Try and take this series as an example of good kitsch --really, this series is neither crazy kind of funny that keeps the audience on the surface all the time nor it is as banal as some reviews here and elsewhere found it to be. But there is honest critique, not just frustrations and displacement of real-life situations with unlikely new situations, or not simply words, accents and bodies used to build comic material. There is comic spirit that wants to come to terms with the 80s, a period of going into anticipated oppression and neoliberal dilution of art and cultural production. I'm not suggesting Cem Yilmaz chose this motivation even deliberately, it could be just the time decor for the story, but the story definitely adopted troubles with the period. After all, his other works did not carry this tone much. With an added volume of neoliberalism (that values surface material all the more) in the country in the 2010s and 2020s, any worthy comedian cannot stay deaf to and uninspired by such motivation, nonetheless.
The character buildup for Ersan is worth seeing: episodes offer a closer look at the fiction character of Ersan Kuneri (whose name appeared as a knockoff of Sean Connery, gotta see Yilmaz's other movies' plots to make the connection). He's one amateur and inspired filmmaker, his original fictive name is Cemil Can Tarakli, his surface fictive name: Kuneri. An entrepreneurial character, his life of precarious jobs turned to porn-maker turned to foreign cigarette-smuggler in the 70s' Turkey turned to doing some jailtime around the coup. Then getting out and finding new motivation to make films unlike the earlier porn filmography, the persona wants to be true to his filmmaking ambitions and in that he is failing beautifully - until he turns to arabesk (the country's mode of culture, besides accepted and greatly promoted lifestyle in the 1980s and 1990s ). That's the end of season. Maybe he'll succeed after arabesk. Let's see... If I can borrow words from one of my favorite series, Futurama, there was the Bender, the lovable rascal. So, Ersan figure here becomes kind of another 'lovable rascal' to some of us. His team remains an earnest lot, in that they will be comical compared to the rest of the changes around them.
There are well-thought moments and absurd twists, which can clearly become more than constant or intense laughter. If there were more of those intense laughters, more people would be crazy about the show. If there were more of those constant laughter-materials, men who can't do without 'swearing' in their daily lives could still embrace those comic moments and repeat them in teen-spirited bro-meetings. But now many did find the series disturbing because there is so much slang and swearing in the show. Please. Suddenly disturbed by your real life?
Could this story be told without the slang and swearing? Could a character who's already involved in nightlife, running a bar and whose producer who formerly made sex movies wants to continue on that lane, open up to us by speaking clean, tidy, well-behaved Turkish? Could their cast of formerly sex movie stars look convincing if they didn't swear and use lots of slang?
Take the Cooperative Kemal episode: in one scene of a socialist movie they attempt to make, the father trying to calm down the furious bride-to-be swears at the bride unexpectedly, as if words of love, and everybody in the room is super cool with that, the urbanized and elegant sisters included. Instead, they go on to shush the bride-figure who's cursing and getting more furious. Why not take this part of a comic scene that is larger than a few reckless laughters? TV, news, morning shows in the country are full of male characters who treat their female family members and acquaintances worse than they would treat their dicks. Which one is less funny, the show or that part of us? If you don't see the scene that way, if you say that such a hint on sexism was not flowing into the plot, okay, choose to take it so. But do so by knowing that many figures who've been disturbed by the slang and swearing in the series can also be regularly swearing in their daily lives. Honestly, watching the whole thing twice, I couldn't convince myself that slang and swearing were down-factors. The character build-up has more veins that slang to baffle the audience. FYI: elsewhere on a TV program, Cem Yilmaz dropped some hints on why this jargon, why swearing in the joke remains.
Some scenes in Cem Yilmaz movies are cartoon-like. Always. That's inevitable due to his history as a cartoonist. Watching the series for the first time, those bits make one giggle and giggle more. But the cast is more than cartoons. Watching the series a second time, I didn't laugh with the same intensity; instead, details, gestures, plot, a time depicted in the movies struck me as more fundamentally comical. A few friends had a similar impression upon watching: we have realized again that the country has become more and more conservative compared to what's in the show. We were children in the 80s. We knew that was more in tune with the decade's mode of living. The shorts, the manners, the fights, and the small steps of arabesk in daily life... something about these is more decent, relaxed and real than what we have now. Perhaps I feel obliged to add this because I remember a common reaction to his most recent couple of movies, Comidark movies. After I watched them in the theatre, even the ticket-girl sneered at them: not the usual Cem Yilmaz, she said. He lost it (the comic vibe) they say, she added. I don't know, I had to reply. He seemed to be after something that is more than laughters on the surface. I was able to find the comic vibe in them. I could watch those as part of a transformative phase in his trajectory. But we live in a country that has become super-uncomfortable with transformation. That itself is one of the comical features of this place. Perhaps, Ersan Kuneri needs to be considered with that transformation.
The character buildup for Ersan is worth seeing: episodes offer a closer look at the fiction character of Ersan Kuneri (whose name appeared as a knockoff of Sean Connery, gotta see Yilmaz's other movies' plots to make the connection). He's one amateur and inspired filmmaker, his original fictive name is Cemil Can Tarakli, his surface fictive name: Kuneri. An entrepreneurial character, his life of precarious jobs turned to porn-maker turned to foreign cigarette-smuggler in the 70s' Turkey turned to doing some jailtime around the coup. Then getting out and finding new motivation to make films unlike the earlier porn filmography, the persona wants to be true to his filmmaking ambitions and in that he is failing beautifully - until he turns to arabesk (the country's mode of culture, besides accepted and greatly promoted lifestyle in the 1980s and 1990s ). That's the end of season. Maybe he'll succeed after arabesk. Let's see... If I can borrow words from one of my favorite series, Futurama, there was the Bender, the lovable rascal. So, Ersan figure here becomes kind of another 'lovable rascal' to some of us. His team remains an earnest lot, in that they will be comical compared to the rest of the changes around them.
There are well-thought moments and absurd twists, which can clearly become more than constant or intense laughter. If there were more of those intense laughters, more people would be crazy about the show. If there were more of those constant laughter-materials, men who can't do without 'swearing' in their daily lives could still embrace those comic moments and repeat them in teen-spirited bro-meetings. But now many did find the series disturbing because there is so much slang and swearing in the show. Please. Suddenly disturbed by your real life?
Could this story be told without the slang and swearing? Could a character who's already involved in nightlife, running a bar and whose producer who formerly made sex movies wants to continue on that lane, open up to us by speaking clean, tidy, well-behaved Turkish? Could their cast of formerly sex movie stars look convincing if they didn't swear and use lots of slang?
Take the Cooperative Kemal episode: in one scene of a socialist movie they attempt to make, the father trying to calm down the furious bride-to-be swears at the bride unexpectedly, as if words of love, and everybody in the room is super cool with that, the urbanized and elegant sisters included. Instead, they go on to shush the bride-figure who's cursing and getting more furious. Why not take this part of a comic scene that is larger than a few reckless laughters? TV, news, morning shows in the country are full of male characters who treat their female family members and acquaintances worse than they would treat their dicks. Which one is less funny, the show or that part of us? If you don't see the scene that way, if you say that such a hint on sexism was not flowing into the plot, okay, choose to take it so. But do so by knowing that many figures who've been disturbed by the slang and swearing in the series can also be regularly swearing in their daily lives. Honestly, watching the whole thing twice, I couldn't convince myself that slang and swearing were down-factors. The character build-up has more veins that slang to baffle the audience. FYI: elsewhere on a TV program, Cem Yilmaz dropped some hints on why this jargon, why swearing in the joke remains.
Some scenes in Cem Yilmaz movies are cartoon-like. Always. That's inevitable due to his history as a cartoonist. Watching the series for the first time, those bits make one giggle and giggle more. But the cast is more than cartoons. Watching the series a second time, I didn't laugh with the same intensity; instead, details, gestures, plot, a time depicted in the movies struck me as more fundamentally comical. A few friends had a similar impression upon watching: we have realized again that the country has become more and more conservative compared to what's in the show. We were children in the 80s. We knew that was more in tune with the decade's mode of living. The shorts, the manners, the fights, and the small steps of arabesk in daily life... something about these is more decent, relaxed and real than what we have now. Perhaps I feel obliged to add this because I remember a common reaction to his most recent couple of movies, Comidark movies. After I watched them in the theatre, even the ticket-girl sneered at them: not the usual Cem Yilmaz, she said. He lost it (the comic vibe) they say, she added. I don't know, I had to reply. He seemed to be after something that is more than laughters on the surface. I was able to find the comic vibe in them. I could watch those as part of a transformative phase in his trajectory. But we live in a country that has become super-uncomfortable with transformation. That itself is one of the comical features of this place. Perhaps, Ersan Kuneri needs to be considered with that transformation.