2
Hollywood, with the help of second wave feminist scholarship in the late 1970’s and
80’s, limited the way in which these melodramas were investigated.
4
Turkish melodramatic films from 1965-75
bring together Hollywood style and
Turkish -Middle Eastern popular love tales
such as, Kerem ile Asl , Leyla ile Mecnun
etc. These melodramas mainly focused on
the problems of love, sexuality, and
parenthood. As it is with folk tales, the
subject is almost always an impossible love
affair between the poor boy and rich girl or
vice versa. In some, there is the “love
conquers all” theme, interspersed with
class issues. Taking place mostly in interior spaces, there is a claustrophobic intensity
that represents repressed individual desire. Desire, which is deeply personal, is in
conflict with that of the greater society’s traditions, values and rules. After all, what is
more personal than love in a society such as the Turkey of the mid-twentieth century,
were marriages are still arranged. Melodramas with their love stories then, bring the
individual face to face with the collective: sexual freedom versus virtue, economic
freedom versus loss of control threatens to compromise the patriarchal power structure.
4
Ana M Lopez, Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the ‘Old’ Mexican Cinema, from Multiple
Voices in Feminist Criticism, edited by D. Carson, L. Dittmar and J. Welsch, University of Minnesota
Press, 1993
Convention