Watching Turkish television dramas in Argentina: entangled proximities and resigned agency in global media flows

María Celeste Wagner; Marwan M. Kraidy

doi:10.1093/joc/jqad001

Watching Turkish television dramas in Argentina: entangled proximities and resigned agency in global media flows

María Celeste Wagner^*, Marwan M. Kraidy

^*Corresponding author for this work

NUQ Administration

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

For decades, the theory of cultural proximity, which states that audiences prefer culturally proximal content (Straubhaar, 1991), has remained a major framework to explain audience preferences. We show how transnational media flows have challenged its contemporary applicability. To probe this, we focus on a recent, intriguing, and still understudied development: the success of Turkish television dramas (dizi) in Latin America, the land where the telenovela was born. Drawing from 25 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Argentina, we develop the notion of "entangled proximities"to explain different viewership positionalities. Moreover, we show that audiences adopt a "resigned agency": they experience pleasure while recognizing the role of market forces. Finally, we build on the cultural proximity theory by arguing that these contemporary audiences are instead driven by a desired proximity with both the past genre of the telenovela and with the past society depicted in it.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	304-315
Number of pages	12
Journal	Journal of Communication
Volume	73
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad001
State	Published - Aug 1 2023

Funding

We want to sincerely thank the members of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the University of Pennsylvania for their invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript, particularly Yasemin Celikkol. We are also thankful for the comments and suggestions that we received from fellow panelists and attendees at the IAMCR 2019 conference, the \"Global Politics and Poetics of Turkish Television\" 2020 CARGC symposium, particularly James Ryan, and the \"Domestic priorities, global impact: Turkish television explained\" 2022 roundtable at the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative at New York University, especially Ays, e Baltacioglu-Brammer.

Keywords

Argentina
audience reception
cultural proximity
entangled proximities
resigned agency
television drama
Turkey

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Communication
Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language

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10.1093/joc/jqad001

Cite this

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abstract = "For decades, the theory of cultural proximity, which states that audiences prefer culturally proximal content (Straubhaar, 1991), has remained a major framework to explain audience preferences. We show how transnational media flows have challenged its contemporary applicability. To probe this, we focus on a recent, intriguing, and still understudied development: the success of Turkish television dramas (dizi) in Latin America, the land where the telenovela was born. Drawing from 25 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Argentina, we develop the notion of {"}entangled proximities{"}to explain different viewership positionalities. Moreover, we show that audiences adopt a {"}resigned agency{"}: they experience pleasure while recognizing the role of market forces. Finally, we build on the cultural proximity theory by arguing that these contemporary audiences are instead driven by a desired proximity with both the past genre of the telenovela and with the past society depicted in it.",

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N2 - For decades, the theory of cultural proximity, which states that audiences prefer culturally proximal content (Straubhaar, 1991), has remained a major framework to explain audience preferences. We show how transnational media flows have challenged its contemporary applicability. To probe this, we focus on a recent, intriguing, and still understudied development: the success of Turkish television dramas (dizi) in Latin America, the land where the telenovela was born. Drawing from 25 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Argentina, we develop the notion of "entangled proximities"to explain different viewership positionalities. Moreover, we show that audiences adopt a "resigned agency": they experience pleasure while recognizing the role of market forces. Finally, we build on the cultural proximity theory by arguing that these contemporary audiences are instead driven by a desired proximity with both the past genre of the telenovela and with the past society depicted in it.

AB - For decades, the theory of cultural proximity, which states that audiences prefer culturally proximal content (Straubhaar, 1991), has remained a major framework to explain audience preferences. We show how transnational media flows have challenged its contemporary applicability. To probe this, we focus on a recent, intriguing, and still understudied development: the success of Turkish television dramas (dizi) in Latin America, the land where the telenovela was born. Drawing from 25 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Argentina, we develop the notion of "entangled proximities"to explain different viewership positionalities. Moreover, we show that audiences adopt a "resigned agency": they experience pleasure while recognizing the role of market forces. Finally, we build on the cultural proximity theory by arguing that these contemporary audiences are instead driven by a desired proximity with both the past genre of the telenovela and with the past society depicted in it.

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KW - entangled proximities

KW - resigned agency

KW - television drama

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Watching Turkish television dramas in Argentina: entangled proximities and resigned agency in global media flows

Abstract

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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