The Humor Produced from Cultural Schizophrenia: “Aşkımızın Meyvesi Aytek” / Kültürel Şizofreniden Üretilen Mizah: “Aşkımızın Meyvesi Aytek”

Abstract

Turkish humor publishing, which takes its roots from oral culture, has formed its own tradition for a century and a half despite the troubles it has gone through from time to time, and many classic heroes have emerged from this tradition, shaped by the lines of powerful cartoonists. The heroes in question have gained a folkloric meaning by settling in the common memory, such as Nasrettin Hodja, Bektashi, Karagoz, Kavuklu and many other examples in traditional narratives. The subject of this article is the analysis of the series, which is the narrative of one of these heroes and created by Umut Sarıkaya in the Uykusuz Magazine with the name “Aşkımızın Meyvesi Aytek (The Fruit of Our Love, Aytek)” from the axis of the conflict of tradition and modernity. In the aforementioned cartoon series, the story of a couple who adopted the Western lifestyle as a whole and their children named Aytek, who represent peasantry, provincialism, poverty and traditionalism in almost every detail, are told. The series mentioned in this study has been tried to be analyzed with the semiotics approach. Although the conflict between modernity and traditionalism was shown in the cartoons through his parents and Aytek, it was found that this performance was presented in unusual roles as a result of the research. It has been concluded that through the dissonance of the new generation prefering the old and the old generation prefering the new, this unique humor has remarkable data in terms of presenting the consequences of the Westernization efforts that has been going on in social life in Turkey for nearly two centuries and which can also be described as a kind of “cultural schizophrenia”.

Keywords

• cultural schizophrenia
• tradition
• modernity
• humor
• umut sarıkaya
• aşkımızın meyvesi aytek