A NEW WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN CINEMA AND TELEVISION; ARABESKİN AŞIK KADINLARI

Abstract

The documentary series Arabeskin Âşık Kadınları tells the disadvantaged life

stories of arabesque female singers who are silenced, marginalized, ignored

and exploited even though they are visible. The story of the women told in

the series exemplifies the silence of the subaltern. The fact that the story is

heard and visible in the production of the majority of men is an issue that needs

to be considered, reflecting the internalized subordination of the singers.

Although the series is about the gender-based unfair exploitation order, it should be

questioned whether the subaltern really speaks, since the structure that allows the

subordinate to speak is in the production and control of men, overlapping with the

social structure. Arabeskin Âşık Kadınları tries to preserve its feminist content and

assertion as a production of “hegemonic masculinity” in the serial medium where

subaltern “speak” in every episode and identity is at the center, but content and space

dominance is gained and lost from the masculinity fiction. In this context, although the

series fills an important gap in terms of the possibility/impossibility of the subaltern

to speak in the male-dominated structure and its dimensions, it creates that gap

once again.