Yeşilçam in letters : a "cinema event" in 1960s Turkey from the perspective of an audience discourse

Abstract

This study examines “Ye§il9am event” in Turkish cinema from the perspective of an audience discourse that is reconstituted from the audience letters published in popular cinema magazines Sinema and Perde. Through a study of the letters, it is observed that neither Ye§il9am cinema that marks the 1960s can be reduced to a film industry nor the social experience of it could be evaluated in terms of a cinema-audience relation consisting merely of movie going and film viewing. The topics and the forms of expressions in the letters suggest that Ye§il9am was a “cinema event” diffused throughout everyday life especially through social images of stars and that the audiences had an important role in its (re)production and circulation outside movie theatre.