Abstract:

Orientalism still provides a rich literature to explore the representations of the Orient from a Western perspective as well as the manifest and latent power relations designating the Orientalist imagery. Following Edward Said’s theorization of Orientalism, this paper examines Orientalist imagery, iconography, and gaze from a sexual difference perspective in Turkey’s cinema on the trajectory of the films Il Bagno Turco aka Hamam, Zenne Dancer aka Zenne, and Auf Der Anderen Seite aka Yaşamın Kıyısında. The paper discusses the representations of the West(ern) and East(ern) characters, cities, spaces and culture and Orientalist gaze in the selected films from a sexual difference perspective. Semiotic film analysis is implemented as the methodology, deploying Roland Barthes’s conceptualizations on semiotics as a supporting component. The analysis reveals that the visual and narrative structures of the selected films are ornated with both manifest and latent Orientalist elements, the leading of which are romanticism and homoeroticism of the Oriental.

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