Erguven’s “Mustang”: the imprisoning nature of the male gaze
Walking into the Laemmle Theatre at 7:50PM at night, I didn’t know much about Deniz Gamze Erguven’s Mustang. I knew that the movie was noteworthy in that it was the only female-directed narrative film nominated for an Oscar (not including Liz Garbus and her documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?), and that it seemed to be a Turkish Virgin Suicides. So I came in expecting the same tragic tale: mysterious, beautiful and innocently seductive young girls, who are the subject of many a man’s desire- which ultimately dooms them; the blooming sexuality of a teenage girl seen as tempting and out of their control. Ultimately their sexuality defines them, consumes them, until it is repressed and hidden away by their families. If you’ve seen the Virgin Suicides, you’d know that the moment the Libson girls were locked away, it was the beginning of the end.
But Mustang was none of those things.
Set in a small Turkish village, we are introduced to a group of five rowdy and carefree sisters who are loud and cheery while spending a morning swimming with their male peers. At this point, I thought I knew what was coming. They’re girls, they’re in water, they’re with adolescent boys. There’s going to be a slow-motion, POV shot of the girls laughing and splashing water as one of their male classmates discovered boners for the first time. And yet, that never happened. We were not introduced to the sisters as girls on the cusp of womanhood. We were introduced to them as mischievous, fun-loving children who argue over a botched game of chicken and sneak into gardens to steal fruit. However, the conservative and watchful eyes of their relatives and neighbors view them as unrestrained girls well on their way to becoming ‘loose’ women, a perspective which soon drives their grandmother to lock them away into the isolated and confining quarters of their home and to begin marrying them off one by one. It becomes, as the young Lale observes, a “wife-making factory”.
Erguven portrays the sisters’ home as both physically and culturally isolating. A large cement wall closes off their property from the open, coastal environment of the outside world, and long, winding mountain roads insulate their small town from the more ‘liberal’ influences of big cities such as Istanbul. The closed, confined framing of the film seems to entrap the girls as they learn how to cook for future husbands, and endure invasive ‘virginity tests’. And yet, even within the lonely and remote space of the girls’ home, Erguven colors the screen with a warm and colorful palette.
Bright sunlight seeps through open windows and basks over giggling sisters as they rip into the seams of their traditional dresses; bright and colorful blankets line their bedroom as they daydream of the world outside. As Mustang’s insular framing and setting suggest, there is an attempt to stifle the sisters’ individuality. But the physical and cultural prison that holds these five sisters does not erase the color of their lives. When they are taken out of school, they go ‘swimming’ in an ocean of blankets; as they learn to cook for future families, they also learn how to make gum and eat it behind their grandmother’s back. Though a male-oriented culture views them as future wives, they never stop being the rambunctious, dreaming young girls that we are introduced in the beginning of the film.
It was refreshing it was to see a story of female oppression that not only kept each character’s personality intact, but showed that even in the more male-oriented communities, women keep living. After watching gritty storyline after gritty storyline of female oppression that emphasizes the abuse of their victims over their humanity (Game of Thrones, I’m looking at you), it can be easy to adopt a broad mindset in which one forgets that even in the most conservative of cultures, women are not all painted with sadness and misery- they love, they laugh, they share secrets with each other. They are human.
Each of the girls had their own personality; Sonay (played by İlayda Akdoğa) with her dreams of love; Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu), with her resigned persona; Ece (Elit İşcan) with her withdrawn nature; Nur, (Doğa Doğuşlu) who struggles between rebellion and complacency; and perhaps most notably Lale (Güneş Şensoy), the determined, youngest sister who remains unapologetic in her desire to break away from tradition. Each performance is played with a tipping balance between girlish fantasizing and harsh realities of impeding adulthood, but Sensoy’s performance as Lale is particularly striking.
Her quiet, but steely gaze allows her to become the audience’s eyes and ears as she navigates and tests the boundaries of her newly secluded existence, and not for a moment does Sensoy’s portrayal allow viewers to see Lale as passive. We see her mind work and assess new obstacles, even if it seems as though she is simply watching. It is through her that we see injustice, and it is through her that we hope. The use of Lale’s watchful eye as the narrative lens is refreshing in that it refuses to simplify the rather complicated relationship that women have with male-centric cultures.
I think in particular of the relationship the girls hold with their female relatives. Many times, it can be very easy for a film to fall back onto tired tropes which frame older women as vicious enforcers of the female protagonists’ oppression- if not the source of the oppression itself. And to be sure, the girls’ aunts and grandmother do play a part in restricting the girls from the outside world. But not before Grandmother desperately tries to quell their uncle’s anger at the rumor that the sisters are promiscuous. And how did the girls learn how to make bubble gum? Their aunt taught them. Most powerfully of all, the drastic measures their aunt takes when the sisters sneak out of the house to attend a soccer game: after realizing her nieces are on television, she throws rocks at the village’s power source until all televisions black out. In each of these instances, the dynamic between the older woman and the sisters is one of compromise; they wish for the girls to fulfill their wifely duties, but they also hope for them to find happiness in their seemingly inevitable roles.
The older women enforced the patriarchal expectations of what it meant to be a woman, but their experiences of women themselves is never erased either. From the beginning it is clear that it is the male gaze that ultimately imprisons these girls- it is their Uncle Erol who views them as loose women rather than children, it is their uncle from whom the sisters are protected from by their aunt. It is their uncle who ultimately holds the most power over them.
It is the male gaze that forces them to grow up too soon; the male gaze that deems them too sexual for their own good, that prompts their grandmother to marry them off as soon as she possibly can, that pushes Lale to learn to drive years before her time. It is not that it operates differently from voyeuristic narrative of “blooming girlhood”; it is that once one sees it through the eyes of a young teenage girl, what may have seemed passive becomes incredibly predatory. But at the same time, Erguven’s vision also reminds us that even in the oppressive and lonely of circumstances, there remains a window of hope that continues to bring color into our lives.
