... Recep İvedik, the epononymous protagonist of Gökbakar's first film (2008), is just such a figure—a huge Caliban-like bear of a badly-dressed, black-bearded taxi-driver. İvedik's clothes and make-up are grossly exaggerated. His eyebrows, for example, are an unbroken strip of black marching across his brows. The intention is clearly to make him a living cartoon figure who will contrast incongruously with all the realistically-depicted denizens of the hotel. In Recep İvedik 2 (2009) Gökbakar plays a rude big man again. To please his grandmother he finds a job and tries to find a woman to marry. [edit]Iconic incivility Used to getting his way everywhere by shouting, raging, and threats of physical violence, İvedik is the ultimate embodiment of incivility in a consumerist age, unable to operate a hotel door key or use its bathroom, but with an underlying desire to conform to his own naive and outdated conceptions of moral and social rules. İvedik could possibly be taken as emblematic of the traditionalist forces making inroads into the lives of Turkey's westernized middle classes, but Gökbakar only hints at this possible interpretation. (Another interpretation would be that the main traits of İvedik are derived from those of characters in Turkey's traditional Karagöz shadow puppet plays). This film, like Turkish burlesque film comedy extracts draws its fun (and it is extremely funny for most viewers) from representing a collision between conventional stock-in-trade figures and an outsider who undermines them, rather than from satire: in other words it does not have a social message, beyond showing that attempts to lead a conventional life are more fragile than they seem and easily upset by the arrival of an uncivil intruder. İvedik despite his black beard and eastern clothes (at one point in the film he makes his bathroom towel into a turban) is more urban than rural, has an email address, and speaks at least a few words of international English. Much of his humour arises from his lack of self-awareness and inability to perceive the reactions of others to him. He contrasts strongly with Turkish burlesque protagonists in earlier generations of films who tended to be deferential, physically-slight, and to wriggle their way out of difficult situations and who operated against a backdrop of a much less economically advanced society. There are other indicators of social change. "Recep İvedik" is full of noise, angry shouting, appalling behaviour, and abusive swear-words which were never heard in public in Turkey before. Though the plot is flimsy, Gökbakar's acting brings İvedik side-splittingly to life and one has little or no sense of the actor creating him.