Abstract
Turkey’s Yeşilçam film industry produced more than 5500 films during its lifetime of 40 years. The industry had a unique narrative approach shaped around its economic model, Turkey’s ambivalent connection with modernization and the country’s domestic culture. Yet, particular characteristic qualities of the industry remained rather limited up until the last decade, in which vast databases were built up as a consequence of the digital turn. In this study, we develop a relational approach and conduct network analysis to the Yeşilçam with the aim to better understand the patterns of its constitution. Our findings suggest that Yeşilçam was not a homogenous industry as often considered by the film scholarship, rather divided into two main clusters in which professional, narrative and financial dynamics were significantly different.
Highlights
This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press
Yeşilçam is often considered a homogeneous film industry, yet the industry operated under diverging conditions throughout its history, with a network of dynamic connections between particular players, offering a unique form identified with the character and the spirit of the industry
We develop a data-driven relational approach and conduct network analysis to Yeşilçam, with the aim to better understand the exclusive dynamics of its constituents
Summary
We have identified only one paper using network analysis in the Turkish film literature, in which Beyhan and Erkılıç (2020) analyzed the spatial clustering of the Turkish film industry through network analysis, relating their findings to the life cycles of the industry They suggest that the emergent life cycles of the Turkish movie cluster can be traced “in the volume and quality of the social interactions experienced between agents in the network” (Beyhan and Erkılıç 2020:210). The word Yeşilçam does refer to the name of this domestic film industry, and identifies the films it produced, the films’ narrative structure, and the related movie-going experiences of the audience (Akbulut 2012; Arslan 2011; Dönmez-Colin 2014; Erdoğan and Göktürk 2001; Kaya Mutlu 2010; Özön 2010; Refiğ 2009; Scognamillo 2003; Yıldırım 2016). The whole country was divided into six distribution regions, and the producers’ main financial income was the advance payment from the movie theaters in each region
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