The politics of pleasure in global drama: A case study of the TV series, The Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl)

Abstract

This article is concerned with the ways in which local/national drama becomes a global success, which strategies are developed to appeal to viewers within different cultural settings and how far this shift is important when re/thinking audience reception studies. The study answers this question by exploring the television (TV) drama series, The Magnificent Century (2011–2014) by conducting in-depth interviews in the Greek capital Athens and the Moroccan capital Rabat with viewers and the production and distribution team of the series. The findings show that potentials for pleasure in the consumption of drama are designed from the very beginning when thinking globally, to reduce cultural differences to a minimum, to finally fuse audiences’ interpretative practices beyond cultural polarization to common understandings.

Viewing Turkish TV series in Skopje: Audience memories on travelling cultural products

“…‘Rumelia’ refers to the lands conquered by the Ottoman Turks from the Byzantine Empire (e.g. Phillips, 2004). The symbolic name ‘Rumeli’ is used as a title for a Turkish TV series Elveda Rumeli (TV series 2007–2009, Farewell Rumelia) that has become a hit in Turkey, in Macedonia and elsewhere.…”

“…Over the years, Turkish series producers have acquired the features of transnational TV drama historical legacy series to offer a 'Westernised, modern and traditional content' (Jenner, 2018, p. 230) that later assisted them in securing international distribution deals (Gül, 2021). Mimicking successful marketing strategies in international TV fairs like MIPCOM and MIPTV, these series produced in Turkey were exported to Arab countries, the Middle East and then to the markets in the Balkans, Asia and South America (Özalpman and Sarikakis, 2018). Turkish drama combines qualities found in high-end drama that sells local colour, local identity and diversity (Jenner, 2018, p. 230).…”

The role of online fan communities in the popularization of Turkish TV dramas in Brazil

“…This phenomenon motivated researchers to further investigate the reception of Turkish dramas within the different markets in which they are present. First works approached the success of Turkish dramas in the Middle East and North Africa, observing that, although their “westernized modernity” was perceived as controversial by some segments of society, they are contributing to positioning Turkey as a cultural, political, and economic power in the region (Anaz, 2014; Berg, 2017; Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi, 2013; Ozalpman and Sarikakis, 2018; Salamandra, 2012; Yalkin and Veer, 2018; Yanardağoğlu and Karam, 2013).…”

Content is power: Cultural engineering and political control over transnational television

“…The Turkish TV industry's cultural exports, which are predominantly TV series, have had an enormous impact not only in the Middle East and Turkey's other neighboring countries but also on the entire world from Asia to Latin America since the mid-2000s. Global audiences' response to and engagement with the Turkish TV series (Aslan, 2019;Berg, 2020;Özalpman and Sarikakis, 2018;Salamandra, 2012;Tunç, 2012;Yeşil, 2016), the question of soft power surrounding the popularity of these TV series (Al-Ghazzi and Kraidy, 2013;Algan and Kaptan, 2021;Çevik, 2019;Kaynak, 2015;Yörük and Vatikiotis, 2013), pro-Islam sentiments and the reproduction of conservatism in the TV series' narratives (Berg, 2017;Emre Çetin, 2014;Pothou, 2020;Yanardağoğlu and Karam, 2013) have been well documented. However, how the transnationalization and platformization of the Turkish TV industry intersect with conditions of restricted media freedom marked by government intervention in both the TV industry and the content it produces remains undertheorized and draws on limited empirical evidence.…”