Estudio del tráfico

Formed by the shadow reflection of the puppets behind a lit screen, unlike cinema, images of the shadow play were mirrored in front of the audience. This arrangement may bring to mind Metz’ speculation on the spectator’s primary identification with the projection, yet this theory can hardly be applied to Karagöz

since it has different projection mechanisms, where the source of light is not behind the audiences but behind the characters. However, such a distinction does not seem to account for the lack of identification in the shadow play as there are stronger factors to alienate the audience from the characters. The prologue of the plays, named the curtain poem, with its Sufi references presents a Neo-Platonic understanding of the shadowy mimesis and is thereby a reminder of the cave parable.

Karagöz was allegedly created by a Sufi Sheikh named Kusteri in the fourteenth

century and the plays were imbued with Sufi (particularly Alevi/Bektasi) thought. The curtain upon which the images were projected is called Hayal Perdesi

(indicating both ‘the Curtain of Dreams’ and ‘the Curtain of Illusions’) and the images are called Gölgeler (‘Shadows’), as another allegory reminiscent of the Platonic cave. The curtain poems, under Sufi inspiration, referred to the ‘source of creation as one God, that the Creator is manifest through and is one with his creations, and that everything is a shadow of the real thing.’69 Sufism emerges as a significant school of thought to elaborate on as it seemingly determined the viewing modes of the shadow play. Shadow play, particularly in the curtain poems, constantly reminded the audience of its own limitations by showing the truth as it is. The lines of Hafez, one of the most well known Persian Sufi poets from the late fourteenth

69 _{Mizrahi, p. 95.}

century, although not written for the shadow play, seem to confirm the basic concern of the shadow play and its role in visual enlightenment and tells the reader/audience:

I am just a shadow I wish I could show you The Infinite Incandescence

That has cast my brilliant image!70

The Sufi ontology on the illusionary characteristics of the world is materialized in curtain poems, as follows:

What is visible is the curtain

But the aim is to apprehend what truly is behind it Do not confide in the world

As it is nothing but shadow and dream71

These verses demand an insightful kind of spectatorship, where a Brechtian type audience will not fall into the traps of passive pleasure offered by the Aristotelian narrative. Nevertheless, the lines of action in the plays appear far more materialistic in the sense that they deal mainly with the everyday adventures of Karagöz and Hacivat. However, it is not only the curtain poem but also the interludes that ‘encouraged awareness of the here – and - now of the theater’.72 The interludes usually occur after an introductory dialogue between Karagöz and Hacivat. Irritated by Hacivat’s refined words, Karagöz ‘the ruffian’ tells Hacivat off and says: ‘I will now go to watch the carnival, the fairground and the beautiful women. Let’s see what the mirror of time will show’.73 With these words, spectatorship is placed within the text itself again, and indeed refers to the basis of the cinema of attractions, the carnivals and the fairground. Moreover, Karagöz himself frequently plays the

70 _{Hafez Siraz, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy, Trans. Daniel Ladinsky (New York,}

Toronto, London: Penguin, 2006), p. 7. 71 _{Kudret, p. 263.}

72 _{See Mizrahi, abstract.} 73 _{Kudret, p. 52.}

spectator, where he appears to be a voyeur, particularly in the love scenes between the frivolous woman and the dandy. In some plays, Karagöz, from his window, listens to the young couple discussing their relationship in the garden and interferes in the dialogues, but, rather awkwardly, he never receives any response. By distortedly repeating what the lovers say, or commenting on their attitude towards each other, Karagöz poses as a humorous interlocutor for the audience. In these scenes, he seems to direct his speech towards the audience without, however, any immediate contact. Such active witnessing might posit him both as narrator and spectator. This voyeuristic position was perhaps strengthened by the medium’s limits, where the puppets could appear on screen only in profile without the perspective of a three dimensional space. In the same scene, three characters could hardly face each other and when they converse with one another, for example, they cannot walk past each other or turn around.74

What may also be seen as cinematic, or rather early cinematic in Karagöz is the magical type of visual attractions similar to the trick films of Georges Méliès. If Karagöz annoys the witches they turn him into an animal or in some scenes ‘a snake eats his donkey’s head after which Karagöz experiments with the possible uses of a headless donkey’.75 One main purpose of these attractions can be understood in the understanding of boredom as formulated by Lars Swendsen and mentioned in the introductory chapter. Swendsen considers boredom to be an ontological problem that connotes the loss of meaning.76 Therefore entertainment appears as a way of searching for meanings through the creation of new meanings. Karagöz, who always begins the shows with a call for entertainment (with the lines: ‘Yar bana bir eglence medet’ literally translated as ‘dear companion provide me some entertainment’) and

74 _{See Mizrahi, p. 81}

75 _Ibid.

is preoccupied with giving objects new meanings (by using his own leg as a binocular or by using a needle as a fishing hook) may be similar to Eisenstein’s montage of attractions where he underscored the role of the original meanings of the objects and attributing new metaphorical meanings to them.77 Karagöz’s replacements of meanings may not seem metaphoric but metonymic; however, both of the new attributions still provide a common ground between shadow play and the cinema of attractions; drawing attention to the spectacle by changing the meanings of objects.