The film Mustang is both a coming of age tale about five sisters and the
strife they encounter through female adolescence growing up in Turkey, and a
cautionary tale about freedom of expression, and the price paid for breaking
the status quo. Sonay, Selma, Ece, Nur, and Lale play the role of five sisters
that take the audience through their journey of overcoming adversity, often
without much of any positive outcome. One by one the audience witnesses their
lives change within given relationships not just with each other and members of
their own family, but the external conflict between themselves and society as a
whole. The film sparks a conversation about the role of women in many nations
where religion takes precedent over individualism. Therefore, the film Mustang is reminiscent of a teenage
slasher horror movie, masquerading as a coming of age tale of female
individualism overcoming adversity.
Female sexuality is the driving
cognitive metaphor throughout much of the movie. There are two basic elements
of the film that guide my perspective on the film: parallelism and motif. The
film begins innocently enough with the five sisters mentioned playing in ocean
waters with a group of adolescent boys. Physical contact is represented in a
very child-like sense, with no sexual overtone or sexual contact expressed
during the opening scenes. This setup establishes the mood and characterization
that carries the rest of the film. It is necessary, for its ability to show the
innocence of the five sisters all living out an idyllic afternoon among
friends. The motif among these scenes, the binding connection symbol, is the
ocean. The ocean then represents the metaphor between nature and man’s
dominion.
The ocean is shot at a wide angle,
with close ups involving the girls all laughing in its bliss and among the
boys. It is almost as if the ocean acts as a barrier to the outside world
around them, and a blanket that encompasses both the girls and the boys at
close physical proximity. There’s already a strange feeling of tension, that
part of life where girls and boys start to mature and blossom into women and
men, and is represented with some of the older sisters, particularly with the
likes of Selma and Sonay. They are carried atop the shoulders of boys, the
ocean waters drenching them repeatedly as the men bounce them up and down above
their heads with the ebb and flow of the waves. It represents the sexual coming
of age between the two eldest sisters, whose physical proximity to the boys are
almost natural for girls their age with developing hormones, with the sensation
of dampness and the bobbing between shots giving the audience the allusion
about sex.
After their trip through the garden,
the introduction of the film’s parallelism is first seen. The ocean scene and
the garden scene are similar with their bliss and naïve quest to explore the
nature of life around them, and thus an inner journey to search for their own
identities. What separates the two is the man with a shotgun who jolts the
women back into reality, of diving into areas they should not be wandering. The
entire scene sets up the second act of the film, and the consequences for
flying too close to the sun so to speak, and even representational of the fall
of Adam and Eve in the Garden when they became too self-aware of their Original
Sin. In this case, the Original Sin is the lack of concern for obeying status
quo, and allowing themselves to partake in open public physical interaction
with young boys.
From here on out in the film, the
idea of premarital sex, or any physical lewd act for that matter, is discussed
openly. It allows the audience to see the main external conflict right in the
open without any hesitation: Their virginity, their chastity, their bodies and
their vaginas are not their own. On the contrary, they are vessels for men, for
society, and for their future husbands now and forever. While the beginning and
the very end of the film becomes a story of personal growth and overcoming
adversity for one particular character, the main protagonist and the youngest
sister Lale, it then turns into a cautionary tale for all the other sisters.
Maureen Medved, a famed scholar who
analyzed the subliminal messages of the film Mustang mentions in her article, “the innocent freedom they
experienced before their imprisonment was a cruel illusion” (Medved 47). In
almost every teenage slasher film, there are “tropes” commonly mixed in for the
audience to analyze. A group of teenage characters arrive, stumble upon a
remote area they shouldn’t have wandered, and are then systematically killed
off one at a time usually because of their sexual promiscuity, drug use,
tattoos and piercings, and anything else that symbolizes individuality and acts
seen as negative by society and the status quo. The heroine, if there are any
survivors, is always the chaste and innocent girl where through her sexual
repression, defeats her antagonist by expelling all her tension through
physical action. Mustang turns into a
horror movie, with clever variations disguising some of the more overplayed and
clichéd stereotypes and tropes.
Our five main characters are all
introduced, each with their own personalities and yearnings for personal growth
and freedom. Each are thrown into naïve amusement during the opening scenes at
the ocean and through the garden. As the film progresses, they are marked by an
elder neighbor who spills the beans and begins to change the course of their
lives forever. Uncle Erol, their guardian along with a multitude of elderly
aunts and female relatives, scorn them for even thinking of unleashing their
sexual promiscuity. They are all locked up in a house that slowly but surely
becomes more and more securitized, like countless infamous tales of a Haunted
House Story where no one can leave. Their sexual promiscuity ends up being
their downfall when the elders think it is time to sell off their girls to the
highest bidders, with not even a word of consideration from the sisters
themselves.
The wedding scene represents an
excellent example of parallelism, where one sister Sonay is beyond overjoyed to
be engaged to the man of her dreams, while another sister, Selma, is openly
displeased. Her “virginity check” is a time for catharsis for herself and for
the audience, to analyze why she states her message of how she has slept with
many men even though her hymen seems to say otherwise. It’s as if she’s
wondering why she is being punished with this miserable life and circumstances
outside her control, and why she simply cannot enjoy life and individuality.
She is already dead, “killed” on the inside and has been for some time. Sonay
seems to believe that she has “won,” that because she is with the man of her “dreams”
she will be just fine and “we” as an audience never know what ends up of her
fate and whether a happy marriage is in the works and maybe that is all she
needs. But then again, how do any of us know if a happy marriage to a loving
spouse is all we’ll ever need as the years go on?
Ece is the next sister on the
chopping block, who suffers the ultimate doom. It is revealed that Uncle Erol
has been molesting her, stealing away her innocence. In rebellion, she allows
herself to have sexual relations with another boy in the backseat of her
Uncle’s car very dangerously and in public. Her exposure to sex has always come
at a negative, and soon enough, she ends up taking her own life with a gun. Since
sex is taken by force, and innocence is robbed, the effects on Ece are
devastating and comes at a heavy price, along with the burden for those suffering
that hardship. Maral Erol, a researcher on Turkey’s medical arena, states that,
“Nearly half of forensic physicians
in Turkey conduct virginity examinations for social reasons despite beliefs
that such examinations are inappropriate, traumatic to the patient, and often
performed against the patient's will” (Erol 55). Even
if the girls get away with certain acts of promiscuity, society will always
find a way to keep them in check, scaring them into forever forcing them to be
pure, or suffer the consequences beyond your imagination.
Lale’s
last sister in the house, Nur, is also being taken advantage of by Uncle Erol.
Through a cunning plan, the two sisters finally act against society and their
elders and find a way to escape the horrors and trauma of what was to be their
futures. Lale is in control, as the innocent and still a chaste girl who takes
over the wheel of a car and drives off – somewhere…anywhere. Our main
protagonist, our heroine, our leading lady who defeats her monster ends up
escaping and even manages to survive with one of her sisters, but do they drive
off into the sunset? Is it a happy ending to know that all of Lale’s other
sisters, except for Sonay who accepts her fate to be a housewife for better or
worse, are doomed one way or the other and punished more or less by the use of
either sexual desires or sexual misdeeds? How far can they go behind the wheel
of that car, at their age, in an entire nation designed to shackle them? The
movie has another classic horror movie inspired ending; our main heroine has
survived, for now, but the boogeyman is still out there lurking and stalking.
And if it’s not their Uncle, it’s their aunts, or their neighbors, or the
police, or anyone at all in the country of Turkey.
Analyzing
the movie therefore is like summarizing any teenage slasher film. A group of
young adolescents think they are all alone, with the freedom to express
themselves any way they see fit. They are soon “found out” by a force, an
unstoppable entity that stalks them at every turn. They are isolated, secluded
from others in a physical “location” they cannot escape from and weld shut from
the outside. One by one, sex proves to be their downfall until finally a brave
chaste heroine makes a daring escape that expels the antagonist once and for
all out of their lives. Before the film concludes, and as they are driving off
into the unknown, it highlights their emotional growth and spiritual journey, and
hints that the audience shouldn’t necessarily assume a “happy ending” if all of
Lale’s sisters are gone or negatively affected, and the Boogeyman is still out
there in some form or another trying to catch them. The title of Mustang, is in reference to Lale, the
brave steed who gets away by finding her inner strength to confront the evil
fate that stands before her. The one, lone chaste warrior who at least for a
brief while, has the chance to get away.
Works
Cited
Ergüven, Deniz Gamze, director. Mustang. Cohen
Media Group, 2015.
Medved, Maureen. "Mustang." Herizons Summer 2016: 47.
Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.
Erol, Maral.
"From Opportunity to Obligation: Medicalization of Post-menopausal
Sexuality
in Turkey." Sexualities, 17.1-2 (2014): 43-62.
in Turkey." Sexualities, 17.1-2 (2014): 43-62.
Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang and the Fight for Control Over
Women’s Bodies
by Colette Meade
by Colette Meade
In
America, mustangs are feral horses that have escaped captivity are adapted to
the conditions of the wilderness (Schafer). Mustang is a
2015 Turkish film directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven where young women also fight
to escape captivity. The film centers on the story of five orphaned sisters
growing up in rural Turkey in the early 2000’s. The film stars Güneş Şensoy as
Lale, Doğa Doğuşlu as Nur, Elit İşcan as Ece, Tuğba Sunguroğlu as Selma, and
İlayda Akdoğan as Sonay. At the beginning of the film, the sisters are shown
playing innocently in the ocean with male classmates. Unfortunately, this is
interpreted as a sexual offense by members of their community, and their
surrogate parental figures, a grandmother and uncle, Because of this incident,
the older sisters Ece, Sonay, and Selma are subjected to “virginity tests,” all
of the girls are not allowed to return to school, and their home is converted
into a prison that they are rarely allowed to leave. Meanwhile, their
grandmother begins cooking and sewing lessons with the sisters as they are set
up in arranged marriages one by one. In addition, it is revealed that their
uncle is molesting first Ece, and then Nur.
Ergüven intended to convey a powerful feminist message against
patriarchal oppression in her film Mustang;
she conveyed this through strategic plot points including the reaction to the
girls frolicking with their male classmates, Nur’s molestation, and Ece and
Lale’s acts of rebellion.
There
is a powerful message regarding women’s role in a patriarchal society in the
film Mustang. Patriarchy is defined
as “a social structural phenomenon in which males have the privilege of
dominance over females, both visibly and subliminally [which is] manifested in
the values, attitudes, customs, expectations, and institutions of the society”
(Darity). Turkey has a long-standing
tradition of being a rather patriarchal society despite some modern
improvements over the years. The
Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures describes this by saying
“While women have access to the public sphere as citizens equal with men in
modern Turkey, the private sphere is still held to be the appropriate place for
women, since their roles as mothers and wives are prioritized by the prevailing
patriarchal mentality” (Özman). As recently as March 2016, Turkey’s current
president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in a speech that a woman “is above all
else a mother” (France-Presse). Places like Turkey are able to maintain
patriarchy through control over female bodies. Power over bodies is an
extremely important way to perpetuate social hierarchies as famous French
philosopher Michel Foucault explains in his work “Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of the Prison.” Some feminists, such as poet Adrienne Rich and activist
Andrea Dworkin, also discuss power over bodies and how it is a way that males
maintain dominance over women (Bordo). What makes Mustang such a unique film is how it skillfully presents ideals
similar to Rich. Foucault, and Dworkin’s without ever once mentioning politics
or feminism. As Adile Sedef Dönmez states in a review of the film, “The movie
explores women’s issues by focusing on social and private life, rather than
structural and legal problems, and through this delineates the way these
oppressive structures are recreated within the family and society.” The
politics of a nation are often an abstract concept to many people and the ways
in which they affect the family unit is where they truly play out. Thus, the
focus on the family in the film puts the issues of control and dominance over
women’s bodies’ in the viewer's face in a very real and approachable way.
The
catalyst for all the action throughout the film is the scene where the sisters
play in the ocean with the school boys. The reaction to this incident shows how
the town, the girl’s uncle, and their grandmother all attempt to exert control
over the sister’s sexuality. According to Rich, denying women their sexuality
by means of punishment is another method by which “male power is manifested and
maintained” (1596). After the ocean
incident, the uncle is angry with the grandmother for allowing the girls to
interact in a potentially sexual way with the young men. The grandmother keeps
trying to reassure him that they have done nothing wrong to which he replies,
“If they’re sullied it’s your fault!” (Ergüven). Thus, the sister’s sexuality
is deemed to be under the control of the uncle and the grandmother and not the
young women themselves. Foucault
discusses the modern invention of institutions that discipline the body. He
mentions a French prison named Mettray as an early model for these types of
institutions. He explains that one of the hierarchical models in which inmates
were divided at Mettray was a ‘family’ structure. The prison’s task was “to
produce bodies that were docile and capable” using family models among others (1491). In a similar way, the sister’s family hierarchy
is an institution that controls their bodies. Their grandmother is expected to
produce docile young women that adhere to patriarchal norms. The grandmother
reassures the uncle that the sisters are still virgins despite their play in
the ocean by saying “I’ll prove it to you” (Ergüven). Again, it is the
grandmother and uncle’s decision to subject the three older sisters Ece, Sonay,
and Selma to a “virginity report,” which is a direct violation of their
bodies. According to the article
“Virginity Examinations in Turkey: Role of Forensic Physicians in Controlling
Female Sexuality” these tests are “gynecologic examinations that attempt to
correlate the status of the hymen with the occurrence of sexual intercourse”
because “rupture of the hymen is considered evidence of loss of virginity”
(Frank). This article also goes onto to assert that “premarital female
virginity is considered an important social norm that may serve to control
women's behavior” (Frank). Thus, at the beginning of the film it is established
that the young women do not have much control over their own person due to the
patriarchal control that the authority figures in their life exert over them in
a prison-like fashion.
Another
demonstration of how male patriarchy maintains control over women is conveyed
in the film through the uncle’s molestation of Nur. The film tackles this
somewhat delicately by not showing any actual molestation, but strongly
implying it. Lale sees the uncle quietly sneaking into Nur’s room at night, and
then the next scene cuts to Lale waking up to her grandmother and uncle
arguing. The grandmother exclaims “What were you doing? I asked you a question!
Stop that! Stop it right now!” (Ergüven). This scene makes it clear that the
uncle feels he has complete control over the sisters, which includes sexual
access to them. Rich describes this type of behavior as forcing male sexuality
upon women by means of rape or incest (1549). Rich sees this as another form of
power that men hold over women to enforce patriarchy. Their grandmother’s reaction to the
molestation only serves to reinforce this power structure. Their grandmother
does not turn their uncle into the authorities despite being appalled by his
actions. Instead she begins plans to arrange a marriage for Nur since she, “is
a young woman now” (Ergüven). The
grandmother is again acting as an agent of patriarchy and using the sisters as
“objects in male transactions” (Rich 1595).
She is transferring ownership of the young women’s bodies from the uncle
to another male. Their grandmother is not encouraging the girls to embrace any
personal control. Dworkin explains the behavior of women like this in her
speech “Terror, Torture, and Resistance.” She discusses how some women accept
as a basic premise of life that women are “things” that must be sexually
pleasing to men to survive. Thus, women in oppressed situations are often brave
people, but they use their bravery to make deals that compromise their freedom
in the name of survival “instead of fighting the system that forces [women] to
make the deal” (Dworkin). An arranged marriage to protect a young woman from
rape is an example of this type of “deal.” The grandmother feels she is being
brave when she is an active participant in the young women’s oppression.
Ece
and Lale both rebel against the patriarchal structure of Turkish society in
very different ways. Ece takes control over her body by committing suicide. The
scene begins with the three youngest sisters eating dinner with their uncle and
grandmother. The uncle is intently watching a television program. The audience
does not see the television, only the uncle’s face as he is absorbed in the
program. The voice on the television states, “Women must be chaste and pure,
know their limits, and mustn’t laugh openly in public, or be provocative with
every move. Women must guard their chastity!” (Ergüven). The faceless man on the television is
explicitly encouraging the control over women’s sexuality that Rich has
described. Ece makes fun of the program
by putting up her middle finger in front of her face where the other two girls
can see, and they all begin giggling. As a result, the uncle demands that Ece
leave the table. When she goes into the room, she shoots herself. It is clear
that Ece is fed up with the patriarchal attitude of both her uncle and the
surrounding society. She feels that the only way she can exert control over her
own being is to end her life. Ultimately, Lale exerts control over her
situation, much like Ece did, but in a much more constructive way. At the end
of the film, on what is supposed to be Nur’s wedding day, Lale initiates a
daring escape from the house with Nur. She locks the entire wedding party out
of the house while her uncle bangs angrily on the doors and windows trying to
get in. The two girls manage to escape and eventually make it the more
cosmopolitan city of Istanbul where they find their female school teacher and
show up at her door. Lale’s daring
escape echoes the words of Dworkin in “Terror, Torture, and Resistance” when
she says: “ I'm asking you to fight…I'm not asking you to get caught. I'm
asking you to escape. I'm asking you to run for your life” (Dworkin). Dworkin
is encouraging women trapped in violent and oppressive situations to stand up
for themselves through escape rather than death, and this is exactly what Lale
does. Lale exerts ultimate control over her body by getting away from both her
uncle and the arranged marriage. She does not compromise her freedom by
allowing herself to be transferred to another male in order to avoid
molestation from her uncle. She then seeks out the help of an educated woman in
a metropolitan city as her final act of defiance in the film.
It
is clear that Ergüven wanted to discuss feminist issues with her film Mustang. Ergüven explains in an
interview that she “had long had an abstract desire to tackle the question of
what it is to be a woman in Turkey” (Cooke). Ergüven brilliantly conveys a
powerful message regarding the enforcement of patriarchy through control over
women’s bodies. These ideas are reminiscent of the work of great writers like
Foucault, Rich, and Dworkin. A mustang is a wild free-roaming horse, and the
film’s title acts as a symbol for the free spirits of the sisters that
authority figures attempt to tame throughout the film. However, at least two of
the sisters are able to break free from their oppression thanks to the
untamable strength of the youngest sister Lale. This strength is a powerful
role model for women dealing with oppression that encourages them to fight and
to escape.
Works Cited
Bordo, Susan, and Monica Udvardy.
"Body, The." New Dictionary of
the History of Ideas, edited by Maryanne Cline Horowitz, vol. 1, Charles
Scribner's Sons, 2005, pp. 230-238. Gale Virtual Reference Library, Accessed 11
Dec. 2016.
Cooke, Rachel. “Deniz Gamze Ergüven:
'For Women in Turkey It's like the Middle Ages'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 May 2016.
Darity, William
A."Patriarchy." International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., vol. 6, Macmillan Reference
USA, 2008, pp. 173-174. Gale Virtual Reference Library, Accessed 11 Dec. 2016.
Dworkin, Andrea. “Terror, Torture,
and Resistance.”Canadian Woman
Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, fall 1991, Volume 12, Number 1.
Dönmez, Adile Sedef. "Mustang
(2015)." Nidaba 1.1 (2016): 84. journals.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/nidaba/article/download/15853/14340
Ergüven, Deniz Gamze, director. Mustang. Cohen Media Group, 2015.
Frank MW, Bauer HM, Arican N, Korur
Fincanci S, Iacopino V. “Virginity Examinations in Turkey: Role of Forensic
Physicians in Controlling Female Sexuality”. JAMA. 1999; 282(5):485-490,
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” The
Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. Ed. Peter Simon. 2nd ed, New
York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Schafer,
Elizabeth D. "Mustangs." Dictionary
of American History, edited by Stanley I. Kutler, 3rd ed., vol. 5, Charles
Scribner's Sons, 2003, p. 504.
Özman, AylIn. "Turkey." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures,
edited by Suad Joseph, vol. 2: Family, Law and Politics, Brill Academic
Publishers, 2005, pp. 670-671. Gale
Virtual Reference Library.
France-Presse, Agence. “Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan: 'A woman is above all else a mother.'” The Guardian News
and Media Inc.
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.”The
Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. Ed. Peter Simon. 2nd ed, New
York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
