(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
doubtless related with the rise of women in business life in the 1970s. Woman straddle
between her job and her child and she also straddle between the difficulties of the life out and
the comfort of man’s auspices. In a patriarchy society, bringing up children is a duty assigned
to women and competition in the life outside is a domain where men struggle and in man’s
monopoly (1997:220-221). According to Isiklar, since the 1970s, patriarchy strategy was
intensively represented and this has continued so far. Horror seems to be the genre in which
misogyny is seen most in terms of character representations. In horror genre in which most of
the narrations intensify around sin-punishment axis, it is generally seen that sinner or who
lead to sin are women.
The film Araf is about the punishment of a woman who betrayed her natural role-
motherhood- by abortion. The theme of the film Araf is based on the punishment of sex and
abortion. Motherhood is natural and instinctive duty of Dahlia in Dark Water and Eda in Araf.
The point here is that while Dahlia tries not to make her daughter experience the traumatic
childhood her mother gave her, Eda experiences the trauma of the child she aborted. Eda tries
to have a new baby and pacify herself by attaching to her new baby. Dahlia tries to have
purgatorial by preventing her child having the same problematic relation she had with her
mother. Sinful woman character which we frequently come across in Hollywood horror films
is represented by Eda in the film Araf, Dahlia appears to be the victim character. The
representation of Dahlia as the victim character is different from patriarchal point of view in
classical narration in Hollywood horror genre. Dahlia is alone, helpless and innocent in Dark
Water. She is a mother who tries to be strong for her daughter. In this adaptation, woman is
represented as the victim of the male dominant social structure, tough to some extend. What
spoiled the life of Dahlia was abandoned little girl -Natasha- whom she met at the new
apartment block she moved to, Eda was disturbed by the girl she aborted. In both films, girls
turn up as ghosts who want to take revenge. The ghost of the dead little girl is the most
significant example of the influence of Fareast cinema on Turkish horror films. The two little
girls who come to take revenge are both the victims of their families and want to find peace.
Ghost children in both films have supernatural and evil and the primary source of threat. The
children want their mother to be with them to have the maternal love and compassionate they
need. Eda and Dahlia are concerned to be good mothers. In the film Araf, Eda is the sinful
woman who has to suffer from the sin she committed by aborting the child. She had an affair
not acclaimed by the society and committed a sin by aborting the child. Ghost girl only
hounded Eda because motherhood is Eda’s natural, intrinsic duty and she couldn’t fulfill her
duty. She lost her second child and she won’t be able to be mother anymore. While Eda pays
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