Crying with Yeşilçam: Nostalgia, Gender, and the Digital Afterlife of Dönüş

OpenAlex Türkçe

This article examines digital nostalgia surrounding Türkan Şoray’s Dönüş (1972), exploring how crying functions as both affective practice and gendered discourse. Drawing on 138 Ekşi Sözlük posts (2004–2025), it employs feminist qualitative analysis to scrutinize how audiences remember and reinterpret the film. Posts invoking affective idioms of crying were coded as restorative or reflective nostalgia, following Boym’s (2001) framework. Informed by feminist affect theory (Ahmed, 2004), the study shows that restorative nostalgia often reproduces melodramatic codes of maternal sacrifice and fidelity yet also revalues women’s pain, fosters solidarities, and repositions Şoray as both star and director. This ambivalence reflects postfeminist affect (Gill, 2007): recognizing inequality while reattaching to ideals of care and endurance. Reflective nostalgia, by contrast, comprises gestures that both subtly withdraws from dominant emotional narratives and uses irony to disguise hegemonic masculinity as critical distance.