Representation of childhood in Aysecik films

The films with the child stars which had been shot since 1960?s, were evaluated as a glut imported from the West by the Turkish cinema studies and were not found worth analyzing. As the film with child stars have some similar characteristics with the popular cinema, they can be evaluated within Western cinema but it is deficient to treat these films as copies of the Western precedents. When the films with child stars are analyzed along with the developments in Turkish society, it can be perceived that these films deal with a collective sense and consequently access a mass of audience. Ayşecik, the most popular character of the films with the child stars, embedded in the collective memory of Turkish society as a strong image. Because that Ayşecik can be both a child an adult, both devoid and powerful, she is a character who is represented through dualities. These dualities that constructs the character of Ayşecik, are fostered by the sense of ?being left in between? which the Turkish society had during the process of modernization. The elitist character of Turkish modernization, which is due to the East-West duality, causes the society to identify with the child or childish characters in literature, music and cinema. Childhood as the collective sense of Turkish society corresponds to Ayşecik films in cinema.