6. "life is hard. life is short. life is painful. life is rich. life is....precious."

Last week, the class watched the movie, Precious, but I missed that class and watched it by myself. First of all, it was very similar to the novel "The Bluest Eye" and it was as good and sad as it. The movie effected me almost in the same way with the novel. I kinda understood after the novel again how loneliness feels like.. Again a black girl looking for love, in the desire of being beautiful, again a dad who rapes his daughter and again a mother who does not have so much an effective relationship with the daughter. Precious was only a few ages older of Pecola, the same wants, the same kind of lifestyle are the obvious similarities between them. In the novel, it was mentioned that Pauline does not like her daughter because she is ashamed of her, but in the movie Precious's mother is jelaous of her daughter because she thinks her daughter has stolen her husband from her. In the novel such a case is not mentioned but it seemed possible to me.

The cruelty of people and the society's pressure was again very obvious in the movie as it was in the novel, but although Precious had aids and had a little life to live, she was luckier than Pecola because she had her children and supporters who was next to her to make her happy.

5. Justice

I want to write about the terrible occasion happened in Siirt.

8 boys, at the age of 13-14 raped 2 babies and killed one of them. Those boys' friend, 14 year-old girl brings them her cousins when those boys blackmail her and say if she does not bring them little babies, they show her inappropriate photos to her family, and the girl brings her 2-year old cousins to them. Here, the thing is again "honour killings". That girl is afraid of her family and so brings the babies to them. If we had lived in a more educated and conscious society, the result would not be this. That girl would go to police and prevent such an ugly case, instead of being afraid of her parents and bring the babies. But actually, when we see the result, we see that if she had gone to the police, maybe nothing would have changed, because the governor of Siirt has explained that they made a "deal" with those boys and they are with their families, instead of being in the jail.

4. There is no ugly women but less vodka

In the novel, "The Bluest Eye", we see again the ideal model of beauty, like we saw last semester. Last semester, we've watched the documentary "Killing Us Softly", and argued that a beautiful woman does not always have to be slim and all women do not have to have a flawless skin.

We also said that these ideas have grown in last years, comparing to 40's and 50's.

Here we see that there is always a strict rule of being beautiful. 50 years ago, a beautiful woman had to be absolutely white and now she has to be absolutely skinny. We always try to determine an absolute model. The natural beauty of a human, which is described in the last part of the novel is generally neglected. 50 years ago, girls like Pecola were going mad because of the desire of being white and now girls are dying because of slimming pills. It is very classic but I think we have to see the beauty inside as the humankind.

3. Güldünya

Güldünya was a 23-year-old girl, who was in love with a boy. They loved each other, she got pregnant and also the man was married.

This sounds like a normal story, but the tragic part has happened after that. Gümdünya's family realised that she was pregnant and learned who was the baby from. First they decided the man to take Güldünya as his "second wife", but she did not want it and ran away. He went to İstanbul and started to live with a relative of her. She was happy and she had started to think that she could build a new life with her baby. Then one day his brother came and gave Güldünya a rope, told her to commit suicide. She did not, and went to police. Police talked to Güldünya's brothers and father, and they "promised", that they won't kill her. Police was seeming like protecting her but Güldünya got shot by her brother, but she did not die. Maybe the police could not follow her all the time or they had "no place" in the government's special houses, which are built for these kind of cases. This can be ok, but how can her brother come again and kill her in the hospital room? Isn't it obvious that they will come again and kill her? What was the police doing at that time? Were they trying to prevent people to drink beer on the street(!) or were they searching random people's cars to find something for bribe? What can be more important than a person's life? Does the police do anything else from taking kissing couples to the police station?

I think police is as guilty as Güldünya's brother.

2. Honour Killings

In this semester's research paper, I will write about honour killings. When I look at other options, I see that none of them attracks my attention as much as honour killings does. I had also evaluated this in my TLL 001 course, when I was writing about the necessity of the abortion pills and the pregnant girls being killed, so I have a little background about honour killings. I also plan to talk to people who are actually in these cases (like the mother of an honour killing victim) and write about them, if this is possible.

1. Turkish "The Graduate"

Last week, I watched the movie, "The Graduate", before we have watched it in the class, and it was a quite interesting coincidence. I liked the movie but the most enjoyable parts of the movie was the screams of Benjamin's mother, those made me really laugh.

Then I searched about the movie on the internet and learned some interesting points. For example, Dustin Hoffman, was 30 years old while he was playing a 20-year-old boy, and Mrs. Robinson was 36 years old in 1967, Anne Bancroft was looking older with a special make up she had.

But the most interesting part was the turkish version of "The Graduate": "Mahçup Delikanlı". The script and the places are almost the same with the original and filmed in 1974. There are of course differences between the two movies, for example in the turkish version, main boy has an affair with the girl's sister, not with her mother. But I think, both are very good movies.

15. Marked "Men"

In this semester, we have discussed the gender issue and told that women are marked, just because they are "women". Sexual harassment, the pressure of the desire of being beautiful, being under the dominance of men, are a few things almost all women live. But I want to say that, men are sometimes also marked. This reminded me of an incident I lived last year.

It was the second month after I got my driving license. I had an accident and hit to a taxi and it was completely my fault. I apologized to the taxi driver for many times and we called the police. When the police came, they shouted at the taxi driver, and acted like it was all his fault. It was obvious that he did not do anything, but they were very kind to me and absolutely rude to the man.

Another example to this kind of situation is that men are not allowed to go to a nightclub without the company of a woman. Of course the amount of men and women are important in a nightclub, but it is obvious that 10 women can go to any club, while 2 men can definetely not. Last week, we were 2 females+3 males, and they did not let us in. It is like they say to us: "We know that this +1 boy will get in and attack all the ladies in our club, because he is a man" It is like men always harass women unless there is a controller woman with them.

14. The Naked Truth

When we look at the advertisements which take place on the tv, billboards and magazines, we see that there is a general concept, nudity. It is obvious that "sex sells", but there are naked people almost in every advertisement, even the product has no connection with nudity. For example, if this is an underwear advert, it is very natural the models to be naked, but I cannot understand why there is a naked man in a vodka advertisement.

I am not criticising it, if I were in advertising business, I would also use the most advantageous way but I just cannot understand why it is so effective on the audience.

For example, there is a campaign in Australia which aims to protect the lambs and create an awareness. They say that sheeps suffer during their transportation and they get killed wildly and in a very painful way and they ask for people's support. This is a very beneficial campaign for animal rights but I cannot understand again, why there is a naked woman next to the sheep, on the poster of campaign.

13. The Full Monty Presentation

Last week we have watched the presentation of the second group; "The Full Monty". I saw the disadvantage of being the first group as my group is. I think showing the last scene of the movie was a very creative idea and I thought why couldn't I think that before my presentation :). I enjoyed the presentation although I had not seen the movie, because the group members were very enjoyable and friendly.

I decided to watch the movie after the class, becuse the topic has also attracted my attention. As I watched the films and read the texts about gender, I had thought that "beauty" is not important only for women, also for men. The film showed me that there are also men, who care about their appearence as much as women and it is not only women who make money by using it.