZ?

METøN ÇAMURCU

EMøNE ùENLøKOöLU (Novel)

ESRA FILM

YÜCEL ÇAKMAKLI

AHMET EFE

ESRA FILM

(How did you sacrifice us?)

1996

SON TÜRBEDAR (The last tomb man)

NURETTøN ÖZEL (Film script)

KOMBASSAN HOLDøNG

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Works Cited Bayramo÷lu, Ali, Ça÷daúlÕk Hurafe KaldÕrmaz: Demokratikleúme Sürecinde Dindar ve Laikler, østanbul: TESEV YayÕnlarÕ, 2008 ÇayÕr, Kenan, “øslami Edebiyat”, Milliyet Sanat Dergisi, A÷ustos, 2005 Diriklik, Salih, Flaúbek: Alternatif bir Sinema Tarihi: Türk SinemaTV'sinde øslami Endiúeler ve Çizgi DÕúÕ Oluúumlar II, 1995 http://www.diriklik.com/gulistan/sinema/flesbek.htm, Kentel, Ferhat, “1990’larÕn øslâmî düúünce dergileri ve yeni Müslüman entelektüeller: Bilgi ve Hikmet, Umran, Tezkire”, Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Düúünce, østanbul: øletiúim, 2004 LeFebvre, Henri, Modern Dünyada Gündelik Hayat, østanbul: Metis, 2007 SubaúÕ, Necdet, “Gündelik Hayat ve Dinsellik”, European Journal II: Berlin, 2001 —. “Müslüman Modernleúmesi ve Türkiye Örne÷i” (ed. Gönül Pultar, øslam ve Modernite,), østanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2007

Interviews Diriklik, Salih, 14.03.2008, Güneú, øsmail, 23.04.2008, www.sinematurk.com, the data base of SinemaTürk,

Films Kelebekler Sonsuza Uçar : øskilipli AtÕf Hoca (Butterflies Fly to Eternity: AtÕf Hodja from øskilip,) Mesut Uçakan, Atlas Productions, 1993 YalnÕz De÷ilsiniz (You are not alone), Yücel ÇakmaklÕ, Feza Film Productions, 1990 Minyeli Abdullah I (Abdullah from Minye I), Yücel ÇakmaklÕ, Feza Film Productions, 1989 Minyeli Abdullah II (Abdullah from Minye II), Yücel ÇakmaklÕ, Feza Film Productions, 1990 The ømam, øsmail Güneú, Marmara Productions, 2005

CHAPTER NINETEEN VENUS IN FURS, TURKS IN PURSE: MASOCHISM IN THE NEW CINEMA OF TURKEY SAVAù ASLAN

On December 7, 2006, Orhan Pamuk gave his Nobel Prize Lecture, ‘My Father’s Suitcase’ (BabamÕn Bavulu) at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Although seemingly apolitical, the talk actually attempted to come to terms not only with his father, but also with the trope of the stately father itself. The father’s suitcase, which is expected to keep a personal history, may also carry within it dirty laundry. Coupled with the foreclosed elements of a nostalgic past, this laundry suggests fear on the part of those who want to open the suitcase. In his talk, Pamuk spoke at first about his hesitation to open that suitcase and come to terms with his father’s personal history through his notebooks. However, once he decides to open the suitcase, he does not find anything shattering or tremendous.

Instead he just sees that those are his father’s unremarkable literary texts and other writings. Pamuk then relates how he communicated with his father through a look and the ensuing silence about what he found in the suitcase.

Like Pamuk’s lecture, which to a degree echoed ideas about the paternalistic state in Turkey, new cinema in Turkey has attempted to open up the father’s baggage and address masculinity and fatherhood at different levels as it has started to move away from the storytelling conventions of the classical popular cinema of Turkey, known as Yeúilçam. While various recent films have addressed controversial aspects of history, including current and past ethnic problems, military interventions, and Turkey’s relations with other countries, other films have focused overtly or covertly on identity issues centered on the themes of gender, ethnicity, and culture. However, much like Pamuk’s experience, some of the films which attempted to open the father’s suitcase either could not find anything interesting or chose to communicate about difficult

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subjects through glimpses and silence. However, even in such exchanges, fissures become readily apparent in a way that tends not to appear in Yeúilçam films. This study will look at some of the films which interpret the discursive changes that have foregrounded various tropes in relation to male subjectivity. I will argue that while the classical Yeúilçam presentation of a positive Oedipus complex helped in forming a dominant narrative which has ideological underpinnings and which is partly traceable in the contemporary action-adventure genre, various other examples of new cinema in Turkey present us with ‘deviant’ masculinities which put classical masculinity into a process of crisis and reappraisal.

Dominant Fictions: From Yeúilçam to the New Cinema of Turkey As a form of popular cinema in Turkey, Yeúilçam which persisted over four decades from the 1950s to 1980s, represents the ‘dominant fiction’ securing the commensurability of penis and phallus through an ideological claim toward normality. Kaja Silverman argues that the dominant fiction or ideological reality which ensures the positive Oedipus complex has to do with a faith in “the unity of the family and the adequacy of the male subject.”1 While it is possible to find cracks, excesses or transgressions in the discourse of Yeúilçam films, mainstream films still try to secure family by underlining the dominance of masculinity. More importantly, the melodramatic mainstream of Yeúilçam, while having a continual interest in various forms of castration, did not allow homosexuality or masculine masochism to surface. This may be seen, for instance, in the figure of Zeki Müren who, as a star singer and actor, is known in Turkey as ‘the Sun of Art’ or, ironically, as ‘the Pasha’. Müren, who was both the subject and object of a publicly-known but never uttered collective communal secret, was a public figure above all laws or rules, with open signs of countermasculine difference such as his eleven-inch high platform shoes with which he went to a ball at the Presidential Palace. Despite his openly camp attire, his personal life has always been referred to as ‘bitter’ and full of ‘well-kept’ secrets.

Silverman argues that the ideological claim of the dominant fiction, which relies on ‘the pivotal status of the phallus’ and its alignment with the penis ensures hegemony through “the maintenance of collective 1

Silverman, Kaja, Male Subjectivity at the Margins, New York and London: Routledge, 1992, p. 16.

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belief.”2 This collective belief about the propriety of masculinity and its filmic narratives could also be found at another level in action-adventure films, ripe with instances of sadism, machismo, and violence. For instance, a recent book on the genres in Turkish cinema lists various subtle genres such as erotic or sex films, masculine women films, slang films, violence and torture, macho men, and adultery.3 Some of these themes or genres obviously address ‘proper’ masculine subjectivity which fosters the collective belief at the level of fantasy and the ego instead of consciousness. This, according to Silverman, fixes the site of the subject’s formation and fosters Oedipal normalization.4 The normalization of male subjectivity, or the passing rite of the male child into adult male normality, inscribes the patriarchal order and the acceptance of the law of the father by the male child. By staying in concert with the patriarchal order of the republican regime, this normalization stays in line with various nationalistic claims and it can be seen in examples of contemporary cinema in Turkey where the action adventure genre and its political overtures coincide with overtly nationalist texts, in films such as Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, 2006) and Deli Yürek: Bumerang Cehennemi (Wild Heart: Boomerang Hell, 2001). Both films deal with southeastern parts of Turkey where the majority of the population are Kurds. Whereas the first film involves an incursion by the secret Turkish forces into northern Iraqi territories under the control of Kurds, the latter one is about the internal strife in Turkey between Turks and Kurds. Both films offer conspiracy theories or secret plots which are prepared and administered by the United States and which are then foiled by Turkish undercover agents. The male bonding among the tough heroes and their sidekicks, codes of patriarchal honor, and the domestic role of women are all parts of the dominant patriarchal fiction presented in these films. In other words, this recent genre of masculine action-adventure, which has a backdrop in television serials (both films appeared as highly nationalistic televisual dramas and, thanks to their popularity, they were made into feature films) introduce a nationalistic discourse through a binary of friends and foes. However, their underlining logic does not allow for many friends thanks to an isolationistic nationalism that stigmatizes both the other nations beyond the borders of Turkey and the ethnic minorities in Turkey as the enemies of Turks. For instance, according to the discourse of Kurtlar Vadisi Irak, not only the Americans or Jewish people, but also 2

Ibid, p. 16. Özgüç, Agah, Türlerle Türk SinemasÕ, østanbul: Dünya KitaplarÕ, 2005 4 Silverman, Kaja, Male Subjectivity at the Margins, New York and London: Routledge, 1992 p. 16.

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the Kurds and other Iraqi enclaves may pose serious threats to the existence of the Turkish nation. Such threats are portrayed as incessantly trying to undermine the integrity and unity of the Turkish republic through differing tactics. This involves a power play among secret agents, military, and terrorists in which there is no room for the utterance of alternative male subjectivities. Similar to Yeúilçam’s dominant fiction, such films fix male subjectivity through Oedipal normalization. However, this rendering of male subjectivity has also come into crisis in some other films of the post-Yeúilçam era.

Alternative Fictions: Popular and Auteur Cinemas A series of films made in the last two decades posed different challenges to the dominant fiction, especially through some nonmainstream films or through the examples of art house or auteur cinema, as well as with the contemporary revivals of family melodramas. These films foreground ‘a loss of belief in the whole of the dominant fiction’ because they put into danger the sustaining of ‘the equation of the male sexual organ with the phallus’ or the dominant fiction of Oedipal normalization.5 Some of these films reversed the Müren syndrome, i.e., the veiling of sexual identity despite its playful visibility, by focusing on marginal masculinities and thereby challenging Oedipal normalization and the male subject’s relation to power. While the Müren syndrome inscribed an unquestioned and hypocritical protection of the secrecy of sexual identities which is shared by both Müren himself and the public, these recent films offered overt instances of the portrayal of gendered and sexual identities which runs counter to the dominant fiction and its masculinist logic. Thus the portrayal of gay, lesbian or transvestite characters and their lives within the traditional patriarchal order present different ‘diversions’ from the dominant fiction and foreground the diversity of themes coming into play in the cinema of Turkey, such as contemporary urban life, transnational and diasporic identities, and global encounters. Set in the seedy backstreets of central Istanbul, Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar (Night, Angel and Our Kids, AtÕf YÕlmaz, 1993) focuses on ‘our’ kids who are not normalized and on the difficult experiences of homosexuals, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Similarly, Dönersen IslÕk Çal (Whistle If You Return, Orhan O÷uz, 1992), which revolves around the same setting, focuses on the friendship of a transvestite and a dwarf both of whom are outsiders in a society which tries to come to grips with its others. While 5

Ibid, p. 2.

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Düú Gezginleri (Wanderers of Dreams, AtÕf YÕlmaz, 1992) presents an early post-Yeúilçam lesbian story of an upper-middle class woman and a prostitute, a more recent lesbian film is 2 Genç KÕz (2 Young Girls, Kutlu÷ Ataman, 2004) which relies on a similar class and culture contrast in showing the process of sexual identity formation.

While these films brought about class and cultural conflicts which are set into the patriarchal matrix of Turkey, a series of other films have examined transnational and diasporic aspects of the others of dominant fiction. These films introduce encounters between Turks or Kurds and Europeans through tropes of migration and travel. Among these films, Hamam (The Turkish Bath, Ferzan Özpetek, 1997) is a story of an Italian revealing his past and sexual identity in an exotic Istanbul, Lola + Bilidikid (Kutlu÷ Ataman, 1998), and Küçük Özgürlük (A Little Bit of Freedom, Yüksel Yavuz, 2002) all introduce Turks or Kurds going through the stresses of the traditional patriarchal regime in Germany.

Unlike the overt themes of these films, a group of other films introduced challenges to masculinity and Oedipal normalization through masochistic subtexts. Below, the focus on the cinematic instances of masochisms will be outlined through three different strands of masochism. The first one will underline the inaccessibility of the master woman; the second, the bind between the mother and the son; and the last, reflexive masochism.

Three Instances of Masochism In a Deleuzian vein, masochism is not the opposite of sadism, nor is it sado-masochism, which is a combination of the two. Instead masochism is “a contract between two parties, in which the supposed victim is giving the orders” whereas in sadism the torment is uncontrolled.6 This scheme of masochism fits well with ‘male weepies’ which are basically contemporary ‘melodramatic’ texts revolving around the emotions of male characters who suffer due to love relationships, in films such as Yavuz Turgul’s EúkÕya (The Bandit, 1996), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s øklimler (Climates, 2006) or Zeki Demirkubuz’s øtiraf (Confession, 2001). In EúkÕya, the bandit, who is released from jail after serving for thirty-five years, goes after the love of his life. However, various obstacles including time, marriage, and traditions make their relationship impossible. The bandit’s unsuccessful attempt to revive the past and to come to terms with contemporary realities 6 Zizek, Slavoj, The Žižek Reader, ed. Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999, p. 148.

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represents his torment in his relation to the master woman. On the other hand, in both øklimler and øtiraf, educated middle-class male characters attempt to come to grips with their marriages and cheating. Both films introduce male characters whose paternal authority is threatened by women, either through the cheating of Harun’s wife in øtiraf or by øsa’s desperate attempt to get his wife back after he breaks up with her in øklimler. Such films echo a particular fascination with being in love with an inaccessible woman, as though rediscovering the trope of courtly love.

In this fantasy of the lady, not only the masculine subject’s life is ordered or given a meaning, but that subject’s fantasy is founded on victimization –even through the death of the male, as in Eúkiya. Unlike the institutional and thus political aspects of sadistic power which take pleasure from the helplessness of the victim, the masochistic ‘contract with the master (woman)’ authorizes “her to humiliate him in a way she considers appropriate.”7 In all of these films, women control and torment the male characters by choosing to be masters of their own lives. However, one should not forget here the fact that it is the male subject, the servant, “who writes the screenplay –that is who actually pulls the strings and dictates the activity of the woman (dominatrix): he stages his own servitude.”8 Therefore, all these films involve male characters who attempt to control the women. However, once they realize that such a task is impossible for them, the women turn into inaccessible objects, in their contractual and performative masochistic fantasies.

The dramatic portrayal of victimization through which the male subject actualizes his reality fits well with the cinematic narration. While this argument seems to echo the typical melodramatic plot based on an unrequited love relationship, the inaccessibility of woman in this case is not based simply on the trope of forbidden fruit. Instead, “the place of the Lady-Thing is originally empty: she functions as a kind of ‘black hole’ around which the subject’s desire is structured… the only way to reach the Object-Lady is indirectly, in a devious, meandering way.”9 While one may think of a classical Yeúilçam melodrama in which the male character simply wants to sleep with the woman he loves or to have a family by staying true to the dominant fiction, in recent filmic occurrences of the unrequited love theme, we deal with “yet another new ordeal, yet one more postponement.”10 Here, for example, we may consider Harun (Taner 7

Ibid, pp. 152-153.

Ibid, p. 153.

9 Ibid, p. 155.

10 Ibid, p. 157.

8

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Birsel) in øtiraf or øsa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) in øklimler –hence the insight into the subordinate status of Harun (Aaron) to Musa (Moses) like Ali to Muhammad or hence the suffering of Isa (Jesus). In both cases, ‘the masochist’s being is externalized in the staged game towards which he maintains his constant distance’ which leads to his becoming hysterical, resorting to violence against the threat of being reduced to “the role of an object-instrument of the enjoyment of his Other.”11 But who is his Other? Is it the master, the Lady of courtly love or the father? Is Venus in furs hidden in the father’s purse? Or should we look elsewhere to figure out the void around which the male subject’s masochism is structured in a fantasmatic scheme of desire? Deleuze and Guattari argue that masochism has to do with “an affair between son and mother… between the male masochist and a cold, maternal, and severe woman whom he designates the ‘oral mother’.”12 In the Freudian fantasy of ‘a child being beaten,’ it is not ‘the male subject as the father, or the father in the male subject,’ but instead it is about an elimination of the father and a relocation of the mother. The father, as the stately figure, as the law, as the state or the political power which imposes its will over its servants, has been replaced with the mother. Here we are dealing with masochism as “a pact between mother and son writhing the father out of his dominant position within both culture and masochism, and to install the mother in his place.”13 This sense of masochism is very much visible in films such as Ça÷an Irmak’s Babam ve O÷lum (My Father and My Son, 2005) where the movie centers on the main character’s mother, despite his relationship with his father and his son. The main character suffers during the film and dies at the end, after he eliminates the problems with his father with the help of his mother and his son. However, what he leaves for his son is a motherless and fatherless life which has to be realigned through the figures of grandfather and grandmother. Similarly, Hokkabaz (The Magician, Cem YÕlmaz and Ali Taner BaltacÕ, 2006) introduces a father-son relationship in which the mother figure is projected on a young woman who is simultaneously an object of love for both the father and the son and an impostor. The magician who cannot relocate the mother in the figure of the young woman ends up failing without being able to eliminate the father. Thus through the stately father figure, both of these films attempt to unsuccessfully relocate the mother as the main characters, and 11

Ibid, pp. 153-154.

Quoted in Silverman, Kaja, Male Subjectivity at the Margins, New York and London: Routledge, 1992, p. 211.

13 Ibid, p. 211.

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end up finding themselves in a protocol of victimization.

The last category of masochism in the contemporary cinema of Turkey introduces ‘reflexive masochism’ in which “the reflexive masochist suffers/enjoys pain without renouncing activity. The reflexive masochist might indeed as appropriately be designated a ‘reflexive sadist’, for he or she incorporates both functions” (Silverman 1992, 324-5). By way of Lawrence of Arabia’s (T.E. Lawrence) writings, Silverman argues that reflexive masochism entails two contrary images of self: one who pleasurably inflicts pain as he suffers that pain, which opens up the possibility of a tyrannical ideal. In other words, reflexive masochism maintains a masculine position to ward off the risk of castration.14 It is a position of the masculine subject in which he suffers from masochism while he represents it. Such masochism is not a threat to masculinity, for it is taken to inscribe virility. Such a position may be observed in Ça÷an Irmak’s Mustafa HakkÕnda Herúey (Everything about Mustafa, 2004), which tells the story of an upper class character, Mustafa (Fikret Kuúkan), who figures out that his wife, Ceren (Baúak Köklükaya), had an affair with a cab driver, Fikret (Nejat øúler), before dying in an accident. In one scene where Mustafa beats up Fikret, the film reenacts the Freudian fantasy of ‘a child being beaten’. Here, the reflexive masochism plays out through the commensurability of inflicting pain and suffering from it. The most interesting part in this staging of the Freudian fantasy is the mise-en-scène where he who is beaten up is not only the boy or the girl, but both. This according to Deleuze and Guattari has to do with ‘the complementary ensemble made up of boy-girl and parents-agents of production and antiproduction’ which brings to the fore “a typical group fantasy where desire invests the social field and its repressive forms.”15 It is this desire which is inscribed in Mustafa HakkÕnda Herúey, where we want to know everything about him even as we come up with nothing.

Conclusion Another film moves the staging of the Freudian fantasy into a political mise-en-scène. YazÕ Tura (Toss Up, U÷ur Yücel, 2003) introduces the civilian life struggles of two former soldiers who fought in Southeastern Anatolia. During their service, RÕdvan lost his leg and Cevher his hearing 14 15

Ibid., p. 327.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 61.

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ability in his ear due to a mine explosion. While both characters have thus been castrated by the paternal state, their lives after military service also introduce various other complications. RÕdvan is no longer able to play soccer and thus made fun of by the people in his central Anatolian village, whereas Cevher experiences the 1999 earthquake in which his father gets injured. Thanks to their frustrations in civilian life, both characters carry the violence of the army into daily life through violent altercations or by resorting to Mafioso crime. RÕdvan, who lives with his mother, cannot go through Oedipal normalization because of his castration. Ultimately, he kills himself when all redemptive roads have been lost: not only is he unable to live with the knowledge that he had unknowingly killed his Kurdish high school sweetheart during the fighting in the mountains, but he is refused by his prospective Turkish wife in the village. In the parallel story, after the earthquake, Cevher meets for the first time his Christian mother and gay brother. As Cevher comes to accept his brother’s sexual identity, he kills a guy who beats his brother. In the case of Cevher, his infliction of pain by cutting the foreskin of a guy, by beating his friends, and killing people resides in the reflexive masochistic protocol of the oscillation between masculinity and castration. Both Cevher and RÕdvan find themselves in a post-military civilian situation where, using Silverman’s terminology, both figures oscillate between reflexive masochism and sadism through their simultaneous representation and suffering. The nature of this position emphasizes the political nature of this masochistic dynamic that underlines the traumatic existence of characters following their military service. Much like the situation of Lawrence of Arabia, where the tyrannical ideal is at stake through a rendering of imperialism with homosexuality and through an exchange of active and passive or master and slave positions, when RÕdvan shouts, ‘I lost this leg for you people,’ he is addressing the stately father’s violence inflicted on its sons and daughters.

It is in this travel between reality and fiction, between the soldier and the civilian, and between the heterosexual and the homosexual that these last two films address the ‘well-kept’ secret in the father’s suitcase. This secret, then, lies with the father figure who has left his place ambiguously Oedipal or Abrahamic. Is it the father whose sons and daughters want to kill or is it the father who wants to sacrifice his sons and daughters? As this question looms in the recent filmic texts of Turkey, the masochistic renderings of violence, its pleasure and pain, has a lot to do with the group fantasy to which state violence owes itself. In the vein of Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of masochism, this contemporary situation

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inscribes on the part of the children a particular pleasure of being beaten by the teacher or of the people by the state. In this world of learning by punishment, then, the contemporary cinema of Turkey is also rife with boys and girls in search of their father figures. Many recent films have dealt with military interventions or other eclipsed moments of Turkey’s history. However, even if the problems are addressed or the father’s suitcase is unpacked, such films have not yet been able to figure out all of the secrets held within. Instead it becomes clear that there are many suitcases to be opened and many more to be found.

Work Cited Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. by R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. R. Lane.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Özgüç, Agah. Türlerle Türk SinemasÕ (Turkish Cinema Through Genres).

Istanbul: Dünya KitaplarÕ, 2005.

Silverman, Kaja. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.

Wright Elizabeth and Edmond Wright (eds.). The Žižek Reader. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.

Zizek, Slavoj. “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing” in E. Wright and E. Wright eds. The Žižek Reader. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.

CHAPTER TWENTY (CANNOT) REMEMBER: LANDSCAPES OF LOSS IN CONTEMPORARY TURKISH CINEMA ÖVGÜ GÖKÇE

This essay approaches loss as an emerging sentiment in contemporary Turkish cinema through two recent films, Bulutları Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds, 2003) and Sonbahar (Autumn, 2007). These two films can be located within a limited number of films which display an interest for unexamined moments in official history through their narrative such as Derviú Zaim’s Filler ve Çimen (Elephants and Grass, 2000) and Çamur (Mud, 2002) or U÷ur Yücel’s Yazı Tura (Toss-up, 2003). These films convey their story mostly through isolated and non-communicative characters since the ambiguity of the historical imagination concerning these different pasts translates into a difficulty of communication between people. The multiple aspects of language and its problematization appear as an issue between characters; they speak with languages that do not communicate with each other or the audience, or they would not speak at all. Therefore, the inner and outer dialogue (with the self and with others) is limited, and it is indicated as the site of the problem. The narratives represent this limitation, and eventually imply ‘loss’ –something that cannot be fully articulated through language, a sentiment that concerns both the historical and personal/subjective realms. The statement about the lack of dialogue in these films does not pertain to merely the level of the narrative where it becomes literalized through film dialogue, character composition and plot. Complying with the general tendency of experimenting on form that underlines Turkish cinema of the 90s, the lack of dialogue and the signification of what is lost in these films exceed the narrative, and become inscribed into the narration and film aesthetics. At this point, it becomes crucial to closely look at how these films contain or suggest loss in a way that it becomes more than a theme that is already

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conveyed in the story, and emerges as a sentiment that trespasses the narrative into the realm of the narration or, rather, a sentiment that signifies the relationships between all these different realms in the films, and initiates the search for a film aesthetics that could manifest this emergence. In other words, I argue that as much as the sharp content of their narratives, the aesthetic approach of these films marks an exceptional point in Turkish cinema in terms of trying to find a way of speech to articulate loss.

The subject or object of loss is unclear or unexamined and more importantly, it is not communicated in film. Therefore, these films attempt to investigate how loss may be manifested. In the introduction to the volume Loss: The Politics of Mourning, David L. Eng and David Kazanjian state that “as soon as the question ‘What is lost?’ is posed, it invariably slips into the question ‘What remains?’ That is, loss is inseparable from what remains, for what is lost is known only by what remains of it, by how these remains are produced, read and sustained.”1 The two films that are the subject of this essay, Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar trace loss and its remains, namely mourning. While Bulutları Beklerken tells the story of an assimilated Turkish Greek identity, and the subjective experience of dealing with surfaced origins and loss through its main character, Sonbahar meditates on the process of loss and foreshadows mourning through Yusuf, sentenced to jail as a university student and released from prison after ten years on health grounds. For their bold stories, both films could already be located as two distinctive attempts that engage with unspoken or poorly discussed historical moments in contemporary Turkish film. However, I argue that the significance of Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar emerge from their narration and aesthetics, which opens a secondary and yet novel path to interpret and read the emergence of loss. Firstly, the two films focus on two remote moments in the distant and recent past; the former in the late 1910s and the latter in the present day. The history of Turkish and Greek forced migration taking place in the period 1912-1924 has been mostly unattended to in the cultural realm, particularly cinema, and is one of the footnotes in between the world war and Turkish Independence War followed by the establishment of the Turkish republic. On the other hand, Sonbahar tells the events that took place during the political uprising of 1

Eng, David L. and David Kazanjian, “Introduction: Mourning Remains.”

In Loss: The Politics of Mourning, edited by Eng and Kazanjian, 1-25.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p. 2.

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students and political groups against the government during the mid 1990s, followed by a period of large public discussion along with hunger strikes that protested the policies around the new atrocious F-type prison system.

Although hunger strikes and the operation of the police forces on 19th December 2000 (an operation ironically named ‘Return to Life’) ended with many deaths and received public attention at the time, particularly the operation and the aftermath of these deaths under state responsibility have not been explored since then. Therefore, both films are looking at two distinct and distant moments of social trauma (among many others) which have been repressed in the present day. Such repression and the related realms of memory, loss and mourning have not yet found substantial ways of expression in the visual arts.

Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar not only reveal these historical moments in their narratives but also seek ways to manifest remembrance, loss and mourning through film language, thus suggesting an alternative path in Turkish cinema. This alternative path/level is constituted of a number of aesthetic choices and strategies. One of these strategies is the switch between different realities and worlds, cutting across the filmic world with actual footage, shifting in between diegetic and non-diegetic worlds, between the story and the history. Through interventions in the case of Sonbahar or bracketing footage in the case of Bulutları Beklerken, the films act on a wide range of relations from inscribing themselves onto the historical reality, to getting informed by it through the characters’ subjective reality. In each case, this range of relations, established between different types of images in the films, strive for a dialogue between what is possibly lived, lost, and what remains, what is sustained.

The first sequence of Bulutları Beklerken constitutes a substantial example of this shift between diegetic and non-diegetic worlds. The film opens with titles on a black backdrop, with a very deep sound of some unclear hymns until the film score fades in shortly with a strong tune on some archival footage from the early twentieth century. The sepia footage shows people traveling in large numbers on boats and trains, families feeding their children, women taking care of babies, images of immigration, displacement, and suspension in undetermined places. While these images run one after another and the score overcomes the mute images, the opening credits keep appearing on this archival footage indicating the point the film starts writing itself ‘on’ the history as fragmented, ambiguous, and incomplete as the footage itself. The last image is of a young girl with a baby in her arms, and it dissolves into the

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color film, to an extreme long shot of a village in the mountains of the Black Sea region, with the intertitle ‘Trebolu, 1975.’ Then we cut to interiors, to a woman sitting by the window on a divan. She gets up at the call of an elderly woman and carries the latter to the toilet outside the house on her back. In the next scene, we see a neighbor’s son coming to their place, asking to watch a heroic series on TV. Before the series starts, we see news about the population census on TV. From being just a part of the mise-en-scene, the image of the black and white footage on TV becomes the entire screen where we see the image of military trucks with gendarmes. The news report says that this census will comprise social and economic data including religion, language and sex, adding that ‘those who do not take part in the census…’ The film leaves the rest unheard and cuts to the color image where two officers with the same raincoat arrive at the town and a villager seeing them closes her window. By substituting the filmic reality with the archival footage for a few shots, the film refers to historical reality –except the opening and closing shots– with the population census presented with the armed and controlled state officials.

Their arrival shot behind the wooden fence is followed by the scene of the woman telling the young boy the story of Karakoncolos while making a fire in the stove. Karakoncolos is a dark creature in regional myth, which wanders about homes on dark winter nights, whispering people’s names and kidnapping them while they are asleep; according to this ancient myth, if the people don’t wake up they die. The story is about a girl who loses her family and gets lost in the snow until a fairy comes to help. The telling of such a symbolic mythical story by dark creatures and a ‘lost’ girl is preceded and followed by the census officers, creating a juxtaposition between the official Turkish historical record and Pontic folklore. This juxtaposition culminates in the scene when the officers ask for their identity cards and the audience is introduced to the woman (Ayúe) and the elderly woman (Selma, Ayúe’s sister) through the official account of their identity. The sequence not only creates a dual vision between mythical story and official history, between the census and the Karakoncolos tale, but also –by consciously underlining the non-diegetic interruption of news footage and the indifferent attitude of the officers– the supposedly fearful tale of Karakoncolos creates an ambiguous and uneasy feeling, possibly referring to something unknown in the story. The more clearly and concretely the information about the character is laid out, the more it points to something ‘missing’.

The missing piece in Bulutları Beklerken will be completed at the end of the film on one level but, until then, the film gets more and more

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occupied with what is missing, what is lost, and how it may be recovered by constantly seeking a relation between the ambiguous past and the present. After Selma’s death, Ayúe goes up to the attic one night. While she is going through things, the young boy comes up and asks what these old things are, and Ayúe immediately speaks through the mythical language she has set up with the kid, saying, they belong to Karakoncolos.

Then the kid asks why she is looking at them, and she says ‘so that it doesn’t blow into our ears.’ Then they come up with some old photographs in a box, and Ayúe shows Selma and her parents until she pauses at another photograph we cannot see.

After this scene, the film shifts to a different plane, in which the aesthetic character of the landscape begins to embody Ayúe’s subjectivity, and eventually works as an alternative level that reveals sentiments of loss and mourning. This can be thought of as the other major strategy in both Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar in addition to their narrative level that has a factual relation with a particular historical event, and the way they constitute shifts in between their filmic world and actual footage. The story and narrative established up to this point in Bulutları Beklerken become subordinate to the narration and its aesthetic features with the villagers going up to the high plateau for the summer as the film designs a different existential state for Ayúe, an existence that is contained by the landscape. In the first part, the spatial character of the film is identified by the enclosed villagescape with rainy narrow stone paths, small and multilevel houses, and dimly lit interiors as well as a couple of additional scenes on the coast among fishermen. The shift from the village to the high plateau is also graphically displayed through the bridging images of the little community. We see the village community walking in groups with their animals, kids, belongings, and creating bridge-like chains on the vast mountainscape. In this way, the film inscribes displacement onto the landscape; by using the image of displacement in a traditional journey (taking place at the beginning of every summer), it evokes other displacements, particularly those in the opening footage. This is the point where the break happens for Ayúe. While this journey means only a seasonal leave for the rest of the village, it is a departure for Ayúe since she leaves everything behind with the loss of her only bond. The loss of her sister brings back the loss of something else, something that she cannot understand at first. Eng and Kazanjian state that: The ability of the melancholic object to express multiple losses at once speaks to its flexibility as a signifier, endowing it with not only a multifaceted but also a certain palimpsest-like quality. This condensation

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of meaning allows us to understand the lost object as continually shifting both spatially and temporally, adopting new perspectives and meanings, new social and political consequences, along the way.2

While the villagers keep walking, Ayúe stops and stares at the foggy mountains and empty landscape, as if she is remembering something but cannot remember. The moment of her pause points at a rupture in the existent status of her existence, and indicates the beginning of a quest for the origins. Laura Marks talks about the multiplicity of memory and images in her discussion of intercultural cinema, and ascertains that in their constant movement between past and present, intercultural films suggest alternative narratives after dismantling certain official histories.

Although Bulutları Beklerken is not a clear example of intercultural cinema in spite of its international production context, due to the background of the director and her way of engaging with the characters’ subjective experience, Marks’ following point offers a way to interpret the moment of rupture in Ayúe’s existence, and within the film: There is a moment of suspicion that occurs in these works after the official discourse has been (if only momentarily) dismantled and before the emerging discourse finds its voice. This is a moment of silence, an act of mourning for the terrible fact that the histories that are lost are lost for good. Yet this moment is also enormously suggestive and productive. It is where these works begin to call upon other forms of cultural knowledge: it is where the knowledges embedded in fetish-like objects, bodily memory, and the memory of the senses… are found.3

Ayúe’s pause on the way is indeed suggestive. The possible meanings embedded in her gaze at the landscape are expressed in the performance elements that point to different and interrelated states of not remembering, almost remembering, grieving, expecting, being awed and startled. It is as if in that initial pause, that moment of silence, everything that is possibly lost for good and that can be evoked are captured and suggested. In fact, after this scene, which ends with a neighbor dragging Ayúe back to walking, her contact with her environment, her sense of belonging for the village community, become loose to the point of extinction. Slowly withdrawing from daily contact with her neighbors, she becomes alienated, going up mountains and looking at the landscape as if waiting or on hold.

As Ayúe stops talking to people, the film also gets more silent in terms of 2

Ibid, p. 5.

Marks, Laura, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, 2006, pp. 25-66.

3

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dialogue, and only when she catches fever does she hug the neighbor’s boy in delusion and spits out one name: Niko. After that we see Ayúe, running out of the house with a fever and then the film starts to take in the topography of Ayúe’s internal world; this time we see a series of foggy mountain shots. Just when she is about to throw herself into the landscape, the young boy holds her, and asks her why she doesn’t speak with anyone and whether she will speak again. When Ayúe opens her mouth, she speaks in a different language, Turkish Greek, and she speaks out two sentences asking God for forgiveness. Ayúe shuts herself up completely in the little barrack and refuses to go back down to the village from the plateau; we learn her story only when a stranger, an old Turkish Greek inhabitant of the village, arrives. Ayúe is Eleni, she lost her family with many more Turkish Greeks who were forced to immigrate, and she saved herself by taking shelter with a Turkish family, thus leaving her brother, Niko, behind. The loss of her identity and her family comes back as guilt after Selma (who clearly substitutes for her family) is dead, and clinging to the only photograph that is the remains of her origin, she tells the stranger that she will wait for her death in the mountains.

However, Ayúe/Eleni’s quest is not yet complete. In the last section of the film, she receives a letter from the stranger after he has gone back to Greece. She goes back to the village to prepare to go to Greece, to find Niko. Once she finds him though, it is the encounter of two strangers; Niko does not accept her. The next day, Ayúe/Eleni finds herself in a church and goes through the last phase of her journey into reconciliation with loss. After staring at every corner as a stranger in the church, she eventually burns a candle. Bulutları Beklerken does not end its narrative at this point. The film offers more than the subjective closure of Ayúe/Eleni or her belated mourning for what is lost. In the last scene, Ayúe/Eleni comes home and finds Niko looking at a large pile of old photographs scattered on the table. He shows her some of them, telling the story of each one, talking about the people in the pictures. At the end, he pauses and says: ‘This is my life. You are not in any of these pictures. Now you came to ask for forgiveness. There is nothing to forgive. If you were my sister, you would be in one of these photographs.’ Ayúe/Eleni slowly takes out her lone photograph from her pocket and gives it to Niko, and the camera stays on the close-up shot of the family portrait of a man, a woman and two kids until it dissolves into the archival image of the young girl with the baby in the opening footage of the film. In the end, the film closes the bracket it opened at the beginning with images of immigration, and Ayúe/Eleni’s story becomes something bracketed, related to the stories of

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other anonymous people; she becomes one of the many whose stories are lost. Iordanova concludes her article on Balkan hushed histories as follows: Ayúe’s trembling hand, reaching out with the pale photograph, undermines not only the official discourse that wants the memory of persecuted Pontian Greeks obliterated; it equally powerfully protests against the selfsufficient and confident personal story of the brother who is reluctant to accept and embrace the hushed suffering of his seemingly irresolute and confused yet committed elder sister.4

In this way, Bulutları Beklerken makes a statement; what is lost can be traced back with the fragments. The picture can only start to make sense by bringing together the pieces, and the meaning can be found in putting together the separate subjective experiences that are partially lost.

Therefore, the film points not only at the remains of a certain subjectivity – it does not leave us at the point where things are completely remembered and recovered. Instead, it is indicating that the fragments of experience and memory are intact with things that are lost and that are remembered. The way that the film arrives at its beginning at the end underlines that a journey is to be undertaken –like that of Ayúe/Eleni –to be able to start the quest on what is sustained. In other words, what is more vital in this quest is not what is remembered or what is lost but rather, how these communicate with each other and what sorts of dialogue they can pursue toward a better understanding.

It is striking how Sonbahar almost picks up from where Bulutları Beklerken leaves us. Although there is not any common trait in terms of their stories, the sentiment of loss and its possible remains surface on a similar landscape that belongs to the same geography, the mountains of the Black Sea, in both films. It could be argued that these two films, when viewed together, may refer to what Eng and Kazanjian call the palimpsestlike quality of the melancholic object. Here, the palimpsest becomes embedded in the landscape that characterizes the main aesthetic component of these films. While Bulutları Beklerken searches for loss and remembrance in the encounter of Ayúe/Eleni and the foggy mountains she faces, Sonbahar shows Yusuf in a prolonged loss of his young life in the backdrop of an autumn in the mountains of the Black Sea. As opposed to Ayúe/Eleni who searches for something to remember, something to take 4 Iordanova, Dina, “Intercultural cinema and Balkan hushed histories.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 6 no.2, 2008, p. 16.

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from the landscape, Yusuf only glances at it, just like an observer, when he comes back home with seriously damaged lungs after staying in prison for ten years. As opposed to Ayúe who has to pause and then deconstruct herself so that her origins can surface, Yusuf calmly goes through fragments of life: a breakfast with his mother, spending time with a childhood friend, an encounter with a woman, helping the neighbor’s kid in maths. However, his ‘life’ is constantly shaded with the trace of ‘death’, his finite existence next to the infinity of the landscape.

In her critique of Sonbahar, Zeynep Dadak says that “Sonbahar narrates life and death not as two different paths but a sum of moments that eventually collide and are always interlaced. The closest one can get to life is where death is nearest, and the nearest death can get is where the feeling of life is strongest.”5 Life and death are constantly present in Sonbahar, and the way they are interlaced is manifested through the fragile body of Yusuf next to the immense body of the mountains and the sea. The lesser his breaths get, the more there is to breathe. The film’s consistent use of extreme long shots depicts a separate reality than that of Yusuf’s subjectivity; yet, it grows into an aesthetic that transcends Yusuf’s slow immersion in death, an aesthetic that creates the metaphysical grounds for grasping death in life. In this respect, Sonbahar collides loss and mourning and presents their interwoven process through its timespace in two ways. On the one hand, the film starts in the prison at the point of Yusuf’s loss of freedom, youth, and health. His life after he arrives home is quiet, slow, and almost like a rehabilitation of his losses through his mother and the traces of his past such as pictures and letters. In this respect, the recovery process is condensed with the remembrance of what he lost, and takes the form of mourning. On the other hand, as the film interweaves Yusuf’s subtly growing sickness with the shots of immense landscapes, this mourning also becomes something that foreshadows his own death. Here, the film’s aesthetic and narration choices are striking in the way that both Yusuf and the audience are almost equally aware and unaware of the approaching death at the same time. Although there are many indications and literal images of death in the film, daily life and its mundane fragments create a sense of striving for life.

Here, the two major strategies that constitute the alternative path of Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar provide a critical basis toward understanding what these films could mean in this historical moment. The 5

Dadak, Zeynep. “Ölümü ùaka÷Õnda Hissetmek,” 2008, p. 82.

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opening sequence of Sonbahar viewed in the light of the entire film illustrates this point. Similarly to Bulutları Beklerken, Sonbahar also opens with archival footage before introducing its story and character. However, as opposed to the former’s anonymous and indefinite images, the opening footage of the latter is very specific. The time code reads 22 December 2000, 10:14, and a police officer is reading an announcement to convince the prisoners to surrender. While the mechanized voice of the officer reads ‘Attention, attention! Human life is the most precious thing...’ the tape shows the prison windows with prisoners shouting from a distance and behind the barbed wire frame. December 22, 2000 was the last day of the ‘Return to Life’ operation held by security forces in 20 prisons to stop hunger strikes that grew into death fasts, and ended with 32 dead, more severely injured, and many transferred to F-type prisons. Hunger strikes continued into 2001. At the end of the police announcement (‘Life is beautiful no matter what’), the video footage cuts to the film, two guards taking a prisoner, Yusuf, to the doctor.

This choice concerning the beginning of the film has the significant function of interrelating the subjective experience of Yusuf that follows in the rest of the film to the aftermath of an actual event in social reality, and hence historicizing the film’s subject matter. The use of such archival footage is repeated two more times: images of the police rushing into the prison cells is followed by Yusuf waking up suddenly from his sleep, and archival images of student demonstrations persecuted by police forces precedes Yusuf looking at a picture album. As much as the archival footage historicizes Yusuf’s story, nevertheless it does not overshadow the film’s engagement with subjective experience due to the narration and film aesthetics.

Resonating with Walter Benjamin’s point on how the adherents of historicism actually empathize with the victors, Laura Marks states that, “Not only is the historical archive available primarily to the victors, but also it is often those in the land of the victors who have access to a culture lost by the vanquished.”6 Sonbahar uses actual footage not to justify or explain its course of events; instead, it quotes them in the larger body of the film in contrast to the other major aesthetic trait that signifies timespace and engages with subjectivity, namely the landscape. As opposed to the rigid and dominant discourse that assimilates Yusuf’s and many others’ experience, the open and empty landscape suggests a surface 6

Ibid., p. 56.

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where alternative narratives can be inscribed. Accordingly, one could also argue that the timeless, unexplored or neglected geography of the Black Sea region constitutes this common surface with its palimpsest-like quality stemming from its multi/inter cultural yet repressed character and aesthetic embodiment of different timespaces. Underrepresented in Turkish cinema itself, the geography of the Black Sea region accommodates these fragments of history and memory bridging the two films discussed here, and therefore, sets up a common site for seeking the traces of loss and mourning.

The very existence of Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar translates as an exertion in the body of contemporary Turkish cinema in terms of narrating and generating the sentiment of loss. There is both a physical and mental aspect to this exertion in terms of the actual production and reception contexts since both films refer to historical moments that lack alternative narratives, which challenge the existing official histories.

Bulutları Beklerken and Sonbahar point out how film can account for a medium, a place/space, a site that contains and reveals the ruptures in subjective and collective memory, difficulties of remembrance, recognition of loss, and ways of mourning. The two films’ strategy of writing ‘on’ history at the aesthetic level also brings about the physical interrelatedness of film in this historical moment. Through elements of narration such as editing, where one image cuts to another, falls on to another, replaces what is missing and superimposes/dissolves into one another (particularly in terms of the actual footage that is used in both films), the film body becomes a part of the historical effort that relates the present time to the past. Eventually, while these films’ narratives are filling in the gaps or breaks of what has not been told in official narratives of history by creating alternative and subjective narratives in their story, they are also putting forward film as a practice of remembrance or mourning (and an awareness of the difficulty to remember or mourn.)

Their existence becomes the evidence and a part of an effort and practice that accounts for dialogue between the unspoken or forgotten points in the distant and recent past, and the present where it is still being lived, sustained, and is immediate, asking for a response. In his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, Walter Benjamin states that, “The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”7 Bulutları Beklerken and particularly Sonbahar with its ongoing immediacy 7

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations, 1992, p. 247.

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in the present, reveal this sort of an image, and thereby signify a crucial point for the beginnings of a possibility in Turkish cinema.

Works Cited Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. London: Fontana Press, 1992.

Dadak, Zeynep. “Ölümü ùaka÷Õnda Hissetmek.” Altyazı 78, 2008.

Eng, David L. and David Kazanjian, “Introduction: Mourning Remains.”

In Loss: The Politics of Mourning, edited by Eng and Kazanjian, 1-25.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Iordanova, Dina. “Intercultural cinema and Balkan hushed histories.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 6 no.2, 2008 Marks, Laura. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

CONTRIBUTORS

Elif AkçalÕ worked as an assistant director in commercials and films and then as a Research Assistant for the Department of Radio, Television and Cinema at Kadir Has University, Istanbul after completing her MA in Visual Culture. Elif started her PhD studies in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London in fall 2006. Currently, she is writing her thesis about discontinuities and fragmentations in style in contemporary cinema. Her research interests include film style and narrative, new filmmaking technologies and film history.

Murat Akser holds his PhD from a York/Ryerson joint program in communication and culture. He also holds an MA in History and a BA in English and Comparative Literature from Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey where he taught English as a faculty member. Subsequently, he entered York University’s graduate film program where he earned his second MA in film in 2002. In his spare time at York and Ryerson Universities, Murat Akser directed music videos and short films.

Currently, he teaches in the Film and Television Department at Kadir Has University.

Savaú Arslan is an Assistant Professor of Film and Television at Bahçeúehir University, Istanbul, Turkey, where he teaches film theory and history, Turkish cinema, cinematic narration and genres, art and culture, and communication theory. In 2005, he completed the PhD program in the History of Art Department at Ohio State University. His dissertation was on the history of popular cinema in Turkey. He has contributed an article on popular Islamic films in Turkey to Youth/Culture/Shock: Adolescents in International Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2007) and on Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films to Cineaste (Summer 2007). He is currently working on a forthcoming book on Turkish cinema and a number of articles about contemporary cinema in Turkey which will appear in various journals. In Turkish, he has published numerous book chapters and articles, as well as a pocket book entitled Melodrama (2005) and a forthcoming volume entitled Kitsch, Camp, Trash (2007).

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Zahit Atam has been studying the history of cinema since 1985 and regularly watching films. He has given seminars and lectures on various aspects of cinema at more than twenty universities in Turkey. He has advised many postgraduate and doctoral dissertations. He is the founder of Görüntü, a quarterly cinema magazine of the cinema club at Bosphorus University, the only magazine published by university students after the military coup d’etat on 12 September 1980. It has entered various citation indexes of academic papers in Turkey. Since 1997, he has been both the editor and a regular contributor to the journal Yeni ønsan Yeni Sinema. At present he is writing two books, The Cinema of YÕlmaz Güney as a social event and Third World Film Making and The History of Turkish Cinema after the Coup d’etat, 12 September 1980, as well as contributing chapters to other books on cinema. Özlem AvcÕ is a PhD student studying sociology at Mimar Sinan University in the Arts and Sciences Faculty. She completed her MA on “Islamic Television in Turkey” at Galatasaray University and has a BA degree from Hacettepe University in sociology. She has been studying the subject of the modern appearance of Islam since 2002 and also studies Islamic life styles and Islamic movements in Turkey.

Deniz Bayrakdar is acting as the dean of the faculty of communication and vice rector at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. She is the organizer of the New Directions in Turkish Film Studies Conference since 1998. She has published several editions on Turkish Cinema; Gender and Media, and Mediated Identities.

Nevena Dakoviç is a PhD professor of Film Theory/Film Studies at the Department of Theory and History and the Head of Art and Media PhD Studies at the University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia. She is the author of five books including Melodrama is Not a Genre (1995), Dictionary of Film Theoreticians (2002), and her latest Balkan as (Film) Genre: text, image, nation, representation (2008; written with the support of a BAAS fellowship) as well as the editor and contributor for many others published in Turkey, Czech Republic, UK, USA, France, Italy, Canada and Austria.

She participates in conferences and frequently lectures at European and American universities. Her research is focused on issues of identity representation (mainly national and multicultural) in cinema.

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Contributors

Övgü Gökçe studied philosophy at Bosphorus University, Istanbul and received her MA degree from Istanbul Bilgi University’s Department of Film and Television, with a thesis on narration in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. She has presented and written widely on Turkish film in the past several years. She is a film critic and a member of the editorial board of AltyazÕ, a prominent monthly film magazine in Turkey. Currently, She is a PhD candidate at Ohio University School of Interdisciplinary Arts where she is writing her dissertation on the historiography of sentiments in contemporary Turkish film. Her areas of interest are Turkish cinema, transnational cinemas, melodrama, and self-reflexivity with an interdisciplinary approach particularly drawing on the visual arts and aesthetics.

John Hill is a Professor of Media at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the author of Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema 195663 (1986), British Cinema in the 1980s (1999) and Cinema and Northern Ireland (2006).

Eylem Kaftan completed her BA in Philosophy at Bosphorus University, Istanbul and received her MA Cinema from York University in 2000.

After completing her thesis on post-1980 Turkish cinema, she made her first documentary, Faultlines (2004), which investigates the aftermath of the earthquake which hit Turkey in 1999. It won Best Short Film and the Jury Prize at the Planet Indie Film Festival in Toronto in 2002. Kaftan then wrote and directed Vendetta Song (2005) produced with DLI Productions in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada.

This gripping hour long documentary was broadcast on Vision TV and Télé-Québec in Canada and has received several awards including: CIDA Prize for Best Canadian Documentary on International Development at Hot Docs; the Quebec Film Critics Association Award for Best Medium Length Documentary: Best Documentary, Calgary International festival; and Best Documentary, Female Eye Film Festival. The film also won third prize at the International Women’s film festival in Torino, Italy. Her third documentary Bledi, This Is Our Home tells the story of non-status Algerians and their struggle to remain in Canada. The film was made for the Quebec broadcaster Télé-Québec. Since 2007, Kaftan has been teaching at Kadir Has University, Istanbul.

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Zeynep Koçer is a PhD student in Graphic Design at Bilkent University, Ankara. Her research interests centre on Turkish cinema, horror films, and cultural studies. She is currently working on contemporary horror films in Turkish Cinema in relation to religion and gender.

AslÕ Kotaman completed her PhD at Marmara University, Department of Radio and Television. Her dissertation ‘Mental Collections: From the Yeúilçam Period to Tele-Novelas’ claims that the Turkish family and melodramatic television serials recall the image of the social conscious melodramas of the ‘Yeúilçam’ period. Kotaman’s topics of research and teaching interests include; cultural memory in cinema, melodramas, soapoperas, Turkish Cinema, spectatorship-early spectatorship and movie going experiences.

Giacomo Manzoli is an Associate Professor of Italian Film History at the University of Bologna. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer at the University of Urbino and at the Catholic University of Milan. Since 2000, when he was awarded his PhD, his research interests have been mainly focused on Italian silent cinema and the relations between popular cinema and the sixties and seventies' auteurs. He has published almost a hundred essays, mainly in academic film studies journals. He is the Director of the courses of study in Cinema, Music, Performing and Visual Arts at the University of Bologna. Among his main publications there are the following books: Voce e silenzio nel cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini (Pendragon, Bologna 2001), Cinema e letteratura (Carocci, Roma 2003), L'arte del risparmio: stile e tecnologia. Il cinema a basso costo in Italia negli anni Sessanta e Settanta (with Guglielmo Pescatore, ed. by Carocci, Roma 2005).

Kaya Özkaracalar received his MA in Political Science from Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara, and his PhD in Fine Arts from Bilkent University, Ankara. He is currently the Head of the Film and TV Department at Bahçeúehir University, Istanbul. He has also contributed numerous cinema-related articles to Turkish newspapers and film journals as well as editing the quarterly GeceyarÕsÕ SinemasÕ. He is the author of the books: Gotik (2006) and GeceyarÕsÕ Filmleri (2007), and an awardwinning documentary film-maker. Besides genre cinema, his areas of research interest also include comic history.

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Contributors

Ella Shohat is a scholar, critic, and Professor of cultural studies at New York University. Her work includes award-winning books and numerous anthologized essays. Her writings have been translated from English into French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish and German, inspiring a young generation of scholars, artists and political activists. Upon the publication of her first book, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (NYU, 1986; University of Texas Press, 1989; and under the Hebrew title Israeli Cinema: History and Ideology, Beirut, 1991, Dyunon, 2000), the book sparked a public controversy, contributing to the shaping of a new agenda for the critical debate in Israel. Her more recent book Talking Visions deals with visual culture and multicultural feminism in a transnational age.

Levent Soysal is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Radio, Television, and Cinema at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. He is also the Director of the MA program in Communication Sciences. His topics of research and teaching interest include City, Spectacle and Globalization, and Youth Culture and Migration.

Zeynep Tül Akbal Süalp has taught cinema, media and cultural studies at various universities in Istanbul and lectured at Humbold University in Berlin as a Visiting Professor last year. She has recently become a faculty member of the Film and TV Department at Bahçeúehir University, Istanbul. She has a BA degree in psychology and studied political science, cinema studies and sociology (cultural studies) in New York and Istanbul, both MA and PhD degrees. She has been writing articles on cultural studies, cinema and critical theory in various journals and is the editor of Kültür ve Toplum 1 (Hil, 1995), Oyun (2002) and the author of Zaman Mekan: Kuram ve Sinema (Ba÷lam 2004) and co-author of the short fiction Wanting Book Odd Notebook (MudamCamp de Base & :mentalKLøNøK, 2004).

Frank P. Tomasulo is a Professor and Head of Film Studies in the College of Motion Picture, Television, and Recording Arts at Florida State University. Tomasulo has also taught cinema history and theory, as well as film production and screenwriting, at Ithaca College, Cornell University, the University of California-Santa Cruz, Georgia State University, Southern Methodist University, and FSU. The author of over sixty scholarly articles and essays, and over 150 academic papers. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Film and Video (1991-1996) and Cinema Journal (1997-2002). His co-edited anthology, More than a

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Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance (2004), is published by Wayne State University Press.

Berna Uçarol is a PhD student at Mimar Sinan University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences specializing in sociology. She received her MA from the University of Istanbul in history in 2002. Her master’s thesis investigated the emergence of a new type of bureaucracy including the reformation period of classical Ottoman bureaucracy. Her BA is from Mimar Sinan University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences in sociology. Her BA’s final project was a case study of the experience of gay life in Istanbul. Her research interests include new forms of work and labour process theory, the space of the new workplace and workplace resistance.

Hande Yedidal is a student at Bahçeúehir University’s Film and TV Graduate Program and is working at SabancÕ University as Extracurricular Student Activities Specialist. She received her BS in International Relations in 2000 from Bilkent University, Ankara. Her current research is on horror film and the representation of women in horror films in Turkey.

Müberra Yüksel completed her PhD at the department of Political Science, Binghamton University (SUNY) in 1989. She has experience in corporate communication and policy analysis as a consultant and has managed a World Bank Project that led research on comparative vocational standards in the US, UK and Germany. From 1991-1995, she was an Assistant Professor of political science at Bilkent University and was an Adjunct in Bilgi University’s MBA Executive Program until 2003.

Her research interests include organizational behavior and conflict management. She has been the Chair of the Advertising Department at Kadir Has University since 2005.

INDEX

A Akar, Serdar 166, 230 Akay, Ezel 119, 227 AkÕn, Fatih 118 AKP 118 Albanian 120 alter Ego 126 anti-imperialism 167, 170 Arslan, YÕlmaz 118 art Cinema 78, 79, 80, 81, 203, 206, 207 Aufklaerungsreise 125 B Babam ve O÷lum/My Father and Son (2005,Ça÷an Irmak) 12 Barda/The Bar (2006, Serdar Akar) 148, 150, 229 Bauman, Zygmunt 123 Bellour, Raymond 50 Bhabha, Jacueline 124, 127 Bismarck, Otto von 42 Black Sea 121 Brown (1979, R.W.Fassbinder) 126 C Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Robert Wiene) 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 Cemil/Cemil (1975, Melih Gülgen) 168 Cemil Dönüyor/Cemil Returns (1977, Melih Gülgen ) 168 Cenneti Beklerken/Waiting For Heaven (2006) 227 Ceylan, Nuri Bilge 119 Chaos 123

Contradiction 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 50, 51, 54, 55, 72, 73, 83, 156, 158, 209, 213, 219 Creolisation 94, 95 Creolised 107 and cinema 123 Culture 122 and identity 16, 37, 97, 106 Ç Ça÷lar, Ayúe S. 122 Çamur/Mud (2003, Derviú Zaim) 228 Çetin, Sinan 118 D Decla 40, 49, 55, 56, 60, 63, 96, 194, 224, 229 Deleuze Gilles 266, 267, 268, 269 Demirkubuz, Zeki 119, 207, 208, 212, 220, 229, 233, 264 diasporic 101, 106, 123, 223, 263, 264 disjunct Subjectivities 123 disjunctive Historical Spaces 126 Documentary Drama 75 Die Ehe der Maria Braun/The Marriage of Maria E Erdem, Reha 226 Erdo÷an, YÕlmaz 119 Eúkiya/The Bandit (1996, Yavuz Özkan) 120 EU and cinema 40, 93, 106, 118, 125, 126 Eurimages 119 and history 125

Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and The New Europe and image 126 and look 119 and space 125 and subject 125, 126 Expressionism/Expressionist 47, 50, 58, 68 F Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 126 Filler ve Çimen/Elephants and Grass (2000, Derviú Zaim) 223, 227, 270 Film Aesthetics 271, 275, 279 and awards 119 and festivals 119 Foucault, Michel 156, 157, 159, 160, 166 Frame story 42, 45 Freud, Sigmund 6 G Galt, Rosalind 125 Gemide/On Board (1998, Serdar Akar) 148, 230 Gender 15, 26, 27, 30, 40, 46, 50, 132, 136, 140, 156, 158, 172, 185, 221, 228, 260, 263 Genealogical Network 126 Genre 20, 21, 25, 28, 32, 40, 50, 58, 70, 71, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 192, 199, 228, 231, 261, 262, 269 George Guediguian 224 Globalising World 122 and PR Tools 119 and the Ethics 120 Godard, Jean Luc 27, 56, 224, 228 G.O.R.A. (2004, Ömer Faruk Sorak) 120 Guattari, Felix 266, 267, 268, 269 Güney, YÕlmaz 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153, 158, 213, 218

287

H Hababam SÕnÕfÕ Askerde/Hababam Class is in the Military (2004, FerdiE÷ilmez) 120 Heimat (1984) 124 Heimlich 122 Heterogeneity 123 High Culture 119 History/Historical 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 42, 78, 81, 90, 97, 98, 103, 104, 109, 110, 120, 125, 126, 136, 138, 140, 141, 159, 166, 172, 175, 178, 181, 182, 186, 189, 190, 191, 194, 196, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203 and the present 120 Hitler, Adolf 40, 41, 43, 47, 50 Homosexuality 54, 57, 60, 261, 269 Hybrid 123 and hybridisation 123 Hyphenated 123 and identity 120 and directors 120 Hypnosis/Hypnotic 47 I Ideology 15, 40, 41, 42, 72, 81, 133, 134, 140, 147, 165, 196, 205, 243 Intertexuality 126 Iraq 120 Islamic Styles of life 240, 247, 248 and Cinema 240, 244 øklimler/Climates (2006, Nuri Bilge Ceylan) 119 øpekçi, Handan 226 østanbul 119 and istanbullite 119, 122 J Jameson, Fredric 98, 153, 160, 234, 236 Journey of Enlightenment 125

288 K Kahpe Bizans/Wrotten Byzantinien (2000) 120 KaranlÕkta Uyananlar (1964) 170, 171 Karpuz Kabu÷undan Gemiler Yapmak/Boats Out Of Watermelon Rinds (2004) 224 Kavafis, Constantino 127 Kechiche, Abdel 224 KÕsa ve AcÕsÕz/Short,Sharp/Shock (1998, Fatih AkÕn) 122 Killing the Shadow/Who Killed Shadow/Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü?(2006, Ezel Akay) 227 Kracauer, Siegfried 47, 50 Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak/Valley of the Wolves-Iraq (2006, Serdar Akar) 120, 128, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 263, 262 Küçük KÕyamet/The Little Apocalypse (2006, Taylan Biraderler) 118 L Laleli’de Bir Azize /A Madonna in Laleli (1998, Serdar Akar) 218 Lang, Fritz 85 Leaud, Jean-Pierre 126 Loach, Ken 70, 71, 78, 79 M Male subjectivity 160, 261, 262, 263, 267, 269 and masculinity 157, 158, 159, 194, 259, 260, 261, 263, 266, 267 Marketing 119 Melodrama 70, 102, 104, 105, 137, 141, 151, 211, 230, 236, 261, 263, 264, 265 Modernism 15, 11, 12, 13, 98, 221, 244, 248, 249, 251, 253 Montenegro (1981, Dusan Makajev) 120

Index N Naficy, Hamid 124 Nationalism 94, 95, 97, 98, 135, 138, 139, 140, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 170, 185, 186, 198, 199, 262 and motives 120 Neredesin Firuze?/Where's Firuze?

(2004, Ezel Akay) 224, 226 New Cinema of Turkey 203, 260, 261 New Germany 120 O Oedipal normalization 262, 263, 264, 268 and complex 261 Open-ended story 121 Organize øúler: The Magic Carpet Ride, Turkish Title is: Organized Business (2005, YÕlmaz Erdo÷an) 120 Orientalistic Tableaus 126 Other 120 and the otherness 120 Ottoman Empire 127 Ö Ömer Kavur 223, 230 Özal, Turgut 119 Özpetek, Ferzan 118 P Pamuk, Orhan 119 Politics 1, 39, 40, 49, 50, 52, 54, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 82, 84, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97, 108, 113, 122, 127, 128, 129, 133, 140, 141, 142, 152, 154, 160, 163, 201, 231, 239, 242, 243, 245, 271, 278 Pommer¸ Erich 40, 49 Postmodern Cultural Nomads 123 Post-Yeúilçam 264, 265 Psychology/Psychological 71, 86, 174, 175, 176, 186, 204

Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and The New Europe and psychoanalysis 6, 33, 40, 49, 50, 161, 186, 174, 234 R Rahmenhandlung 42, 49 Rank, Otto 42, 45 Realism 11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 36, 65, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 152, 197, 214 Reitz, Edgar 124 Religion 3, 9, 20, 57, 66, 116, 133, 139, 140, 192, 194, 195, 198, 208, 240, 2464 246, 248, 251, 254, 273 S SabancÕ, Kudret 229 Sadism 262, 264, 268, and macoshism 260, 261, 264, 266, 267, 268, 269 Schygulla, Hanna 126 Sentiment 163, 164, 165, 178, 179, 234, 274, 277, 270, 273 Serbian 120 and cinema 94, 96, 97, 103, 105, 106 Spectator 47, 85, 90, 123, 126, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 229

289

T Transnational 13, 99, 108, 118, 120, 122, 124, 225, 263, 264 and directors 118 Trier, Lars Von 126 Turkish émigré directors 126 U Uluçay, Ahmet 227 Ustao÷lu, Yeúim 226, 218 W Weimar Germany/Weimar 40 Western Discourse 126 Wiener, Robert 48 Y Yara/Wound (1996, YÕlmaz Aslan) 122 YaúamÕn KÕyÕsÕnda/At the Edge of Heaven (2007, Fatih AkÕn) 121 Yeúilçam 152 Z Zaim, Derviú 119 Zizek, Slavoj 264, 269