CINEMAGOING AS A HETEROGENEOUS AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL STRATEGY: NARRATIVES OF WOMAN SPECTATORS

Abstract

Even though cinema studies, usually focusing on films, the audience has been attracted to the attention of researchers since the beginning of these studies. However, in recent years the number of studies on the audience has been increasing steadily. While early cinema studies has focused on the influence of films on the audience, the experience of cinemagoing has recently become a focus. This article is based on oral history interviews conducted in Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya and Kocaeli within the scope of the TUBITAK Project entitled Cinemagoing as a Cultural and Social Practice. In the article, through the fifty interviews with female spectators who went to cinema in Turkey in the 1960s and '70s, dynamics that played a role in the women's experience of cinemagoing and the narration styles of the experience of cinemagoing were analyzed thematically and discursively. The narratives of women spectators and their analyzes emphasize that women's understanding of cinema is heterogeneous and multidimensional and have shown that marriage is a significant threshold for women's experience in cinemagoing and is used as a strategy act of going to cinema against the reality of everyday life.