RÜZGARDA SALINAN NİLÜFER VE BAĞLILIK ASLI FİLMLERİ ÜZERİNE TOPLUMSAL CİNSİYET VE ORTA SINIFLAR BAĞLAMINDA BİR DEĞERLENDİRME
Authors: NEZİR Muslu Caner 
Published: April 2023

Bu çalışmada, Seren Yüce’nin Rüzgârda Salınan Nilüfer (2016) filmi ile Semih Kaplanoğlu’nun Bağlılık Aslı (2019) filmi toplumsal cinsiyet ve toplumsal sınıf tartışmaları bağlamında değerlendirilmiştir. Toplumsal cinsiyet ekseninde yapılan değerlendirme, özel alan – kamusal alan ayrımının cinsiyetçi karakteri hakkında süregelen tarihsel tartışma temelinde kurulmuştur. Toplumsal sınıf ekseninde yapılan değerlendirme ise toplumsal tabakalaşma tartışmalarındaki Marksist ve Weberci hatlar üzerinden kurulan bir izleğin üzerine kurulmuştur. Türkiye’de filmlerle ilgili sınıf çözümlemelerinde genellikle Weberci geleneği takip eden statü temelli toplumsal tabakalaşma yaklaşımlarının esas alındığı görülmüştür. Bu nedenle bu çalışmada incelenen filmler, farklı bir yaklaşımla değerlendirilmiştir. Bu değerlendirme, Erik Olin Wright’ın çelişkili sınıf konumları kavramsallaştırması esas alınarak yapılmıştır.[tr]
This study examines the films The Swaying Waterlily (Seren Yüce, 2016) and Commitment Aslı (Semih Kaplanoğlu, 2019) in terms of gender and social-class discussions. The evaluation made on the axis of gender discussions is based on the ongoing historical debate over the sexist character of the distinction between the private and public spheres. In this context, it is first stated that the private sphere is generally identified with women, whereas the public sphere is identified with men; after that, Nancy Fraser’s subaltern counter-publics conceptualization, which supports the presence of women in the public sphere, is addressed. Historically, women in films have been positioned in the private sphere. This article addresses this issue in the case of the two films The Swaying Waterlily and Commitment Aslı. It argues that Commitment Aslı establishes a narrative emphasizing that women naturally belong to the private-household sphere. The film’s director, Kaplanoğlu, skillfully constructs this narration using a range of cinematographic elements. In contrast, The Swaying Waterlily welcomes the presence of women in the public sphere more positively. Although Yüce skillfully includes the complex social mechanisms that work against the presence of women in the public sphere, he does so in a way that opens a wide space for women in the public sphere. This article’s evaluation on the axis of social-class discussions is carried out through the lens of Marxist and Weberian approaches, as these are the dominant approaches to discussions about social classes and especially the position of the middle class in the literature. While class analyses of films in Türkiye are generally based on status-based social stratification approaches that follow the Weberian tradition, this article takes a different approach, one based in the Marxist tradition—specifically, Erik Olin Wright’s conceptualization of class counts. On this reading, the monotony, restlessness, and search for meaning in the lives of the characters in both films are associated with the contradictory character of their class counts. This contradictory character is mainly due to the fact that white-collar workers work for wages, while fulfilling their management and control functions over the wage earners in favor of the capitalist class. The article suggests that the unrest in their daily lives may also be related to such class counts. Nevzat Evrim Önal’s conceptualization of defense mechanisms is used to make sense of some of the attitudes and behaviors of these people. Önal categorizes the defense mechanisms that white-collar workers develop to escape from the unrest they are in as nihilistic defense, hedonistic defense, mystical defense, and infantile defense. In this study, the attitudes and behaviors of the characters in both films in daily life are evaluated by connecting them to nihilistic defense and hedonistic defense mechanisms. The article concludes that in terms of the position of women in the private or public sphere, which constitutes the first evaluation axis of this study, the film Commitment Aslı adopts a more conservative attitude and is willing to position women in the private sphere, whereas The Swaying Waterlily adopts a more positive approach to the existence of women in the public sphere. In the second evaluation axis, about middle-class lives, it concludes that both films draw attention to the unpleasantness, meaninglessness, restlessness, and lack of communication in such lives. In the movie Commitment Aslı, all these situations are presented within a main narrative line in which the woman is withdrawn to the private sphere; in The Swaying Waterlily, this is done in a more watchful style.[en]