Bir başkadır benim memleketim (Something else my homeland is)
Turkish song from the ’70s
Turkish melodrama is a billion-dollar industry, with an export value second only to that of shows made in the US. ‘Dizi,’ the term of choice for these sweeping, soapy affairs, that are marked by heavy dollops of drama, lush original scores, and endless Cinderellas, aren’t always taken seriously, but in the non-English speaking world, they are consumed voraciously. ‘Bir başkadır,’ re-titled as ‘Ethos’ for Netflix’s global market, features a show-within-the-show that criticizes the genre for showing mainstream Turkish audiences far too much of what they want to see. I call that being cheeky, because despite its arty pan and zooms and gorgeously sociological mise-en-scene, Ethos also daisy-chains its ensemble of stories into connections far too improbable for a cosmopolis the size of Istanbul, ties happiness a bit too close to marriage, and leans heavily on the country’s retro pop song tradition which is not subtle about its emotional cues. But because its women don’t contend with handsome beaus, but the myriad oppressions and dysfunctions of sharply polarized Turkish society, ‘Ethos’ might well be one of the finest minis ever to hit the platform.
In its present form as a republic, Turkey has now existed for ninety-seven years of both mounting prosperity and endless tumult. Within its history of violence can be found a continuous stream of women murdered for revenge or passion, a statistic at the scale of dozens of femicides a month and rising. Berkun Oya, the creator of ‘Ethos,’ likely cannot speak frankly about this, for the same reason that he cannot have his lesbians share a kiss, or pretty much anyone, for that matter. (Another Netflix production has been allegedly blocked by the government for identifying a character as gay.) What he can do is turn the raw emotionality of dizi on its head, hold up a mirror to his society, refract its unspoken sufferings across his storylines. Where common melodrama jerks its tears from our collective longing to be someone we aren’t, to find our way elsewhere, his show is about the truer heartache of the jaded here-and-now, of families at boiling point and the churn of therapy sessions Ꙩ Ꙫ. His show made shockwaves in his country, or at least I’m told as much by an awkward TRT review fidgeting about his characters being too representational, “chess pieces on a directorial board.” Damn right they are. If only we could have that on the other side of the river, too.
the Budafoki amended 