Looking at New Turkish Cinema Through Durkheim's Eyes

Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci took part in the Cultural Studies session on the second day of the MSGSU Sociology Conference, held between 3-5 November, with a presentation of her work in the field of cinema and sociology. Making productions by using cinema and sociology disciplines together in her academic studies, Çekemci underlined in her presentation that it is not possible to separate cinema from social interactions, and that these traces can be easily followed even in New Turkish Cinema, where perhaps the most individual narratives are present.

Benefited from Emile Durkheim's Theory

Drawing on the period of New Turkish Cinema, which created a unique contemporary narrative structure by deconstructing Yeşilçam's narrative structure and produced with an innovative cinematic language, Çekemci interpreted the depression atmosphere, depressive and pessimistic characters and repetitive suicide narrative from a sociological perspective. In her presentation, which she divided into two main topics as New Turkish Cinema and suicide, she found that both the narrative of the New Turkish Cinema period, which has an individual narrative language, and the act of suicide, which is accepted as an individual decision, are affected by social transformations and the society-individual relationship through the films in the sample.

Using the suicide theory of sociologist Emile Durkheim and the types of suicide he divided into categories, Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci analyzed the suicides seen in the New Turkish Cinema narrative with the descriptive analysis method and determined which type of suicide Durkheim put forward. As a result, Cekemci, who found that altruistic type suicides take place in a mixed manner with selfish and unruly type suicides, explained the lack of monotype suicides with the rapid transformations in social life and the unbalanced situation observed in the society-individual relationship in the form of convergence from time to time.

The session, which focused on studies in the fields of cinema and musicology and where pleasant discussion environments were formed, ended after a question and answer session.

We congratulate Res. Asst. Eda Çekemci for his paper presentation and wish him continued success.