Writings

About “Writings”

This pdf is a collection of essays I have written for theoretical

courses during my COVID-19 effected undergraduate education.
Each of them shaped my design works.

Eylem Eylül Acarsoy

2021
 6 About net.art
and AR

14 About New Media, Electronic Art

and Digital Art

22 Consumer Culture, Mass Media

and Public Sphere

28 Modernism, Fordism
and Mass Culture

36 Postmodernism, Postfordism,
Cultural Studies

Analysis of French New Wave

46 over the Comparison of

Pierrot Le Fou and Bufalo ‘66

Analysis of Ana Yurdu

74 and Köksüz within the

Framework of Motherhood
 How and why is net.art connected with New Media Art?

net.art is a New Media Art genre that emerged in the 90s. It is

named by Vuk Ćosic. They aim to produce aesthetically non-
pleasing artworks using the internet and its tools yet disregarding
its procedures. Besides, they produce their artworks in a sarcastic
way that some of their works may be misunderstood as viruses
since they are intervening in the audience’s personal computers and
making them non-functional. In that sense, the artists of net.art can
be considered rebellious, prank-loving, and sarcastic technophiles
with avant-garde approaches.

ASCII art and Glitch are some examples of the tools that net.art
artists are using. ASCII art is the code of symbols used for providing
standard electronic communication. Net.art artworks use ASCII
elements and “appropriate” them with changing their meaning,
creating images or banners with them as a funny and ironic game.

Glitch, on the other hand, is based on the errors of anything that

appears on the computer. It can be unreadable text or an image

About
with disconnected parts. Net.art artworks use glitches to provide a
pranky feeling that gives you shivers and makes you think you are
in an inescapable situation. As an example, “JODI” (Joan Heemskerk
and Dirk Paesmans) as the lead artists of net.art, use glitches and

net.art and AR
ASCII artworks that arrive nowhere, show nothing and provide no
information in their artworks. That’s the intention of them.

net.art is a New Media Art form because it illustrates many of the

characteristics of New Media and New Media Art.
I will examine those characteristics under these subjects:
2020-2021 Fall | RCTV 3380 New Media Art | Dr. Gizem Kızıltunalı | Midterm Paper Medium,
Content,
Audience,
Documentation, Adaptability and Remediability.

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 1.1 Medium
Traditional art gradually became New Media Art with the advances
in technology. As the mediums changed and humanity met with
computers and the internet, new spaces for art emerged as well.
These new spaces proved that sacred shrines like museums and
galleries where people go and look at the artworks without touching
and interacting are no longer needed to display art. The artist can
simply use internet to spread the artwork they created. That made
New Media Art accessible, universal, and decentralized by making
the world a “global village” where anyone can have any kind of
information as Marshall McLuhan states in his book “The Gutenberg
Galaxy”. In that sense, net.art is clearly a New Media Art form. It is
using the Internet as its default tool. As we can understand from its
name, it is the art of the internet itself. A net.art artwork, just as a
website, can be experienced by different classes, in different times
and with different intentions. There are no boundaries, which makes
it quite democratic.
1.2 Content
With its Zeitgeist, the 60s is the most active era of the world in terms
of social consciousness. The content of artworks radically changed
after exposing to a chaotic world stuffed with World Wars, racism,
and sexism. Because art is the ultimate expression of humanity,
artists started to criticize the political issues they are being exposed
in an intellectual way sooner or later. Also, using the new media
tools for art seemed so reasonable for them. Artwork without a
political attitude was considered an improper one. Although it seems
more on the aesthetic side, as being a New Media Art genre, net.art
artworks indeed demonstrate a political argument. It has emerged to
exhibit the artworks independently. Because in the non-virtual world
there were museums and galleries with boundaries. It was hard for
the artist to speak to a narrow audience and fight with issues like
nepotism in the museum business.
Thus, although we can not directly see the political content in the
artworks, the format that they build was politic. Therefore, the way
they discuss the internet is sarcastic. They manipulate it by using it
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again. Maybe it is kind of a criticism about the evalution of internet,
exposing too much media and “beauty standarts” of websites.
1.3 Audience
The audience of New Media and New Media Art is active. This is not
just because the Internet itself is providing this activeness by its high
interactivity level. It is also a new approach dates to the 60’s “Fluxus
Movement” and “Happenings”.
With the “Fluxus Movement”, art started to become process oriented.
The people involved in the art and the activity increased so much
that at some point in performance arts like “Happenings”, the
ordinary people became the art itself. They were the most active
ones by creating the artwork together. This is not a feature that we
can find in traditional art. The audience is creating the meaning
themselves. With the new media tools, they can share, make
comments, edit and “appropriate” the artworks. This characteristics
were again valid for net.art.
Net.art artworks are mostly collaborative projects that are done
remote and the audience can make changes continuosly on it
because HTML allows it. Further, it contains hypertextual elements.
The audience can jump from one page to another and experience the
whole artwork without any directions. This makes the experience
non-linear and the audience more active than before.
1.4 Documentation, Adaptability and Remediability
In addition, the archive techniques of traditional art changed with
the new media technologies. It can be documented easier and faster
then before. One can reach whatever they want in milliseconds with
the search engines. This makes the audience more active as I said
earlier. Besides, it allows a wide range of audiences to explore many
artworks themselves and change those artworks in their way-which
is called “appropriation”. This is an ambivalent point because this can
make new media artwork both ephemeral and eternal. If someone
appropriates an already-existing artwork, s/he creates an artwork
chain where other artists also edit. In that sense, it is eternal. Yet,
 some argue that this makes artworks cheap. The same view claims
that the internet and new media technologies made artworks banal
because it is not giving any new form and concept but it just adapts.
This is a bothersome gift from postmodernism to humanity.
Plus, the fast and furious development in technology made new
media art necessary to adopt itself and this is called remediation. In
that way, new media can be continuous and dynamic. For instance,
net.art contains windows and buttons, it uses typing and
copy -paste logic. All those features came from the 1920s traditional
art-college mentality. The computer itself is a remediation of basic
tools. Furthermore, net.art can remediate itself in the future with
inventions, just like how it’s doing since the 1990s with the tools
that create ASCII art. It is now easier to create an artwork or just a
supportive element of the net.art artwork.
Net.art is easy to archive as a new media art genre. The old net.art
artworks are archived via using “Wayback Machine: https://archive.
org/web/ It is a website where you can explore archived websites
according to the date. So, whether it is deleted or not, an artwork will
always be there to be explored. That makes net.art adaptable because
it is open, free, and dynamic.
How and why is Augmented Reality connected with New
Media Art?
Augmented reality is a new technology commonly used in social
media, games, medicine, advertising, and so on. It uses “markers”
to recognize the object and it provides a real-time experience.
Augmented reality can be used in an Instagram makeup effect
or even in an artwork displayed on the street via a mobile phone
camera. Although it is arguable whether an AR Instagram makeup
effect is an artwork or not, it is an effective and popular technology
in our generation.
According to a theory, the mentality of AR is going back to the 1900
“Wizard of Oz”, which is a well-known pop-culture book of that time.
It is claimed that the spectacles Emerald City citizens wear were
10
indeed AR tool that provided seeing the actual green and shiny side
of the city, whereas the whole city is a grey and dull place. This
theory is a clear example of AR.
Thus, I will explain why AR artworks are connected with new media
art according to those subjects:
Medium,
Content,
Audience,
Documentation, Adaptability and Remediability.
2.1 Medium
Augmented reality is a new media art genre because it uses new
mediums. Since we carry our mobile phones and cameras anywhere
we go like an organ of our body, augmented reality is always with
us. That makes it universal and ubiquitous. The artworks created
via AR technology can be exhibited anywhere without limits.
This mentality comes from the art approach of the 60s. With the
Happenings, art became presentable in every kind of place. That
is the logic of AR. You can lie down on your bed and experience
an artwork or you can simply go for a walk and scan an object to
reach the artwork. As I explained in net.art subject, this weakened
the authority of museums and galleries and made art way more
democratic and accessible.
2.2 Content
AR artworks mostly appear with their entertaining side. They are
there to make our day bearable or make ourselves beautiful if we talk
about Instagram makeup filters. The content must be new, real, easy,
and different. Because there are dozens of AR artworks, if we are
talking about giving it a different kind of view it should make people
feel different.
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 The nature of AR already allows the audience to feel the
juxtaposition because as the audience, we are exposed to virtual and
real together. It makes the AR artworks’ content tend to be surreal
and ironic. You can see a “Shrek” dancing on top of your carpet, for
example. This mentality dates back to the “Dada” movement. The
absurdism that took place in the 1920s “Dada” movement improved
and implied to the new technologies. Besides, there are AR artwork
projects like “Amp Up Seattle” that are involved with social and
political issues like racism and sexism, which makes them more
unique and effective in their field.
the artworks adaptable without even asking. We see so many AR
artworks with the same aesthetic, technique and content. Lastly,
AR artworks can remediate themselves. The first times we see
AR was 3D Glasses. Then there were 5D Cinemas and the basic
AR applications in some expensive mobile phones. It remediated
itself many times with the technological advances. Thus, it turned
into today’s standards. Now we can experience the whole process
without glasses, cheap and fast.

2.3 Audience

The content that AR artworks provide, makes people engaged with

the artwork more and more. It creates an immersion feeling and this
generates immediacy. The audience is so involved with the artwork
that sometimes they can forget that they are looking at an artwork
that is not real. There is no doubt that this is related to the audience’s
activeness that took place since the 60s with the process-oriented
approach of art. Yet in AR artworks, the immediacy is so high level
that the artwork is the audience themselves. The artwork can never
exist without the presence of the audience. If we want to see the
makeup in our face there should be a face, we can not experience
the makeup effect with a table or a spoon. Therefor, the results of
the artworks are different all the time even when used by the same
person. The angle, ambient light, and the place itself can be changed
radically in every frame of the AR artwork. All those variables indeed
provide eternal alternatives to the finished artwork. It gives an
everlasting timeless and spaceless experience to the audience.

2.4 Documentation, Adaptability, and Remediability

Like net.art, AR artworks are also easy to document and archive.

Being cheap, easy, and copiable makes it more accessible and
evanescing at the same time. Also, the virtual presence of AR
artworks makes it can not be stolen or vandalized psychically. Yet
we see the same ideas of the AR artworks everywhere so it is not
that preservable in terms of the idea of the artwork. This can make

12 13
 About New Media

Living in the environment of World Wars, deaths, hunger, and

poverty people understood that, they are not that innocent to live in
a modern world. They faced with circumstances that were different
from what modernity promised them: an everlasting development
and irrevocable peace and those people’s disappointments built a
postmodern society that created lots of different identities and views
in it. It was the rise of individualism.

In such a world, the 1960s took place in the history pages with its
dramatic social revolutions. Inevitably, in this individualistic culture,
the 1960s was the duration of abundance in terms of “voices”. The
voice of the street, youth, sub-culture, marginal ones. And those
voices had one single purpose: freedom. They wanted to be accepted
and gain the rights they deserved, They fought for a borderless
world. While blacks and gays fought for their rights, hippies only

About
wish was peace. Also, the sexual revolution and feminism were
started to occur at that time and nd they fought via lots of channels
such as art, music, poem and cinema.

New Media
In those times, capitalism was everywhere. Even art had
commoditized and it became a thing that people consume every
day. The galleries gave places only to the artist who can ensure
them with their fame and money. Yet, the intellectual artists who

Electronic Art
think art is priceless realized that issue and questioned the art as
a commodity. They thought that it is a serious issue that can cause
art to destroy itself. Hereby, the art perception changed actively. It
became more process-oriented than outcome-oriented. Because

and Digital Art

2020-2021 Fall | RCTV 3380 New Media Art | Dr. Gizem Kızıltunalı | Final Paper
they thought that “an outcome” means a material, a thing to sell,
a thing that will be used by capitalism whatever anyone do. Yet,
already everything was in the hands of capitalism. That’s why they
focused on works that belong to everyone, works that are ephemeral,
temporary, so that experience-oriented.
Those ideas created the Fluxus Movement which means “flow”. They
thought that nothing is important but the flow. You should go with
the flow and create your art around it. It is not important whether
you are an artist or not. Because the only important thing is the flow

14 15
 and what you do in this flow. Because of that, they started to create
spontaneous art performances they called “Happenings”. They were
happening in the middle of the street, with no aim or schedule,
including ordinary people with their ordinary circumstances. They
jumped over the tires, made pillow fights, sang songs cacophonously,
and these processes were considered as art. As a postmodernist
behavior, it makes high art and everyday life blurred. It brings
together the intellectual and the ordinary people. In that sense, we
can say that the Fluxus Movement and Happenings are counter-
hegemonic and non-conformist.
While all those “Happenings” happening, capitalism was
overwhelmingly growing. In terms of visual culture, television was
the only channel to obtain information. It was like a monopoly
monster creating “the mainstream culture” with its eternal arms.
In 1965, things started to change rapidly when Sony marketed the
first portable video camera. It was certain that, in such an active
environment in which portable cameras were built, there will be an
urgent change in every kind of social path. It affected art, cinema,
social activism, and used them as a weapon and a witness against
the mainstream culture.
The same intellectuals that created the Fluxus Movement, published
a magazine to reveal those statements of them: Radical Software.
It was more like a little community and their most “radical” offer
was to use new Sony portable cameras as a tool for creating art.
Because beyond being just new and active, the outcomes of portable
cameras were real. It was far away from the mainstream, which is
an avant-garde attitude. It had the potential to use as a medium for
personal expression, which is everyone’s desire in such a capitalist
and individualistic culture. Its counter-hegemonic and political way
made it scaled guerilla television. People started to capture their
own moments, their own memories, in their own habitat whenever
they want. It was the disclosure of streets and ordinary people. Just
like in the Happenings. There were no censorship, no commercial
and authority, and no perfection. Footages were shaky and irregular,
mostly black and white with low quality. It was completely stark.
They screen those films in the festivals like Woodstock, and in
16
underground places like a garage or a loft of an ordinary house
which they called “People Video Theater” and they were discussing
intellectually over those ordinary screenings. They thought that the
real media and art can only be made in this way.
Accordingly, the videos we use today emerged from the personal
portable camera usage habit around ordinary people. By the time
with innovations in technology, people became free to edit and add
effects to the videos and used stock images/videos. Thus, a huge
database of personal videos created around the world. Everyone in
their home had a Handycam since the 70s. And this created a more
visual-based society. Youtube emerged around this mentality.
Snapchat and Instagram, so that “story” concept is another aspect
of this situation. It seems that its only aim is to share the instant,
fast, and everyday status of ourselves. But nowadays, it transformed
into again serve to the capitalist system. The commodities here,
are ourselves. Wearing that face effects which makes us look like
a model on the Instagram stories, actually reversed what portable
cameras did in the first periods.
On the other hand, innovations in technology established a ground
for new artistic approaches, such as video art, electronic art, and
digital art under the new media art genre as the remediation of
the first portable video cameras and the fast and instant sharing
made social media platforms so much more active than television
media. That gently melts away the television culture. We can see the
participation of every individual, every side’s supporters in almost
every social condition in those social media platforms but not in
television’s mainstream flow.
17

Electronic Art
Electronic Art is considered as a valuable genre of New Media Art
because it contains pre affirmed genres of traditional high art in it,
such as ballet, opera, modern dance, drama, and so on. It is obligated
for electronic art to include an electronic component and the
masters of those related performances that the artist preferred.
In Alexander Mcqueen’s Savage Beauty, we can see that a model
(probably also educated in ballet) turns around in a turntable
between two standing robots (electronic components) that holding
spray paints towards her. She is the leading role and she acts like a
ballerina. So it is related to the traditional high art genre, ballet.
Being talked about traditional high art, the audience is extremely
important in electronic art, whether they attend the performance or
not. It is some kind of extroverted genre and in that sense, it is highly
interactive.
18
Alexander Mcqueen - Savage Beauty
Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=P13oZsD-t4s
As we see in the Savage Beauty, the robots start to spray paint the
white dress of the model(ballerina) randomly. And her actions
change rapidly during this process. The audience is reacting to this
action immediately. They clap hands and indicate that they are
here and watching the process actively. And it obviously affects the
audience with its tense music choice and the acting ability of the
model. So it is highly interactive.
Thus the key factor of electronic art is interaction. People are
interacting with the work. There is an artist and it constantly in
relation to the work. The artist does not just make its artwork before,
then present it by hanging or only publishing. They are making it
usually lively and there are full of interactions between them and the
electronic component.
So that, it is unequivocally process-oriented rather than outcome-
oriented.This does not mean that there is no outcome, but the
process is more valuable than the outcome here.
As though, we see in Savage Beauty, the claps of the audience are not
for the dress here, it is for the process and the total feeling that the
process made felt on the audience.
Because of its relation to traditional high art, electronic art is utterly
respectful towards those genres. That’s why it is an example of
remediation. It uses old art genres with remediated forms. That
clearly explains why Savage Beauty is considered as electronic art
and Alexander Mcqueen as an artist here.
And the roots of it unsurprisingly reaches to the 1960s art
perspective and Happenings’ interaction mentality so that people-
based performance arts as I mentioned earlier in the first question.
Savage Beauty is just a remediated version of the performance arts
of the 1960s.
19
 hypermediacy level. Also, there may be allegoric elements, which
makes digital art more abstract.

Like we see in the works of Harp’s it is quite surreal. We can’t see a

tailed man in our grandmother’s photo album. But it is done cleverly
with its craftmanship (effects and 3D object creating) that at first
glance we can not understand that it is a manipulated artwork. Also
clearly it carries an allegoric meaning, the woman with a half-cut
face looks like she is wearing a mask like a poker face and if we
remove the mask we can see what is inside.

Because of its postmodern perspective, digital art has no rigid

borders in terms of the movements it has influenced. Harps’ works
were influenced by surrealist works but he may shift to use pop
art elements in his works and that’s not an exceptional situation
in the digital art field which is different from what is usual in
traditional art.That’s why it is under the risk of not serving an avant-
garde attitude and digital artist may tend to be criticized about this
situation and even considered not as an artist. Maybe it’s the reason
why we can not find any Wikipedia page in the name of Harp’s and
Digital Art some of the other digital media artists on the internet.

Digital art can be summed up as using computer-based technologies Jeffrey Michael Harp’s
to createa work (outcome) that is consisted of pixels. It is static and Surreal Vintage Collages
outcome oriented. It remediates traditional art methods and it uses Reference: http://www.jeffreyharp.com/
manipulations a lot. victorian-surrealism/

As we can see from the artworks of Jeffrey Michael Harp, he

simply scans the physical vintage photos that he found around and
transfers them to the computer so that into pixels. Then, using 3D
tools again with the computer, he creates different objects and he
cleanly merges those two elements. So he is using a computerized
traditional art method: collage with manipulations.It is static, it’s
purpose is to be looked at and just stand there as a printed work or a
digital image on a website.

In its eclectic aspect, digital media can be extremely real or

hypermediated. Yet, it is usually surreal so that immediacy is a
part of it because it has to surprise the audience but not at the

20 21
 Consumer Culture

Everything actually began with Industrial Revolution so that mass

production. Capitalism changed the way people are living and it
turned the society into a community of consumers. That changed

Consumer Culture
both life styles and the personalities. People began to create their
ideal-selfs and that led to consuming more and more. Henry Ford
played a major role in this subject by reducing the working hours-
which eventually created a society that can have leisure and so that

Mass Media
consume. It evolved to a modern human who strolls and searches for
a good to buy like Baudelaire’s Flaneur mentioned in the slides. They
began to get the idea that the emptiness capitalism created will fulfill
with the capitalism again but that only ends up with consumption.

and Public Sphere
2019-2020 Spring | RCTV 3306 Visual Reading and Interpretation | Dr. Gizem Kızıltunalı | Assignment Paper
Consumer culture made advertisement an obligation, in the world
in which companies competing with each other madly. Therefore,
visuality means a lot when it comes to consume. This advertising
world that we are talking about lures people with different methods.
Most of them are promising a new, totally abstract world that you are
forced to imagine yourself in it, and consume as a consequence of
this imagination. It is some kind of an enchanting process.

The imagination that created with advertisements affects people in

a schizophrenic yet unconscious way that they think the product

22 23
 they bought is reflecting who they are, like a mirror of themselves.
Consequently, they want to display themselves as the best. But
the best that they think and the idealized self is just an imaginary
self that built by capitalism. The aim is to convince people that the
product is for them. That is called “pseudoindividuality”. We can see
it in Dewar’s Profile ad directly. It calls a persona to buy their product
straightforward by giving even the age and hobbies of the customer
profile. It calls to an action and it convinces people that they are the
people in the poster and they need to buy that product also by using
the myths of masculinity and power.
Likewise, consumption can create fetish products that gains
meaning by the time. These products secretly symbolizes the power
that the owner of it has. They began to carry a totally new meaning
separated from its original meaning. If I give a personal example
from my childhood, I can say that buying cloths from LC Waikiki and
eating in McDonald’s was considering so cool at that time. And if we
talk about these days, lots of brand especially Apple has that power
in its hands if we take notice that everyone trying to buy Iphone.
In that sense, this subject fits with Marxist theory with criticizing
capitalism on exchange over use value. Accordingly, we can say
that diamond costs more than water not just because it rare but the
possession of it gives power and privilege to people.
Advertisements aims to lead people to consume that product
but the successful advertisements are the ones that also creates
idealized selfs and make people consume that signs. Because it
is the only way to make them addicted in a confidential way. We
can say that advertisement methods may be seen in four different
ways. Using myths and social concepts, using intense feelings like
envy, desire and anxiety, using bricolage and counter-bricolage and
differentiating their product from other ones.
If we illustrate,in the Megara Perfume ad language in advertisements
is always direct, addressing to the viewer with presumptions
and creates personas on myths. It says “complex, fascinating and
unpredictable like a woman should be” as refer to the myth of
woman should be like that. Also we see Pablo Picasso in Apple’s
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advertisement. It uses the fame-mainstream to became fame again
using counter-bricolage technique.
Lastly we can say that advertisements can use art to be consumed
but they can also be art with some editing. In street culture people
are making fun with the advertisements and that can convey
political meanings. That is can be considered a detournement which
is a way to show that somewhere, some people are aware of this
situation and try to create an awareness with itself.
Mass Media
Mass Media is the media that speaks to the Mass Society. As we
can understand from the word “mass”, its address is directly mass
society which tastes are produced like a product to serve capitalism
by mass media through advertisements and so on. It is lack of
originality, creativity and individualism and it limits people in their
lifestyle. “Exchange value” and “commodity fetishism” are the results
of the process of generating taste, creating masses.
Even though, social media is open to every kind of people, looks from
different sides and more thought-provoking -like mentioned in the
slides, I believe that taste creating and being “mass” process is more
visible in the social media through especially Instagram. Everybody
wants one kind of product and it spreads through social media way
faster in comparison to mass media. You can see a movie or a band’s
t-shirt on everyones body. It is not just in the products, but in the
physical appearances itself. Nowadays the perception of beauty has
changed and all the people are trying to look like Kim Kardashian,
having cosmetic surgeries to get that look. In my opinion, this is a
direct “mass” example.
25
 Narcotic Effect in Media Public Sphere

As we can understand from “narcotic” word, it is an illusionary
feeling which make people consider just an interaction with a social
problem via mass media is enough to be a part of it. As an example,
during Gezi in Twitter there were many supporters who feels like
there are a part of the happenings yet, they were not the ones that
actually participate. Or as a more regular example, people are feeling
hurt when an animal is attacked only by sharing a picture of it via
social media.
Public Sphere is a discussion space which brings citizens
together to solve the problems related with society. In Turkey no
doubt that Gezi was a public sphere which gets help from other
public spheres like social media: Twitter and Facebook. As more
alive example, we can say Ekşisözlük is directly a public sphere
where members of the website can freely express themselves.
Other than Internet, I think “Turkish Kıraathane” or some TV
talkshows can be considered as a public sphere but especially
in the TV there are censorship pressures that may make people
avoidant to debate.

Frankurt School

Frankfurt School’s critics differs from Marxism on the idea of the end
of capitalism will never going to come. I think we can say that they
are some kind of “post-modern” so that hopeless in that sense. They
think that capitalism’s effects will grow stronger in a tangled way
because people are in a situation that no longer understand what is
real or not. They are fooled by the “false needs” which imposed them
by media. Films, popular music, tv shows so that whole media want
us to believe that we are living in a capitalist world and it will not
going to end. The only thing that we can do is entertain ourselves
with capitalism again or try to risen our standards with working
more which will probably result in disappointment. Even if it
succeed the person will be just a piece of the capitalist system.

I am for sure agree with that critic. Because the illusion of living
in a capitalist world always a thing that I experienced especially
psychologically. As an individualist person, I always try to escape
from the things that capitalism offers and that makes me feel
depressing all the time. As Frankfurt School critics says I do not
feel free to choose the fitting product so that I try to find ways of
customizing. Maybe that’s why Do it Yourself projects are common
around world, more than ever.

26 27
 What does it mean to be “modern”? Explain modernity from
Marxist and Weberian perspectives with the help of the key
words and concepts that they use to analyse it. What is the main
motive behind the idea of progression in modern age? Show how
capitalism and modernity are intertwined with each other. What
are the promises and the outcomes of modernity? Discuss it by
using the concepts of utopia and dystopia.

On the etymological side, coming from the root “modo” in Latin,

“modern” means basically the things happening right now -
contemporary. We can say that its contrary word is “ancient” and
this distinction started with the Renaissance. As an adjective, it used
in various meanings through time because of the changes in the
world after some milestones. Until the 19th century, it had a negative
meaning, yet after the 20th century “modern” started to be used in a
more positive way which is defined as improved, satisfactory
or efficient.

There is not a single modernity. There are different kinds of

modernities. Every culture modernized in different ways. We can
not say that Turkish modernity and Russian modernity are the same
because the societies are not dealing with the same issues at the
same time through history.

Modernism, Fordism
As Baudelaire pointed out in his essay “The Painter of Modern
Life”, modernity is fleeting, just a momentary feeling that people
experienced in the metropolitan. And the different views in the
modernist art clearly reveals that situation. We can not say all art

and Mass Culture

pieces in the modernist area are positive because it will eventually
derive into postmodernism.

The key factors of modernity have been mentioned with different

factors according to different theorists:

2019-2020 Spring | RCTV 3380 Popular Culture | Dr. Güven Selçuk | Midterm Paper For Karl Marx, capitalism, its principles, institutions and the
bourgeoisie are the reasons why modernity takes place. He clearly
explains this in the Communist Manifesto as the “melting of solid
in the air” which also gives its name to Marshall Berman’s book: “All

28 29
 That is Solid Melts into Air”. Capitalism brought a totally different
lifestyle to the world with frantically increased production and this
put forward the class differences. It changed all the social conditions
in a bad way and brought dull relationships. It destroyed the
traditional way of living. Moreover, it took power from the employee
and gave it to the employer because of the selfishness of classes.
It brought labor productivity issues with it and the rate of surplus-
value increased automatically with capitalism. Also, as Marshall
Berman claims whether it brings joy, power, and growth, it will also
bring humanity’s end. Once a thing is created, it should be destroyed.
For Max Weber, modernity is associated with rationalization and
disenchantment, which lead to secularization. He thinks that the
Enlightenment project is the cornerstone of it. It was aiming to
liberate humans with demystification and desacralization with the
help of science. Yet it was illusory and ironic, and it metaphorically
creates an iron cage which people can not escape. It created
instrumental rationality which will lead to terrorism and violence in
the end. That is also why Adorno and Horkheimer see the purposive
instrumental rationality that derived from Enlightenment as a
nightmare that will bring the end of humanity by causing self-
domination in “The Dialectic of Enlightenment”.
Modernity promises of the individual’s perfection as well as the
perfection of society: the perfect human who controls nature and
brings abundance to the world. Yet as I said earlier we all know that
even though modernity sounds optimistic, humanistic and innocent,
it is not. The promises it gives did not match its outcomes. This is
proved by the Nazi movement and Hiroshima-Nagasaki explosions.
These were the ultimate examples of the demolition of modernity
and the hopes that were attached to it.
To sum up, it is hard to base everything on the reason like dreamed
in the Enlightenment project and creating a class-based controlled
system with the rising of capitalism. These drag people into a
paradoxical situation that will bring the end of modernism: if we
control nature we will control ourselves and this produces the end of
humanity. Which we face with most of the modernist era stories we
examined like Franz Kafka’s The Castle or Goethe’s Faust.
30
For example, in Goethe’s Faust, Faust was portrayed as a man that
desires the world to be a better place. It mentions “Übermensch”
which is basically the master race. He created a modernist Utopia by
being such dreamy and wanting to sell his soul to the Mefistoteles
and change the world. He was revolutionary and his virtues were for
society and community, they were not individualistic.
Yet his dreams are destroyed with his own hands because he turns
himself into an ambitious and furious destroyer with this first evil
act. He destroys the house of innocent Philemon and Baucis’ just for
his own sake. “Once he’s running, to get rid of all the obstacles then
he starts to block the road and he has to go” as Marshall Berman
commented and story turns into a dystopia which will paradoxically
bring Faust’s end.
Explain thoroughly the Fordist method of production and
accumulation regime (where does the term come from, its main
characteristics, the relationship between Fordism and the previous
production methods, its consequences, etc.). In what ways Fordism
is modernist? Try to prove the correlation between Fordism and
modernism by making an analogy between Henry Ford and Faust.
The term “Fordism” named by Antonio Gramsci and it took place
in the 20th century. In the narrow scope, it is an assembly-line
based manufacturing system. Yet, if we analyze it deeply, it is an
accumulation regime and it generated a new kind of society.
The creation of the assembly line provided a totally different
manufacturing system. It substituted the craft-based production.
It is affected by Taylorism and a complementary part of it, but
Ford implemented this in an obscure and sneaky way. It uses the
principles of Taylorism such as splitting works into pieces and
training. The worker was training in a really short time that they
were being ready to work after the lunch which also leads to the
dehumanization of process. It turned the worker into an unqualified
and dependent person without the concept of humanity. It brought
full employment, speed, increased the rate of surplus-value without
even noticing it.
31
 Moreover, we should know that Henry Ford was not just a
businessman but he was actually a community engineer. He created
a society that feeds from leisure. He destroyed the puritanism
concept that comes from the traditionalist lifestyle which was the
idea of working a lot and being modest about consuming. Yet that
was not Henry Ford wanted. He wanted people to consume more and
more. He wanted people to be happy and take care of themselves.
He provided people even the power of buying the product that they
just produced. That’s why he decreased the working hours into eight
hours and increased the salary of one hour into five dollars - which
is more than doubling the previous salary even though the condition
in an economic crisis.
Henry Ford tried to control the nature of humanity without even
noticing. That was the distinctive part of Henry Ford that separates
him from Taylor. He was visionary. That lead to a world system
that governed with companies and created a paternalist society. He
tried to sneak into people’s lives, change it, and make them serve the
capitalist system - so that he. His main enemy was unionization.
He even placed spies into the fabric that will influence workers
into not unionize. He tried to block individualism with restrictions
even with the outside the workspace with creating social discipline
instruments like social care specialists in workers’ house. He even
restricted the alcohol and tobacco consumption and the sexual
relationships so that the health of the workers which will provide
him more adaptable handy and coordinated ones. We can say that he
was quite thoughtful about his workers like Willy Wonka on Oompa
Lompa’s, because they are the precious producers of him. So that
clearly explains the Taylorist view of Ford.
Thus, in many ways Fordism is modernist. It is modernist both
aesthetic and ideological way. It affected the world with Bauhaus
school and it’s products so that the whole lifestyle “being modern”
defined with the Fordist system. like wanting perfectionism, being
over nature, trying to create an alternate world in which everyone is
happy and working in an illusionary way.
32
In all those ways he could control nature but as Goethe’s Faust, that
backfired him not just because of the lack of modesty he served but
also the pushing the limits. Twenty-four hour loop working hours,
undertaking workers too much, using the same machines twenty-
five years and most importantly; standardization-which happens to
be impossible with the need for customization in the mass society
became the end of Ford.
He turned into the Faust with transforming working mentality,
which eventually will face demolition. The workers started a riot
which will continue with blood. By the time, riot enflamed and the
biggest factory in the world stopped.This changed the view towards
Ford. Most interestingly, according to Gramsci; Ford’s attitude
triggered even the rise of fascism in Italy.
Henry Ford and Faust similar in the way that both of them driven
with a capitalist mentality. They never stop. They continue until they
destroy themselves. The “speed” was essential for both of them and
together they sink into the arrogance of power after a while.
But the differences are;
-Faust did not want anything for himself. He only wanted to bring
goodness to the world.
-He was virtuous.
-He did not care for money. It was just a tool for him.
-Faust was an individualist
-Henry Ford consciously did everything for himself in a sneaky way.
-He did it like he is doing something good for the workers but these
were just manipulative moves.
-The only aim of him was money.
-Ford ignored the individualism and focus on the masses.
33
 Explain thoroughly the concepts of mass society and mass culture.
What is the relationship between modernity and mass society?
What are the ideological functions of culture industries and mass
culture generally? What is the relationship between the Fordist
method of production and mass culture products? In other words,
can we see the reflection of Fordist production system on mass
culture?
After the Industrial Revolution, with the death of the agricultural
lifestyle the village community, the scientific knowledge and
secularization were aroused, and the world started to urbanize and
industrialize. That created a profile of “atomized people”. In this
profile, people are far away from the moral and modest lifestyle.
They only “crash” each other not actually “communicate”. So, there is
no power in this society. People are only authorized and connected
via mass media which is controlled to create “masses” so that a
“mass society” starts to form.
The mass society is “the everyone”, “common people” and the
mass culture is the culture that they experience. It is the majority’s
style. It has no identity. It is superficial, non-discriminating and
homogenized. It is benumbed brains that are controlled via media.
The mass culture is not a top-down entity. It is a created and
formulated society and, of course, it clearly has a pejorative
meaning. It is directly produced by a capitalist economic system
and the masses have to serve again capitalism. So this situation
keeps it alive. It teaches people how to live, how to consume and
communicate - or not. It creates tastes.
In such a world, the value of product is determined by its exchange
value and that brings a fetishism towards commodity which is
called “commodity fetishism”. Because of that dependency, the more
a product remains in the market, the more it will be wanted by the
mass society. The aesthetic of it is no longer important; it is only
important to possess it.
As Fordist methods, mass culture aims to create indistinguishable,
standardized, and easy to obtain minds. We can illustrate it by Ford’s
Model T. It was produced only in black with one model and price and
everybody - even the workers in the factory were buying it because it
was that cheap.
As Adorno and Horkheimer claim, there is no difference between the
cars and the films, songs, and eventually the people. People are like
they are all produced in an assembly line with the exact formula,
standardized, routinized, and passivated just like the commodities.
Thus, the culture itself starts to become a commodity.
There is no given choice to consumers. The choice given is nothing
different from choosing between Apple or Android, a fake and
cheating choice that will result in the desire to customize after a
little while with Post-Fordist culture.

Thus the lack of communication and destruction of individualism in

this society brings nostalgia towards the old, traditional, folk culture
which is more communitarian. Because this new society only brings
perfectionism, so that depression, loneliness, and stress increase
People are trying to find a way to escape from this situation and try
to forget it by some kind of amnesia. Since they were beguiled with
“false needs”, they can not understand the whole situation. They
focus on the false needs like property or rising in the workplace so
they structure their life around those

34 35
 Explain the correlations between the concepts of postmodernism,
post-Fordism, and ‘contemporary’ popular culture. How Fordism
was transformed to post-Fordism? Explain the economic and
political conjuncture. Is there a relationship between post-
Fordism and postmodernism? Is there a connection between
“the transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation” and “the
transformation of the norms, habits, and political and cultural
attitudes since the 1970s”? Is the shift from the collective norms and
values of the 1950s and 1960s, towards a much more competitive
individualism (and the emergence of an entrepreneurial culture),
related with the rise of post-Fordism? Do these shifts herald the
birth of postmodernism and what kind of impacts do they have
on contemporary popular culture? In what ways post-Fordism
and postmodernism is linked with popular culture? What is the
relationship between the post-Fordist method of production and
the products of popular culture? Can we see the reflection of
post-Fordist production system on popular culture? In what ways
contemporary popular culture is postmodern?

After revolutions in the technology world started to digitalize, it

unsurprisingly take the world into a total change in terms of social

Postmodernism
conjuncture by creating a new type of social life, sowing the seeds of
today’s people. Yet the changes in social life started very firstly with
the changes in the economic and political conjuncture. And these
started with the big crisis of capitalism and Fordism in the 1970s. In

Postfordism and
this era called Post-Fordism manufacturing was governed by flexible
accumulation. Technology made countries dependent on each other
in terms of economics. Also with colonization, Western countries
used the unqualified workers of Northern countries. That made

Cultural Studies
companies decentralized and created a network society. This was
not the Fordist era experienced. For instance, the Ford company was
producing from its raw material to its radio in its own fabric. It had
no distributers, it was selling its products on its own.

Post-Fordist methods are resemblethe Pre Fordist era working

2019-2020 Spring | RCTV 3380 Popular Culture | Dr. Güven Selçuk | Final Paper patterns - 1920s workshops but in a digitalized way. Yet as I said
earlier, in the Post-Fordist era countries/companies were started to
obtain their requirements from different kind of partners/colonies.
That created national markets so that nation-states withdrew and

36 37
 instead dominated global markets and Neo-liberal states.
Those changes bring other fundamental changes in the social,
economic, and political attitudes and cultural routines, since those
are integrated with each other solidly. In its economic conjuncture,
Post-Fordist transformation made the rich richer while the poor
ones became poorer.
Everything started to be decentralized as well as the working
system. The service industry played a major role in the working
pattern with technological advances. The ease of accessing the
information made home-office working style popular and part-
time work started to apply. Yet in another way, it demanded that
workers were super qualified. It created a type of worker which
can be classified as “portfolio worker”. That made everything a
competition and created an entrepreneurial culture. In the Post-
Fordist era, working in the same company for years is not seen as
professional contrary to the Fordist era. Therefore, as I experienced
in the Visual Communication Design field, it made interdisciplinarity
a requirement. We can not say that we are only designing, we have
to understand the process of developing. I think that in the future,
sooner or later all these fields will intertwine totally.
Thus, more importantly, the ethos: norms and habits of humanity
totally changed after the Post-Fordist era. Women’s conditions in
society were with their economic independence by existing in the
working class more actively. So that everything including women
changed, patriarchalism started to be questioned and feminist
movements flared up.
With this expansion in all the fields, social movements began to
be volatile and local. Fragmentation was the keyword of the Post-
Fordist era. It was fragmented in all ways. The political attitudes
were only concerned with a single issue such as feminism or
veganism. Religious, ethnic, territorial, or national identities started
to transform into “sub-identities” that gathered in a narrow scope.
So that, religious fundamentalism occurred, people started to be
fanatics of their own identity, giving no chance to other groups.
Eventually, they saw other identities as strangers and threats.
38
That made everything specified, and social areas became hard
to share. Thus, today’s identities have become more and more
disjunctive, unlike the Zeitgeist of the 50s and 60s organized class
resistances. All these transformations speeded up the process in
which people are surrounded by the ideas of nationalism, racism,
and conservatism. Those are some of the former reasons why we
experience racism issues.
As a continuation, in contrary to the collective norms of earlier
eras, the norms of Post-Fordist era became individual. The dramatic
results of Post-Fordism built an enterprising and competitive culture
in which people were exposed to better and better-qualified CV’s
and portfolios, eternal dedication to the work and interdisciplinarity
that eventually will result in individualistic, self-seeking,
unsatisfied and ephemeral hedonistic society as the 80s punk
band The Replacements’ sums up with their song titles like “Here
Comes a Regular” or “Unsatisfied”. Those elements drag us to the
Postmodernism.
All those shifts in the Post-Fordist era created a Postmodernist
society and affected popular culture. This competitive world resulted
in a lack of depth and meaning, only visual-oriented and superficial
outputs. This output reaches from the products to the people
themselves. It made everything transient and it preferred feelings
and emotions over logic. In its aesthetic form, Postmodernism made
pastiche a method, while it was using it as an irony in the past times.
It nourished its outputs from the past in a nostalgic way, at the end of
the day it made everything trivial.
Postmodernism totally changed the idea of “time” and “truth”
with the colossal advances in science like relativity theory. It
destroyed the linear understanding of people and changed it with
non-linear narratives and created hyperreality with simulations.
Lots of elements in the media - from a playground to a city itself
- are simulations of the real world because the destruction of
reality influenced popular culture insanely. Those clarify why the
Postmodernist society is lacking in historicity. People simply think
that they don’t need truth, reality and history. Everything digested
in a non-linear and unknown way to a schizophrenic situation
39
 as Fredric Jameson claims. People act like they lost their sense
of direction and stroll around like they don’t have any idea about
anything contradictorily to the technology they have in their hands.
This situation brings existential crisis with it and we can examine it
in every corner of popular culture.
These changes in the ethos of Postmodernism and popular culture,
necessarily derived from the changes in the Post-Fordist era. The
increase in production affected the whole culture. Culture itself
transformed into “Made in China” products. As David Harvey states,
it is not a coincidence that time gain importance with time-space
compression and that leads to create a just-in-time delivery system.
With Post-Fordist accumulation systems everything speeded up,
and as Alvin Toffler named a “throw-away society” built itself.
They did not just consume fast-foods and did not just throw-away
commodities, together they abandon norms and morals.
Postmodernism made everything commercialized by with creating
a media-saturated society. Media started to be considerded not
as reflection of reality, but reality itself. We can exemplify this in
contemporary popular culture. The things that are not posted on
social media can be considered nonexistent, or the people who
are not using social media actively are unlikely to be “famous”
in these times. Thus, contemporary popular culture is besieged
with postmodernism in various ways. It is desperate and helpless
because the so-called rebellion always reminds people that
nothing is going to change. It values style over substance. It is only
concerned about how “many” a products can be sold. Usefulness
means nearly nothing, and that makes intellectual insignificant
which creates kitsch outcomes that designed for masses. We can
see examples, especially in pop-art. Andy Warhol’s works illustrate
how the masses’ taste can be represented. It is a populist view over
Postmodernist culture. Today that kitschiness and pastiche-based
outcomes can be seen all around the popular culture even though
you look into the high art examples, cinema or a regular bag you
used; it is intertwined in all the fields.
40
Explain the “structuralist” and the “culturalist” approaches to
popular culture (the two clashing views that dominated the studies
on popular culture in the 1970s) through the works of Roland
Barthes, Louis Althusser, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and
Edward P. Thompson. How do they handle the issue of popular
culture, and in what ways they differ from each other. Compare
those different approaches by using the concepts of “structure” and
“agency”. What is your point here, and why?
Structuralism and Culturalism were the two incompatible
domineering views in the 1970s popular cultural studies.
Structuralism, as we can understand from its roots discusses popular
culture over the structure, whereas Culturalism discusses it
over the agency.
Culturalists see popular culture as the culture that was built by the
society itself, produced by the people who live it, from the “bottom-
up”. They give value to the movements that have been built in society
such as subcultures and grassroots. That is why they analyzed those
movements intensely. Therefore, there is no doubt that they don’t
underestimate the agency. The agent is active and producing, not
just passive and consuming. For them, society is living, and the mass
culture is just a thing that the culture industry spread.
Structuralism sees social and economic structure as the factors
that determine society. Structuralists see society as passive and
identify it as nothing different than the mainstream. In that sense,
we can say it has been inspired by the “Frankfurt School”. Contrary
to Culturalists, they think popular culture is a “top-down culture”
and they find agent passive and only consuming, so to say unable to
think and act because of the structure that builds it. Accordingly, its
view is more pessimistic than Culturalism.
Louis Althusser who was influenced from Marxism and created
Structural-Marxism finds Karl Marx’s thoughts on ideology
inadequate and claims that ideology is pervasive, concrete and
structured so that everywhere. He thinks that being the “subject”
is just an illusion after modernity and its offered social-politic and
economic lifestyle. For him, there is a Subject(with capital-S) and
41
 the regular subjects(people). With seeing people as the passive little
subjects, he values structure over agency like the other Structuralists.
And he explains it with Ideological State Apparatus(ISA) and
Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) which are basically the tools of the
state that structured to shape society.
Besides, Roland Barthes who made lots of contributions to the
Semiology sees Structuralism over meaning. Semiology examines
how meaning is made with denotations and connotations and
demystifies myths which are seen by him as the illusions that serve
the bourgeoisie-the class with no name that hides itself. His views
are quite structuralist because he sees society as passive.
According to Raymond Williams, culture is lived experiences of
“ordinary” people, what they have faced within their daily lives.
That puts emphasis on the agency. Furthermore, Williams thinks of
popular culture in a pejorative way, yet he claims people should not
be reduced to their consumption.
Unlike Structuralists, E.P Thompson, as in the title of his book called
“The Making of the English Working Class” sees culture as an active
process that builds itself and sees the working class as a conscious
creation, which started with the expression “being a working-class”.
He sees popular culture movements from “below” and identifies it as
a site of resistance, which makes it alive, controllable, and an arena
that people can express their rebellions.
In this topic, I’m in the position where Antonio Gramsci and Stuart
Hall stand which is in-between. I believe with no doubt that there
is a structure that shapes the society and we cannot ignore the
Apparatus that Althusser mentions, yet we cannot ignore the acts of
the agency which have been proved with subcultures and affected
whole societies and modified them. And at the same time as we see
through history, eventually, these movements will turn into a mass
culture item and serve again capitalism which I find inevitable. So, I
am not as optimistic as E.P Thompson in that sense.
42
Explain the “cultural studies” tradition of Birmingham School after
Stuart Hall, which proposed the Gramscian notion of “hegemony”
as a solution to the structuralist/ culturalist debate. Explain
Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony by clarifying the concepts
of “persuasion”, “incorporation”, “articulation”, “consent” and
“common sense”. Why hegemony is always contested? How Stuart
Hall explains and defines popular culture from a Gramscian point
of view? In what ways his approach is different from structuralism
and culturalism? Discuss the evolution of musical forms in popular
culture (such as rap, punk or arabesk) from this theoretical
viewpoint.
In the 1970s cultural studies were deadlocked. The studies were not
enough to understand popular culture truly, either only focusing
on the agency and lacking in structure or ignoring agency totally
and seeing it as gullible. In the Post-Fordist era, digitalization
and changes in the economic and political system resulted in the
decrease of industrial cities’ populations and so the decline of the
working class. Furthermore, it resulted in deunionization. These
events matched with what Antonio Gramsci faced fifty years ago in
the Mussolini era of Italy.
Different from how Marx sees ideology, Gramsci didn’t see the
production only as a guaranteed monopoly justification of ruling
class. It is not enough to subordinate. He claimed that political
leadership is based on cultural leadership. And he sees cultural
subordination as a fluid and permanent process with lots of needs.
Firstly, the ruling class must persuade, then gain consent and
eliminate the marginal ones by demonizing them or incorporating
them in a subtle way or including them to again hegemony with the
articulation method. And this happens with developing a common
sense, which is his definition of a glue to hold society together. In
this way the ruling class can build a consensus, persuade other
people and demonstrate their ideologies as natural and typical, as if
they belong to other classes. That is how hegemony is built, and this
view matches Structuralism unquestionably.
43
 In another view, he sees the agent active the same way as
Culturalism sees it. Because in his view, the agent is always
struggling actively, fighting with the system. It needs to be proved
again and again because there are lots of “glitches” that show
people that those ideologies are fabricated. People are struck with
their poverty, femininity, blackness. They are struggling with their
differences in their daily life. That is again the ruling class’ work to
narcotize the other classes continuously which makes hegemony a
spaceless arena.
They do this mostly with incorporation. That means in order to
suppress rebellions, they turn them into an element that again mass
culture consumes. It can be exemplified with the punk elements
that commoditized. That’s why the“poser” term is used among punk
subculture to eliminate those who fooled with incorporation and
dragged it to a different place where their purpose was totally upside
down.
Because of the above reasons, we can say that hegemony theory was
on its own a combination of Structuralism and Culturalism, but by
itself neither one. It gives value to both agency and structure equally,
and it does not see a particular one superior to another.
Using Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony theory, Stuart Hall combined
Structuralist and Culturalist view in the Birmingham School. The
school sees popular culture as Culturalists, yet getting help from
Structuralist methods, they examined popular culture mostly over
mass media and subcultures that emerged in their time.
Mass media was the area that we can examine hegemony in its
barest form. Different from how Marx sees media, Stuart Hall does
not think that there is one single ideology that imposed people in
the media. He thinks there are different ideologies and realities in
mass media which reveals his postmodern thoughts even though
he is not a postmodernist theorist. There are different thoughts and
some of them shows confrontations against the ruling class. This
feature is also making it intertwined, polysemic and conformist so
that it can be accepted from different kinds of people with different
ideologies. That makes mass media a really important arena as
44
well as language and popular culture in Birmingham School, which
examined those subjects during the Stuart Hall period. This period
was quite rich in terms of counter-hegemonic movements that are
coming from “below” and there is no doubt that they threatened
the dominant hegemony. And no one before the Stuart Hall period
looked into the subcultures in that way and examined them as a
serious social-political movement.
The subcultures that have been derived from some musical forms
clearly illustrate how a culture that performs differently (in terms
of fashion, argot, signs, symbols and so on) can be built up with the
experiences of being working class, poor or black - the frustrated,
marginal cultures. They are creating their own identity and act
differently from the regular culture that we know, which makes
them counter-hegemonic. Those musical forms can be named as
rap, punk, reggae, arabesque and so on.
Dick Hebdige, who is himself totally Culturalist, uses Structuralist
concepts like homology, bricolage and appropriation to explain
subcultures in England. In his view, punk was the most active
subculture in England during post-war period which affected
other subcultures. They appropriate dog collars, safety pins and
Doc Martens’ into their riot tools while they have a totally different
meaning on the dominant hegemony culture.
On the other hand, Rude Boys and Rastafarians were more
concerned with racism over blackness, and those cultures
appropriated cultural items of black culture to them. Dreadlocks
and marijuana was later used by other white subcultures such as
mods. Also, Tricia Rose who examined rap after 80s as a counter-
hegemonic movement claims that it can’t be argued that rap shows
what suburban black youth faced in a musical form. Yet, it has some
contradictions like being sexist, and it is prone to being commercial.
On this basis it is not wrong to say that Turkish migrant workers’
rap music performances in Germany and the arabesque movement
which existed in the 80s in Turkey were clearly examples of
subcultures that derived from poverty. They both show how a
working-class people act and feel. So, they are epitomes of the
45
suburban youth.


Table of Content

1. Information about French New Wave

1.1 Historical Perspective
1.2 Visual Features
1.3 Common Themes
1.4 Important Directors and Films

2.Information about Pierrot le Fou

Analysis of
2.1 Story of Pierrot le Fou
2.2 Importance of Pierrot le Fou and Jean-Luc Godard in Film Culture
2.3 Reason to choose

French New Wave

3.Information about Buffalo ‘66
3.1 Story of Buffalo ‘66
3.2 Importance of Buffalo ‘66 and Vincent Gallo in Film Culture
3.3 Reason to choose

over the Comparison 4. Similarities between Pierrot le Fou and Buffalo ’66
4.1 Similarities and Differences in Visual Elements
4.1.1 Intro
4.1.2 Colour and Lighting

of Pierrot Le Fou
4.1.3 Costume and Makeup
4.1.4 Props
4.1.5 Settings
4.1.6 Editing

and Bufalo ‘66

4.1.7 Shots
4.1.8 Movement
4.2 Similarities and Differences in Performance
4.3 Similarities and Differences in Themes
4.4 Similarities and Differences in Sound and Music

2020-2021 Fall | RCTV 0220 Film Culture | Dr. Burcu Dabak | Midterm Paper 5. Conclusion
5.1 The reasons for the differences and similarities
Scan the code to read this document 5.2 Personal Interpretation
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1. Information about French New Wave
1.1 Historical Perspective
Before explaining what is French New Wave as a cinema movement,
we must cover the socio political aspect of the 60s.
After experiencing two world wars, it was inevitable for the 60s
people to crave freedom. And the desire for freedom has been
expressed in various ways in various genres such as art, music, and
cinema. Besides subcultures like “hippies” and new art experiences
like “Fluxus movement” and “happenings” emerged in this era with
their process-oriented views.
And the nutrition of the 60s people was capitalism. After a huge
industrial growth that was surrounding them, capitalism was
creating a consumerist society sneakingly. Thus, looking into
the 60s, no doubt that we can identify this era as the most youth-
dominated era ever. Everything was dominated by youth, their
consumptions, their preferences. Pop culture created in those times.
People’s modernist view of the world shifted to postmodernism
after their disappointment with the world wars. Capitalism and
postmodernism together created an individualistic society that
prefers one’s self and personal thoughts over unity and variety.
Because it was the time when people shifted to a life loop that
contains only working and consuming. Their only chance was to
go into their shell and discover their inner thoughts, disorders, and
madness. This individualistic lifestyle together with technological
advances made television culture popular over movie culture.
In France, while the mainstream’s concern was television, cinema
was released to the intellectuals. Those intellectuals created the
term “Cinephilia”. They started to watch dozens of films, think about
cinema itself, analyze films in terms of their philosophical views. It
was a real philosophical process.
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French New Wave, emerging from this kind of environment
developed around “Cashiers du Cinema” magazine’s writers, the
cinephiles of the 60s: Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude
Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette. Foremost, they were both the
writers and thinkers of their films.
After their thoughts on cinema shaped, they wanted to make films
immediately. That’s why they were the primary steps of the “auteur
director” term. In the beginning, it meant” the director who is also
the scenarist of the film”. Then, it gained its meaning with French
New Wave directors and it became “a film director who has a lot of
influence on the making of their films so that they can be considered
as their author” according to Cambridge Dictionary.
Being the first thinker generation of directing, French New Wave’s
motto was to break the rules. They always tried to do the opposite of
what they saw. That’s why they influenced such various directors in
the world.
1.2 Visual Features
Just like how 60s people wanted freedom, French New Wave
directors searched for the liberation of the camera from the tripod.
They saw the camera as a captivated dog and all they wanted was to
unleash it. Thus, they experimented with the camera’s opportunities
by giving it freedom. Technological advances in the camera industry
positively influenced this desire. Portable and hidden cameras were
used in most of the scenes.
They preferred natural lighting, yet unnatural and amateur acting.
Actors were acting artificially and they even hired untrained actors.
Influenced by Brecht, they tried to break the fourth wall. They
wanted the audience to notice that “it is just a film”. And they did it
blatantly with the actors looking and talking to the camera directly
while acting. Impressed by the theatre, they sometimes used musical
kind of acting. Narrative ambiguity was the key factor applied to all
the French New Wave films. Because of giving the feeling of this
ambiguity and discontinuity, they used jump-cuts a lot.
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 1.3 Common Themes 1.4 Important Directors and Films

As I said, narrative ambiguity was the essence of their themes. As Started as a critic:
contrary to what they saw before the 60s, they wanted to break the
rules of narrative continuity. They particularly not focused on the Jean-Luc Godard | À bout de souffle (1960) , Une femme est une femme (1961),
story. It was only the auxiliary element of the film. This made visual Vivre sa vie (1962), Le Mépris (1963), Pierrot le Fou (1965)
elements more important to discuss in those films.
François Truffaut | Les Quatre Cent Coups (1959), Tirez sur le Pianiste (1960),
The story itself has given with no purpose, meaning is not much of a Jules et Jim (1962)
thing at all. And the common feature in French New Wave films is to
give the feeling of aimlessness. At first glance, the film seems like it Claude Chabrol | Les Bonnes Femmes (1960)
tells nothing in terms of story and its flows, yet when it finishes the
audience realizes that there is a story and it tries to tell something to Eric Rohmer | Claire’s Knee (1970)
them in between the lines.
Jacques Rivette | Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)
Deriving from an individualistic era, French New Wave’s
themes covered private thoughts of the person; their concerns,
existential anxieties mostly using irony. That’s why there is not Not started as a critic:
much consistency in the themes of this era like how thoughts of
individuals vary and not consistent. So, the films themselves become Agnes Varda | La Pointe Courte (1955), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
some kind of essay of the director.
Louis Malle | Les Amants (1959)
About its common points, we can say that French New Wave films
tend to contain a coincidence lot. Every character somewhere,
somehow accidentally runs into each other. That makes a
connection between the films.

Although we say that there are no common themes because of its

individualistic feature, some patterns could be found. If we have
to illustrate these common themes from the words of Evan Luzi:
“loneliness, a self-awareness of cinema, the nature of memory
and the past, and the quick and sometimes violent nature of love”
(Luzi,2010) are the key themes that lead French New Wave.

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 2. Information about Pierrot le Fou
Pierrot le Fou (English meaning “Pierrot the Madman”) is a 1965
French New Wave crime film directed by Jean-Luc Godard,
starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. The film is a highly
interpreted adaptation of the 1962 novel Obsession by Lionel White.
2.1 Story of Pierrot le Fou
The story of Pierrot le Fou shapes around Ferdinand’s “Pierrot”
(meaning sad clown in English) and Marianne’s relationship.
Ferdinand is a frustrated yet adventurous man married to a wealthy
woman. He is sick of his wife’s bourgeoisie lifestyle and he feels
alone. One day he “coincidentally” comes across his ex-girlfriend
Marianne as the babysitter of his children. In Pierrot’s car, while
he was taking Marianne to her house, their love rouses up again.
They decide to run away. Marianne kills her boyfriend and Pierrot’s
friend - Frank and they steal his money. Setting forward to the road,
they plan somewhere to stay amateurly. They kill some people in
mostly funny ways for their own sake like in the gas station. When
Pierrot burns Frank’s car and his money, Marianne’s real aim slightly
shows itself. She was always complaining about Pierrot doesn’t
understanding her and being into books, poems, and philosophy so
much. She says she only wants to live. They became distant over
time. When Marianne kills and runs away from the gangster who
searches for Frank’s money, other guys who are looking for Marianne
finds Pierrot in the hotel room. They threaten him to snitch
Marianne’s place and he says where she is. Eventually, they split up
after this case. After some time, they come across each other again
on the port. Marianne again uses Pierrot to kill the gangsters that are
looking for her and steal their money. When Pierrot understands that
and busts Marianne and his boyfriend together on the island, he kills
them and decides to suicide. Painting his face to blue, and wrapping
his head with dynamites, he kills himself in a clownish way just
like what his nickname means- a sad clown. Although he tries to
extinguish the fire he fails and dies in a tragicomic way.
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2.2 Importance of Pierrot le Fou and Jean-Luc Godard in Film Culture
Jean-Luc Godard is considered as the rebel child of the cinema. He
is not a rule-breaker but a rule destroyer. He radically challenged
everything that cinema said before. In that way, he became the lead
pioneer of the French New Wave. To me, Pierrot le Fou is kind of the
manifesto of Godard. It is the accumulation of his primary works. It
simply explains how Jean-Luc Godard thinks about cinema within
the dialogs of the film. We may see Ferdinand (Pierrot) acting like an
oldie and saying that “I will write about life itself, not the people’s life.”
That line was explaining the exact approach of Godard to the cinema.
He was trying to transfer his ideas with the whole content and form of
the film, not with the story. And in Pierrot le Fou, he straightforwardly
explained those ideas to the audience.
Godard when interviewed about Pierrot le Fou, said that it turned out
different from how he thought it will be since it is an interpretation.
In the interview, he said: “I remember that when I began Pierrot le
fou, one week before, I was completely panicked, I didn’t know what
I should do. Based on the book, we had already established all the
locations, we had hired the people . . . and I was wondering what we
were going to do with it all.” Those words of Godard exemplifies that it
was a process-oriented film, which is also matching with the free and
rule-breaker soul of the French New Wave.
Once again, Pierrot le Fou is overly intellectual as Godard himself, we
see lots of paintings and references from literature throughout the film
and we experience all of them. So in that sense, we can say that it is
educational for those who are open to knowledge.
2.3 Reason to Choose
As I said earlier, I interpreted Pierrot le Fou as the manifesto of Jean-
Luc Godard. The dialogs that are processed in the film reveals how
Godard thinks about cinema. It gave me the feeling of being original.
It was the start of everything. It was full of editing techniques,
constantly breaking the fourth wall, so that made me question the
cinema concept. Also, the theme was so exciting and intriguing. There
were scenes that an audience may not expect.
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 3. Information about Buffalo ‘66
Buffalo ‘66 is an independent American crime comedy-drama film
written, directed, and composed by Vincent Gallo, starring Gallo (as
Billy) and Christina Ricci (as Layla) in 1998.
3.1 Story of Buffalo ‘66
Buffalo ’66 is an abduction story that eventually ended with love.
A neurotic yet childlike man called Billy has been jailed because
of a crime that he never commits. When he was released, his
only wish was to kill the man that resulted in his imprisonment.
But, before that, he had another duty: facing his psychologically
problematic family and convincing them to his so-called perfect
life with his perfect non-existing wife. That was the point where
Billy “coincidentally” comes across with Layla who is a quiet and
easygoing dancer in the dance club. He abducts Layla and they go
on a trip. He wants Layla to introduce herself as his wife “Wendy
Balsam” –Billy’s ex-crush- to his family. They go to his family’s
house, Layla acts like he is Billy’s wife and she enjoys while all these
are happening, yet Billy was nervous all the time, bullying Layla like
she is a prisoner and he is the security guard.
In their times at home, we are understanding that Billy grew up with
a neurotic dad who killed Billy’s dog in his childhood and a madly
American Football addicted mom with no affection.
Layla starts to like Billy, experiencing some kind of Stockholm
Syndrome. Billy, on the other hand, acts mad and not interested at
all. After spending time together at the bowling hall, coming across
to the Wendy Balsam, and taking a bath in the same bathtub; Billy
and Layla develop a deep connection. After their first sleep in a
hotel room, Billy decides to kill his enemy and set forwards. We see
his vision- but as a regular scene- in which he kills his enemy and
himself afterward. Then, he changes his mind and understands that
Layla is the girl of his dreams. He turns back and goes to Layla with
hot-chocolate immediately.
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3.2 Importance of Buffalo ’66 and Vincent Gallo in Film Culture
Vincent Gallo is mostly known for his low-budget independent
films and his interdisciplinary interests. He is foremost a director,
musician, and actor. And also, he has experience in painting,
modeling, and motorcycle. This variety is reflected in his films. He
composes his film’s score himself and no doubt that he knows the
color theory and how to apply it aesthetically.
Buffalo ’66 can be considered as the masterpiece of Vincent Gallo.
It is a 1998 American crime comedy-drama. Vincent Gallo is the
director, scenarist, leading actor, and composer of the film. According
to Empire Magazine, in their 50 Greatest Independent Films List
as of 36th Greatest Independent Film. ( https://www.filmsite.org/
independentfilms.html )
Also, it has popularity especially on Tumblr, among teenage
cinephiles. It was shared thousands of times on social platforms
because of its aesthetics and well-designed scenes, remarkable color
coding, and rooted unrequited romantic relationship dialogs.
3.3 Reason to Choose
I choose this film because it is quite successful in transferring the
oppositeness together with sameness. We see how Billy realizes
Layla is her dream girl and how he changes his mind for her, how
being loved can change one’s whole perspective of the world.
For me, the film smoothly blends childishness with reality. It is
the story of surrender. Characters are getting close to each other,
breaking the obstacles of the relationship. We see how a person can
be so innocent while they look so annoying and angry. And most
importantly, we see a psychological analysis. Billy is a portrayal of
modern people full of exhaustion. He has problems with his family
and society itself. Layla on the other hand searches for an escape
from her uninteresting, regular life, symbolizing the regular modern
people shelters to some little adventures.
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 4. Similarities and Differences between Pierrot le Fou
and Buffalo ’66
4.1.2 Colour and Lighting
Although Vincent Gallo denied that he is inspired by Jean-Luc
Godard in his interview for The Public magazine (Faust, 2015). I think
that it is not possible to not influence from a good director in such Similarities: It is obvious that both films choose to use primary
a postmodern world. Especially in terms of visual elements, It is colors - especially red and blue predominantly. Also, duotone effect
obvious that he uses some traces from Godard’s films. is used by both films in some shots for the same purpose.

4.1 Similarities and Differences in Visual Elements

4.1.1 Intro

Similarities: In both Pierrot le Fou and Buffalo ’66 we face a red and
blue colored typewriter inspired font above a black background.

Differences: As the film itself, Pierrot le Fou’s intro is quite dynamic

and lively, while in Buffalo ’66 it is more static and calm.
Primary color usage in Pierrot le Fou Primary color usage in Buffalo ‘66

Intro of Pierrot le Fou Intro of Buffalo ’66 Duotone effect usage in Pierrot le Fou. Duotone effect usage in Buffalo ’66

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 Differences: Taking place in the summer season, Pierrot le Fou is Furthermore, Marianne and Layla’s makeup is quite similar to each
quite saturated in terms of colors than winter-related Buffalo ’66. other. Their look with blue color symbolizes their innocent sides.
Also, while Buffalo ’66 has a polaroid kind of effect and its lighting is
darker in the whole film, Pierrot le Fou is more natural and lively.

Makeup in Pierrot le Fou Makeup in Buffalo ’66

High saturation in Pierrot le Fou Low saturation in Buffalo ’66

Differences: Although Marianne and Layla’s blue costumes match

most of the time. Later, Marianne starts not to wear blue, she will
start to wear red and as the symbol of becoming evil over time, while
4.1.3 Costume and Makeup Layla stays blue all the time.

Similarities: The colors of the leading actor’s dresses are consistent.

For example, when Ferdinand wears a red tie, Billy is wearing
red shoes- which may be the symbol of their passion, anger, and
inaccessibility. Costumes are harmonic because Buffalo ’66 as the
film is in a vintage aesthetic.

Marianne’s first dress when she is in love with Pierrot Marianne’s dress when she loses interest in Pierrot

Costumes in Pierrot le Fou Costumes in Buffalo ’66

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 4.1.4 Props 4.1.5 Settings

Similarities: Because the two film’s aesthetic approaches resemble
each other, the prop’s they used and their colors mostly similar. As
you can see below, together with being road and crime films, type of
cars and guns matching. Also other props like bowling balls are used
in both Buffalo’66 and Pierrot le Fou.
Similarities: The settings both films used are matching most of the
time since both films are road and crime oriented. Like erotic parties,
bowling halls, café, hotel rooms, and bathtubs.

Cars in Pierrot le Fou Cars in Buffalo ‘66 Erotic Party in Pierrot le Fou Erotic Party in Buffalo ‘66

Guns in Pierrot le Fou Guns in Buffalo ‘66 Bowling Hall in Pierrot le Fou Bowling Hall in Buffalo ‘66

Bowling in Pierrot le Fou Bowling in Buffalo ‘66 Cafe in Pierrot le Fou Cafe in Buffalo ‘66

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 4.1.6 Editing

Similarities: For the sake of breaking the linear narrativity directors

apply different methods. In both Pierrot le Fou and Buffalo ’66 a scene
breaks the continuity used. It is provided by using jump-cuts. It is the
most popular technique of the French New Wave, and feels jarring
and annoying. This scene is also for giving the feeling of being in
a loop. Below, while Pierrot in the party he feels exhausted, and
Hotel Room in Pierrot le Fou Hotel Room in Buffalo ‘66
Billy, on the other hand, was searching for a place to pee, he was so
nervous. Both scenes feel unending.

Bathub in Pierrot le Fou Bathub in Buffalo ‘66

Jump-cuts in Pierrot le Fou Jump-cuts in Buffalo ’66

Differences: Although some settings are matching, Pierrot le Fou
is remarkable with its “outdoor” settings and lots of the rooms are
wider, which we can not see in Buffalo ’66 because of its melancholic
and entrapped atmosphere. Differences: With the advances in science and the popularity of
non-linear thinking, French New Wave adapt this process to their
films. They experimented in flashbacks. Pierrot le Fou applied this
with sudden jump-cuts.

On the other hand, with the help of advances in the editing features
Buffalo ‘‘66 used a small frame which appears and scales up in the
center of the scene and turns into the main scene together with its
black sideways. It emphasizes that “this is from the past”.

Wide Outdoor places in Pierrot le Fou Narrow indoor places in Buffalo ‘66

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 Both films used altered frames via darkening a portion of the frame
which gives the director an ability to focus on the selected object.
These trials were made firstly in French New Wave cinema.

Flashbacks in Pierrot le Fou Flashbacks in Buffalo ’66

4.1.7 Shots

Similarities: The arrangement of the scenes matches at some exact

shots. It is especially when people are on the phone. Altered frame in Pierrot le Fou Altered frame in Buffalo ‘66

Close-up shots are used at certain times in both films.

Differences: While it’s mostly used in Pierrot le Fou to awaken the

audience, Buffalo ’66 on the contrary gives it suddenly, more like a
glance. It can be a reference to the personalities of actresses as Layla
is shyer than Marianne.

Marianne talking on the phone in Pierrot le Fou Billy talking on the phone in Buffalo ’66

Long shots as unending walking scenes are used in both films to

make the audience question again and again.

Big close-up in Pierrot le Fou Big close-up in Buffalo ‘66

A Long Shot in Pierrot le Fou A Long Shot in Buffalo ’66

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 4.1.8 Movement 4.3 Similarities and Differences in Themes

Similarities: In both films, road scenes use shaky and not stable
camera movement. This was a feature used firstly in French New
Wave. It is related to liberation from the tripod.
Differences: While in Pierrot le Fou, roads and views from the car
don’t appear much, Buffalo ’66 shows the stores entirely nearly every
time throughout traveling.
Both films are in an intersection of being romantic crime dramas.
We see a pattern in the timeline that follows an escape, road, and the
breaking point as suicide- whether it is real or imaginary.
In both films, there is an escape whether it is a volunteer or not it
turns into a joy. We may associate the frustration of Billy and Pierrot,
what they feel when they are around their family.
Also, there are lots of coincidences in the plot, which is a French
New Wave feature. For example, in the scene when the first time
Pierrot and Marianne encounter each other we could clearly
understand that this was a coincidence. And in terms of setting and
performing it resembles Billy and Layla’s first encounter.

Shaky movements in Pierrot le Fou Shaky movements in Buffalo ’66

4.2 Similarities and Differences in Performances

Similarities: The most similar mood that dominates both films is First encounter in Pierrot le Fou First encounter in Buffalo ‘66

neuroticism. In Buffalo ’66 we see Billy in a neurotic mood. And on

the other side, in Pierrot le Fou, all the cast performs in a lunatic way.
There are repetitions in dialogs. Whether some things can not be
heard, voices are blocking the dialogs or the characters can not hear
each other and they ask for repetitions.

Differences: While in general, Pierrot le Fou is more twittery,

exciting, and active in terms of performance, Buffalo ’66 is more
stressful, melancholic, and slower.
In general, characters are more talkative and their way of talk is
intellectual while in Buffalo ’66 it’s more casual.
Anna Karina’s Marianne performance is more extroverted and blunt-
talking, while Christina Ricci’s Layla is more introverted, shy, and
calm. And apparently, Billy is more uptight than Pierrot.

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 In both films, the audience feels the presence of the camera.
“Breaking the fourth wall” technique is applied repeatedly. We
are seeing Pierrot turning back directly talking to the camera
complaining about Marianne and he was saying “I am talking to the
audience” without any hesitation. At the same time, Layla is dancing
in the bowling hall detached from time and space.

Crime in Pierrot le Fou Crime in Buffalo ’66

In both films somewhere at some point, we see love and surrender.

The characters are holding each other. They are relaxed around their
lovers as if they are in the uterus of their mom’s.

Breaking the 4th wall in Pierrot le Fou Breaking the 4th wall in Buffalo ’66

Embryo position in Pierrot le Fou Embryo position in Buffalo ‘66

Breaking the 4th wall in Pierrot le Fou Breaking the 4th wall in Buffalo ’66

Speaking about time and space, serious things happen more in a

surreal and theatrical way in both films. The blood seems as if it’s not
real, things are odd and ironic.

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 Yet while this love shows up as superficial and hurting, causing
deaths and suicide in the Pierrot le Fou because of Marianne.
And conversely, it is deep and activating, causing turnabouts and
salvation under the favor of Layla in the Buffalo ’66.
Suicide scene in Pierrot le Fou
And the iconic imaginary suicide scene illustrates how Vincent
Gallo passes the limits of breaking the fourth wall technique
by actually freezing the scene and making it a comic book-like
aesthetic, remembering the audience that it is hyper fake and it can
be manipulated. This clearly explains that what French New Wave
established is used and developed by the time.
Suicide scene in Buffalo ‘66
Suicide scene in Buffalo ‘66
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4.1 Similarities and Differences in Sound and Music
The soundtrack of both films is sweeping. Being mostly in the jazz
genre, so that the saxophone is used a lot. Yet, while Pierrot le Fou
uses sound and music a lot, Buffalo ’66 prefers not to use it much.
Both films are switching to a musical form occasionally. That affects
music usage in the film. We see Marianne singing and dancing
in some scenes, and Billy’s father sings underneath a vignette
effected red room. Also, in Buffalo ’66 sounds and music composed
by Vincent Gallo himself, and that makes it more unique, so that
Vincent Gallo more “auteur”.
Suicide scene in Buffalo ‘66
Marianne sings in Pierrot le Fou Billy’s father sings in Buffalo ’66
The dancing crowd in Pierrot le Fou Layla’s dance in the bowling hall in Buffalo ‘66
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 5. Conclusion Works Cited

5.1 The reasons for the differences and similarities
The accumulation of film culture affects all the new directors. That’s
why although Vincent Gallo says that he is not influenced by Godard,
he clearly does this subconsciously. He kept some features of the
French New Wave and carried it to the forwards by exaggerating
them like breaking the fourth wall technique. Yet in some cases, he
preferred not to apply to give the right feeling like natural and clean
lighting. So, there are reasons for the preferences that directors had
but all of them are consistent on their own.
Luzi, E. (2010, March 29). The French New Wave: A Cinematic
Revolution. The Black and Blue. https://www.theblackandblue.
com/2010/03/29/the-french-new-wave-a-cinematic-revolution/
50 Greatest Independent Films. (n.d.). filmsite.org. 2010-10-19.
https://www.filmsite.org/independentfilms.html
Faust, M. (2015, March 30). From the Vaults: Vincent Gallo on Buffalo
and Buffalo 66. The Public Magazine. http://www.dailypublic.com/
articles/03302015/vaults-vincent-gallo-buffalo-and-buffalo-66

5.2 Personal Interpretation *All screenshots and gifs prepared by me.

While I was writing this paper I noticed that, although Pierrot Le Fou
and Buffalo ’66 seem to resemble each other only on the visual side,
the theme is also complementary. And I saw that the mumbo jumbo
that takes place in nearly every French New Wave movie, means
something philosophically. It tells something about the movie itself.

Godard took cinema to another level by talking about cinema in the

film itself. And he definitely broke the rules of this road, and others
will continue to break again and again as Gallo.

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 Analysis of
Ana Yurdu and
Table of Content

1. Motherhood
1.1 The Psychology of Motherhood

Köksüz
1.2 Motherhood in Cinema

2.Analysis of Ana Yurdu

2.1 Information about Senem Tüzen

within the
2.2 Synopsis of Ana Yurdu
2.3 Visual Analysis
2.3.1 Shots
2.3.2 Colors
2.3.3 Setting

Framework
2.3.4 Lightning
2.3.5 Costumes and Props
2.4 Representation of Motherhood in Ana Yurdu

of Motherhood
3.Analysis of Köksüz
3.1 Information about Deniz Akçay Katıksız
3.2 Synopsis of Köksüz
3.3 Visual Analysis-Shots, Colors, Setting, Lighting, Costumes, and Props
3.4 Representation of Motherhood in Köksüz
2020-2021 Fall | RCTV 0220 Film Culture | Dr. Burcu Dabak | Final Paper
4. Conclusion
Scan the code to read this document 4.1 Similarities and Differences of Ana Yurdu and Köksüz
on Google Documents with gifs: 4.2 Personal Interpretation

74 75

1. Motherhood
1.1 The Psychology of Motherhood
Motherhood is a unique female process of being a mother and
taking care of the child. Yet whether it seems like a pure instinctual
status it’s different from what it meant to be because of the complex
patterns of the society we live in.
Its effects on females are undeniably huge. That makes it a social
issue. A mother is a role model for the kids. Everybody expects her
to be the one with the knowledge, patience, and most importantly
nurturance. When I say nurturance, I am not only talking about
physical needs like feeding and cleaning but I am talking about
psychological needs. In this situation, it seems that a mother should
always be the giver one indefatigably. Her process of being the
mother never ends. She should be someone who will always be there
without question. That makes it irrational in itself.
Besides being logically impossible, it is also expecting too much from
the females. That expectation from society makes motherhood a
troubled process. It shapes the role of the female in society. Giving
her an unbearable burden, affects her whole relationship, lifestyle,
taste, and beliefs. That creates neurotic, unpredictable, and socially
problematic mothers.
1.2 Motherhood in Cinema
The problematic sides of the mother are covered in many movies
and series. For instance, a neurotic mother and a blameless child
represented in Carrie (1976). The classic portrayal of a problematic
mother illustrates neurotics, domesticity, and most importantly
conservatism. In Carrie, the mother is a dangerous and savage
animal even wanting her own child to die.
Conflicts with the child and the bizarre situation that surrounding
mothers handled in Turkish Cinema as well. Because of the social
structure of Turkey, it is crueler and more effective than thought.
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We are a society that adores emotions, exaggeration, and drama.
Two examples that successfully handle motherhood in Turkish
Cinema are Ana Yurdu (2015) and Köksüz (2013).
2.Analysis of Ana Yurdu
2.1 Information about Senem Tüzen
Born in Ankara, Senem Tüzen discussed the social problems in
Turkey as a feminist in her awarded short films. Ana Yurdu is her
first try of a long film which places her hometown Niğde.
Her background with documentaries explains why she goes towards
real cinema, she likes to deal with real people and real problems.
2.2 Synopsis of Ana Yurdu
Nesrin is a middle class, divorced woman who tries to finish writing
her first novel. She is depressed and experiences burnout syndrome.
All she wants to be lonely and immediately finish her novel. That’s
why she goes to her dead grandmother’s house in a cold village in
Niğde (Anatolia) to be alone there.
Yet things change when her neurotic and conservative mother
shows up without her invitation. Nesrin has the most serious issues
with her mother and can not keep a warm and happy relationship
because of her mother’s attitudes. Her mother is selfish, conservative,
judgmental, and tries to be away from her husband (Nesrin’s dad).
The judgments of her mother lead to Nesrin’s breakdown,
surrounded by sexual desires and revenge, Nesrin sleeps with the
mentally retarded boy in the village.
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 2.3 Visual Analysis The scenes that Nesrin runaways and stays lonely are represented
with long shots which makes it more peaceful and relaxing because
of her crave for loneliness.
In general Ana Yurdu is quite cinematic in terms of its shots and
lighting. It first gives the feeling of being designed with its overall
attitude. This makes it a festival film unequivocally.
The pressure that dominates the film is represented in various ways.

2.3.1 Shots

Some shots are given by fitting women one by one into frames with
barred windows. This represents both the desperation because of the Long Shots in Ana Yurdu
pressure between mother and daughter and the pressure of being
watched all the time. The windows try to cut the frame and shape 2.3.2 Colors
it as society shapes the women. And not only Nesrin but also her
mother is trapped in the windows built by society. Furthermore, overall low-saturated color usage supports the dullness
and nihilist view of Nesrin towards the world around her. As you
see below, the colors are cold and distant just like the relationship
covered between Nesrin and her mother.

Scenes with barred windows in Ana Yurdu

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 2.3.3 Setting In some scenes, reflection is used in order to give the confusions and
juxtapositions. Like you see below, when Nesrin thoughts about the
Just like the relationship between mother and daughter, and the mentally retarded man.
low-saturated cold colors, the setting environment is a cold village in
Anatolia and the season takes place in winter. The concrete houses
(yer evi) makes you feel cold and distant in that sense.

Reflections in Ana Yurdu

Cold house in Ana Yurdu

2.3.5 Costumes and Props

2.3.4 Lightning The film uses everyday mass-produced objects of Turkish people
like Pril dish soap, HP Notebook, or Samsung Mobile Phone. It is just
The effective and dramatic lighting of the film gives the stressed because creating a bond and making the film more relatable.
and uncanny situation well. When general lighting is cold, in the
scenes when Nesrin and her mother are talking and sharing a happy
moment we face a more yellowish lighting technique instead of
natural cold lighting which makes it more warm and affectionate.

Everyday objects in Ana Yurdu

Natural Cold Lighting in Ana Yurdu Yellow Lighting in Ana Yurdu

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 On the other hand, the costume of Nesrin which is a shalwar with
a leather jacket represents her conflict between obedience and
disobedience. Also, it is a material confusion that the middle class
faces in Turkey. You can see traditional-popular outfits together.
Nesrin’s outfit in Ana Yurdu
2.4 Representation of Motherhood in Ana Yurdu
The sacralization of maternity places at the very beginning of the
film. Nesrin arrives in the village and the first things she faces are
the mothers. They ask her questions like “Are you okay?” “You are
sure you are okay?” and tries to be nurturing yet just becoming more
stress giving and insistent. It’s all the same in the attitudes of the
women in the village. For example, when Nesrin asked for keys
from the old lady she insisted on staying in her house thinking that
it would make Nesrin feel good. Also, the neighborhood ladies judge
Nesrin as if they have the right to say something to her. They do it
and they reprehend Nesrin just because she came late and made her
mother wait outside the house.
Women of the village in Ana Yurdu
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Throughout the film, we do not see the grandmother because she is
dead but we feel her presence. There is something that makes her
wise, making her elude from her sexuality says Senem Tüzer in her
interview for Hürriyet (Senem Tüzen: “Annem İzin Vermezse Bu
Filmi Çekmeyecektim” 2016). This wisdom is dedicated to her from
the other women. She is nothing but a picture, yet her thoughts are
the most respectable words because of the sanctity attributed to the
mothers, in our society.
Grandmother in Ana Yurdu
We see women as the majority in this film, hardly finding men. This
gives the feeling that they are the active ones and it seems that they
are the ones who lead the village. Because it is actually. In Turkish
culture, whether it seems like men are the active ones, the truth is
the opposite. When they just arrive at the house, Nesrin’s mother
starts to cry for her own mother’s (Nesrin’s grandmother’s) death,
acting like a drama queen. Then, shows obsessive attitudes by
suddenly saying “Did you change the interior design? ”.
The mother here is portrayed as a psychologically disordered,
neurotic, and obsessive person. She is obsessed with cleanliness
and order. This explains a common character we face in Turkey
every day in our ordinary life. Nearly every mother in Turkey has
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. So that, involving in their only
duty: dealing with domestic works makes them more drone to be
obsessive about it. Because they are so “in’’ the house, their only
social network consists of the other mothers and the only thing
they do is gossip. But this gossip is in a very judgmental way. Nesrin
complains about this when she argues with her mother.
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 It’s inescapable because they are the only ones that take care and
they believe this is their only duty. It is told to them by their mothers
and grandmothers. Thus, motherhood is a generation to generation
duty. That issue was discussed by giving the three generations
( grandmother, mother, daughter) together in the same room.
The mother’s only aim is to nurture her kids. In every questioned
situation, when she feels trapped she says “I am a mother.” “Mothers
heart…Oh my dear” (Ana yüreği işte… Dayanmaz ki).
This illustrates the situation of seeing maternity as a sacred duty.
She believes that this is the most giving, nurturing role of the whole
world only mothers can have. She says that no one can understand
how it feels without being a mother.
Also, she is quite nostalgic because she had married at a young age
and dedicated her life to motherhood, unable to live her youth. She
even claims that she lived only for Nesrin. These attitudes represent
emotional abuse, clearly.
Even though she is a teacher, Nesrin’s mother is also a conservative.
She always judges how everybody, but especially Nesrin wears, sits,
and acts. She constantly accuses Nesrin of being a slut and losing
her honor (namus). She judges Nesrin with her abortion.
Nesrin’s mother look in Ana Yurdu
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The moment Nesrin’s mother and mentally retarded boy look at
each other hostilely pictures how problematic and jealous things are
happening on the mother’s side. She is seeing even the retarded boy
as a threat to her daughter.
All those complex issues together sicken Nesrin so much. That’s
why she wants to be alone. Yet, her relationship with her mother
is indecisive. It always changes. She likes her mother on the other
hand. She enjoys the normal moments, without any judgment and
she directly expresses it. Yet the psychology of being judged all
the time results in a hysterical attitude and Nesrin sleeps with the
mentally retarded boy. This scene symbolizes the revenge of Nesrin,
accused of being a slut. The reason she chooses retarded boy is to
demonstrate that she could do it with anyone even a retarded boy to
abash her mother. Also, the director may want to give the deficiency
of men and their inadequate attitude towards women by using a
retarded male in the intercourse scene.
Retarted boy’s look in Ana Yurdu
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 3.Analysis of Köksüz

3.1 Information about Deniz Akçay Katıksız

Being the most known Turkish TV Series scriptwriter like Hayat

Bilgisi and Küçük Kadınlar, Deniz Akçay Katıksız has only directed
Köksüz (2013) as long film and she awarded to 20. Altın Koza Festival
Awards. She is related to the real subjects, social issues, and lives of
The sofa in Köksüz
ordinary middle class people.

3.2 Synopsis of Köksüz Also shot in İzmir, it is relatable for most of us who are living in the
Aegean side of Turkey. In terms of settings, the kitchen used a lot as
Working in an advertisement agency, Feride takes care of her a uniting place of the house. The kitchen is where they experience
mother Nurcan and her siblings Özge and İlker after their father’s different kinds of things in a silent atmosphere.
death. She is financially independent yet the problematic mother
Nurcan always judges every single member of the family but
especially Feride. Sick from this situation, Feride finds Gülağa who
is an unschooled yet affectionate co-worker of hers, and accepts
his marriage proposal. Because of that, the corruption of the family
accelerates together with the experiences of Özge and İlker.
In the end, psychologically disordered mom Nurcan suicides in the
Henna Day of Feride and Gülağa.

Kitchen settings in Köksüz

3.3 Visual Analysis-Shots, Colors, Setting, Lighting,
Costumes, and Props

Because Deniz Akçay Katıksız’s interest is more on the scenario

and being her only directing try, visual language is not that in the
foreground in this film. The scenario is essential.

We can say that naturality is the keyword of the film’s visual identity.
It is real and the feeling wanted to give is this realness.
The setting is just real as we know. The way they selected the
neighborhood, the kind of sofa in the salon illustrates the ordinary
middle class of Turkey. You can find such a sofa in every middle-
class family’s house in Turkey.

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 The shifts that take place in some shots are remarkable. The scene
where Gülten (İlker’s friend’s mother) using a vacuum cleaner
suddenly shifts to the mother Nurcan’s vacuum cleaning.
This resembles the audience the motherhood of both characters.
Gülten using vacuum cleaner in Köksüz Nurcan using vacuum cleaner in Köksüz
Furthermore, the setting of Henna Night (Kına Gecesi) represents
many things. In Turkish Culture, It is the intersection of happiness
and grief. It symbolizes the weakness of the bride. Other women
try to make the bride cry for her mother and home. And she sings
songs about how she feels desperate about her situation. This
special occasion even illustrates Turkish people’s approach to
marriage. It’s bittersweet. And the situation of Feride is bittersweet
as well. She tries to escape from her mother and end the battle of
leadership yet she loves her mother and does not love Gülağa much.
It is complicated and hard. Her ambivalent thoughts could not be
represented in another setting.
Feride’s Henna Night in Köksüz
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3.4 Representation of Motherhood in Köksüz
Köksüz with its more than ever real scenes is a portrayal of a family
without a father. Without the presence of a father, there should be a
role of leader. That results in the battle of leadership.
As a financially independent woman, Feride takes care of her
family after her father’s death and deals with her psychologically
problematic mother. She has a huge role in the family. Besides
already being the problematic mother, Nurcan is an enemy to Feride
and as an audience, we can feel it because while she is trying to
maintain order in the home Feride is in the role of “mother”. That
situation psychologically creates a battlefield between Feride and
her mother Nurcan. She is the reason for every single psychological
problem that Feride, İlker, and Özge experience. İlker has mother
issues and being the only man in the family he always expected to
act like his father. That’s even directly said by his grandmother. He
needed to be the man of the family. But he is so desperate and fragile
about his father’s death that he can not handle the situation which
he illustrates in various ways. Those all explain why he sleeps with
his friend’s mother. It’s a trauma needed to be solved in psychology.
He wants himself to be seen as the father and solve his problems
with his insane mother.
İlker’s moments grieving about his father in Köksüz
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 Özge, on the other hand, is an introverted and silent girl with low
self-esteem. Her problems are related to her mother’s issues. The
things that she does childishly with pure goodwill, turns out sad
because of her mother’s attitudes. The gift she gives to her mother is
peacemaking tryings, can’t be understood, and left unrequited.
Nurcan and Özge in Köksüz
Nurcan the mother, is nostalgic about everything about the past. She
hates how she is now and adores her past self. We can understand
it with the gift Özge gave to her. She likes the clock with the photo
from her past, young and beautiful days. It’s definitely about the
beauty standards dedicated to the woman. She thinks that she needs
to be young and beautiful.
Nurcan when she opens Özge’s present in Köksüz
Nurcan is surrounded by superstitious beliefs like many mothers
in Turkey. She is irrational and she always accuses Feride of being
unfortunate, the sinister child just like how Carrie’s mother sees her.
This is because of the traditional bonds that mothers created among
them. They all believe this kind of thing.
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The generation to generation feature of motherhood is represented
in the film with the grandmother. She is on the top of the pyramid
and as she is the oldest and wisest. She can judge all the females
and she must fix the things that are not going right. That’s why
she throws wise words to the family but especially females. Even
Though we do not see her interaction with Feride throughout the
whole film, she says to Özge about Feride’s concerns in marriage that
“She will go with the wedding dress, come back with the shroud.
There is no chance to give up.” (Gelinlikle gidecek, kefenle gelecek.
Geri dönüşü yok.). Also, she has the right to judge Nurcan the mother.
Because she is at the top of the pyramid. She can lead the man of the
family to make better choices as she did it to İlker.
This attitude somehow results in the Turkish phrase “Kadın kadının
kurdudur.”, can be translated to English as “A woman is a worm for
another woman”. They are the worms that eat each other. They are
acting with the men’s rules in the men’s world constantly judging
each other with the things that they made up just to please men kind
and never able to discover these things they judge are a fabrication.
This issue I am talking about is essentially the key of how Nurcan
and Grandmother act and the director clearly shows it in this way.
Grandmother in Köksüz
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 Lastly, the suicide of the mother Nurcan is revenge. It’s even readable
from the way she looks Feride. She wants Feride to feel guilty about
it. That’s why she chooses the special occasion to suicide. To me,
the most meaningful and beautiful scene of the film is this scene.
Because as I said earlier, it is quite relative to Henna Day. On Henna
Day, the daughter cries for the mother. She cries about losing her
but after the ceremony, she sees her mother in her life nearly every
day. Yet, in this scene, we know that she will not be able to see her
Breakfast in Ana Yurdu Dinner in Köksüz
mother once more. That complex feeling is represented especially in
this scene successfully but it is dominating all the film. That’s one of
the successful things about Köksüz. Both mothers are insisting especially on the cleaning, Nurcan even
broke her waist because she could not stay without doing domestic
work.As a difference, while Nurcan has social anxiety and fear of
4. Conclusion being outside, we don’t see this side of Nesrin’s mother. We can
clearly understand the feelings of Nurcan in the scenes that she is
4.1 Similarities and Differences of Ana Yurdu and Köksüz on the metro, ferry, and inside the crowd. This is because she was
always at home cleaning and cooking. She was only doing what was
Being the most remarkable works about motherhood in Turkish expected from her, letting other “outside” things to her husband. Yet,
Cinema, both Ana Yurdu and Köksüz pictures the real world of after her husband’s death, her daughter Feride took this job. Nothing
middle-class Turkish women. is interesting. She was in the home.

The seek for loneliness both Feride and Nesrin experience can be felt
by their every act. They are sick and desperate yet they are trying to
achieve a successful life. While Feride tries to be active in her job and
find the love of her life, Nesrin tries to be a writer and prove herself.
Yet, both female protagonists struggle with their goals because of
their mothers’ drama queen acts and psychological problems.

The mothers in question in both films are whether they seem over
problematic their only fault is not understanding the system. They
are the victims of the system and they are hurting their precious
children they claim they care so much. Yet both mothers and Nurcan’s social anxiety in Köksüz
daughters are searching for a moment to feel happy. Both of the
relationships are bittersweet. Also in both films, there are many of As a visual analysis, while Ana Yurdu is a more film festival kind of
these moments of dinner or breakfast without any discussion and film with its remarkable lighting and usage of colors, Köksüz is more
sharing. There is only emptiness. memorable with its scenario. Köksüz is more real and relatable in
that sense.

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 4.2 Personal Interpretation

I enjoyed watching both of the films and there are so many things
to analyze that I was really surprised. I think this is because of the
realness of the films. It made me feel the boredom they are fighting
even though I was not experiencing the same situation with my
mother. Yet on the other side, those things are not the things that
we do not see in everyday life. I think everybody has a friend that
has mother issues or at least some of us’ grandmother is just like the
grandmother pictured in the Köksüz. In conclusion, the attitudes of
mothers are savage yet they must show us the faults in the system,
not the individual’s faults. Because at the end of the day, it is a
sociological problem that should be solved by reducing the burden of
women in every term. Gender equality is the key.

Works Cited

1- Senem Tüzen: “Annem izin vermese bu filmi çekmeyecektim.”

(2016, May 13). Senem Tüzen: “Annem Izin Vermese Bu Filmi
Çekmeyecektim.” https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/kelebek/keyif/senem-
tuzen-annem-izin-vermese-bu-filmi-cekmeyecektim-40103366

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