Opening a file in Varlık on ‘Popular culture in flux’, Mutlu Binark’ presents an outline of the hegemony of North American cultural merchandise within the Nineteen Seventies. In keeping with Binark, an ‘unjust communication network’ was imposed on the World South for many years. Within the twenty first century, in contrast, Bollywood, Korean tv dramas, Okay-pop, and Nollywood have gone world, difficult northern cultural dominance.
Binark, a professor of communication and new media research at Hacettepe College, ponders examples of cultural merchandise, together with Ne Zha 2 (2025), the Chinese language animated fantasy action-adventure movie written and directed by Jiaozi. Grossing greater than $2.1 billion, which makes it the fifth-highest-earning movie of all time, the film has aligned with what President Xi Jinping described as China’s ‘cultural confidence’. Binark notes how Chinese language state actors have framed Ne Zha 2 as a ‘a fresh window for the world to view China’.
Opening with an epigram from South Korean cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han (‘If the ruptures are painful, the bonds are real’), Hüseyin Köse considers Child Reindeer (2024), The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) as explorations of post-emotional human relationships within the period of digital tradition.
From monachopsis (the refined however persistent feeling of being misplaced) to benching, gaslighting, ego-surfing, submarining, haunting and situationship, the article presents a useful glossary of latest emotional phenomena and ways, mourning lower within the existence of what Han has described as ‘people worthy of love whose lives we fear’.
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Lastly, Tuba Pırlant Yılmaz seems to be on the ethical dilemmas of characters in collection akin to Breaking Dangerous, Succession, Mad Males, The Sopranos and Fleabag. ‘The characters in question attract attention not only with their contradictions but also with their psychological depth,’ Yılmaz writes, quoting British actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s description of her character in Fleabag as an ‘expression of the worst in us, but also the most honest part of us’. This method ‘captures the essence of modern character design, expressing the desire of viewers to confront their shadow side,’ in accordance with Yılmaz.
Poetry and translation
Efe Murad writes on the not too long ago departed Can Alkor’s (1936-2024) lives as poet and translator. Alkor possessed ‘a sense of mystery that we do not often encounter in Turkish,’ writes Murad, an assistant professor at Ca’ Foscari College. ‘In addition to Alkor’s phrase selection and meticulousness in language, fascinating text-to-text parallels and overlapping themes may be observed between his translations and the poems he wrote, and generally these two practices even intertwine.’
The Turkish artist Bilge Alkor, spouse of the poet, shared with Murad poems, poetry translations, essays and poetry concept drafts (most of which have been unpublished) from Alkor’s property. Varlık publishes a textual content concerning the works of Ezra Pound, Stefan George, Rilke and Quasimodo, the Italian poet whose ‘contribution to modern Italian poetry was not so much in his poems as in his translations of ancient Greek poetry’.
The brief essay begins by asking: ‘What is the difference between someone whose main occupation is poetry and who translates poetry in his spare time and someone whose main occupation is translation and who writes poetry in his spare time?’ Murad, the writer of six books of poetry and the translator of ten extra, together with the primary full translation of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, presents his personal tackle the query whereas he close-reads Alkor’s textual content.
Utilized arts
Elsewhere within the challenge, Fatma Berber interviews Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, the Turkish-Danish ceramic artist who designed wares for the businesses Royal Copenhagen and Rosenthal AG and acquired a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2009.
Ebüzziya, 86, has led a captivating life. From an early age, she was engaged in dialogues with key figures in Turkey’s literary and artwork circles, together with Sabahattin Eyüboğlu and Tomris Uyar. ‘I can’t think about a life with out literature and music,’ Ebüzziya tells Berber, recounting an anecdote with Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962), some of the vital Turkish novelists of the 20th century.
‘I was still a student in England during those years. And when I came back for a vacation, he asked me what I was reading. I replied that it was William Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. He was so impressed by how I shared my emotions concerning the ebook that I’ll always remember how he checked out me.’
Working with clay, Ebüzziya considers simplicity to be essentially the most complicated facet of her work. ‘Because it requires reduction. It requires the essence, and the smallest thing stands out in that essence. I love simplicity very much, I hate ornamentation.’
Overview by Kaya Genç
