Şahan Gökbakar

Şahan Gökbakar (born 22nd October, 1980 in İzmir, Turkey) is a popular Turkish comedian and film actor, specialising in burlesque comedy. Gökbakar grew up in Turkey's capital, Ankara, attending the primary school and high school attached to the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ). After completing high school in 1997, he went on to study music and visual arts at Bilkent University's Faculty of Fine Arts in Ankara. He graduated in 2002, with a GPA that ranked him fourth out of a total class of 350. Gökbakar's early life was overshadowed by the death of his father in a traffic accident when he was eight years old.

After university, Gökbakar tried his luck in some promo elections and as a result was given the opportunity to make his own program on TV8, a Turkish satellite TV channel. His first show was called "Zibin" (an invented word in Turkish which combines the sounds of the words for 'oddly-dressed person' and 'dung'). The show received good ratings and was followed by another called "Zoka" ("Trap") and finally a show called "Dikkat Şahan çıkabilir" (Warning: Şahan May Appear) which established him in a long line of nationally-famous burlesque comedians stretching back to the 19th century. But Şahan Gökbakar's humor is focused mainly on 21st century societal conventions governing Turkey's leisure and consumerist classes, and the ways in which they conflict with the views of the uneducated outsider who is often unaware of such conventions.

Film

"Recep İvedik", the epononymous protagonist of Gökbakar's first film (2008), is just such a figure -- a huge Caliban-like bear of a badly-dressed, black-bearded taxi-driver. İvedik's clothes and make-up are grossly exaggerated. His eyebrows, for example, are an unbroken strip of black marching across his brows. The intention is clearly to make him a living cartoon figure who will contrast incongruously with all the realistically-depicted denizens of the hotel.

Iconic incivility

Used to getting his way everwhere by shouting,raging, and threats of physical violence, İvedik is the ultimate embodiment of incivility in a consumerist age, unable to operate a hotel door key or use its bathroom, but with an underlying desire to conform to his own naive and outdated conceptions of moral and social rules. İvedik could possibly be taken as emblematic of the traditionalist forces making inroads into the lives of Turkey's westernized middle classes, but Gökbakar only hints at this possible interpretation. (Another interpretation would be that the main traits of İvedik are derived from those of characters in Turkey's traditional 'Karagöz' shadow puppet plays.) This film, like Turkish burlesque film comedy extracts draws its fun (and it is extremely funny for most viewers) from representing a collision between conventional stock-in-trade figures and an outsider who undermines them, rather than from satire: in other words it does not have a social message, beyond showing that attempts to lead a conventional life are more fragile than they seem and easily upset by the arrival of an uncivil intruder. İvedik despite his black beard and eastern clothes (at one point in the film he makes his bathroom towel into a turban)is more urban than rural, has an email address, and speaks at least few words of international English. Much of his humour arises from his lack of self-awareness and inability to perceive the reactions of others to him. He contrasts strongly with Turkish burlesque protagonists in earlier generations of films who tended to be deferential, physically-slight, and to wriggle their way out of difficult situations and who operated against a backdrop of a much less economically advanced society. There are other indicators of social change. "Recep İvedik" is full of noise, angry shouting, appalling behaviour, and abusive swear-words were never heard in public in Turkey until now. Though the plot is flimsy, Gökbakar's acting brings İvedik side-splittingly to life and one has little or no sense of the actor creating him.

The plot of "Recep İvedik"

The story is quickly told: İvedik is a fearsome-looking uncultivated driver with a lot of aggression but a spark of goodness in him. Involved by accident in a street fight, he rescues the wallet of the owner of an Antalya luxury hotel and hitchhikes his way south to restore it to the rightful owner. Along the way he is made the object of an unlikely attempted seduction by a homosexual truck-driver, reacting with shock and innocence. Reaching the hotel to hand over the wallet, he begins his stay by shattering a porcelain vase in the hotel lobby and talks his way out of the situation in exactly the same way as earlier burlesque characters. After giving back the wallet, he is about to leave when he glimpses his childhood sweetheart Sibel(Fatma Toptaş)among a party of arriving guests and decides to take up the owner's offer of a free stay in the hotel. Gökbakar then uses İvedik to burlesque every aspect of five star hotel life. Unable to use to the toilets, he pees in the ornamental flowers, drinks the hotel shampoo as well as the contents of the minibar, massages the foot of an amorous woman in mistake for Sibel's, gatecrashes women's morning fitness exercises on the beach in a ludicrous purple gown, and cuffs the heads of almost everyone who comes into contact with him. All the while he pours out a stream of inappropriate invective and obscenities. By the close of the film most middle class conventions have also been shattered, a high point being a burping contest between him and Sibel. Sibel, who is resisting her bourgeois mother's attempts to marry her off to a fiance she does not love, contains a very mild criticism of the middle class lifestyles and attitudes with which İvedik is colliding. By making a sweet nice girl like Sibel belch at full volume, Gökbakar comes closest to an outright repudiation of middle class values. The film ends with İvedik leaving the hotel. Has catharsis been achieved? No. İvedik departs more or less exactly as he arrived, presumably en route to more adventures in his next film. Yet somehow he ends up by being not so much frightening as slightly loveable--no doubt because he no longer appears wholly dangerous. It is Sibel's view of him which has changed--and that of the film audience too.

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