Strike the Slut] and Its Cinematic Afterlife
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THE MELODRAMATICS OF TURKISH MODERNITY: VURUN KAHPEYE [STRIKE THE SLUT] AND ITS CINEMATIC AFTERLIFE by BARAN GERMEN A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Comparative Literature and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2018 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Baran Germen Title: The Melodramatics of Turkish Modernity: Vurun Kahpeye [Strike the Slut] and Its Cinematic Afterlife This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Comparative Literature by: Sangita Gopal Chairperson Michael Allan Core Member Kenneth Calhoon Core Member Selim S. Kuru Core Member Michael Hames-Garcia Institutional Representative and Janet Woodruff-Borden Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2018 ii © 2018 Baran Germen iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Baran Germen Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature September 2018 Title: The Melodramatics of Turkish Modernity: Vurun Kahpeye [Strike the Slut] and Its Cinematic Afterlife Proposing melodrama as an aesthetics of victimhood, my dissertation examines the intermedial itineraries of notable feminist Halide Edib’s Vurun Kahpeye [Strike the Slut]. Originally serialized in 1923 and published as a novella in 1926 in Ottoman Turkish, Vurun Kahpeye was translated into modern day Turkish in 1946. The melodramatic story was then adapted for screen three times in 1949, 1964, and 1973, respectively, by Ömer Lütfi Akad, Orhan Aksoy and Halit Refiğ. With the circulation of these films on TV, the title Vurun Kahpeye has since the 90s morphed into an idiom designating the unjust treatment of the innocent. The persistent repetition of Vurun Kahpeye across media, I suggest, signifies melodrama’s aesthetic durability due to its affective excess: its efficacy in making a disaffected public experience its own victimhood. Thus, my dissertation provides an archeology of melodrama as a political technology through a reading of each of Vurun Kahpeye’s media iteration as embedded in its socio-historical context. In this account, the affective medium of cinema emerges as the main site for the formation of a secular mass public by linking secularism to structures of feeling rooted in victimization, suffering, and injury. iv And yet, the affective excess of melodrama, I demonstrate, renders Vurun Kahpeye’s normative project unstable and uncontainable with each iteration. At different moments in time, Vurun Kahpeye is a queer text exposing the heteropatriarchal nature of secular nationalism; lays the infrastructural, spectatorial, and aesthetic foundation of the classical cinema of Turkey; and serves as the project of a social realist, counter-populist, and anti- Western theory of cinema. Therefore, this dissertation traces the conflicting projections, aspirations, and feelings central to Turkish republican modernity that congeal and clash in, through, and around Vurun Kahpeye. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Baran Germen GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2018, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Comparative Literature, 2010, Istanbul Bilgi University Bachelor of Arts, American Culture and Literature, Baskent University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Melodrama Queer Theory PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Visiting Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies Program, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, 2018 to present Instructor of Record, Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2017-2018 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Comparative Literature, 2011-2018 Bruce M. Abrams LGBTQ Essay Award, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Oregon, 2017 Jane Grant Dissertation Research Fellowship, Center for the Study of Women in Society, University of Oregon, 2016-2017 The Institute of Turkish Studies Summer Language Study Grant, 2016-2017 vi PUBLICATIONS: Germen, Baran. “Abjectly Melodramatic: The Monstrous Body and the Queer Politics of Are We OK?” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 2, no. 3 (2017): 339-351. Germen, Baran. “Of Parks and Hamams: Queer Heterotopias in the Age of Neoliberal Modernity and the Gay Citizen.” Assuming Gender 5, no. 1 (2015): 111-137. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is a product of a collective effort insofar as a diasporic subject’s mental, emotional, and physical –let alone intellectual– well-being depends on a number of people. In the seven years that I spent in Eugene, Oregon, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people whom I am happy to call friends, for friendship, as the most generous rubric for those loving relationships and communities, is the foundation of a migrant life. The scholarly backbone of this life was my chair Sangita Gopal. My academic career, including this dissertation, would not have been possible without her tireless support, mentorship, and inspiration. I am indebted to the time, care, and faith that she put in me and my work throughout these years, and I am grateful for her presence in my life. I feel privileged also to have been near the brilliance of Michael Allan who was an important part of my academic journey at Oregon. I thank him not only for his exemplary scholarship, our rich conversations, and his challenging questions that always set the bar higher, but also for his companionship. Like Michael, Ken Calhoon was a constant source of support and encouragement from day one. His words of guidance to a confounded first-year student that I was to this day ring in my ears: “No matter what you do, work from within.” Special thanks are due to Selim Kuru for believing in my project and joining the committee from University of Washington in the later stages of the dissertation after a fortuitous and fortunate encounter in Cunda. I also thank Michael Hames-Garcia for accepting to be a member of the committee and his eye-opening questions and comments in the defense. Many other scholars outside my committee at Oregon contributed to my personal and professional development. I wish to express appreciation to Paul Peppis and Colin Koopman for their influential courses and thank Jenifer Presto not only for assisting my viii research and professional career by being an avid reader, but also for the many enjoyable conversations that I continue to cherish today. To go back to where I began, I want to thank my friends Palita Chunsaengchan for sharing her world and gifting my world with it; Sunayani Bhattacharya for always leading the way without never letting go of the hand; Danielle Seid for the queer family Orlando, you, and I have formed; Fulden İbrahimhakkıoğlu for her ever-insightful perspective, inspirational genius, and unaffected affection; Sergio Rigoletto for having made Eugene – and wherever we travel to– a better place; Michelle Kyoko Crowson for emitting calmness with her voice and words; Nate Liederbach for not holding back who he is; Erin Gallo for all the good times on the 9th Place; Iida Aino for the radiance she exudes; Otto Kyyrönen for listening and, even more so, hearing; Andrea Gilroy for all the soccer talk; Yvonne Toepfer for her company along the way; Mona Tougas for their touching tenderness; and Faten Arfoui Demirer for all the food and the baklavas. Also, thanks to Jenny Odintz, Emily McGinn, Elizabeth Howard, Martha Ndakalako Bannikov, Alican Akyüz, Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Gülce Tarhan, Celil Çelebi, Laura Mangano, and Suzanne and Bill Dassenko for helping me make a home out of Eugene. Special thanks to Gözde Kılıç for her long- distance assistance in acquiring some of the sources lacking in my research for Chapter III. Finally, I want to thank Özüm Erdil for always being there for me, and my parents, especially my mother Canan Akıncı for her never-ending love that blesses me from afar. ix In loving memory of Müji x TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: MELODRAMA AS AN AESTHETICS OF VICTIMHOOD ........................................................................................................... 1 II. VURUN KAHPEYE AND THE MELODRAMA OF HALIDE EDIB’S QUEER FEMINISM ................................................................................................... 30 The Ottoman-Turkish Women’s Movement ......................................................... 35 The Tanzimat Era ............................................................................................ 40 The Abdülhamid II Rule ................................................................................. 47 The II Meşrutiyet Era ...................................................................................... 54 The Republican Era ......................................................................................... 62 Halide Edib As an Ottoman-Turkish Feminist .................................................... 67 Hamidian Maternity and Demands for Education .......................................... 68 Marriage of Turkish Nationalism and Women’s Movement .......................... 72 Edib’s and the Ottoman-Turkish Movement’s Predicament: State Feminism ......................................................................................................... 75 The Melodrama of Vurun Kahpeye ......................................................................