“Looking for art in television is like looking for love in a whorehouse”
Quinn Martin
Producer of the series “The Streets of San Francisco”
Friends at Perspectives asked me for an article entitled along the lines of “Television Series Culture and Censorship in Turkey.” The topic is nice and interesting, yet the title was a challenge because “... and censorship” creates the impression that there is an anti-systemic element that is censored by the authorities.
In his book “Psychology and Abnormal Behavior in Television Series,” psychologist Tarık Solmuş writes “Some series have a positive impact on cognitive development, intellect, creativity, research skills, imagination or the need to discover and render meaningful life, whereas others can have negative impacts such as attention deficit, estrangement from one's self, increased loneliness, dependency, violent tendencies turning into behavior, pornography, disrupted mother tongue, at times an intense worry or fear.” This can be summarized as “there are good series and bad series.” From this point of view, censorship of television series in Turkey becomes meaningful.
Which television series, one might ask, had or has a positive impact on cognitive intellect and creativity? Is it “the In-laws”? The “Second Spring”? The “Vineyard Estate”? “Valley of the Wolves”? “The Tulip Age”? I think these are amongst the most popular series in Turkey. If we accept imagination as a kind of gymnastics that positively develops the human mind, which of the above triggered or currently triggers this action?
Isn't it the case that when it first appeared series were designed to sell American housewives detergent, and based on scenarios that bend over backwards to keep them in front of the screen and make them watch the next episode? If Karl Marx was alive today, would he rephrase his famous “religion is the opium of the masses”? Or would he say “religion and television series are the opium,” or even get rid of religion and just say “television series are the opium of the people?”
“Good series, bad series” is in fact like the “good cop-bad cop” concept where both do the same job—one with goodness and the other with cursing. Because the goal of all series is the same: sales.
“Program services (news, series, films and game shows) are products for TV broadcast, and the second product is the viewers. The viewers are pulled to the broadcast through the programs, packaged and sold to the advertisers.” Whichever one it might be, whoever may have written or even produced it – even “Remember Darling” - it is politically naïve to see any series as playing a role in awareness raising or developing society. It is also naïve to get angry at former Prime Minister (now President) Erdoğan, whose direct interventions into TV production have become chronic, such as when he criticized the screen writers of “Magnificent Century” for differing from his own image of a Sultan and interpreting his attitude as censoring.
For instance, I was a part of the scenario writing process and designed the story flow together with Erdal Özyağcılar for the series “My Love.” Taking place in a valley in the Black Sea region and broadcasting on Show TV for 20 episodes, the series never evaluated its inclusion of the issue of hydroelectric dams through the potential reaction of the government or the president. This is the case both for the producer and the channel. It was even a possibility at one point that the series would be broadcast on the public channel TRT. At the production level, the only perspective with which we approached the issue of the dams and the struggle of the Eastern Black Sea residents against the dam was whether the TV viewers were ready for this. This is because the viewers are pulled to the series, packaged and sold to the advertisers. That is exactly what happened, and it was only after there was agreement that the dams would have a positive commercial impact on the series that the decision was made to bring up the issue in the first episode and subsequently go into it in more detail to keep the viewers glued to their screens. In other words, the series aimed also to glue to the screen the segments that are interested in, struggle against, or support the struggle against hydroelectric dams.
Flashback: Wuppertal
We have mentioned Marx, so let's continue with Engels. Around 35 years ago, while touring the Engels museum in Wuppertal, we were intrigued by the objects on alcohol and alcohol consumption, and their prominence, and asked the staff about it. Friedrich Engels was from Wuppertal and his father was a factory owner who had a textile factory there. The Wupper river valley was the center of German textile industry in the first half of the 19th century, like the Merter neighborhood of Istanbul today. Here, textile workers worked under a cruel system of exploitation like the one described in the Communist Manifesto. There were no unions. There was no insurance. There was no need for a retirement system since very few of the workers who worked like half-slaves for 12-13 hour days, without job security and in unhealthy conditions, made it to their 50th birthday. The main strategy of the employer was based on giving a daily wage that was adequate for the worker to turn up at work the next day and have children to create new labor force. Understandably, the workers were not very happy with their circumstances. Thus, precautions had to be taken against possible riots and uprisings. Engels’s father and his friends first chose to promote the consumption of cheap schnapps. Yet, it became clear quickly that this method conflicted with the main strategy as schnapps prevented workers from turning up at work the next day as well. Next, price adjustments were made in Wuppertal bars to make it impossible for workers to purchase hard liquor and beer prices were pulled down as much as possible. The employer wanted the employee to drink pure German beer. In fact, it should be drunk in liters so that the day's exhaustion (the extreme exploitation environment) is forgotten about, whereas the alcohol content should be low enough so that the worker can be productive at the workplace the next day.
There was no TV then. There were no television series. Just primitive capitalism. But now there is prime-time.
“The prime time of TV broadcast paradoxically assumes viewers that have slowly exhausted their energy through the day in the “real” world outside of TV, and who are tired of the monotony of their own world. The most 'productive' hours of TV broadcast correspond to the most tired hours of the viewer. The program at its height might have closure within itself or might required continued watching, but the result remains the same vis-à-vis the satisfaction promised. (…) The program that is at the height of the broadcast is always one that has guaranteed the maximum interest of the viewer.”
If we want a slightly pessimistic interpretation of this description, we quickly arrive at the world that George Orwell describes in his novel “1984.” Of course the series producers are much quicker. They have discovered Orwell in reverse, developing and marketing to the whole world the reality show “Big Brother is Watching You” in the 1990s. The owners of this format, which was broadcast in Turkey with the name “Someone is watching us” is the Dutch company Endemol, who contributes to what some might call globalization, and what I would rather call the entrenchment of a worldwide monotonous free time culture through the simultaneous publication of reality, series, game and talk shows in around 40 countries.
When Oprah Winfrey started breaking records with her talk show in the 1990s, the said company thought that “the blacks of Germany are the Turks” and immediately began its search for a female Turkish host with perfect German, and managed to rush this author, who was then a radio host, from his holiday in Bodrum to a casting meeting in a private jet when a women host could not be found. The reason was that the aim was sales and profits.
The concept of a Black (Turkish) host in Germany did not catch on as an idea because “the public was not ready.” But what if it had held? What would have changed except the company would have made a bigger profit (and I would have made it)? Would it have decreased the votes of Neo-nazis? Would the people from Turkey no longer have had their houses burnt down? Would xenophobia have disappeared?
In his article “Time for Prime-Time” Artun Avcı explains as follows how increasingly similar formats appear and program content begins to resemble one another : “Because TV is the strongest advertisement medium and due to its superiority as an advertisement investment tool, series, game shows, entertainment and other shows that resemble one another in content, scenario and story flood the prime-time broadcasts. A formula that is proven to attract a wide audience by a certain channel is repeated and entrenched by other channels who broadcast programs based on the same formula at the same time.”
If there is talk of censorship, Artun Avci argues it should be about market censorship: “The market logic, manifest in the viewer rates that result from economic competition, displaces the logic of censorship and acts as a cruel censoring institution. In this sense, the authoritarian rationality of viewer ratings constitute the standard of programs broadcasting in prime-time.”
How so? For instance, in the version of “Desperate Housewives” broadcast in Turkey, all the details were kept in line with the original, except for the gay characters who become heterosexual (as the “Turkish public was not ready for this”).
I think in Engels' Wuppertal beer houses there was diversity and people could freely drink the beer that they wished to, provided they showed up at work sober the next day. There was Pilsener, Alt beer, Kölsch, and Weizen.
Jump cut: Soap Opera
From its beginning, TV has been a medium that was shaped through a commercial mentality, that depended on advertisement and sponsorship income and that was managed as a commercial establishment. This is how the American broadcast system is. There is also the European public broadcast approach with channels such as the BBC and ARD, where public benefit is kept in mind and where TV is also understood as a cultural and political platform. Yet, except for some attempts in 1974-1975 when İsmail Cem was the head of the public TRT, this system never gained any currency in Turkey. As in the past, TRT continues a broadcast policy that resembles the state channels in the former Eastern Bloc countries. Private channels, on the other hand, have always taken the American broadcast system as their model. And the series were born in America.
When TV fast became widespread in the USA after World War II, it brought with it the problem of broadcast material. TV channels were set up by existing radio channels, and broadcast was made from these small venues. Under these circumstances, broadcast segments were given over to advertising industrial companies to both fill up time and provide images from outside the narrow confines of the studios.
For instance, Procter & Gamble (whose products in Turkey include Ariel, Alo, Ipana, Max Factor, Pantene and Orkid) purchased hour long time slots on channels in 40s and 50s, and developed fictional series to fill in the blanks between commercials (to emphasize, this is not the blanks between programs but between advertisement segments), to ease the flow, keep viewers in front of their screens, and to continue on a daily basis.
The actors in these series were positive and pure characters that prepped the audience for the commercial “coming soon.” The dramaturgy was clear and simple so as to cause no confusion. And it was always about love. Series were born in this “it is all for commercials” environment and were given a name reminiscent of the radio period: Soap opera. Not because they were light like soap bubbles and disappeared when they popped but because they were produced by soap companies themselves!
“First We Take TRT”
Culture and arts theorists often point out that cinema is the current day continuation of oral literature (e.g., the storyteller, Spielmann, singers). Yet, in the words of Quinn Martin, the producer of “The Streets of San Francisco,” looking for art value in series – a TV format created to sell detergent – is like “looking for love in a whorehouse.”
But aren't there any significant pieces from the 1950s to our day in the wide range from comedy to police series, from hospital dramas to variations of sci-fi? Wasn't “Star Wars” a cult series? Or “Lost?” Wasn't there at least a critical approach to society in “Behzat C?” (A police drama in Turkey.)
I think, like “good cop-bad cop,” there is “good series-bad series.” Media bosses in Turkey, such as Ferit Şahenk and Aydın Doğan, have never hidden the fact that they are profit-oriented and undertake broadcasting to that effect. Along with the international companies, and within the commercial framework we outlined above, they will naturally continue to talk about “clean” worlds, “good” families, “pure” love, and “glory” that triumph over everything bad, as originally envisioned by detergent companies. And those series are reminiscent of George Orwell's “1984,” which he wrote in 1936 before there was television. In Orwell's fictional country Oceania, there were departments that produced literature, music, drama and entertainment for the “proletariat” and other departments that produced newspapers that did not have any substance but rather offered cheap love novels, sports, murder, sports or astrology. They also produced songs without human touch with a “lyric machine.”
We should manage to move beyond this cycle. The discussion should be concentrated on the possibilities of pluralistic public television. This does not mean the establishment of another channel, but the restructuring of tax-nurtured TRT, its democratization and the production of methods for making it more public, and an appropriate struggle. Is this not possible at all?
Think about it: TRT is managed not by a government appointed manager and his/her cadres but a commission. The commission, in turn, comprises a proportional make-up of party representatives and women, religious groups, LGBTs, workers, youth, the old and civil society organization representatives. Is this a utopia? No. What I am trying to describe here is the public service broadcasting model of Europe.
Let's end with a real song, and inspired by Leonard Cohen: “First We Take TRT…”
--------------------------------------------------------
1 Doruk Publishing, 2013.
2 Haluk Geray, “Radyo ve Televizyon Yayıncılığının Ekonomisi” [The Economy of Radio and Television Broadcasting], İletişim Publishing, 2005.
3 Sevilay Çelenk, “Televizyon Temsil Kültür - 90’lı yıllarda Sosyokültürel İklim ve Televizyon İçerikleri”, [TV Representation Culture – the Sociocultural Environment and Television Content in the 90s] Ütopya Publishing, 2005.
4 “Dizim Başladı! Kapat, Sonra Anlatırım” [My Series is on! Hang up, We will talk Later.”], H2O Books, 2011.