Resignifying the mainstream: transgender embodiment in cinema in Turkey

Abstract

This study focuses on the mainstream representation of the transgender phenomenon in the cinema of Turkey during a forty year period starting from the 1960s. In studying these images, the main argument of this thesis is that although mainstream cinema has been conceptualized as incapable of producing meanings that are anti hetero-patriarchal; factors such as audience reception, textual incongruity and directorial intentions might produce ambiguities in order to trigger subversive readings and identifications with these images. By reaching masses of audiences, mainstream representation of transgender embodiment might offer a possibility that might challenge the binary thinking and normative identificatory mechanisms. Conceptualized within their specific historical milieu and in relation to each other, these images also refer back to a historical subconscious in which the repressed desires return back to haunt the heteronormative binaries of gender and sexuality. Reading these films through gender parody, masquerade, heterosexual melancholia, shame and transnational circulation of transgender images, this study explores the relation between performance and performativity in order to resignify the mainstream from within.