(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
1.Introduction
Films began to tell stories soon after the invention of the cinema. Thus, story-telling, found
new medium as product of high technology with which stories can reach not only individuals
or groups but also masses. Moreover, this tool that substantially increases the magic of
mimesis and its power to address viewers’ subconscious via techniques such as close-ups,
camera movements, angles and montage (Aristoteles 2002, Benjamin 2009, Pezzella 2006).
The power of cinema to influence masses was noticed early, especially during World War-I.
Besides propaganda films, films removing the viewer from real world also took place in the
history of cinema as products of this awareness. From the 1920s to the present, both
commercial and cinema movements films have been formed with a strong consciousness
about their power (Monaco 2002, Coskun 2003, Biryildiz 1998). The fact that popular films
were so important as to be worth investigation was understood in the 1940s. As a result of the
efforts aimed at objecting to the criticism conducted in accordance with high art criteria
especially in France, the view that films particularly theme films could not be handled
separately from social history gained importance (Abisel 1999;31). From the 1940s to today,
academic studies have investigated cinema in many dimensions ranging from its ideology to
sociology and from its psychology to history, analysed films by developing various methods
of analysis, formed a substantial know-how about cinema and put it into the service of
cinema.
When the industrial and economic prospects of cinema were properly appreciated besides its
magical influence on masses, a tough competition began between powerful countries. This
competition took place between France and USA. The former was considered to be the
country that invented the cinema, and the latter turned Hollywood into a concept rather than a
film-making centre and had secured its victory by 1928 in this competition which had started
in 1914. The economic domination of major Hollywood compaines in the global market
accompanied by American ideology has been continuing since 1928. Although occasional
efforts are observed in national cinemas aimed at breaking Hollywood’s domination (Monaco
2002;286-297), these efforts are far from achieving this goal.
Hollywood’s conveying ideology through story-telling and implanting this in viewers’
subconscious intensified when American cinema began to assert its domination in world
markets. One of the themes frequently used in Hollywood films, which becomes more
common in certain periods but is never totally discarded, is ‘saving the world’. Saving the
world is a feat that can be achieved by American or Americanised heroes no matter where the
threat comes from. Thus, American supremacy and the privileged position of being American
is inserted in the subconscious of the world. Naturally, American citizens are not exempted
from this process.
Although Turkish cinema has been making many films in its specific history involving the
task of ‘saving the country’, it has not assumed the task of ‘saving the world’ except for two
films which worth investigating. They were made with an interval of 24 years. Do these films
really save the world? Are there symbolic relationships between ‘saving the world’ and ‘reestablishing
national unity’? By answering these and similar questions, ample data can be
obtained and various conclusions about sociological, economic, political and sociopsychological
conditions of the countries at the time when they were made (Berger 1993,
Ozden 2004).
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