About Movie Poster | History of Turkish Film Industry | Evolution and Characterstics of Turkish Movie Poster | Poster's Story: Four Types | Star Posters |  | Phallic Woman Posters | Posters of Movement
In melodrama posters we can observe that sometimes men are being looked at by women just like in the poster of Affedilmeyen (The Unforgiven, Turker Inanoglu, 1966). In the beefcake posters the direction of the look is oriented from the female towards the male with fear, respect, adornment, jealousy and pray for mercy. And in most of the cases the male figure's gaze is directed towards outside the poster without engaging the eyes of the female and the spectator, but with confidence, passion, seeming to care about more important things than both.
The eroticisation of the body of the male, in terms of melodrama and movie posters, involves to a certain extend the figuring of the male like the depiction of women. In Turkish Melodrama posters we can observe the man with emotional facial gestures, holding babies with a mother's care or laying their heads on the knees of their lovers like in the posters of Yikilan Yuva (Ruined Home, Orhan Aksoy, 1967). |
In
terms of Turkish melodrama posters like that of Hollywood there is also the
"beefcake" case which is the display of the male flesh. This poster type has some variations within
itself: poster with the sensitive, maternal, emotional image of man; poster with the partly naked image
of man as the object of sexual desire and masculine, warrior identity as well as image to imitate; and
poster with the image of man as the object, and image of woman as the bearer of the look of the spectator.
But no matter how the male is displayed the male image always represents the "ideal".
Since
the movie goers of those times were mostly women, and there was even the display
of the flesh of men on the posters, then there seems to be an erotic intention within the design of
these posters. In some
of the beefcake posters shirtless male bodies are used to sell male sex appeal in a less direct approach
and the threatening sexuality of the male figure locking his thumbs in his
belt right above the pockets, and his fingers will point down to his genitals may be observed
like in the posters of Galatali Mustafa (Mustafa from Galata, A. Gulyuz, 1967) 
and Kral Arkadasim (My
King Friend, Osman F. Seden, 1964). Also after remembering Freud's argument
that the gun stands for the phallus, the beefcake posters dominated by the men with guns and raised
fists protecting women from danger, coded with action and patriarchal iconography seem to have erotism
within themselves.
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