This report on Netflix Turkey is a part of a series of dossiers compiled by the Global Internet TV Consortium members. All country reports are available on the Consortium website: https://global-internet-tv.com/netflix-country-reports/
The theatrical experience has long been central to the act of viewing a film. But with the rise of multiplexes, which first appeared in Europe in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, this experience underwent an important shift. Multiplexes brought with them standardization, and many have criticized their impact on the cinematic experience. Though monoscreen theaters remain firmly rooted in Continental Europe, multiplexes dominate elsewhere, including in Turkey, where they are often found in shopping malls and are therefore also caught up in the country's crisis of urban transformation. Where shopping malls in Europe are often located on the outskirts of cities, most in Turkey are built in city centers. How does watching movies in these shopping malls affect the cinematic experience? How does that experience differ from watching a movie in a neighborhood cinema? To answer these questions, this study draws a distinction between neighborhood cinemas, which are steeped in local memory and serve effectively as an extension of the home, and multiplexes, whose anonymity and uniformity make them what the French anthropologist Marc Augé calls "non-places." Based on fifteen participant observations carried out in different types of cinema venues in Istanbul, this study presents scenes of the current theatrical cinematic experience in the city and discusses how the choice of movie theater has increasingly become an identity issue. Even so, there remains a common thread connecting people's experiences in different types of cinema venues: the desire to stay connected at all times.
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