Abstract:

Susuz Yaz, the first film of Turkish cinema to win an award abroad, has been examined from different perspectives by contemporary film researchers in the context of social realism, property, power struggle, and the relationship of social structure with nature and culture. The aim of this study is to reveal how Metin Erksan's film Susuz Yaz (1963) deals with the narrative structure and the hierarchy of gaze in its visual arrangement in the context of the objectification of the female character. In the study, a descriptive analysis of the film is made based on the concepts of scopophilic and voyeuristic(surveillance/voyeurism), which Laura Mulvey discusses in her article titled "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and claims to serve the masculine gaze. Feminist theory constitutes the conceptual framework of this study in terms of questioning the position of women in the patriarchal society, which is trapped in power-based hierarchical structures. As a result of the examination, it has been observed that the female character in the narrative is seen as a commodity in a passive position, a servant at home, a worker in the field, and as a means of child production and raising in society. It has been determined that the woman, who is reduced to a commodity in the social structure based on the family institution, can not exist alone in the narrative structure of the film, but can only be represented by being associated with men. By using different gaze mechanisms with the help of the camera, the female character of the film is represented as the object of desire and fetish, as a body to be conquered. Thus, the female character is avoided from being represented as a complete whole, which is in the position of the subject.

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