Unfamiliar sounds in familiar settings: On the cosmopolitan labour of film composers in Istanbul
Filmmaking in Turkey has long, convoluted history. The Turkish film industry developed, flowered, and declined before being nearly obliterated altogether by a military coup in 1980. Following the nearly total disappearance of a coherent studio system, a new approach to filmmaking, the New Turkish Cinema, developed during a time of economic and cultural resurgence. Now in a mature phase, Turkish films and television programs are rapidly becoming a focus of local and global interest, as Turkey grows as a consumer marketplace and as a player in global affairs. Films and television programs have become key players in Turkey’s economic, cultural, and diplomatic resurgence. Despite film’s reemergence, film music has not been a focus of scholarly inquiry until recently because critics and scholars have not seen it as a contributing factor to the development of the new Turkish cinema. This dissertation examines the creative labor of film composers working in the Turkish film industry from 2010-2016. It focuses on the socio-cultural contexts that facilitate the work of filmmakers as they create films suitable for the Turkish market while working from within a much more globalized, cosmopolitan framework. Through a detailed assessment of film composers’ creative processes, it demonstrates that their work is that of a “first interpreter,” a role that makes them the conduit between the filmmaking team and the audiences. The initial chapters develop a technological and social history of Turkish filmmaking. They identify the conditions under which diasporic Turks have come to dominate the role of film composer. These individuals brought new technologies and practices in the form of digital music composition and the use of DAWs (digital audio workstations) to create almost exclusively synthesized film scores. Their working methods are connected to a larger filmmaking context because of the unifying presence of these new tools. Consequently, they have brought new practices and methods by participating globalized filmmaking praxisscape enabled by computerized technologies and fundamentally changed the way Turkish films are made. Later chapters investigate the details of Turkish filmmakers’ work and demonstrate how their disinterest in identity politics has made them excellent conduits for importation and experimentation of outside influences. Their role as first interpreter grounds their work as they experiment with a combination of Turkish topics, global topics, and many different genres of music. Following a close analysis of how new technologies have influenced the practicalities of film music composition and cinematic interpretation, the final chapter closes with a description of the “return to home” trope. This cine-musical construction is found in a number of films of the New Turkish Cinema. Its construction and use is a significant manifestation of contemporary debates trying to locate Turkish social and cultural identity between old/new, eastern/western, rural/urban, and traditional/modern dyads.
Turkey, New Turkish Cinema, STS, Cinema studies, Film music, Composition, Music, Identity, Digital audio work station, Ethnomusicology, Music performance, Human computer interaction, Nationalism
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign