University Film Essay: Mustang and Patriarchy in MEDA18291G

This essay provides a critical analysis of the 2015 Turkish film 'Mustang,' directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven. The essay explores the film's portrayal of patriarchal domination and the restrictions placed upon five orphaned sisters in a remote Turkish village. It examines how the girls navigate these constraints, forming micro-resistances and strategies to assert their independence. The analysis connects the film's themes to real-life scenarios, highlighting the societal pressures faced by women. The essay also acknowledges the film's fairy tale-like qualities and its focus on intra-cultural concerns, particularly the exploration of adolescent sexuality. The conclusion underscores both the oppressive aspects of patriarchy depicted in the film and the rebellious spirit of the sisters, who challenge societal norms. The essay makes use of references to support its arguments, including academic articles and film reviews.

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL CINEMA
INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL CINEMA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors note

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INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL CINEMA
The film named, “Mustang” is a Turkish film, internationally co-produced, co-written
and directed by, Deniz Gamze Ergruven, who is a Turkish French women. This movie has
released in the year 2015. It solely presents and describes the dramatic tension and complexity
among an intensely conservative but at the same time unconsciously sexualized to an extreme
level adolescent and adult culture, as traced from the brutal sexual transitioning of the five sisters
who are orphans staying together in the house under supreme control and domination of their
uncle and grandmother in a Turkish remote village (Ergüven, Winocour, Ellis, & Gillibert,
2015).
This movie has narratively analysed an everyday life functioning of five characters in the
movie, who are the orphaned sisters living in a village in Turkey, as both parents of the girls died
years back, this trope is in focus in the film along with the genuine parental care. Being playful
and mutually protective towards one another, they have formed a merged group culture , which
shows a powerhouse of naturally emerging female sexuality operating sometimes as a single and
sometimes rebellious organisms (Dönmez, 2015). The motherless siblings are embodied and
loving to each other; and among the fatherless siblings the youngest and the oldest sister strongly
shows naturally fierce and benign parental morality. Despite of having all these attributes yet it is
insufficient for them to protect themselves from the transgenerational transmission regarding
sexual shame, which played the role of a predominant complexity. Their lives suddenly changed
dramatically as they played with their school mate boys (Yılmaz, 2016). As according to Turkish
tradition and culture, it is believed that girls must protect their sexuality from stranger males.
Therefore, after that incident the girls started to face severe control and domination in their house
from their grandmother and uncle, and their hegemonic rules and prohibitions, which has forced
the girls to form a sort of micro-resistance act inside them against their family members. Such

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micro-resistance act can be traced in the Michel de Certreu's notions of everyday life ‘tactics' and
‘strategies'; thus mundane act if the girls, like, wearing shorts skirts and watching football like
games at home are against the restrictions, and due to which these are considered as intelligent
and brave tactics which are intended to break the hegemony of their uncle over them and their
everyday lives. Therefore, an unseen act of resistance has been created and the girls started to
form their own tactics and strategies in order to discover room to be independent and getting to
express themselves freely (Ergüven, Winocour, Ellis, & Gillibert, 2015).
Learning from experience in a certain way and at a certain time is something that
everybody requires at some point of life but it is not something that everyone gets on time.
Sometimes the adult sexuality shadow brutally thrusts its path with in the stages of childhood
and adolescence and it makes its way in the process of attempting to explore out the nuance
world of sexual experience. Among other vital concerns regarding intra-culture, the film
Mustang rather focuses in exploring such sensitive points. This is a merely extraordinary intense,
surreal and dream like film, which has distinct archetypal qualities of a fairy tale (Abbott, 2017).
The main argument lies in the concept of power and patriarchy in the society and the
everyday lives of the women, and this reality of the society can also be traced in the film where
the girls under pressure of extreme domination as mentioned above and how their lives are
deprived and they prohibited in terms of simple vague stuffs, which is also a real life case. The
lives of the women are taken for granted by the men of the society and the family in the name of
honour and protection. In the film, the male domination has been displayed through the character
of the girl's uncle named Erol who can be seen controlling the girls but later the girls started to
break all the bans by wearing colourful bras, short underwear, and night robes and having fun in
their little room while their uncle assumes that they are obeying rules in the locked space. Later

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through many such actions they grasped their desired freedom, which shows their rebelliousness
(Yılmaz, 2016).
Hence, as a conclusion, while on one side this film shows the patriarchal domination and
restrictions over the five girls, which can be related to the real life scenario of women, but on the
other side it also shows the rebellious nature of the girls who are fierce enough to break bans
presenting the breakthrough ability of women.

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INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL CINEMA
References:
Abbott, R. (2017). Mustang: learning from experience. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 62(2),
318-322.
Dönmez, A. S. Mustang (2015). Nidaba, 1(1), 84-84.
Ergüven, D. G., Winocour, A., Ellis, W., & Gillibert, C. (2015). Mustang. Impuls Home
Entertainment.
Yılmaz, (2016) G. G. REFLECTIONS OF TACTICS OF WOMEN IN EVERYDAY LIFE:
ANALYSIS OF THE MOVIE “MUSTANG”.