scholarly journals Between neo-Ottomanism and Ottomania: navigating state-led and popular cultural representations of the past

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 33-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Ergin ◽  
Yağmur Karakaya
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractIn contemporary Turkey, a growing interest in Ottoman history represents a change in both the official state discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia appropriates, reinterprets, decontextualizes, and juxtaposes formerly distinct symbols, ideas, objects, and histories in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we distinguish between state-led neo-Ottomanism and popular cultural Ottomania, focusing on the ways in which people in Turkey are interpellated by these two different yet interrelated discourses, depending on their social positions. As the boundary between highbrow and popular culture erodes, popular cultural representations come to reinterpret and rehabilitate the Ottoman past while also inventing new insecurities centering on historical “truth.” Utilizing in-depth interviews, we show that individuals juxtapose the popular television seriesMuhteşem Yüzyıl(The Magnificent Century) with what they deem “proper” history, in the process rendering popular culture a “false” version. We also identify four particular interpretive clusters among the consumers of Ottomania: for some, the Ottoman Empire was the epitome of tolerance, where different groups lived peacefully; for others, the imperial past represents Turkish and/or Islamic identities; and finally, critics see the empire as a burden on contemporary Turkey.

Popular Culture and Religion in America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Schofield Clark ◽  
Seth M. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Lifestyle Choices ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
Popular Television

“Popular culture” is a term that usually refers to those commercially produced items specifically associated with leisure, media, and lifestyle choices. To study religion in popular culture, then, is to explore religion’s appearance in the commercially produced artifacts and texts of a culture. The study of popular culture has been a catalyst of sorts in the context of studying religion. Some have speculated that with the increasing presence of religion in commercially produced products and specifically in the entertainment media, religion may be reduced to entertainment. Others, however, have argued that religion has always been expressed and experienced through contemporary forms of culture, and thus its manifestation in popular culture can be interpreted as a sign of the vitality rather than the demise or superficiality of contemporary religions. Popular culture is worthy of study given its role in cultural reproduction. The study of popular culture and religion encourages scholars to consider the extent to which popular cultural representations limit broader critical considerations of religion by depicting and reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions of what religion is, who practices it and where, and how it endures as a powerful societal institution. Alternately, popular culture has been explored as a site for public imaginings of how religious practices and identities might be different and more inclusive than they have been in the past, pointing toward the artistic and playful ways in which popular religious expression can comment upon dominant religion, dominant culture, and the power relations between them. With the rise of an ubiquitous media culture in which people are increasingly creators and distributors as well as consumers and modifiers of popular culture, the term has come to encompass a wide variety of products and artifacts, including those both commercially produced and generated outside of traditional commercial and religious contexts. Studies might include explorations of religion in such popular television programs as Orange Is the New Black or in novels such as The Secret Life of Bees, but might also include considerations of how religion and popular culture intersect in practices of Buddhism in the virtual gaming site Second Life, in the critical expressions of Chicana art, in the commercial experiments of Islamic punk rock groups, and in hashtag justice movements. The study of religion and popular culture can be divided into two major strands, both of which are rooted in what is known as the “culture and civilization tradition.” The first strand focuses on popular culture, myth, and cultural cohesion or continuity, while the second explores popular culture in relation to religion, power, and cultural tensions.

scholarly journals “But in the Thunder, I Still Hear Thor”: The Character Athelstan as a Narrative Focal Point in the Series Vikings

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Margaret Steenbakker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Television Series ◽  
World Views ◽  
Negative Picture ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Medieval Christianity ◽  
Eventual Death ◽  
The Way

This article explores the way the character Athelstan serves as a narrative focal point in the popular television series Vikings. Using this series as its main case study, it addresses the question of the ways in which the character functions as a synthesis between the two opposing world views of Christianity and Norse religion that are present in the series. After establishing that Vikings is a prime example of the trend to romanticize Viking culture in popular culture, I will argue that while the character Athelstan functions as a narrative focal point in which the worlds can be united and are united for a while, his eventual death when he has reverted back to Christianity shows that the series ultimately favors Viking culture and paints a very negative picture of (medieval) Christianity indeed.

De-coding the Gendered Order of Memory in 'Hitlers Frauen'

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 134-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Lenz ◽  
Kirsten Heinsohn
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
Critical Media ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Women's Role

Building on the assumption that cultural representations of the past contribute to the establishment and regulation of gendered power relations, this article investigates the representations of female participation in the Nazi regime in the German television series Hitlers Frauen. Stuart Hall's concept of decoding is used for a critical media analysis, asking how men and women are positioned as historical agents or passive objects in the series. In fact, the series plays on the gendered symbols and representations associated with the Third Reich. It reproduces traditional ideas regarding the (non)relation between femininity and politics and evokes a sexualized imaginary where women are seduced by a powerful, charismatic leader. Women are represented as dependent-materially, physically, and emotionally. In this way, the television series contributes to the continuation of traditional gender regimes. Even when the series apparently reacts to ongoing debates about women's role within the Nazi system, it disappoints those who hoped to learn about the reasons, interests, and possibilities of women between 1933 and 1945.

scholarly journals Popular cultural representations of postfeminist religiosity in the international christian fellowship: an analysis of the “Ladies Lounge 2021” webpage

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Freudenberg ◽  
Dunja Sharbat Dar
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gender Perceptions ◽  
Christian Fellowship ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
Sociological Discourse ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractFemininity and female gender roles in conservative religious environments are highly disputed topics both within communities of faith and in sociological discourse. In light of social transformations of gender perceptions in the past decades, conservative Christians have had to reevaluate traditional understandings of womanhood in societies that have become steeped in popular culture and thoroughly mediatized. Taking this development as a point of departure, this article examines how femininity is represented in the International Christian Fellowship, particularly on its “Ladies Lounge” webpage. Advertising an annual event geared exclusively towards women, the website’s landing page contains images and text that we examine by means of visual and textual sequence analysis. Our research results reveal that women are depicted as sensually attractive and self-confidently professional while at the same time being relegated to an exclusively female sphere within (but not beyond) which they wield authority and influence. As such, femininity is represented as self-empowering, but only within a specific, postfeminist framework. This ambivalent depiction of women’s agency challenges conservative Evangelical values at the same time as it affirms them. In this sense, the study contributes the growing body of literature on gender and Evangelicalism.

The Past as a Spectacle

2014 ◽  
pp. 182-202
Author(s):  
Selin Tüzün ◽  
Aygun Sen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
The Past ◽  
Broad Audience ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Television Plays

Television plays an important role in shaping our perception of the past. Popular television fiction selects, alters, and reinterprets the past in order to appeal to a broad audience. The Magnificent Century (2011–present) is one such television drama, which unfolds during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. The show, which is the most expensive Turkish television drama to date, promises its audience a spectacle. It has proven a huge success domestically and as of 2013 has been syndicated in 46 other countries. The show's success has been commodified both officially and unofficially. However, this is not to say that it receives unanimous acclaim, even in Turkey. It has provoked controversy due to the representation both of the period and of Suleiman himself. This chapter reflects on the implications of a historical-fiction television series for the contemporary social and political spheres.

Neo-Ottoman Nostalgia in Contemporary Turkey

2021 ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Daria V. Zhigulskaya
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Western World ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Turkish Society

The article examines the phenomenon of neo-Ottoman nostalgia in the context of attempts to shape a new post-Kemalist civil identity. Today, neo-Ottomanism is making itself heard in various spheres of life in Turkish society: in culture, cinema and literature, politics and elsewhere. The new Turkey is making every effort to tie together individual parts of its fragmentary identity. This being said, an ambivalent approach to the Ottoman heritage is widespread amongst various strata of Turkish society. Most of the founding fathers of the secular republic took a negative view of the Ottoman past and blamed the empire for a string of failures that beset it at the dawn of its new existence – extensive territorial losses and numerous military defeats. The Kemalist nation building project gave rise to a modern Turkish nation which was supposed to become part of the Western world. At the same time, the appeal to Ottoman narratives reemerged after the transition to a multiparty system in the 1950s; admiration for the Ottoman past increased noticeably in the 1980s and has now reached its peak under the Justice and Development Party (JDP). The party leaders are striving to create a new identity for contemporary Turkey, construing and interpreting history in their own way. It should also be taken into account that the growing interest in Ottoman history in contemporary Turkey reflects changes in both the state’s political discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia for the past reinterprets and decontextualizes previously clearly formulated and enshrined symbols, ideas and historical facts. 

“Dressed in an Angel's Nightshirt”: Jesus and the BBC

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Veldman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Radio Drama ◽  
Religious Broadcasting ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Popular Religiosity ◽  
Popular Television

AbstractThis article examines images of Jesus broadcast on the BBC from the 1930s through the 1950s. During these years, the BBC sought to use its cultural influence to replace popular religiosity with what the clerics who staffed its Religious Broadcasting Department (RBD) regarded as a more masculine, modern, and vigorous national religious faith. To achieve this aim, the RBD marshaled the might of British New Testament scholarship and its image of a warrior-like, apocalyptic historical Jesus. Yet the RBD's hopes of bridging the gap between popular religiosity and its own vision of Christianity went unrealized. Programs on Jesus that reached a genuinely national audience—The Man Born to be King, Dorothy L. Sayers's wartime radio drama, andJesus of Nazareth, a popular television series from the 1950s—instead featured Anglicized and ahistorical images deeply embedded within British popular culture. The story of Jesus on the BBC highlights both this popular culture's strength and Christian Britain's fragmentation.

Transnational Viewers of Turkish Television Drama Series

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43
Author(s):  
Deniz Özalpman
Keyword(s):  
Trade Flows ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Austrian Capital ◽  
Depth Interviews

Since the mid-2000s, Turkish television drama series have been exported to many countries and attracted an unprecedented transnational audience. However, despite popularity, there is paucity of research focusing on the transnational understanding(s) of Turkish television drama audiences in different geographies. Through a reception analysis of three mostly cited television series among participants Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century), Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love), Kuzey Güney (North South), this study aimed at offering an understanding beyond overly stated cultural/religious proximity explanations to ascertain traces and elements of empowerment that citizens feel coming through their act of consuming Turkish dramas. For that purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with Iranian viewers of Turkish television series living in the Austrian capital Vienna. Interpretation of that collected qualitative material suggests re-thinking of the transnational audience’s consumption practices that expand tourism and trade flows and other related businesses between the two countries. 

Dowagers, Debs, Nuns and Babies: The Politics of Nostalgia and the Older Woman in the British Sunday Night Television Serial

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estella Tincknell
Keyword(s):  
Older Women ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Mature Female ◽  
Older Woman ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Popular Television

The extensive commercial success of two well-made popular television drama serials screened in the UK at prime time on Sunday evenings during the winter of 2011–12, Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–) and Call the Midwife (BBC, 2012–), has appeared to consolidate the recent resurgence of the period drama during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as reassembling something like a mass audience for woman-centred realist narratives at a time when the fracturing and disassembling of such audiences seemed axiomatic. While ostensibly different in content, style and focus, the two programmes share a number of distinctive features, including a range of mature female characters who are sufficiently well drawn and socially diverse as to offer a profoundly pleasurable experience for the female viewer seeking representations of aging femininity that go beyond the sexualised body of the ‘successful ager’. Equally importantly, these two programmes present compelling examples of the ‘conjunctural text’, which appears at a moment of intense political polarisation, marking struggles over consent to a contemporary political position by re-presenting the past. Because both programmes foreground older women as crucial figures in their respective communities, but offer very different versions of the social role and ideological positioning that this entails, the underlying politics of such nostalgia becomes apparent. A critical analysis of these two versions of Britain's past thus highlights the ideological investments involved in period drama and the extent to which this ‘cosy’ genre may legitimate or challenge contemporary political claims.

Playing Politics: How Sabarimala Played Out on TikTok

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422198976
Author(s):  
Darsana Vijay ◽  
Alex Gekker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Potential Strategy

TikTok is commonly known as a playful, silly platform where teenagers share 15-second videos of crazy stunts or act out funny snippets from popular culture. In the past few years, it has experienced exponential growth and popularity, unseating Facebook as the most downloaded app. Interestingly, recent news coverage notes the emergence of TikTok as a political actor in the Indian context. They raise concerns over the abundance of divisive content, hate speech, and the lack of platform accountability in countering these issues. In this article, we analyze how politics is performed on TikTok and how the platform’s design shapes such expressions and their circulation. What does the playful architecture of TikTok mean to the nature of its political discourse and participation? To answer this, we review existing academic work on play, media, and political participation and then examine the case of Sabarimala through the double lens of ludic engagement and platform-specific features. The efficacy of play as a productive heuristic to study political contention on social media platforms is demonstrated. Finally, we turn to ludo-literacy as a potential strategy that can reveal the structures that order playful political participation and can initiate alternative modes of playing politics.

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