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NARRATIVES OF WOMEN BY WOMEN ON SCREEN: A FEMINIST
ANALYSIS OF MAVI DALGA
İrem İNCEOĞLU *
Cinema in Turkey has flourished and been internationally acclaimed within the last decades. As a
progressing cultural industry, cinema provides a significant domain for social and cultural issues to be
introduced and elaborated. Gender is, inevitably, one of these issues. Regarding this situation, I
would like to scrutinise a recent film, Mavi Dalga (The Blue Wave) produced in Turkey in 2013 and
argue that it is one of the unique examples of feminist film in Turkish Cinema as it opens up new
opportunities in cinematic narrative. I would like to argue that, it is a feminist film that not only
challenges the traditional, patriarchal norms of femininity but also offers an alternative feminist look
at women’s representation on screen. However, it should also be noted that this article is not written
from the point of a film critic, nor should be considered a piece within the field of film studies. My
intention, as a scholar of media and cultural studies, should be regarded as an attempt to analyse a
media text, which happens to be a cinematic one, and the way it narrates femininity and
womanhood from a feminist perspective. On the other hand, I also would like to recall what Hollinger
states; “feminist film theory always had a dual composition: the critique of mainstream cinema and
the advocacy an alternate or counter‐cinema.” 1 Therefore, despite the fact that this piece does not
claim to be produced in the field of film studies in its strict sense, i.e. film grammar and film language
are not the main concern or points of analysis, feminist film theory is utilised in order to comprehend
the distinctive forms of cinematic narrative. Moreover, with the help of feminist film theory texts,
the article provides an analysis of the discourses in the exemplified film.
Claire Johnston suggested a feminist critique of film from a semiotic point of view, arguing that
the sign “woman” could be analysed as a structure, a code or convention. According to this
conceptualisation, women are negatively represented as “not‐man.” 2 The importance of this analysis
is the shift it provides from the conception of cinema reflecting reality to the understanding of
cinema as constructing reality. In relation to post‐structuralist perspective, cinema constructs a
discourse of femininity and masculinity, men and women as natural, realistic and normal. In relation
to this, Smelik states that cinema is a cultural practice, subsumes discourses of femininity and
masculinity being produced, reproduced and represented. 3 The moment we accept this proposition,
cultural struggles become a political possibility in relation to feminist movement. Therefore, I am
interested in feminist films in regards to the argument of political possibility and will focus on Mavi
Dalga (The Blue Wave) as an example of feminist cinema, which, I believe, challenges not only the
mainstream patriarchal representation but also the traditional feminist representations of women on
screen. The film holds out the possibility of a “feminine” narrative for cinema by offering
unaccustomed forms of story line and characterisation. That is to say, not having an extraordinary
protagonist and a story line that includes the unexpected to happen, the film narrates an ordinary
story. But it does it literally by women's voice and standpoint as the co‐scriptwriters; co‐producers
and co‐directors as well as the editor of the film are women, who openly claim to be feminists.
Hence, the film does not only offer a women's look and narrative but also inserts a conscious feminist
approach via cinematic signifiers.
I would like to elaborate on this statement with some examples from the film. Mavi Dalga tells a
mundane story of group of high‐school teenagers in Balıkesir, Turkey, through everyday life of Deniz,
the main character of the film. The plot is rather simple, Deniz and her friends, living in provincial
setting in Turkey, are back from summer holiday and as many other high‐school students in Turkey,
they are feeling the tension of the university entrance exam in the coming years, which arguably
becomes an extremely important experience of their lives. The story is the narration of a few middle‐
*
Kadir Has University Faculty of Communications.