KEBABBLE The perils
of plastic playmates By Fazile
Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - At a time when
Turkey's tourism industry has been under attack in
Marmaris and Antalya, with repercussions for the
rest of the country, one might assume that the
bombings would be everyone's main topic of
discussion.
In fact, the blasts hardly
made the headlines. Whereas the British
publication The Daily Mirror led with an
awe-inspiring "We won't stop bombing!" banner
front-page story. The Turkish paper Vatan
on
the same day placed the article on page 16.
Much like Londoners during World War II or
at the height of the Irish Republican Army bombing
campaign in London, Turks are resigned to the fact
that to stand by their principles they must endure
in the face of attacks by their enemies.
The story that really caught the public
imagination concerned a cult film called That's
My Wife. The interest in this low-budget,
poor-quality film took off when journalist Agah
Ozguc published his latest book on film
Opposite Points, one of 20 books he has
written covering the history of cinema,
particularly Turkish cinema, over the past 40
years.
Even though the book covered many
different topics, the anecdote that got picked up
by the mainstream papers and has been the focus of
discussion was the story about a blow-up sex doll
in That's My Wife. The film was acted in
and directed by Mehmet Ezici, shot on videotape
with muffled sound, and released in 2001. It was
transferred to cinema format, but lost even more
clarity and thus never reached a large audience.
In the film, Ezici's character, a poor and
ugly man, is rejected by the women he finds
attractive. Unable to marry or pursue a love
interest in any way, he purchases a sex doll from
Germany, and it becomes his "partner". When she is
"raped" by three men, he seeks revenge for the
doll's damaged honor and kills all three of the
"rapists".
It sounds like a comedy, but it
wasn't shot as one, and Agah Ozguc believes it is
a suitable metaphor for Turkey's strange attitudes
to women and honor. Ozguc put forward the theory
that this film director in some ways captured the
drama of sex and love better than most
conventional directors have done. He accuses them
of being unable to film truly erotic scenes or
convincing sexual passion.
Ozguc claims
that leading ladies are ready to bare their
sexuality but that Turkish men have such a
deep-seated discomfort with strong female desire
that, with few exceptions, they can only bring
themselves to film a cotton-candy, soft version of
sex.
The topic of Turkish prudery has been
taken up by columnists, television personalities
and feminists, while the papers and magazines have
gone to town reprinting sensational stills of the
film's blow-up doll. The Hurriyet newspaper
website has received more public responses to the
online story about the doll than about the
bombings or sending Turkish soldiers to the
Lebanon.
This is not the first time
blow-up dolls have courted publicity in Turkey. In
2004, a lonely young man, his face hidden in
shame, was pictured on the front pages after being
caught in a hotel room in Istanbul with such a
doll. Osman Inceefe, 27, checked into the Ziyanhan
Hotel in a smart suit and carrying a briefcase.
Despite his respectable appearance, something in
his demeanor raised alarm bells with the staff,
and they reported him to the police.
On
investigation, the officers of the law discovered
an inflatable lady in his bag. Inceefe confessed
that his co-workers came back from their weekend
boasting of how they had taken prostitutes to
hotels for sex, and he aspired to indulge in the
same fantasy himself. However, not having the
money to pay for a working girl, he borrowed a
blow-up doll from a friend.
Last December,
two professional thieves finally came unstuck
when, after 45 robberies in two years, they made
the mistake of stealing two blow-up dolls, one
white and one black, from an erotic shop in
Eskisehir. The dolls, worth 700 liras (US$475),
were obviously too exciting not to share with
friends, and their generosity led to their arrest.
If one searches for "inflatable dolls" on
the Internet in Turkish, there are a variety of
options and price ranges, perhaps the most
interesting of which are the "virgin" dolls. It
seems that Agah Ozguc hit the nail on the head
when he raised the issue of Turkish men's
inability to deal with female sexuality. Even
one's plastic playmate must come to bed untouched
and intact.
Fazile Zahir is of
Turkish descent, born and brought up in London.
She moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been
writing full time since then.
