Resignifying the Mainstream: Transgender Embodiment In
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RESIGNIFYING THE MAINSTREAM: TRANSGENDER EMBODIMENT IN CINEMA IN TURKEY BERFU ŞEKER BOĞAZİÇİ UNIVERSITY 2011 RESIGNIFYING THE MAINSTREAM: TRANSGENDER EMBODIMENT IN CINEMA IN TURKEY Thesis submitted to the Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Critical and Cultural Studies by Berfu Şeker Boğaziçi University 2011 Thesis Abstract Berfu Şeker, Resignifying the Mainstream: Transgender Embodiment in Cinema in Turkey This study focuses on the mainstream representation of the transgender phenomenon in the cinema of Turkey during a forty year period starting from the 1960s. In studying these images, the main argument of this thesis is that although mainstream cinema has been conceptualized as incapable of producing meanings that are anti hetero-patriarchal; factors such as audience reception, textual incongruity and directorial intentions might produce ambiguities in order to trigger subversive readings and identifications with these images. By reaching masses of audiences, mainstream representation of transgender embodiment might offer a possibility that might challenge the binary thinking and normative identificatory mechanisms. Conceptualized within their specific historical milieu and in relation to each other, these images also refer back to a historical subconscious in which the repressed desires return back to haunt the heteronormative binaries of gender and sexuality. Reading these films through gender parody, masquerade, heterosexual melancholia, shame and transnational circulation of transgender images, this study explores the relation between performance and performativity in order to resignify the mainstream from within. iii Tez Özeti Berfu Şeker, Ana Akımı Dönüştürmek: Türkiye Sinemasında Transgender Tecessüm Bu çalışma 1960lardan başlayan kırk yıllık bir dönem içerisinde transgender fenomeninin Türkiye sinemasındaki ana akım temsillerine odaklanmaktadır. Tezin ana argümanı antiheteropatriarkal anlamlar üretmekten yoksun olarak kavramsallaştırılmış ana akım sinemanın izleyici alımlaması, metinsel çelişki ve yönetimsel niyet gibi unsurlarının yıkıcı okumaları ve yıkıcı özdeşimleri tetiklemek üzere bir takım muğlâklıklar üretmekte olduğudur. Transgender tecessümün ana akım temsilleri, büyük izleyici kitlelerine ulaşarak ikili düşünmeyi ve normatif özdeşim mekanizmalarını sarsacak bir imkân sunabilir. Spesifik tarihsel ortamları içerisinde ve birbirleriyle ilişki içerisinde kavramsallaştırılan bu imgeler aynı zamanda bastırılanın cinsiyet ve cinsellikle ilgili heteronormatif ikilikleri tehdit etmek üzere geri döndüğü tarihsel bir bilinçdışına da işaret etmektedir. Bu çalışma bahsi geçen filmleri cinsiyet parodisi, masquerade, heteroseksüel melankoli, utanç ve trans ulusallık gibi konseptler üzerinden analiz ederek performans ve performatiflik arasındaki ilişkiyi ana akımı içeriden dönüştürmek üzere incelemektedir. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First I would like to express my gratitude to Nezih Erdoğan, the supervisor of this thesis, who supported me with his insightful comments in times that I felt totally blocked. He has been a great influence throughout this study and without his encouragement and support I would not be able to write this thesis. I should thank Işıl Baş, who is the coordinator of Critical and Cultural Studies Program and also the co-advisor of this study for her contributions to this thesis. She has provided me with the best tools to evolve during my MA studies which have been an astonishing experience in my life. I should also thank Cüneyt Çakırlar whose courses on film have taught me a lot on queer theory and cinema. These courses and his influence have been life-altering, enabling me to improve both intellectually and personally. I am grateful to him for his valuable criticisms on this thesis and inciting me to think about the global/local circulation of images and concepts. I would like to thank my jury members Didar Akar, Sibel Irzık and Özlem Öğüt whose feedback has been very inspiring in finishing this thesis. I should thank my dear mother and father who have supported me regardless of the troubles I have caused them. I will never be able to pay away what they have generously offered me for so many years. Last but not least, I should also thank İlksen Gürsoy who stood by me even in my most depressed and pessimistic times trying to write this thesis. I would not be able to finish this study without his encouragement, friendship and care. v CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER 2: PERFORMANCE AND CROSS-DRESSING: A BRIEF HISTORY OF CROSS- DRESSING ON THEATRE AND CINEMA……......……....…16 Cross-dressing within Transgenderism and Queer Theory………………….17 Ottoman Theatre and Cross-dressing…..........................................................19 Cross-dressing in Cinema…………………………………………………...26 CHAPTER 3: UNDOING COMEDY AND MELODRAMA: CAMP AFFINITIES AND GENDER PERFORMATIVITY IN CINEMA IN TURKEY.................33 Cinema in Turkey…………………………………………………………....34 Comedy and Cross-dressing in Yeşilçam…...................................................37 Camp Affinities in Fıstık Gibi Maşallah........................................................49 Melodramatic Modality and Sexual Difference..............................................58 Cross-dressing in Melodrama: Gender Melancholia, Masquerade and Sexual Indifference……………….……………………………………67 CHAPTER 4: PERFORMATIVES/SPECTACLES OF SHAME: TRANSGENDERISM AND THE DOMAIN OF ABJECTION……...….......78 Yeşilçam and Arabesk.....................................................................................79 Performatives of Shame and Representation of Intersexuality In Köçek........82 Shame/Performativity and Camp Theatricality inŞöhretin Sonu/YüzKarası..93 Refigurations of Shame in Biji Diva………………………..……………...102 CHAPTER 5: TRANSGENDER GAZE, TIME AND SPACE: TRANSNATIONALITY AND IDENTITY IN KUTLUĞ ATAMAN’S LOLA+BILIDIKID…………………………………………………………108 The Urban Space and Transgender Embodiment..………..……………......108 vi Transnationality and Transgenderism in Lola+Bilidikid……………..……113 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION………….……………………...…………….……131 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………………..136 A: Filmography…….……………………………………………………...136 B: Turkish texts………….………………………………………………...138 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………...………………..…140 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This study focuses on the representation of transgender phenomena in the narrative cinema of Turkey from the 1960s to 2000. I will try to show that studying a span of forty years gives an account of the historical and aesthetic aspects that participate in the production and consumption of such images. The study also elaborates the ‘regulatory ideal’ that lies at the center of the materialization of a rigidly dichotomized sex/ gender system in order to preserve the heterosexual regime. However, as I will argue in this study, there are many complex elements of the filmic medium that sometimes blur and subvert narrative plot and raise ambivalent affections despite of the film’s normative ending. I will try to discuss whether the ambivalences these images raise could be considered as opening up possibilities for subverting hegemonic discourses on sex, gender and sexuality. Elisabeth Cowie suggests that various codes from cultural ones to cinematic and non-cinematic ones are at work in a filmic system. However, the analysis of these codes does not involve a de-coding along the lines of “translating the film ‘back’ from something like morse code, but rather, the discovery of the various codes in play in and the structure of meaning produced by their combination in that specific film” (Cowie 1996, 38). I side with Cowie’s contention and will try to discover the codes at work concerning the text, audience and reception. Alexander Doty suggests that an analysis related to mass cultural productions should point to the ways in which cultural heterocentrism and homophobia shape our understanding of the text/representation as well as our understanding of producers and readers (Doty 1991, xiii). Thus, the main aim of this study relies on a certain relation with the 1 cinematic medium, that is, my subjective position as a spectator vis-à-vis these images that work within a performative strategy. This performative strategy is to consider these films in their relation to gender and spectatorial fantasy as well as in their relation to other films in cinema in Turkey. The period known as Yeşilçam1 (marking a period between 1960s and the 1980s) and arabesk genre in the 1980s have significance in this intertextual relation that still can be traced in recent filmic productions. The Turkish film historian Nijat Özön has criticized the years that Yeşilçam was in its heyday (namely1965-1975) with a production of around 300 films a year, by calling those days “the period that our cinema lived its darkest days” (Mutlu 2001,111). Mutlu argues that the basic idea behind this statement is a certain disdain of the Yeşilçam tradition for being devoid of any intellectual content and artistic value. This tendency of despising Yeşilçam and later arabesk films started with Yeni Sinema journal’s attempts to deploy a more universal, western and artistic film style which they thought Yeşilçam totally lacked. According to them, these films were commercial, cheap, devoid of artistic creation and were producing bad taste to exploit the spectator. They considered Yeşilçam to be a non-illusionist cinema imbued with tradition that did not correspond to any reality about society