‘The Testaments’ and the Tyranny of Tenderness
In The Handmaid’s Tale, violence had to break in; in The Testaments, a tyrannical tenderness occupies a child’s dollhouse, a child’s mind.
Efe Teksoy
Efe Teksoy (b. 1988, Istanbul) is a film critic and media writer whose work analyzes cinema in a political and cultural context. For over a decade, his writing has been published on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Los Angeles–based Alaturka News and Bright Lights Film Journal. He earned his BA in Cinema and TV Directing, Production, and Screenwriting from Istanbul Kültür University, Department of Communication Design, and an MA in Communication Design from the same university’s Social Sciences Institute. His master’s thesis examined the influence of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character on Kemal Sunal’s iconic figure Şaban in Turkish popular cinema. His work has also appeared in Posta — one of Turkey's largest newspapers, published by the Hürriyet media group — as well as Gazeteport and Tezgah Magazine. He has worked in national television, serving as editor on Mesut Yar Sunar (Star TV) and as managing editor on Sadettin Teksoy Zaman Tüneli (Teve2). He received First Prize in Screenwriting at the 2014 Yed-i Velayet Short Film Festival.
‘Hamnet’, Memory and the Politics of Allegory
Zhao’s Hamnet subverts the “great man narrative” not by centering on the rising career of Shakespeare, but instead on the cost of his genius.