Midnight Express, based on an autobiographical book by Billy Hayes, is an unpleasant "true story" about a young American student, who in 1970, had hashish in his possession while attempting to board a plane at Istanbul Airport. The film details Hayes' harsh imprisonment and later escape. According to the advertisements, the film is "the astounding true story, told in Billy Hayes's own words, of those five years of living hell and of the harrowing ordeal of his time on the run." [1] In an "environment of hellish squalor" [2], Billy suffers brutality, filth and the degradation of imprisonment at the hands of Turks.

In this study, I shall analyse the representation of the Turkish people in Midnight Express. Such an analysis may enable us to reinterpret the film in relation to the conditions of its production and reception, in relation to its structural features and organization. Moreover, it may enable us to question or revise our prior understanding of film and therefore alter the horizons of our understanding of ourselves and others.

 

Our hero, as pictured in the 20th Anniversary Video-Collector's Edition

 

Methodology

In pursuing issues of methodology, I have to point out that the analysis of symbolic forms [3] can be most appropriately conceptualised in terms of a the framework which John B. Thompson describes as depth hermeneutics. Thompson develops depth hermeneutics as a general methodological framework for the investigation of cultural artefacts. For Thompson, depth hermeneutics enables us to show how different approaches to the analysis of culture, ideology and mass communication can be interrelated in a systematic way. In trying to explain the reasons behind the choice of the hermeneutic tradition of thought, he suggests they can be interrelated on two levels. On a general level, hermeneutic tradition emphasizes "the hermeneutical conditions of social inquiry." [4] These conditions arise from the nature of the object domain of social-historical inquiry: The object domain of social inquiry is also a subject domain which is made up of subjects trying to understand themselves and other persons by creating meaningful forms and interpreting the meaningful forms created by others. This means that the object domain of social-historical analysis is also a pre-interpreted domain. From this perspective, the pre-interpreted character of social-historical world differs from the natural sciences: In making a social-historical analysis, we are seeking to examine social phenomena which is already examined or explained by the people who constitutes the social-historical environment in the routine course of life. As Thompson says, we are trying "to re-interpret a pre-interpreted domain." [5] (As we shall see below, this constitutes starting point of our study.)

Beside this hermeneutic condition of social-historical inquiry, on a more concrete level, hermeneutics offers us some methodological guidelines for our inquires as we mentioned. Thompson writes as follows :

 

The idea of depth hermeneutics is drawn from the work of Paul Ricour, among others. The value of this idea is that it enables us to develop a methodological framework which is oriented towards the interpretation (or re-interpretation) of meaningful phenomena, but in which different types of analysis can play legitimate and mutually supportive roles. It enables us to see that the process of interpretation is not necessarily opposed to types of analysis which are concerned with the structural features of symbolic forms or with the social-historical conditions of action and interaction, but that, on the contrary, these types of analysis can be linked together and , construed as necessary steps along the path of interpretation.[6]

 

Depth hermeneutics as a general theoretical framework for the analysis of cultural forms in structured contexts has three procedures. First of all we have social-historical analysis. This kind of analysis deals with social historical conditions of production circulation and interpretation of cultural forms. The second aspect of depth hermeneutics can be regarded as formal or discursive analysis. By formal or discursive analysis, we refer to inquiries which aim to study cultural or symbolic forms as complex symbolic constructions which are characterised by an articulated structure. In this procedure, we deal primarily with the internal organisation of symbolic forms with structural characteristics, patterns and relations.[7] The last procedure of interpretation concerns itself with the results of both social-historical analysis and formal-discursive analysis. As we mentioned, the object domain of social inquiry is also a subject domain. In addition, we must stress that the subjects who in part make up the social world are always embedded in historical traditions. In other words, we are part of history and historical traditions. [8] This fact not only indicates my awareness of being Turkish during this study but also constitutes the first step of my analysis. As J. B. Thompson states, if the object domain of our investigation is a pre-interpreted domain, the depth hermeneutical approach must consider the ways in which symbolic forms are interpreted by the subjects who comprise the subject-object domain. Hence, the hermeneutics of everyday life is the starting point of our approach. [9] In this stage, we will take account of the ways in which Midnight Express is interpreted by the western audience. After completing the "hermeneutics of everyday life", we will employ three different analysis which are social-historical analysis (in the section one), formal-discursive analysis (in the section two) and lastly the interpretation of the results of social-historical and formal-discursive analysis (conclusion).

 

Interpretation of Doxa (Hermeneutics of Everyday Life):

At this stage, an interpretation of the opinions, beliefs and understandings which are held and shared by the individuals who comprise the social world is revealed. In reconstructing the ways in which Midnight Express is interpreted and understood in the varied contexts of social life, we will focus mainly on the Western audience since the film is banned in Turkey.

After its release, people lined up at theatres to see Midnight Express. (The film has been widely and continuously shown since its first release in 1978) The advertisements for the movie ask that you "Walk into the incredible true experience of Billy Hayes. And bring all the courage you can."[10] For Pauline Kael, the people who were familiar with the book and hence knew that most of the extreme scenes in the movie were "invented", could still be effected emotionally, because "it's what they want to see - the worst that could happen, and the depths to which they could be driven."[11] In fact, when Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) attacks to one of the bad Turkish prisoners and, in slow motion, chews off his tongue, the audience cheers. [12] Despite its box office success, there are some who claim that Midnight Express is a racist film [13] and its acceptance depends a lot on forgetting several things :

 

[Billy] was smuggling hash; Turkey is entitled to its laws , and is no more guilty of penal corruption and brutality than say , the US , UK, France, Germany, etc.; a world tourist can't assume that a helpful father ( played well by Mike Kellin) is going to have the same clout as with some Midwestern politicians; nor can an American expect to be treated with kid gloves everywhere. [14]

 

Similarly, Pat H. Broeske argues that Midnight Express offers a stern lesson against disregard for a different country's laws and he claims that it is a manipulative, one sided (Hayes's version), and a "modern horror story about the nightmare of an ordeal in a foreign prison".[15] Neal Nordlinger writes about the success of film as follows:

 

Midnight Express was brought in for $ 2.4 million and Columbia will spend almost $4 million promoting it to a market which likes pictures that pit one man against grim substantial odds; where you despair for the hero ever surmounting those odds; and where such classic conflicts gain credence from the fact that they are based on real life . But most viewers will find Midnight Express a thorough visceral experience, and the credit goes to [Alan] Parker and his ability to commingle the real and surreal visually . [16]

 

Pauline Kael asks why people are lining up at the theatres to see this picture. She assumes that there are others besides herself who felt squeezed so much that they grew to hate the picture more and more. Moreover, Kael adds that she didn't hope for Billy and his friends to escape, "just for the movie to be over".[17] Similarly Mary Lee Settle who visited Turkey and felt uncomfortable for her "misrepresentation" in the West points out that Turkey "is known only for its mistakes and its brutalities ". [18] She continues as follows :

 

The Turks I saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were (...) like cartoon caricatures compared to the people I had known and lived among for three of the happiest years of my life . [19]

 

Long after its release, even David Puttnam (the producer) also accepts that the film is based on a "dishonest book".[20] For Puttnam, the story implies that Billy was innocent; it makes much of his escape, though he was released under an amnesty agreement. [21] Moreover, in 1986, Alan Parker (the director) admits that it was a mistake to call Turkey "a nation of pigs" in the film. He adds that he "should have been smart enough, intellectually and politically, to balance that remark" [22] Roy Connolly, who interviewed Alan Parker, writes as follows:

 

Alan Parker now candidly admits that he may have got some of Midnight Express wrong. "I was shocked when people said it was anti-Turk, "he says. "We hadn't meant it to be racist. We thought we were making a film about injustice. There are things I would change now, things to do with an intellectual or political maturity that I don't think I had then." [23]

 

Similarly David Robinson states that Midnight Express is "more violent, as a national hate-film than anything (he) can remember" — a cultural form that "narrows horizons, confirming the audience's meanest fears and prejudices and resentments". [24] But audiences didn't mind this kind of statements about Midnight Express to such an extent that in two years, the film had grossed over +15 million (1980) despite the fact that it was made at a cost of +1.5 million. [25] Moreover the film also won six Golden Globe Awards and an Oscar for Best Film Nomination. [26]

 

In spite of these contrary assessments from critics, how can we explain the popularity of Midnight Express? At this point, it may be useful to consider the ability of cultural commodities to satisfy some human want. Terry Lovell argues that cultural commodities are structured with the feelings and sensibilities which derive from collective, shared experience, individual desires and pleasures. [27] The pleasure of the text arises from collective utopias, social wish fulfillment and social aspirations. But when we deal with the ability of cultural artifacts to satisfy some human want, we have to consider the penetration of capital into cultural production. In a capitalist society, producer makes profit by manufacturing and selling cultural objects which possess "use value". [28] By meeting the wants which they satisfy, cultural products generate "surplus value". [29] But those wants are not always the independent expression of random and diverse desires of individual consumers. On the contrary, wants in which their production is related to the dominant mode of production are systematically produced. Lovell continues as follows :

 

The market for commodities is too important to capitalism to be left to consumer whim. Along with capitalist commodity production a whole host of means of stimulating and proliferating wants has been developed. Wants are not natural or eternal , (...) But it may be hazarded that the production of wants is never fully under the control of the dominant class . [30]

 

In spite of the fact that there is no guarantee that cultural artefacts will secure their ideological effects towards the masses, some of them can be drawn from and articulated within the dominant ideology. On the other hand, capitalism itself generates several requirements for its continuity. Some of these requirements create their effects at the level of individuals, while others produce them at the level of the social collectivity. "The very concept of ideology" writes Terry Lovell "points to another area of the requirements of capitalism". [31] Hence, in the next section of our study, we will have a brief look at the concept of ideology since it refers to the ways in which meaning serves to establish relations of power. [32] During this investigation, we will emphasize that symbolic forms have been used, and continue to be used in the service of power, whether in modern capitalist societies or in social contexts that are removed in time and space. For this reason we will also analyse the western conceptions of Turks since the relationship between East and West can be regarded as an example of relations of domination. For Edward Said, ideas, cultures and histories can't seriously be grasped without their force or their configurations of power also being studied. Therefore the relationship between East and West constitutes "a varying degree of complex hegemony." [33] In the first section, we will also take into consideration the work of Edward Said and western conceptions of Turks. At this point, what needs to be emphasized is that in order to take account of the ways in which Midnight Express is structured, and of the social historical conditions in which it is embedded we must make certain analysis which fall within the methodological framework of depth hermeneutics. In the next section, I shall employ the first phase of depth hermeneutics which is social- historical analysis. My aim will be to reconstruct the social-historical conditions of the production, circulation and reception of Midnight Express.

 

 

Social institutions and social structure constitute a third level of social historical analysis. Social institutions can be described as clusters of rules, resources and social relations established by social institutions themselves. In order to analyse social institutions, we have to examine the clusters of rules, resources and relations and inquire about their historical development. Moreover it is necessary to reconstruct the practices and attitudes of the individuals who work for them.

On the other hand, the analysis of social structure concerns with the relatively stable asymmetries which shape the structure of social institutions. While we try to analyse social structure we shall focus on asymmetries differentials and divisions. Our main purpose is to find out which asymmetries are systematic and relatively stable in terms of resources, power and life chances. This process also requires that we become familiar with the criteria, categories and principles which constitute these differences. At this stage of our study, we will pay particular attention to the relations of domination which characterize social institutions. Thus we will also study the notion of ideology since this approach provides us with a better understanding of the ways in which meaning serves to establish and sustain relations of domination.

 

Ideology

For John B. Thompson symbolic forms are not ideological in themselves. The extent to which symbolic forms or symbolic systems are ideological depends on the ways in which they are used in particular social contexts. Thus when we study ideology we are mainly concerned with the social uses and understanding of symbolic forms. [42] Thompson states that ideology is meaning in the service of power. He writes as follows :

The distinctiveness of the study of ideology lies in the latter question : It calls upon us to ask whether the meaning constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms serves , or does not serve, to maintain systematically asymmetrical relations of power . It calls upon us to study symbolic forms in a certain light . In the light of the structured social relations which their employment or deployment may serve , in specific circumstances, to create, nourish , support and reproduce. [43]

 

Having said this, it is useful to mention an important point about reception of ideology. There is a general tendency to see ideology as illusion and distorted image of the "real". This view inclines us to discern in ideology a cluster of ideas or images which reflect inadequately a social reality that exists independently of such images or ideas. French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser opposes the notion that ideology consists of a collection of distorting representations of reality and empirically false propositions. [44]

 

Ideology for Althusser does indeed - represent - but what it represents is the way I "live" my relations to society as a whole, which cannot be said to be a question of truth or falsehood . Ideology for Althusser is a particular organization of signifying practices which goes to constitute human beings as social subjects, and which produces the lived relations by which such subjects are connected to the dominant relations of production in a society .As a term , it covers all the various political modalities of such relations, from an identification with dominant power to an oppositional stance towards it. [45]

 

Beside this, Althusser's well known contribution to the theory of ideology proposes a more dynamic role for the ideological superstructure than had hitherto been allowed. Althusser recasts the classical Marxist model of economic base ideological superstructure and proposes a far more active role in society for the ideological superstructure. According to this model, ideology is "relatively autonomous" of the economic base and determined by it only "in the last instance". Ideology may take the form of systems of representation which can effectively play a political role of its own. [46] In most societies, coercion is not the only way of securing political order. Besides coercion, consent is an active element of securing the social political order. The main agencies for organizing and holding in place this consent are Ideological State Apparatuses. Most important of these are the institutions such as the religious system, education system, family and political system. Art also belongs to the domain of Ideological State Apparatuses. Like other Ideological State Apparatuses, art also contributes to the unconscious formation of individuals by interpellating them in various ways and calling them to take up their role in society. [47] Here, the stress is made upon the fact that this interpellation takes place at an unconscious level and it is a process of socialisation, namely an important condition of social existence within any economic system. For Althusser, individuals are placed as social subjects in complex and imperceptible ways. These ways provide them with the impression of being consistent, rational and free people. [48]

 

Anette Kuhn states that one of the most potentially interesting and valuable aspects of Althusser's work for a theory of cinema is that it points out a different way of conceiving its ideological function .Firstly, Althusser's work avoids the reductionist model of Hollywood films as mirrors of the capitalist system which produces them. In this context, the notion that there is a total and immediate determination between capitalism and the Hollywood films is criticized. Secondly, Althusser's work also avoids the essentialism involved in a belief in art for art's sake. In this case, the notion that culture can be regarded as independent of its historical conditions is also questioned. Anette Kuhn continues as follows:

 

The formulation of "relative autonomy" retains the notion of the long term, ultimate determination of the economic ("in the last instance") , whilst resisting a notion of simple direct reflexivity. But the difficulty remains of understanding the precise workings of this intricate and highly mediated relationship between base and super-structure. An objection often made about some of the recent work on film narrative - the theory of "classic realism" for instance- is that it tends to postpone or to ignore altogether the moment of the "last instance", so that the autonomy of the text , in principle "relative", is effectively seen as absolute. This results in increasingly detailed sophisticated analysis of the formal operations of texts which, however, fail to allow any significant role to the material conditions under which they were produced. -a particularly questionable omission in the case of an industrial art- form like the cinema. [49]

 

Having said this, we can more easily analyse the relationship between cultural phenomena and relations of power and conflict. Following the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, Thompson argues that concept of culture can appropriately be used to refer to the symbolic character of social life. But this statement must be supported by an emphasis on the fact that symbolic forms are embedded in structured social contexts which involve relations of power. For Thompson cultural phenomena are symbolic forms in structured contexts, and cultural analysis may focus on the study of the meaningful constitution and social contextualization of symbolic forms. [50] Starting from this point of view, cultural phenomena can be conceived as expressing relations of power, as serving in specific circumstances to sustain relations of power and as subject to multiple, divergent interpretations by the individuals who are effected by them. [51] As a modern form of communication (and one of the most widespread form of communication), cinema has a distinguished place in this context. Cinema is the product of Western countries at the specific time in their history and its emergence cannot be ascribed solely to artistic aspirations. Its emergence is closely related to the profit motive which is expressed through the western capitalism. [52] "Because every film is a part of the economic system" writes Bill Nichols "it is also part of the ideological system".[53] For this reason, it is useful to return to the commodification of cultural forms and have a brief look to the writings of Horkheimer and Adorno.

 

Horkheimer and Adorno use the term "culture industry" to refer to the commodification of cultural forms which occurred in the emergence of the entertainment industries in the West. Film, radio, TV, popular music, magazines and newspapers are the examples they gave. They argue that standardization of cultural forms was the result of the rise of the entertainment industries as capitalistic enterprises. Another consequence of this process is that it atrophied the capacity of the audience to behave in a critical and autonomous way. Since the cultural goods are manufactured in accordance with the aims of capitalist profit maximization they are designed for consumption by the masses. Rather than their intrisinc characteristics as an artistic form, the cultural goods are determined by the incentive of commodity production and exchange. Hence the cultural goods are standardized and stereotyped in spite of the fact that they generally affect a sign of individuality (i.e. by the star system). [54]

 

This characteristic of film as a commodity defines the structure of film industry as well. Starting from this principle, Hollywood film industry began to exploit the world market for films from the 1920's onwards. During the early years of cinema Hollywood studios tried to fix the production costs at a level (by controlling all the movie stars and studios which developed efficient and cost effective production methods) since this would allow them to be recouped in the American market, which was biggest in the world. On the other hand, prints sold to the external market were considered as the source of pure profit which allowed the prices to be adjusted to the extent that Hollywood studios could dominate the world market. [55] But before we begin to have a look to the large scale industrialization process of cinema we need to point out that the film industry has a three part structure divided into production, distribution and exhibition. The power relationship between them is not equal. Power in the film industry concentrates on the distribution company. [56] Indeed, finance for making a film today depends upon the negotiation of a distribution deal as a part of a package. Roy Armes writes as follows :

 

The producer is forced to cede rights in his film to the distributor, since he needs a distribution guarantee to raise the risk capital. The distributor does not , however , need to yield these rights in turn to the exhibitor, since the latter needs only a regular flow of assorted films on short term hire. Power in the film industry therefore resides in the distribution company, which , as a purely financial organization, can be located anywhere in the world : It is an intermediary stage not bound geographically to either studios where the films are produced or the cinemas where they are exhibited. US -controlled distribution companies clearly have no interest in fostering the development of rival film production industries anywhere in the Third world. [57]

 

As a product of capitalism, the cinema emerged in Europe in the 1890's in the form of a small scale industry. Despite their modest artisanal beginnings, the first film companies competed with each other to control local and international markets. Due to the disruption to European cinemas caused by World War I, American films began to control the world markets. After the War, the Hollywood film industry prepared to develop the structures for organizing the production and merchandizing of films which would form the oligopoly of the Hollywood Studio System.

 

 

In Marx's work class relations constitute a major criteria in the understanding of the relations of domination in a society. According to Marx, relations of class domination constitute the principal conditions of inequality and exploitation in human societies in general, and in modern capitalist societies in particular. But class relations are by no means the only form of domination and subordination. There are other kinds of domination such as "the structured social relations between men and women, between one ethnic group and another, or between hegemonic nation states and those nation states located on the margins of a global system ". [89]

The relationship between West ("Occident") and East ("Orient") is another example of a relationship of power and domination. [90] For Edward Said, Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and the Occident. It is a Western style of dominating, restructuring and building hegemony over the Orient.[91] Indeed, the two geographical entities (West and East) thus support and in a sense reflect each other. [92] But we have to avoid seeing the Orient as an idea which has no correspondence to reality. As we mentioned before, ideas in some particular circumstances may serve to establish and sustain relations of domination . Edward Said writes as follows :

 

Orientalism ,.., is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient , but a created body of theory and practice in which , for many generations , there has been a considerable material investment . Continued investment made Orientalism , as a system of knowledge about the Orient , an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness, just as that same investment multiplied -indeed, made truly productive -the statements proliferating out from Orientalism into the general culture. [93]

 

In order to explain the strength and durability of Orientalism, Edward Said employs the Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony. For Gramsci, civil society is made up of voluntary affiliations (schools, families etc.) which are noncoercive. On the other hand, political society is made up of state institutions (the army, the court etc.) which may use direct domination and violence. Culture operates within the domain of civil society since its effects work through consent. This framework also includes the fact that certain cultural artefacts can predominate over others. According to Said, the form of this cultural leadership is identified as hegemony by Gramsci. Indeed, hegemony provides Orientalism its durability and strength. In this context, Said argues that Orientalism is never far from the idea of Europe, namely a collective notion identifying the Europeans as against non- Europeans who are inferior ones in comparison with all the European cultures and people. The major component in European culture which can be described as "superiority over others" gave this culture its hegemonic characteristic. [94] Said continues as follows :

 

Under the general heading of knowledge of the Orient, and within the umbrella of Western hegemony over the Orient during the period from the end of the eighteenth century, there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study (...) Additionally , the imaginative examination of things Oriental was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an Oriental world emerged , first according to general ideas about who or what was an Oriental , then according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions , investments, and projections. [95]

 

Hence, the representation of Turkish people in western literature and cinema is not different from Middle Eastern stereotype. First of all they are attributed negative physical characteristics such as ugliness, dirtiness and moral characteristics so that they are always lustful, fanatical, irrational, cruel, scheming, unreliable, defeated. Their only reason for existence is to pose challenge to the western hero. For this reason, if they have any energy it only provides problems to the hero since the characteristics of this energy are evil. Their countries are passive background to the stories in which all the important and good things are done by Western heroes like James Bond. If they have a problem they are not able to solve it, because a western hero is necessary to solve the problem or at least to show them the way to the solution. [96] In Western literature we can easily find various examples in which Turks are presented in association with negative connotations such as cruelty, religious fanaticism, espionage, dirtiness, drug addiction etc. For example, Simon Shephard writes about the image of the Turk during the Renaissance period as follows:

 

Turks, Tartars, even Persians constituted the infidel powers which neighboured and threatened European Christiandom. The word "Turk" was mainly used in two ways, as a generic name for an Islamic State with its own characteristic institutions of Government and military; and as a description of behaviour or character— the Turks 'being of nature cruel and heartless'(...) The idea of cruelty was probably produced by the Turks' distant foreignness combined with an absence from their lives of comprehensible Christian ethics, but more importantly by their military threat. [97]

 

This trend in Early English Stage covers Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlane the Great (1590) and the Jew of Malta (1592), Thomas Kyd's the Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda (1599), Fulke Greville's the Tragedy of Mustapha (1609), John Mason's the Turk (1610), Robert Daborne's Christian turn'd Turke (1612), Thomas Goffe's the Raging Turke or Bajazet the Second (1631), Ladowick Carlell's the Famous Tragedy of Osmand the Great Turk (1657), Nevile Payne's the Siege of Constantinople (1675), Elkonah Settle's Ibrahim the Illustrious Bassa (1677), and Mary Pix's Ibrahim the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks (1696) [98]

 

In these plays, one of the important Turkish stereotypes is a Turkish tyrant who separates two lovers by falling in love with the girl (a naive Turkish beauty) who he has kept in his possession through force. But because of the faithfulness to her lover who is a Christian Westerner, she is either rewarded by God with a happy reunion, or she chooses death instead of the Turkish Pasha's love. [99] While she analyses the general characteristics of Elizabethan plays Rana Kabbani writes that "Shakespeare whitewashes Othello by making him a servant of the Venetian State, a soldier fighting for a Christian power, and most importantly, a killer of Turks..." [100] At the 19th century, due to the censorship of British Victorian society, eroticism was transferred either into the world of underground pornography or to "exotic" lands such as Ottoman Territories. Indeed, some European writers chose Eastern settings and characters to satisfy their reader's sexual interests. Kamil Aydin writes as follows :

 

In fiction, the Lustful Turk (first published in 1828) is an outstanding example of a convention that consists largely of a series of letters written by its heroine, Emily Barlow, to her friend Sylvia Carey. When the heroine sails from England for India in June 1814 , their ship is attacked by Turks and afterwards they are taken to the sumptuous harem. In this epistolary novel, readers quickly encounter bizzare sexual scenes and stories associated with the lecherous and cruel character of the Turkish Dey. All the erotic fantasies are narrated through Emily as she talks to the other enslaved girls in the harem, eg. one of the captives in the harem is a Greek girl named , Adrianti, who tells the tragic story of how her father and brother were slaughtered before her eyes by the Turks. [101]

 

Similarly Lord Byron employed a Ottoman territory for a horror story and started to write a story about a vampire taking Izmir as the setting. [102] In his Turkish Tales, Leile, Zuleika and Gulnare are presented as beautiful, hopeless victims of a Turkish governor. [103] At the decline era of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish image took another form "which is sometimes demeaning, sometimes critically mocking and caricaturised by Victorian figures such as Bayle St. John, Thackeray, C. Dickens and so on." [104] In his Rowing Englishmen, Charles Dickens writes that, "Oh no! We should have been off anywhere but in Turkey." [105]

 

This tradition has not changed in the 20th century. For instance, Paul Bowles claims that "if a nation [Turks] wishes, however mistakenly to westernise itself, first let it give up hashish." [106] Ernest Hemingway clearly states his uneasiness with Istanbul since it is very dirty and he adds that "[minarets] look like dirty, white candles sticking up for no apparent reason." [107]

 

Films have also produced and disseminated particular negative images of Turks. For example, in Lawrence Of Arabia (David Lean) the moviemakers present Turks as corrupt, evil, barbarian, ugly, sodomite peoples by using the point of view of a British army officer. Similarly, in Pascali's Island (James Dearden) Ben Kingsley plays an ugly, bold, bisexual Turkish spy who becomes tragically involved with Charles Dancer's tricksy archaeologist and Helen Mirren's Austrian painter in the middle. Due to his fanatical jealousy and denunciation, the lovers (English archaeologist and Austrian painter) are killed by the cruel, ugly, fat, bribee Turkish Pasha of the island. In Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray,1954), the name of one of the bank robbers is Turkey. [108]

 

In this context, we need to add that stereotypes about western people are regarded as structurally central in relation with the stereotypes of Turks because stereotypes of Turks are partially defined in terms of or in opposition to western people. [109] For this reason, the dirty, lustful Turk attains at least some of its meaning and force from its opposition to the clean, rational, honest etc. characteristics of western people. [110] In the next Section, while we will try to analyse the effects of classical Hollywood Cinema on the representation of Turks in Midnight Express, we will clearly observe that how certain stereotypes about Turks are employed to contribute to the cause-effect chain in the narrative structure of this film.