English
Empress Theodora (501-548) is sad and significantly more famous for the scandalous and promiscuous sexual prowess bordering on the pornographic, without doubt relying on her past as a circus prostitute and actress, credited with clearly defamatory intentions of her contemporary Procopius of Caesarea in the Secret History which, due to her important work as a state woman and feminist legislator avant la lettre.
Not only was she at the forefront of a decisive role in all significant developments during the reign of her husband the Emperor Justinian I. Moreover, among others, she pushed laws which forbade the punishment for adultery regardless of sex, governed the right to abortion, allowed divorce by women´s own decision as well as free marriage between different races, religions and social classes, imposed death penalty as punishment for rape, prohibited forced prostitution and regulated brothels so that they were under the control of women themselves.
At least since her time, largely because of Procopius, the occidental imaginary of the Anatolia region is usually associated with hedonism and pleasures of the body.
To this, the existence of a long, refined and successful tradition of erotic literature and the heady world of light perfumes, aromas, textures, colors, clothes, beverages, sounds and songs that somehow turned Istanbul into the place where the East begins to unfold its many sensory promises has undoubtedly contributed significantly in Minor Asia.
Hence, perhaps, that since the early sixties until the coup of 1980, the erotic film industry representing more than two thirds of Turkish film production. At first, the erotic content is inserted more or less naturally in the romantic comedies and melodramas that Orhan Pamuk speaks as evocatively as extensively about in The Museum of Innocence or in remakes of American films such as The Mighty Men (3 Dev Adam), a rare film of the Marvel superheroes and masked Mexican wrestlers.
However, soon industry specialized and, along with specific issues to the films of this genre, mostly extremely sexist, there were also anomalies such as the representation of lesbian love – in Ilki Gemi Yanyana, 1963, just a year after that in Hollywood (Walk on the Wild Side Edwrd Dmytrik) or interesting art experimental films like Taxi Driver (1976) cult director Serif Goren.
The arrival to power of moderate Islamists in 2002 created a puritan climate, whose last expression was the voluntary exile of the artist Sukra Moral, threatened with death after her last performance in the House of Art in Istanbul, which slowed the evolution of this film, relegating to the background production of erotic films.
Instead, the creative explosion of a stimulating new cinema faces traditionally taboo issues such as the massacre of the Armenians, the situation of the Kurdish people or homosexuality is being producing.
Paul Oilzum
Maybe you want to track her when you rent apartments in Istanbul an European city with an emerging film production and traditional taboos that define this culture so influenced by opposite views.?
