Global Fandom Conversations (Round Two, Part Two): Sebnem Baran and Rafay Mahmood
/Sebnem Baran:
Rafay, your observations about K-pop’s reception in Pakistan, the exploitation and co-optation of fan practices by the media industries or political groups, and the effect of transnational flows on genres raise many important questions about the global–local relationship for fandoms! As we reach the final part of our conversation, I would like to address each of them.
Building on your question about how “fan behavior changes or evolves with the kind of genres and tropes being offered,” I want to mention that melodramas were the highest-rated earning shows on Turkish broadcast television during Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun’s first run.[1] It is still possible to say this genre remains very popular in the domestic market while providing a significant portion of the successful transnational content exports. Although melodramas have been part of public (and political) discussions on different occasions[2], none of them has paved the way for fan activism as intense and long-lasting as the cases of Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun.
Nevertheless, Turkish melodramas’ transnational mobility remains matchless. Therefore, it is impossible to compare Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun with melodramas such as Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century) or Diriliş in terms of the global reach. The global appeal of TV melodramas in different forms is well-known. Your discussion of the similarities between Diriliş and musalsala badawi in another article[3] points toward other transnational connections that would help understand the genre’s role—both in global flows of television and global fandoms.
Whereas the global influence in Leyla ile Mecnun becomes visible when the story incorporates global pop culture references such as Reservoir Dogs, Behzat Ç. shares some of the darker elements of the Scandi-noir genre. As a rogue cop, he tries to fight against corruption but ends up failing to protect himself and his family from retribution. Since mainstream news did not explore the crimes the show’s plot did, the fiction, in a way, became a surrogate for journalistic storytelling. In addition, Behzat’s failure becomes a token of realism for the viewers, who are already upset about the political situation. I believe his failures bring him closer to the Scandi-noir detectives than the DC and MCU superheroes, while the show’s quality TV associations also distinguish it from the superhero genre.
Then again, the crime genre doesn’t always generate the same fan engagement that Behzat did. Your description of the popular Pakistani shows “catching the corruption and crime” reminded me of the success of a long-lasting police procedural, Arka Sokaklar (Back Streets), which similarly enjoys high ratings while depicting crime as an anomaly rather than a systemic problem. The show is continuing its sixteenth season. This mainstream success instigated an online fan presence converging around fan accounts on social media. However, without a conflict between the fans and the industry or the political establishment in general, the show’s fans never gained the same level of visibility that Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun fans did.
I also want to mention that there are some other shows that embrace the global superhero wave openly, such as Netflix’s Hakan Muhafız (The Protector), TRT’s kids shows Tozkoparan and Tozkoparan: İskender, and ATV’s Akıncı. All these shows include historical references within fantastical frameworks. Your question about the influence of the DC and MCU universes made me more curious about these Turkish shows’ fandoms.
On a relevant note, in terms of the influence of the language, it is impossible to ignore the effect of Anglo-American media flows and fan practices on local fans’ choices. For example, Turkish fans frequently combine two characters’ names to indicate their shipping while posting comments and questions on social media platforms like many English-speaking fans had been doing.
Like you explained, production companies can also use social media as a marketing ploy. At times, fans use the network’s or production company’s hashtags, which further contribute to the marketing efforts. In addition to fans’ potential exploitation and co-optation, politically sponsored accounts can join the public debates for or against the fandoms. This becomes more apparent when these debates engage with cultural products or images associated with the country’s political divides, like what happened with Turkey’s women’s volleyball team.
Your discussion of the ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) offers a more complex example where a power holder is not only trying to dominate the public discussion but also recruiting fans as extensions of its PR mechanism. These synergistic connections are further blurring the lines between the official PR personnel, state- or corporation-sponsored influencers and trolls, and regular fans. Therefore, your call to explore how the fandoms with state support pursue their own activist causes and/or amplify the political messages passed down to them along with the fandoms challenging the dominant forces is very important. With more comparative analyses, power hierarchies can be understood better.
As we wrap up our conversation, I must say that I found your discussion of the K-pop fandom in Pakistan particularly striking. The anxieties about the queer influence are very similar to the Turkish case. At the same time, the Pakistani fans of Jungkook from BTS demonstrated the global spread of the K-pop fandom and its increasing power by sharing a happy birthday message for Jungkook on a big billboard.
Considering how K-pop fans became a political force during the US presidential election in 2020, I think we will be hearing more about them in political debates worldwide. With its fast growth in Pakistan and Turkey, the K-pop fandom offers a unique opportunity to comparatively study the relationship between local, regional, and global politics and fandoms at the corresponding levels. Looking at the cases of Pakistan and Turkey, it is clear that nationalism, religion, and identity politics are likely to be part of these fan studies discussions.
[1] Both Behzat Ç. and Leyla ile Mecnun were revived by streaming platforms. My discussion focuses on the initial run of the shows.
[2] Medcezir’s homage to Berkin Elvan, Muhteşem Yüzyıl’s on-screen message in defense of the screenwriter Meral Okay, and cancellation of If Only following a row about a gay character are some examples, where melodramas initiated short-lived political debates online.
[3] https://tribune.com.pk/story/2290484/ottoman-obsessions-and-bedouin-fascinations
Rafay Mahmood
Şebnem, your response about how women's bodies remain an important area of political polarization of not just the TV fandom but Muslim families across the globe was an intriguing framework to understand how the relationship of the TV viewing demographic (the Muslim household) in Pakistan's case has evolved over the years. Your response also raises important questions about how secularism debates in both Turkey and Pakistan hint at specific socio-cultural proximity that result in identity-based fan reactions. It also opens the discussion to Turkey and AKP's mission of reintroducing neo-ottoman values through TV and how in the case of Pakistan, the mission has borne fruit in the South Asian Muslim World.
The relationship between how Pakistani fandom at large views other celebrities and how they view Diriliş' star Esra Bilgiç, as raised in your response is a parallel key to understanding not only how the woman's body is seen in Pakistan but also how the Pakistani fandom, both men and women come to terms with the dichotomy of the local and foreign star, in particular, the non-Indian, Turkish star. And finally your closing question: are there any visible anti-fan reactions against the Turkish content—more particularly against Diriliş: Ertuğrul—in Pakistan? If visible, how do these anti-fans express their criticism of the show? I will address your questions one by one and try to triangulate ideas in a manner that this exchange about how transnational flows happen through imported or acquired content in countries with state or government-controlled cultural production leaves us with even more questions about how unpredictable and yet formulaic fan behaviour can be.
The 8 pm soap on Pakistani television is a genre-specific slot that the country's private media inherited from the state predecessor Pakistan Television (PTV) in the late 90s. One can easily state that the 8 pm soap and the 9 pm news bulletin has been on our television since Pakistan came up with its TV stations a few years after the independence in 1947. Since then the slot has been associated with some sort of women-centric content, usually, a conflict between a daughter in law and a mother in law, catering mostly to housewives, hence Diriliş: Ertuğrul being aired on the same slot on a Sunday surprised a few given the show's focus on crusades and male warriors. But as soon as the audience caught up with the TV show and realized that the show is essentially a family drama minus the swords and horses, the women-dominated soap audience emerged not only as players in the show's fandom but also the ones fueling morally driven expectations from the real life of Esra Bilgiç, who plays the virtuous and pious wife Halime Sultan.
The reason 'fueling' has been used to describe the process of the housewife is that the average Pakistani Muslim housewife, in most cases, does not display a presence on social media but contributes to the values and ethics, the younger and more tech-savvy members of the family will espouse on social media. Hence the content that is watched at home with the family is inspired by the value system of the patriarch usually channelled through the leading lady of the house and revolves around the familial notion of endorsing stars who both inspire and adhere to a similar value system because that is how you'd expect any of your family members to be like. This is why Bilgiç's revealing clothes are seen as a sign of hypocrisy as 'fueled' the women in the family because the younger lot is already used to a cosmopolitan ecosystem, if not in the physical spaces of the family and country, than in the digital spaces of the internet and social media platforms.
The same familial association with the soap genre or women playing family-friendly roles on TV is reflected in the Pakistani fandom of the showbiz, particularly TV, movie, music stars and fashion models. Since TV consumption is still very much a family experience in Pakistan, despite a wide and growing digital market, the image of the star is usually taken off as someone you'd like to see because they are beautiful and perfect but someone you're not supposed to hang out with because they are only beautiful and perfect. A profession in acting and the image industry is looked down upon by families of different classes because you only end up in such a professional if you are either illiterate or uneducated to find a regular job, such as that of a doctor or an engineer, or always eager to reveal your body – both being strong value judgments about your character. This applies to men too but like all patriarchal societies, men do get away with it by portraying a healthy personal life in front of fans.
So while the Pakistani fandom is used to policing celebs, especially women, Bilgiç's case was particularly jarring for them because first she played a very pious and faithful wife and secondly that wife was the embodiment of all the neo-ottoman ideals something had never been established so overtly and in such an engaging manner on the Pakistani television before. So a stroll down Bilgiç's Instagram posts in revealing clothes was more disappointing for the fans than surprising and that sense of disappointment was being 'fueled' by the family structure that associates woman's body and personality to the entire family's honour.
While Bilgiç's fans eventually turned into her anti-fans, the shows anti-fans mostly belong to the educated, liberal and secular-minded minority of the country that equalizes Diriliş: Ertuğrul's patronage in the country to the mission of bringing the regressive Islamic ideals back in the garb of owning our Ottoman heritage. These fans, including both men and women, are more active on Twitter than on Instagram and are also generally opposed to Prime minister Imran Khan and his party Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf's right-wing and centre-right politics. Having said that, every time these anti-fans, usually with a very wide and popular following have started an organized critique of the show on Twitter, the pro-fans, belonging to different social classes have appeared to defend the show and the religious values it promotes. The pro-fans not only condemn the anti-fans for disliking a brilliant show but they also accuse them of being anti-Islam for opposing a show that spreads the True message.
This conflict between fans and anti-fans of Diriliş: Ertuğru confirms that religion and the sacred continues to drive discourse in the digital world and the democratic promises of the internet have only emboldened the ideological divide that already exists in society as reflected in the respective fandoms. The exchange with you (Shebnem) and your input combined with my analysis also show how the women and the feminine body continues to be an area of contestation deeply linked with notions such as tradition and honour that are still central to the Muslim family anxieties in both Turkey and Pakistan. If not the Turkish TV show that is either supported or negated by the state (Case in point Behzat C) the family anxieties drive the political system and show up in hasty decisions to ban K-pop or limiting globally famous music movement and must genre to just homosexuality. Another very important overlapping idea that came to me as an afterthought is that Imran Khan's answers to many ills such as sexual violence are the Western and Bollywood media influences on our culture and that is why he offers Turkish content as an alternate. The reason why such a notion is resonant is that Turkey has succeeded in applying Western production value to Eastern stories and offered it to the world like a treat. It's not just that we as consumers appreciate Western production values but this very idea of bringing Muslim, Islamic and Islamicate stories to the forefront in a Western set standard can be linked to the notion of 'Muslim Prestige' which many Muslims feel has been lost. A sense of the reclamation of the grandeur of the Muslim past seems to be the big idea behind state-monitored cultural production in both countries.
