Yedigün in Space: G.O.R.A and Representation
"But don’t forget: even if it’s an alien, a human is a human."
In my last vacation abroad, two years ago now, I was committed to finding a Turkish science-fiction novel. Across multiple stores I’ve browsed, I found one (1) book on a Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelf that was not a translation - Son Tiryaki (The Last Smoker) by Müfit Özdeş. Originally published in 1996 but re-published with new additions by Metis in 2018, Son Tiryaki is actually a collection of science-fiction stories, all of which center Turkish characters in futuristic settings and play for the large part in Istanbul. We run the gamut from protagonists who get cucked by three-armed aliens to smoking bans, the latter written long before it actually happened in Turkey. This was my review from three years ago:
There's good stuff in there. The title story had potential, but kinda fell flat to me. Yeralti Insanlar [Underground People] felt most realized, but had this 1984 kind of end to it that I... am not a fan of (feels deflating). Everything inbetween ranged from the first draft of a thought experiment to a sketch. The author seemed more keen to bring on these ideas and how Turks would react to said future science, rather than delving more deeply into the characters' psyches or relationships. I didn't hate any story, per se, but I felt blown away by very few, if that makes sense. I think the best way to describe this book is to call it "Black Mirror as imagined by an Istanbulite," which is not at all an insult here. A good book, a fantastic thought experiment […] but not godtier nor a formative tastemaker.
I remember the humor out of it the most, looking back. For instance, the first story “İki Kısa Bir Uzun”, has the protagonist Yalçın jealous of his own future self, even though his love interest repeatedly tells him it’s him, not anyone else. It’s a familiar template for many male characters (and no doubt real life Turkish men) to make fun of and it’s a very welcome reprieve from the usual. And across this book, I meet many more characters and archetypes I’m intimately familiar with. No longer do I have to do the extra mile to relate to American white characters in their American white lives. “Representation” is a word I don’t like to use, but fits exactly what I was looking for and got here. They are not me, per se, but someone I could know, living daily lives in a culture I live in.
G.O.R.A, released in 2004 and roughly a decade after Son Tiryaki’s original publication, taps into a very similar concept. We follow Arif (Cem Yılmaz, who also wrote the script), a shrewd carpet seller from Antalya, whose mind is on making as much money as possible. This has him create “UFO sightings”, which in his case means an old man has to hold a metal plate doubling as a spaceship early on in the film. Turkish customers are nowhere near as relevant as tourists for Arif, and even then, don’t call him “unless it’s Prince Philipp.” Except one day said prince does appear in his shop, and Arif tries to sell a carpet that “had a child go blind from trying to finish it”. As you might imagine, this isn’t really Prince Philipp and his hot female secretary, but Commandant Logar (also Cem Yılmaz) and his right hand Kuna (Şafak Sezer), two aliens who have promptly abducted Arif to planet Gora. Arif’s objective is clear: get the hell out of here, preferably with picture proof. He’s aided by robot 216 (Ozan Güven), Bob Marley Faruk (the late Rasim Güntekin), palace princess Ceku (Özge Özberk in ethnic braids) and the maybe-blind, definitely-sniffing elder Garavel (Özkan Uğur). He also stops Logar from destroying Gora, humanity, and marrying Ceku.
Right off the bat, the character Arif taps into the Turkish everyman archetype: he’s hotheaded and sardonic; he’s rude, but becomes kind as the movie progresses; and he cannot tolerate injustice, always siding with the oppressed. He follows the legacy paved by legendary actors Sadri Alışık (who also had an everyman sent to space once with Turist Ömer) and Kemal Sunal’s Şaban character, as well as the work of theater actors and comedians Zeki Alasya, Metin Akpınar, and Levent Kırca. But Yılmaz connects the dots to the other side of the pond; not only in the overtly parodied Star Wars and Matrix films, as well as referencing The Fifth Element, these subversions also reflect in Arif himself. As the movie progresses, Arif actually rejects the notion of war and fighting, saying, “Hocam, war just isn’t really for me,” as Garavel injects kung-fu into him via a Commodore 64. When Ceku asks who her real father is, Arif and 216 cast a meaningful glance to the camera. Arif wins Ceku over not by being particularly hot or just because he happens to be the protagonist, but by treating her like a normal person with a basic amount of respect.
This is a point that the film makes over and over, be it by conveniently turning an orange to a Yedigün (soft drink brand) in the name of science-fiction or having Arif call his friend Muhittin from space because his phone operator is Avea (once its own company, now part of Türk Telekom). Characters all speak Turkish, to Arif’s own surprise; instead of Dollars, Turkish Lira will do just fine for alien vendors; 216 reads Ceku’s fortune through coffee sod; Ceku watches a Sadri Alışık film (not just any film, but the Ofsayt Osman scene); 216 asks Garavel “Did you go blind from a car crash?” referencing a classic Yesilçam trope; Gora royalty buys and eats a number of Turkish sweets. The soundtrack by Ozan Çolakoğlu fuses techno elements with instruments that in this context just read undoubtedly Turkish instead of “lots of Indian and Moroccan influences and things like that”. Science fiction doesn’t have to be white American, G.O.R.A says. Aliens aren’t necessarily all bad and they crave just as much love as humans do. And at the film’s climax, Yılmaz even tells Hollywood directly: “American films! You’ve introduced aliens differently [than this film] for years. You’ve shown them as monsters. But don’t forget: even if it’s an alien, a human is a human.”
It’s a potent conclusion to arrive at. Even outside aliens serving as sorta-metaphor, sorta-not for all sorts of “the others” and general American fears of being colonized themselves, it’s clear that these heroes cannot, and do not, represent humanity as a whole — these saviors and heroes actually only show a white American fantasy. For a viewer like me, there’s really only two ways the narrative goes: either I forget my own cultural identity for a moment, set aside everything about me, and subscribe to the fantasy in order to feel catharsis out of the “hero/savior” narrative, or I relate to the alien race, hostile, barely-human looking, and always losing. Turkey in 2004 was a country which saw itself eye-to-eye with the ideal Europe, and that meant rejecting either dichotomy: neither European nor the bug-faced aliens, but carving up your own space on the table in which your words matter. Almost two decades on, now no longer desiring to even sit with Europeans, Turkish dizi now export only second to the US with big budget productions more than capable of sending every message it desires with a wide-reaching international audience. Yılmaz’ declaration, interpreted to a certain extent, is now reality.
G.O.R.A isn’t a perfect film. There’s copious amounts of casual-00s offensiveness to it that makes me hesitate to recommend this to any one of my friends. The action scenes use slow-motion that is endemic to every Turkish production. As beyazperde.com puts it, “the film draws its humor only from its script and the actor’s performances,” with director Ömer Faruk Sorak “incapable of filling the low points on his own”. And yet, its Turkishness does a lot of work inside of me, to the point where I have no choice but to separate my rational side with another, one that strongly craves… validation. My Turkishness with its Best of MFÖ cassettes and hand-kissing to its elders and coffee sod reading is fine as it is - even if the Austrian government would have me believe I’m to blame for things outside my control, even if my fellow Turkish people would have me believe otherwise. And it’s not just me who feels this way; famous people suffer from the exact same problem as well. So it’s nice to hear that my Turkishness is fine; more importantly, I can’t put a numeric value to this. It’s odd I had even declared Son Tiryaki “not a tastemaker”. What taste is this supposed to create in me? This is my culture. All the same, though, what perhaps hits me the most is the implication both Son Tiryaki and G.O.R.A make: because my Turkishness is fine in the future, it will be fine and valid now. Rather than bask in the supposed glory of past times, like Resurrection: Ertuğrul and Establishment: Osman, it’s the otherness of now that I grappled with — me and so many others in this world.
Because here’s the thing: I am that alien.
I am that alien that threatens other people’s existence. I am that alien that will always be a political talking point for other people. I am that alien, just by existing and looking the way I do. If I get to choose anything here, it’s that I can only accept, or reject, this otherness I have compared to the people of this country. Some live with the latter. I chose the former. I used to think that this choice was me “choosing” my Turkishness. But no matter what, I am always Turkish. Therefore what I really want to be represented by isn’t Turkishness on a screen. No book, no film, no series will help me with the kind of validation I crave. Just seeing Turkishness alone can’t do, because it leads to the slippery slope of representation that would have me demand my entire identity in fictional novels, which would turn me into something easy to digest and ironed out of every single kink, every single possible “other me” that makes me multifaceted and hypocritical and flawed. What does represent me, though, is the alien: being lost like Arif in a sea of other people and beings, every single one trying to get by and live their lives. It’s knowing that I am just one tiny facet of a world where so many cultures coexist. It’s knowing that I am an alien in a sea of other aliens. So what I really want to be represented by, and what I think G.O.R.A understands better than anything else — even if it’s just to prove a point to Hollywood! — it is the validation that there’s a place for everyone in this world. That really, aliens are humans too.
And no person that seeks to eradicate this can ever be called a hero.