Folklor/Edebiyat (Aug 2020)
Rituals of Transition in Turkish TV Drama: The Case of Henna Night/Yerli Dizilerde Geçiş Ritüelleri: Kına Gecesi Örneği
Abstract
Externalizing social beliefs and values, the rituals are of vital importance since they make individuals feel as a part of society. The rituals of transition (during death, birth, and marriage) make people’s lives meaningful by reinforcing the relationships among them, even though these rituals have changed from past to present within the social structure. The rituals of transition are procedures allowing the individuals to feel secure during status changes and occur when they demonstrate behaviour patterns belonging the society. It is accepted in international literature that the structure of the rituals is also changing according to changeover from the traditional social structure to modern social structure especially considering the context of consumption society. The daily life practices getting the matter of consumption from folkloric culture connected to traditions has been evolving to a structure sustained from popular culture elements in modern societies. The rituals are also affected similarly from this change in a society tending towards more exaggerated consumption elements in daily life practices under the name of modernisation. The main problem of this study is to analyse if the rituals reveal any differences during implementation in Turkey as it preserves the traditional structure as well as showing the modern social structure characteristics. The mass media reproducing the consumption-oriented lifestyle, inured people to these changes. The Turkish TV drama in this sense offers a practical area in which the clues of the social changes can be traced. For this purpose, the content analysis method is conducted to 34 henna night scenes appearing in the top TV drama of rating lists between 2003-2019. The findings of the research indicate that the traditional henna night rituals are maintained along with the modern elements. When the TV dramas are examined according to their broadcasting date, it is determined that the henna night ritual has been drifted apart from traditional and has become consumption-oriented. Also, it is determined that the sceneries of the henna nights in recent TV drama, are extravagant in the context of consumption society without diverging from traditionality.
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