Abstract
Zenne Dancer is a 2011 Turkish film written by Caner Alper and directed by Alper and Mehmet Binay. It is inspired by the story of Ahmet Yildiz, a gay Kurdish Turk allegedly murdered by his father in 2008 for dishonoring his family. Through its depiction of the unlikely friendship between three men, the film addresses the problem of homosexuality, the desire-in-uneasiness evoked by men being together, and the complex social structures of honor killings. In its address of honor killings, Zenne Dancer follows in a prestigious line of some of the best of Turkish and world cinema. Importantly, though, there are differences here as Zenne Dancer reimagines the relationships involved in crimes of honor. First, Zenne Dancer deploys the story of a father killing his son, rather than his daughter, to save the family honor, which is threatened by homosexual desire rather than the loss of virginity or illegitimate pregnancy. Second, rather than pitting the modern state against religion, tradition, or pre-modern culture, Zenne Dancer’s critique of honor killing implicates both the police and the military in the violence done in the name of tradition (not religion). Islam plays a much smaller part than economic deprivation or the trauma of war in this film. Third, the film complicates gendered expectations through its deployment of female characters—mothers, sisters, lovers—who all have their own relationships with and perspectives on these men. The film depicts heteropatriarchy as a system harmful to women and men and shows men and women enforcing and resisting that harm. In the end, Zenne Dancer connects these thematic concerns through a mixture of realist story, dance video, daydream, fairytale, and melodrama in a film ultimately concerned with the care of the self and the meaning of liberation. Thus, it resists falling into fictional “realist anthropology” or simplistic assertions of repression in confronting the complexities of honor killings, the problem of homosexuality, and friendship in cinema.
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
“naked” among men, outside of institutional relations, family, profession, and obligatory camaraderie? It’s a desire, an uneasiness, a desire-in-uneasiness that exists among a lot of people. ~Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life” Zenne Dancer is a 2011 Turkish film written by Caner Alper and produced and directed by Alper and Mehmet Binay, first-time filmmakers who have been in a relationship together for more than 15 years
It is a heady mix of realism and fantasy addressing the difficulties of refashioning and reimagining oneself simultaneously inside the competing contexts of friendship, kinship, state control, and cultural traditions and outside of institutional relations, family, profession, and obligatory camaraderie
Summary
According to Güler, Based on the true story of Ahmet Yildiz, a gay man murdered by his father in 2008 after coming out to his family, the film openly deals with cultural and legal issues through three characters, an out-and-about flamboyant dancer, a gay man coming from eastern Turkey and a German photojournalist whose point of view serves as the questioning eye on [the] many guises of patriarchy that haunt gay men.
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