Orientalism and Oxidentalism through Opportunities in Only Lovers Left Alive

Abstract

Narratives with opposing views and images contain data that is very open to interpretation and use by the audience it addresses. The aim is to develop rich expressions with limited opportunities, especially in branches such as music, literature, painting, sculpture and cinema, which have the power to reach a universal audience. The works produced for this purpose contain contrasts that the user can perceive and act freely while interpreting. The contrasts that vary according to the type of the work and the subject can be expressed with symbols, words, rhythms, colors or forms. In the movie Only Lovers Left Alive, which is the material of this study, many ideas conveyed through metaphors gain depth with contrasts. A subtext reading is made by examining the changes in the other parameters of the film through the spaces that constitute the most concrete contrast of the film, and data on orientalism and occidentalism are sought in the film. The results of the study indicate that there are many orientalist and occidentalist messages that the film contains regardless of its subject, and that these messages take place in a unity that can be found in all components of the film.