FROM THE ASCENT OF SPECTACLE TO THE COLLAPSE OF MEANING: MYTH, ETERNAL RETURN, AND THE MYTHOPOETIC REWRITING OF CULTURAL MEMORY IN BABYLON

Öz

This article examines Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2022) as a contemporary Hollywood allegory in dialogue with the Babylon/Babel myth. The film’s transition from silent to sound cinema exceeds the status of technological development and acquires the force of a formative rupture, reorganizing body, voice, performance, visibility, and cultural memory within modern film history. The analysis places Hollywood’s claims to permanence, grandeur, and cultural authority in relation to dispersal, repetition, corporeal excess, and historical erosion. Babylon casts Hollywood as a modern Babylon/Babel formation: Babylon evokes grandeur, excess, and collapse; Babel evokes linguistic dispersal, plurality, and communicative crisis. The opening party sequences, sound-recording scenes, Nellie LaRoy’s corporeal excess and voice, and the final montage constitute the article’s principal analytical sites. These scenes bring carnivalesque excess, technical discipline, simulation, aura’s erosion, and cultural memory into a single interpretive field. Nellie LaRoy’s body and voice exemplify the star body that Hollywood renders visible, disciplines, and ultimately marks as excessive. The final montage reconstructs cinema history outside linear progress, arranging it as fragments, citations, repetitions, and visual residues. Babylon produces Hollywood’s dream of visual immortality and exposes its instability within the same cinematic structure. The article approaches Hollywood as a symbolic field for American modernity’s myths of progress, celebrity, technological mastery, and permanence, exceeding the limits of film industry. Ultimately, Babylon acquires the force of a mythopoetic allegory that conceives cultural continuity in terms of fracture, repetition, loss, and the labor of reconstruction, apart from the ideals of stability, completion, and historical coherence.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• American cinema
• Babylonian myth
• crisis of representation
• simulation
• eternal return
• mythopoetic allegory

GÖSTERİNİN YÜKSELİŞİNDEN ANLAMIN ÇÖKÜŞÜNE: BABİL FİLMİNDE MİT, EBEDİ DÖNÜŞ VE KÜLTÜREL HAFIZANIN MİTOPOETİK YENİDEN YAZIMI

Öz

Bu çalışma, Damien Chazelle’in Babil (2022) filmini Babil/Babel mitiyle ilişkili çağdaş bir Hollywood alegorisi olarak inceler. Film, sessiz sinemadan sesli sinemaya geçişi yalnızca teknolojik bir yenilik değil, modern sinema kültüründe beden, ses, performans ve bellek üzerinde etkili kurucu bir kırılma olarak yorumlar. Bu çerçevede Hollywood’un kalıcılık, görkem ve kültürel otorite iddiaları; dağılma, tekrar, bedensel taşkınlık ve tarihsel aşınma süreçleriyle birlikte okunur. Makalenin temel iddiası, Babil’de Hollywood’un modern bir Babil/Babel figürü olarak temsil edildiği yönündedir: Babil ihtişam, aşırılık ve çöküş imgesiyle; Babel ise dilsel dağılma, çoğulluk ve iletişim kriziyle ilişkilendirilir. Çalışmada açılış partisi sahneleri, ses kayıt sahneleri, Nellie LaRoy’un bedensel taşkınlığı ve ses performansı ile final montajı merkeze alınır. Bu sahneler aracılığıyla karnavalesk taşkınlık, teknik disiplin, simülasyon, aura kaybı ve kültürel bellek ilişkisi tartışılır. Nellie LaRoy’un bedeni ve sesi, Hollywood’un görünür kıldığı, fakat aynı anda dışladığı yıldız bedeninin belirleyici bir örneği olarak öne çıkar. Final montajı, sinema tarihini doğrusal ilerleme anlatısı içinde değil, fragman, alıntı, tekrar ve görsel kalıntı mantığı içinde yeniden kurar. Bu nedenle Babil, Hollywood’un görsel ölümsüzlük arzusunu hem kuran hem de aşındıran bir sinemasal yapı olarak okunur. Bu okuma, Hollywood’u yalnızca bir film endüstrisi olarak değil, Amerikan modernitesinin mit, bellek ve görsel iktidar üreten simgesel alanı olarak konumlandırır. Makale, filmin Amerikan kültüründeki ilerleme, şöhret, teknolojik hâkimiyet ve kalıcılık mitlerini sorguladığını ileri sürer. Sonuç olarak Babil, kültürel sürekliliği istikrar ve tamamlanmışlık fikrine değil; kırılma, tekrar, kayıp ve yeniden kurma emeğine dayalı biçimde düşünen mitopoetik bir alegori niteliği kazanır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Amerikan sineması
• Babil miti
• temsil krizi
• simülasyon
• edebi dönüş
• mitopoetik alegori

Kaynakça

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