Four Themes and a Movie: Searching for Labor and Its Footprints in Cinematography
Hasan YükselWhen analyzing the literature, studies on labor and cinema are seen to have skyrocketed over the last years. Audiences encountered the movie Iftarlik Gazoz, starring Cem Yilmaz and Berat Efe Parlar, in 2016. This study’s ultimate purpose is to analyze the main dynamics that shape the labor markets in Türkiye based on this movie. The movie uses the flashback method to elucidate the dramatic life story of Adem, a successful primary school student, and at the same time to provide significant hints about the life circumstances of the era. The movie takes place in a small Aegean town quite dominated by silent conservatives and involves the political and sociological conditions of the pre-1980s with a fundamental focus on labor markets. Adem’s family does farm labor, and he supports himself with his own labor. He is a hardworking pupil who likes reading. Upon dropping out of primary school in the 5th grade, he went on to work in the summer as an apprentice under Cibar Kemal Usta, the producer of traditional Turkish mineral water. Meanwhile, Adem had been exposed to the socialist indoctrination process by Hasan, the son of the village headman who had abandoned his undergraduate education as a result of student demonstrations. Adem wants to study and learn, and his elder brother, like Hasan, gives him books and works for Adem’s education. After the 1980s military coup, everything turned upside down, and Adem paid the price just like others. The study uses content analysis as its method. As a result of the content analysis, the following four basic themes emerged: the Akhi tradition (master-apprentice relationship), agricultural capitalism and its laborers, trade unionism and labor consciousness, and the conflict between capitalism and socialism. The first section of the study provides information about the literature review. The second section emphasizes the themes, features, and analysis methods in the movie. The last section of the study frames the findings and their analysis that have come to the fore as a result of deciphering the conversations.
Dört Konu, Bir Film: Sinemada ‘Emeği’ ve İzdüşümlerini Aramak
Hasan YükselÇalışmanın temel amacı, 2016 yılında sinemaseverlerle buluşan, başrolünde Cem Yılmaz ve Berat Efe Parlar’ın oynadığı “İftarlık Gazoz” filmi ekseninde Türkiye’de emek piyasasına yön veren temel dinamikleri incelemektir. Esasında film, geriye dönüş yöntemini kullanarak başarılı bir ilkokul öğrencisi olan Adem’in dramatik yaşam hikayesini anlatmakta, aynı zamanda dönemin koşullarına ilişkin de önemli ipuçları vermektedir. Film, muhafazakâr ve kendi halinde yaşayan insanların ağırlıkta olduğu bir Ege kasabasında geçmekte ve başta emek piyasası olmak üzere, 1980 öncesi dönemin politik ve sosyolojik koşullarını içermektedir. Ailesi tarım işçisi olan ve ekmeğini emeğiyle kazananAdem, çok çalışkan ve okumayı seven bir öğrencidir. Beşinci sınıfı bitirdikten sonra yaz tatilinde Gazozcu Cibar Kemal Usta’nın yanında çırak olarak çalışmaya başlar. Diğer taraftan Adem, köyün ağasının oğlu olan ve öğrenci olayları nedeniyle okulunu bırakmak zorunda kalan Hasan ağabeysinin sosyalist öğretilendirme sürecine de maruz kalır. Adem, okumak ve öğrenmek istemekte, Hasan ağabeysi ise kitaplar vererek O’nu yetiştirmeye çalışmaktadır. 1980 Askeri Darbesi patlak verdikten sonra olaylar bambaşka bir yöne doğru sürüklenmiş ve Adem de bu süreçten payına düşeni almıştır. Çalışmada, içerik analizi yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Yapılan içerik analizi sonucunda ahilik (usta-çırak ilişkisi), tarım kapitalizmi ve işçileri, sendikacılık ve emek bilinci ve sosyalizm ve kapitalizm çatışması olmak üzere emek piyasasına ilişkin dört temel konu tespit edilmiştir. Çalışmanın birinci bölümü literatür taramasına ilişkin bilgiler içermektedir. Çalışmanın ikinci bölümünde ise filmin konusuna, özelliklerine ve analiz yöntemine değinilmiştir. Karşılıklı diyalogların deşifre edilmesi sonucunda elde edilen bulgular ve analiz kısmı çalışmanın son bölümünü oluşturmaktadır.
Cinematography is a tool used extensively to influence the masses as a soft-power apparatus or as a big industry. In view of its universality in regards to the political, social, cultural, and economic messages conveyed to the audiences, cinema (i.e., movies) have been the subject for many scholars from different scientific fields. In particular, cinema has converted into a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural academic discipline in the social sciences over the last few decades. This has also been the case for scholars with expertise on topics such as labor studies, labor relations, labor economics, and social policy. The reason behind this reality is the fact that cinema involves socially realistic themes such as disadvantaged groups, labor movements, immigration, labor history, unionism, political disputes, industrialization, the problems of urbanization, cold war, and economic issues including economic crisis and reflects those sorts of issues directly into scenes. In addition, workers in the cinema sector and their problems with wages, conflicts with capital owners, unionistic struggles, and collective bargaining procedurals are other things that will be taken into account on the basis of cinema’s correlation with labor studies. Therefore, cinema has become the fundamental focus for labor scholars.
Using the content analysis method, this article investigates the main dynamics of labor markets such as Akhi principles (the relationship between master and apprenticeship), agricultural capitalism and its laborers, trade unionism, labor consciousness, and the conflict between capitalism and socialism based on the movie İftarlik Gazoz (Aksu, 2016). The movie is about the economic as well as political outcomes of the military coups that took place in Türkiye in the 1980s within the context of the dramatic life story of Adem. While elucidating on the tragic events in the aftermath of these military coups, the movie clarifies the particular economic and political conditions of the era for a province in the Aegean Sea in line with the labor market dynamics that are stated well in advance. From this perspective, the movie can be referenced as an absolute panorama of social realistic happenings at the onset of the 1980s. The master-and-apprenticeship relationship between Cibar Usta, the seller of Turkish mineral water, and Adem, a primary school student, signifies the principles of the Akhi organization, whose roots date back to the 13th century in Anatolia. Sevket Aga, who possesses large acres of tobacco land, serves as a reference to capitalism in agriculture, while the unionizing efforts of Hasan, Sevket Aga’s son, regarding agricultural laborers signals the reality of trade unions. Again, Hasan’s academic struggles to make Adem into an intellectual man shed light on the issue of labor consciousness. Lastly, Cibar Usta’s challenges to combat large capital owners within the beverage sector demonstrates the conflicts between socialism and capitalism.
The paper contributes to the literature in various ways. First and foremost, associating labor studies and the issues of labor relations (e.g., trade unionism, collective bargaining, socialism vs. capitalism, arbitration, mediation, strikes, labor vs. capital, lockouts) with cinematography is a contemporary approach that has gained great momentum over the last few years. This method has paved the way for overlapping theory with practice, which also accelerates students’ learning capabilities, especially for intangible concepts in the social sciences, and enriches teaching environments. Within this context of the principles of learning and teaching, visual and audial magic comes to the fore in how it stimulates learning and diversifies teaching. This strategy has also led to multidisciplinary and joint works that offer new insights for labor relations as an academic discipline.
Meanwhile, the paper has several restrictions. Initially, the paper just analyzes a movie; however, more than one film could be subjected to academic analyses; this would result in more generalizable outcomes. Future researchers can be recommended to enlarge the scope of the analysis and utilize new software programs like Maxqda, Nvivo or Atlas for analyzing qualitative data.