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The Midnight Express Phenomenon : a Historical Materialist Approach To

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I .v:\i*':uy.Hi^ihUii}^ssii'L THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS PHENOMENON: A HISTORICAL MATERIALIST APPROACH TO THE RECEPTION OF THE FILM MIDNIGHT EXPRESS A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Program in Popular Culture Brock University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in Popular Culture Dilek Kaya Mutlu ^ June 2003 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis marks the end of a one-year period away from home during which I enjoyed the kindness, support, and friendship of a number of people at the Department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University, who have been handling passionately the MA Program in Popular Culture. I will remember all those people with love and respect throughout the rest of my life awaiting me in Turkey. I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisor Dr. Jeannette Sloniowski for her professional guidance and moral support throughout the duration of the project. Besides Professor Sloniowski, Dr. Barry K. Grant and Prof Joan Nicks had significant contributions to the progress of the thesis towards completion with their carefiil readings of the first and final drafts, productive comments and criticisms during the presentations and the defense, and continuous encouragement. I owe many thanks to them. Thanks also to Dr. Angela Stukator for her valuable comments on and evaluation of the thesis, as my external examiner, and to Dr. David Siegel for his professional and charming chairing of the defense meeting, as the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. I am also gratefiil to several professors in the Popular Culture program who contributed to my work with their graduate courses. Dr. Jim Leach, Dr. Bohdan Szuchewycz, Dr. Rosemary D. Hale, and Dr. Sandra Beckett, all have traces, whether major or minor, in several parts of the thesis. The idea for this thesis emerged and was developed over the progress of the course PCUL 5P03 - MA Seminar in Popular Culture. In addition to Professor Grant, who directed the seminars, I would like to thank to my classmates Sarah, Chris, Tanya, and Markian for their comments and questions regarding my research topic. I am also indebted to the members of the support staff in the department and the program, Anne Howe, Bridget Chail, and Rob Macmorine, who helped me in administrative and technical matters at several moments of my study in the program. Thanks also to the staff of the Inter Library Loan Office at Brock University Library, whom I know only by their faces, for handling carefiiUy my requests regarding the periodical and press reviews of Midnight Express , without which this study would be incomplete although not totally impossible. Last, but not least, a very special group of people from Turkey made a great contribution to this thesis collecting the research material from Turkish sources and providing moral support. My husband Tanyel Ali Mutlu, this time again, encouraged and enabled me to do what I desire, showing immense patience and support and taking very good care of my cat-son Muzo during my absence from home. Besides Tanyel, my fiiends Levent Cantek, Kaya Ozkaracalar, and Sadi Konuralp willingly searched for and made the research material available to me on time. I have been impatient to meet them and express my gratitude. Unfortunately, Sadi is not physically among us anymore. I will keep my thanks to him in me till the end of my life. This thesis is dedicated to him. 11 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the Midnight Express phenomenon focusing on the film's reception by audiences in Europe, North America, and Turkey between 1978-2003. Using and enhancing the "historical materialist approach" to film reception developed by Janet Staiger, the thesis considers the historical determinants of the film's nationally and culturally differential readings in different periods and of the transformations in those readings. The thesis argues that while Midnight Express was most likely read in the late 1970s as an attempt to reaffirm American social identity by projecting Turks as an instance of the negative Other, there has been an important shift in the reception of the film in the West during the 1990s due to the changes in the discursive contexts in which the film has been circulating. One does not observe any specific reference to Turkish prisons as a part of the issue of human rights violations in Turkey in the initial reception of the film by European and American critics, whereas these issues appear to be important constituents of a particular reception of the film in the West in the present. The thesis explains this shift by pointing to the constitution of a particular discourse on human rights violations in Turkey after 1980, and especially throu^out the 1990s, which has become a part of the discursive repertoires of the Western audience. Therefore, the thesis argues that today, Midnight Express fiinctions as a more legitimate political statement about Turkey in the eyes of some Western audiences than it had been in the 1970s. On the other hand, parallel to the increasing desire of Turkey to connect itself to the West, particularly to become a member of the European Union, one observes an immense increase in the belief in and defense against the negative effects of Midnight Express on Turkey's international representation since the 1990s. The historical and current discourses that audiences, both in Turkey and abroad, bring into play suggest that these audiences engage with Midnight Express by assuming or denying not only the subject positions constructed by the film text but also certain history-specific extra-filmic subject positions produced by other social and discursive formations. ui ' 36 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction 1 Background and Rationale for the Study 1 Problem Statement 4 Conceptual and Theoretical Framework 5 Methodology 11 Study Overview 1 CHAPTER TWO: THE EMERGENCE OF MIDNIGHT EXPRESS AS A SOCIAL EVENT 15 Discourses of Publicity 1 ?": "Remember William Hayes . Hayes and His Book in the American Press- 17 The Production and Marketing of Midnight Express as a Film 23 Contextual Discourses: The Social and Historical Context 39 CHAPTER THREE: MIDNIGHT EXPRESS AS A FILMIC NARRATIVE AND DISCOURSE 47 The Narrative and Character 47 The Discourse: Midnight Express as an "Eastern" and OrientaHst Discourse 51 CHAPTER FOUR: INITIAL RECEPTION OF MIDNIGHT EXPRESS 67 Reception of Midnight Express by the European and American Press 67 The Message: "Universal" or "Racist"? 69 Representation of Violence 78 Representation of Sexuality 82 The Film's Popularity 86 Reception of Midnight Express by the Turkish Press 90 IV CHAPTER FIVE: THE MIDDLE YEARS 99 Midnight Express on Television and the Turkish Reception 99 Midnight Express According to its Makers and Cinema Books 114 Midnight Express in Other Media 119 CHAPTER SIX: CURRENT RECEPTION OF MIDNIGHT EXPRESS : VIEWER COMMENTS ON THE INTERNET 126 Pleasurable without Reservation: Identification, Absorption, Suspense 130 Politically Incorrect, Yet Pleasurable 132 Offensive 134 Controversy One: Fiction or Documentary? Prison or Nation? 140 Controversy Two: (Do) "People Believe in This" (?) 144 Extra-filmic Discourses, Popular "Activations" 149 Interpretation versus Activation 155 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION 157 WORKS CITED 169 APPENDIX A - CORRECTIVE TURKISH VIEWER COMMENT (IMDb) 182 APPENDIX B - MARGINAL RESPONSE (IMDb) "" 184 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. U.S. Exhibition Figures of Midnight Express 38 VI . LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Press Advertisement for Midnight Express 30 Figure 2. Poster in French for Midnight Express 32 Figure 3 Poster in EngUsh for Midnight Express 32 Figure 4. Press Advertisement for Midnight Express 34 Figure 5. Press Advertisement for Midnight Express 35 vn CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Introduction Midnight Express is the film adaptation of Billy Hayes's 1977 autobiography of the same title. Released by Columbia Pictures in 1978 as a Casablanca FilmWorks Production, the film was promoted as the "true story" of young American Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), namely his nightmarish years in a Turkish prison following his arrest at Istanbul Airport while trying to smuggle two kilos of hashish on his return to the United States in 1970. Besides being a commercial success, the film won eleven major awards and launched several Hollywood careers, most notably of director Alan Parker, screenwriter Oliver Stone, and producer David Puttnam. The information above can be found in any film encyclopedia or film guide, which assumes the dominant text-based or production-based approach to films and their histories. However, the "story" of Midnight Express becomes much longer and more complicated once we take into account viewers who have hitherto been watching and commenting on this film. "Forever embroiled in controversy," as Jeff Shannon begins his editorial review for Amazon.com, Midnight Express is a phenomenon that surpasses the film itself, and that is the subject matter of this study. Background and Rationale for the Study Despite its popular appeal and commercial success. Midnight Express led to a controversy among French, British, and American film critics at the time of its initial release. While some critics appreciated it as a powerful "real-life drama," an "anti-drug film," and "courageous filmmaking," others criticized it for its "needless violence," "xenophobia," "racism," and "homophobia" (James 103). One of the most repeated arguments was that the film altered the facts in the book for "exploitive" and "manipulative" purposes. Not only some film critics who reviewed the film in 1978 but also Stone and Parker soon admitted that they altered Billy Hayes's story considerably. Asked why the events in the movie did not correspond with those in the book. Stone replied: "We weren't making a documentary." The book "didn't have the dramatic cohesion the film needed" (qtd.
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