Abstract
“They cannot show political dissent or sexual relations or any of these anti-hero characters. So, what is the solution?” Genç said in an interview with Index.
A Piece of Hay follows the writing team of a show on Turkflix, a fictional streaming service. Upon the president’s insistence that Turkish morality must be protected, the team masks sexual storylines with innocuous words and images – a process which also happens in real life.
“Writers are alarmed because there are big budgets in these shows, so they have to change certain things so that they are not banned from air,” he said. “They have to be complicit in this kind of censorship.”
Asked if he had been inspired by the work of George Orwell, he said: “There is a Stalinist trend in Turkey. It’s like becoming a party state. There are people trying to serve that party state and show their alliance to the leader, so if they want to complain about power, or the political system, they can’t put it in a realistic frame because they’re concerned that they will be cancelled. There is that kind of Orwellian layer to what’s going on now.”
He says novelists are just as challenged by the censors, who take fiction very seriously – whether on television or in a book.
“If one of your characters says something politically problematic, the prosecutor can come after you,” said Genç, who has direct experience of this from when he was 23.
Turkish writer Kaya Genç, who believes writers have a duty to challenge censorship
CREDIT: Kaya Genç
“I wrote a short story in a fiction magazine and someone complained,” he said.
He was accused of having the same views as his character and had to go to the prosecutor, taking his father along because he was concerned and wanted to make a good impression.
“I remember there was a typist, she was typing whatever I said – that irony means this and allegory means that – because I was trying to get rid of this kind of allegation and then I think he [the prosecutor] believed me and he said: ‘You’re a good boy. I’m going to deal with other things’.”
Genç believes it is crucial that fiction writers continue to challenge the censors, saying: “There is a huge readership for fiction and it means people take your writing seriously, so if you want to make a point people will think about it.”
“You can really show people that freedom of expression is under attack. It makes fiction writing in Turkey exciting because you are trying to avoid pitfalls, and you have this sense of mission. It’s a difficult balance but it also makes it worth trying.”
While novelists are still using their real names, Turkish website sourtimes.org allows people to freely discuss politics using disguised avatars. But Genç believes this anonymity holds people back.
“Everyone thinks they’re rebels. ‘We are writing on this website; we are actually rebelling against the government’. But you don’t know who they are. The government succeeds in locking you up in your anonymity. So, as a political force, you cannot emerge on the public scene.”
The message Genç wants to leave his readers with is that representing reality is a privilege that should not be taken for granted.
“European art is built on realism and it is something we have to fight for because it’s not just an art concept: it’s a way of looking at life, and it can be taken away from us very easily.”
Genç, who recently released The Lion and the Nightingale: A Journey Through Modern Turkey, in which he talks about the gap between our public and private selves, added: “I think what censorship does to us is to widen that gap.”
A piece of hay
By Kaya Genç
“These automated lights,” says the writer, “threaten our agency. I’d much prefer a manual conference room.” They are here to finalise the script of the new episode of The Empire of Love, their Turkflix show about two women’s rivalry to win the heart of one Bearded Son of a Turkish Tycoon.
For three seasons things went smoothly for their show: millions of views, fat ad revenue from chocolate and condom makers, and a flurry of interest from the press. But last night’s breaking news complicated this afternoon’s work.
On Twitter, the President pledged to “put a leash” on streaming services, like Turkflix, “in order to defend our innocent boys and girls”. The instruction from Turkflix HQ, hastily issued soon afterwards, ordered the producer to “tame” their show and make it compatible with “Turkish morality”.
But the Turkish producer isn’t sure what Turkish morality means. “We’ll need to be careful, closeted, a bit muted,” he tells his team, though he doesn’t know how. “Jane Austen, Henry James, those Edwardian, Victorian double-dealers. Like them we’ll be all innuendo and little action. We’ll cater to our President’s old-fashioned tastes. We’ll be decent and pure. We’ll be subtle by law. This is surely a challenge, but it may also be fun.”
But the cliffhanger of last season’s finale was a suspended threesome, and the challenge may be too large to overcome. In that scene Ambitious Banker and Barista Poet laid on Rich Boy’s thighs, wearing robes, and eyeing the camera as it panned between their conniving faces. For sponsors the scene was full of financial promise. The Empire of Love’s media coverage largely comprised photo galleries of lingerie worn in such occasions. Without erotica their revenue would dry.
Now the writer says she can’t believe their misfortune. “This is a ruthless assault on our agency! First the government came for cigarettes. We didn’t speak out because our characters take ecstasy instead. Then they came for alcohol. We didn’t speak out because Rich Boy prefers gambling. They came for swearwords and we didn’t speak out because Ambitious Banker and Barista Poet plot each other’s downfall using posh language. Now the state comes for what it calls elitism, and there is no one left to speak for us.”
The President had accused subscription-based “elitist” streaming services of affronting “Turkey’s purity”. Affluent Turks, he claimed, “believe they are subject to different rules”, and he urged his followers to “teach them a lesson.”
Who could argue with him? Nobody has the power. The writer paces the conference room anxiously, play-acting victimhood – a character from a court drama. “As a nation,” she says, “we scrutinise by punches and make up by blowjobs. Now censors ask us to tame those emotions. Our characters, in their view, should behave civilly and talk articulately. And I tell this to censors: they can’t, and they won’t! Would characters in Goodfellas behave like characters in The Age of Innocence? I ask you to ponder the question for a moment and find a way to fix this disaster.” The bespectacled girl notes the titles; the meeting is adjourned.
That afternoon she buys a copy of Edith Wharton’s novel from the bookstore adjacent to Starbucks. She hopes that will solve the crisis. It doesn’t. While eating her lentils, Wharton’s prose remains unfathomable. She packs the book, switches to Wikipedia, texts her boss (“Ambiguity, complexity: can we turn this into an advantage?”) but spends the next ten minutes poring over her notebook. She scribbles, crosses out and flips back: lengthy depictions of her dreams from last August strike her with their awful imagery. But they also intrigue her. They are uncensored, raw and absurd.
Meanwhile the producer is busy reading Lucky Luke upstairs, and he ignores his phone. As a kid he was introduced to Luke by that iconic cigarette. When a piece of hay replaced it in 1983, he was saddened. When the same happened to Sanji, a hero of the Japanese comics One Piece, and a lollipop substituted the pirate-cum-cook-cum-cart-vendor’s cigarette, he was confused. Why did things need to change? Now he knows what forces them to change. This is a test, he knows, and he has to prove his leadership by steering his team away from troubled waters.
That evening he sits down with his assistant. They pore over her notebook. On a new page they list problematic content – premarital sex, adultery, violence, alcoholic beverages, political commentary, threesomes – and ponder possible replacements: raccoons, fireworks, swords, and the Sea Moss Cocktail, a Caribbean beverage made from milk and seaweed.
She comes up with the scheme; they are her dream images; she tells him how her mother first advised her to keep a dream diary. He cherishes his good luck and her troubled dreams. “He plays with his raccoon,” she says an hour later with an atomic physicist’s seriousness. “She will have fireworks, and she will fondle them,” he says. They sketch the continuation of the suspended scene on the next page. “He will now have a sword in his hand, and her finger will rest on its edge,” she says. “Meanwhile he will wolf a Sea Moss Cocktail,” they say in unison.
CREDIT: Badiucao
This is how it’ll work. They will compile and release more of these “replacement images” on the dark web, hoping that viewers – millennials well-versed in cheat codes and other features of gaming culture – will engage viscerally with their cryptic dream-like content. They will figure out what the show makers want to say but can’t. Their show will be the nation’s subconscious.
First actors will get it. Like teenagers, they’ll conceal and insinuate, imply and wink. Once they get it, viewers will get it, too. “The headmaster is in class; let’s talk in codes.” “Oh, but that scene was just a dream.” This is the language of oppressed childhood for Turks: the god-like image of Ataturk inspecting them in classrooms as they guiltily invent phrases for self-expression. This will strike a chord and catch the government off-guard.
Not everyone will like it. Of course not. “What a stupid idea,” the writer says the next day. “If doublespeak is your solution to censorship, we are doomed. How can we claim to represent reality with these secret ‘replacement images’? They’re an automated solution to an elaborate problem. Besides, they take away our agency!”
But three weeks later she’ll be drinking champagne from the producer’s Rolexed hand, sitting half-drunk on the conference room table, wearing Jimmy Choos. And she will say sorry. “I was mistaken.” The trick has worked. #Raccoon has been trending on Turkish Twitter; firework emojis have dominated sexts. A government adviser has warned against “those who want sword on our streets” while condemning activism. “You were involved in fireworks when your family needed you” a judge has told an adulterer before giving his wife their kid’s custody.
By the end of the year, they had reached dry land. Ad revenue quadrupled. Covers belonged to them, as did talk show sofas. Rich Boy became an icon, despite lines like “the anchovy flattens Apollo 13”. “The anchovy” is “my heart”; “flatten” is “desire”. “Apollo 13” is “Barista Poet’s lips”. Turkish morality is saved, and Turkish purity conserved. Gossip columnists say even the President binges on their show these days; the rumour is that he keeps a Sea Moss Cocktail next to his desk.
*
Now begins work for the final season, but there are changes. The assistant no longer wears glasses. She confesses to finding the Victorianism of their product “out of control”, “dangerously erotic”. She is in a bad mood. Alarmed, anxious, apathetic. She wants out.
But it isn’t easy. People are hooked. Ambitious Banker and Barista Poet feed raccoons, and people find it hilarious, and they watch the scene over and over again. Rich Boy tastes an almond, and there is applause, and he is a trending topic. His father, the Tycoon, talks about a panda, and laughter arises from Turkish living rooms and WhatsApp groups. Everyone knows what that means.
“But you wrote it,” the producer says. “The allegory is working, just as you suggested it would.”
“I was dreaming of The Golden Bowl, or The Turn of the Screw, but this turned into Animal Farm,” the girl says. “Well, we resemble Stalinist Russia, so that makes sense,” the producer says. “Allegory is out of control,” replies the young girl. “It’s disingenuous. It’s dangerous. Replacements replaced realities. We’re helping people enjoy censorship. Others may use this to their political advantage. This can’t go on.”
But Turks would never let The Empire of Love go. Before censorship it was a placeholder; now it’s essential. It is their refuge, the only show where talking heads don’t praise the government or disingenuously criticise “certain aspects” of state power. It is a refuge from the politics-obsessed who dominate screens around the clock, seven days a week. The Empire of Love episodes drop every Sunday, and Turks relish cracking their secrets. It has become a Turkish Alice in Wonderland: a fantasy for those condemned to a nightmare.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” the writer says. “Still, there is an antidote to allegory, and it is dystopia.” She proposes a Turkish Chernobyl: transporting the trio to the catastrophic Turkey of 2023 – rat-infested, on fire, bankrupted, in a grinding civil war – may, in her view, help the show flourish for another season. “At least we’ll have more agency.”
The producer welcomes this appetite for change. He’ll miss the piece of hay they injected to the show; but “replacement images”, he agrees, threaten public order. The dystopia could be timeless: with no links to contemporary Turkey they may act more freely and disregard consequences of allegory. He hopes this will be a “renaissance”, a “reboot” for The Empire of Love. Besides, they can sell branded merchandise.
They are sketching the plot as we speak. Imitation characters are imported from libraries of apocalyptic fiction. Mock conflicts between imaginary powers appear on blank pages. Cliches come to the rescue of a binge-worthy fifth season. Pencils are sharpened; volumes of Atwood, Bradbury and Zamyatin novels borrowed from library shelves. Much fine tuning lies ahead. Those who don’t have to don’t know it, but avoiding reality is really hard work.