The downing of a Russian military jet by Turkish forces in November 2015 caused a major crisis between Russia and Turkey, with a Russian reaction of freezing bilateral relations. Meanwhile, a new Russo-Turkish project sprouted, “East/West.” Star Media, a Russian production company with offices in Moscow and Kiev produced the drama by hiring Turkish and Ukrainian actors and filming in Ukraine and in Turkey, positioning Russia as “West” and Turkey as “East.”“East/West” reflects the narrative and popular geopolitics agenda accurately; it is a story that positions Turkey in an essentialist, backward East, and Russia in a progressive West, by appropriating the code of Turkish dramas and targeting the same audience. As families play a central role in Turkish dramas, “East/West” also provides ample protagonist family footage, contrasting the modern, independent families of Russia, from the meddling, dependent Turkish families. Although Turkish families appear pristine in moral values and familial relationships on the surface, they are represented as duplicitous and spiteful; meanwhile, Russian families are represented as distant but loyal and stable. The principle aim of this study is to multimodally examine (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001) if and how family relationships are deployed to discursively reproduce Turkey/East and Russia/West in this drama. Guiding research questions are: Do family relationships contribute to the discursive reproduction of East and West? What can television drama illuminate about family relations, culture and modernity? Multiple theoretical tools will be used to interpret data, including neo-Ottoman cool (Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi, 2013), orientalism (Said, 1978), and Eurasianism.
Kraidy, M. M., & Al-Ghazzi, O. (2013, 01). Neo-Ottoman Cool: Turkish Popular Culture in the Arab Public Sphere. Popular Communication, 11(1), 17-29. Kress, G. R., & Leeuwen, T. V. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
About the presenterYasemin Yusufoff Celikkol
Completed one year at Drexel University’s Communication, Culture and Media PhD program.
Education:
MS, Intercultural Communication, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education
MA, Language Education and Sociolinguistics, International Christian University, Tokyo
BA, Political Science, New York University
Research Interests:
Global communication
Globalization and modernity