Leiden University Student Repository

Klercq, Rosalie (2022)

Active male protagonists versus passive female supporting characters: A study on the portrayal of women in the corpus of Turkish films on the Dutch Netflix

Master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (MA)

This study analyses the portrayal of women in Turkish films on the Dutch Netflix. With the help of three concepts from feminist film theory, namely male gaze, male voice and female subjectivity, and with the help from earlier studies on the portrayal of women in Turkish films, it finds that women in the Turkish films on the Dutch Netflix are overall portrayed in more passive ways than men, that the female characters often play a supporting role as compared to the male characters and that the concepts from feminist film theorists can still be applied to recently released films. Some films in the corpus however also contain feminist themes and elements, such as female protagonists and female characters that are not occupied with a search for love, but focus on their own personal development. This study concludes that while women are overall not portrayed in a positive way in the corpus, these feminist themes show a promising development that will hopefully continue in the future.

Turkey

film analysis

Netflix

male gaze

male voice

female subjectivity

Author

Klercq, Rosalie

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Supervisors

Bruijn, P. de

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en