The (re)production of a rape culture through film: Turkish cinema’s love affair with rape

Abstract

Sexual violence is a pervasive problem that continues to affect many women’s lives around the world. The cultural environment enables the continued perpetration of these crimes and the (re)production of these cultural environments as well as their subjects through visual arts, particularly cinema. In this article, the mutually constitutive relationship between the rape culture in Turkey and Turkish cinema, with its particular themes and characters, is explored and described in order to shed light upon the social setting that both produces and consumes the rape-themed movies while normalizing and allowing rape.

Notes

1. I do not argue that a rape culture exists only in Turkey. Unfortunately, in different shapes and forms, it can be found in many places around the world. The example that is explored in this article, however, is the one in Turkey.

2. Rape myths are the ‘prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists… deny[ing] or reduc[ing] perceived injury or… blam[ing] the victims for their own victimization’ (Burt 1980, 217).

3. The perception of women as property is one of the oldest historical traditions. In Athens of the fifth century BC, the seducers of married women were executed or tortured while the rapists of married women were made to pay a monetary fine because the former was considered to wrong the man’s property by having regular access to his home and wife, possibly fathering his children (Projansky 2001, 3).

4. For a more detailed analysis of Turkish television series and rape see Yüksel (2013).

5. Some examples include Aysel: Bataklı Damın Kızı (The Girl from the Marsh Croft, 1934), Beni Mahvettiler (They Ruined Me, 1951), Kanlı Feryat (Bloody Scream, 1951), Mahallenin Namusu (Honor of the Neighborhood, 1953), Vahşi Arzu (Wild Desire, 1953), Irz Düşmanları (Enemies of Honor, 1955), Zeynebin İntikamı (Revenge of Zeyneb, 1956), Kara Talih (Black Fortune, 1957), Yetim Ömer (Ömer the Orphan, 1957). See Atakav (2013); Scognamillo and Demirhan (2002, 96).

6. See Özgüç (2000) and Scognamillo and Demirhan (2002) for a detailed analysis of several of these movies.

7. Coşkun Göğen played rapists previously in published photo romance stories but on-screen appearance started in 1976. See Uskan (2010).

8. Most popular search on Google with regard to this scene is ‘İffet sex scene’ although it is really a rape scene.

9. Both actors appear in five of the movies (Ayrılamam, Kayıp Kızlar, Akrep, Polis Dosyası, Vazife Uğruna).

10. These messages are coded as ‘sexist messages/lessons’ in the Tables. These sexist messages/lessons consist of women’s worth being determined by her virginity, rape being the fault of women (because of their clothing, frailty, naïveté, or lack of caution), rape being an act against men related to the victim that needs to be purified by them, parents of women being responsible for controlling their daughters to protect them from rape and rape being lethal to the life of a woman.