Yeşilçam melodramatic imagination and its influence on the new Turkish Cinema

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1167366 (Table of Contents)

In Turkey, especially between 1960 and 1975, the popularity and influence of melodramatic cinema grew during dramatic socio-economic changes and hegemonic ideology of modernization project; melodrama tried to create a new morality for this emerging social order. The melodramatic imagination of Yeşilçam during this time period achieved formation of a characteristic Turkish melodramatic tradition. This thesis attempts to explore the influence of the melodramatic imagination of Yeşilçam on the post 1990s Turkish cinema. Focusing on some prominent examples (Zeki Demirkubuz, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Yavuz Turgul) of the new Turkish cinema, this analysis identifies Yeşilçam’s melodramatic tradition at the basis of this new cinema. The work of this thesis includes analysis of the structure of the melodramatic text, search for the historical and cultural background of melodramatic imagination, and investigation of the fundamental characteristics of Yeşilçam melodrama that forms the melodramatic tradition in Turkey.