“A Living Dog Is Better Than a Dead Lion”: Representations of animal otherness in post-1990s independent Turkish cinema

Abstract

Due to their social and political implications, the various cinematic and narrative aspects of independent Turkish cinema have been popular subjects of critical study for many scholars. One specific focus that has characterized the general approach to these films has been a study of the representations of the “Other” and whether the Other was portrayed in a pejorative or celebratory fashion. This category of the Other has predominantly contained women, children, the economically disenfranchised, the religious Other, villagers juxtaposed with city dwellers, the socially outcast, and finally, animals. All these groups of Others have been the subject of close examination, except one abundantly portrayed group: animals. As this thesis will reveal, animal characters in post-1990s independent Turkish cinema have an equally essential function as any of these groups as they are portrayed both as direct extensions of the human protagonists, and as metaphors of how violence and power operate in society, victimizing human and animal subjects in similar terms. With the increasing attention Animal Studies have drawn and the visibility of animal characters in post-1990s independent Turkish cinema, this critical gap needs to be filled. Assuming such an aim, this thesis will focus on the ethical, aesthetic, cinematic, and narrative implications of how animals are portrayed in Somersault in a Coffin, Distant, Times and Winds, The Yusuf Trilogy: Egg, Milk, Honey; Kosmos, Somewhere in Between, Jîn, Singing Women, Winter Sleep, Sivas and Frenzy and conclude that they open alternative paths of reconciliation between the human Self and the animal Other.