Filmic Imagination as Emotional Homeland: Confronting Callousness, Achieving Home in Post-war Turkey

Abstract

This essay explores the centrality of emotions in the Turkish experience of urban modernity during the post-war decades. It draws on cinematic representations of a range of social emotions stirred by the urban condition in 1970s Istanbul. Tracing first the relevance of popular melodramas to post-war Turkish social imaginary, the article then proceeds with an analysis of three narrative tropes that shed light on people’s emotional navigation of tensions and conflicts wrought by rapid urban change: the callous factory owner as a figure of collective resentment, the old wooden family home as a place of emotional refuge, and the rhetoric of righteous anger to cultivate feelings of solidarity. Methodologically, the study argues for a greater use of films as a valuable source for emotions history, particularly in connection with the historical study of the built environment.