Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Turkish melodramas present some intriguing gender relations and representation. In some cases, characters in melodrama break away from traditional gender roles. In this paper I would like to investigate why certain melodramas film between 1965 and 75 present non-traditional gender roles in Turkish society and how the hegemonic and the negotiated elements of male and female roles in theses melodramas are presented. There has been important feminist scholarship mainly in the United States and in England that examines the binary nature of the melodramas. Yet very little has been written on 'feminine elements' of male actors and 'active' female spectatorship. With my dissertation, I intend to help fill this gap.
Freudian and Lacanian modes of thinking by their nature are Eurocentric and applied to third world cinema, they naturalize the Western feminist perspective as global. In this paper I will focus on elements of Turkish melodramas that cannot be explain western modes of thinking, showing that a different and unique negotiated space within which the feminine elements of male actors and active female spectatorship exists side by side with the traditional, hegemonic patriarchal gender roles in Turkish melodramas between 1965-75. Also, most Turkish melodramas follow the 'fallen but redeemed by motherhood' formula that reestablishes the patriarchal order at the end. There are, however, some films from this period that defy this formula. An alternative look at these films is imperative, as current feminist theory has not addressed this aspect.