ARTICLE
THE CHARM OF THE DIZI GENRE
A STORY OF INTERMEDIALITY ARZU ÖZTÜRKMEN Boğaziçi University
D
izis, the Turkish television series, have garnered both popular and scholarly attention since the 2000s. The term “dizi” obviously has been a term rooted in the early days of television in Türkiye, used both for domestic and foreign content. Nevertheless, what one understands of Turkish dizi nowadays refers to the television genre, which evolved from the 1990s onward, was consolidated during the 2000s and has been globally circulating since the 2010s. The term dizi was also launched in the international platforms as a response to “Turkish soap” or “Turkish novella”, first in a panel at MIPCOM in 2015 (Turkey: Home of Dizi Content, 6.10.2015), and received academic acclaim among scholars researching Turkish dizi industry (See C. Acosta-Alzuru, M. Reyaz, Z. Khan, M.Trauger, A. Kole; Ayman, MC. Wagner, M. Kraidy, Z. Kemiche). One can therefore say that there is now a consensus on the use of the term “dizi” as the Turkish television genre which developed between 1990s to 2010s. As such dizi can be described succinctly as a weekly TV show, with a duration of around two hours; it is usually shot in real locations and adopts a visual narrative style, where stories interweaving romance, action and family life are delivered with an emotive and natural slowness. “Natural slowness” refers to a temporality close to “real time” action, but also to an acting absorbed in this slow pace in a natural way, rather than being artificially stretched. Editors have an important role to play in accommodating this real time, slow motion action, which is often accompanied with music, to better convey the “emotion” of the scene. In that respect, it also differs from the newly registered “New Generation Turkish Series”, which refers to the new, shorter drama format for digital platforms.
Curiosity about the dizi genre, which evolved from the 1990s onwards, was the catalyst for the research that led to the creation of my book The Delight of Turkish Dizi: Memory, Genre and Politics of Television in Turkey (2022). Although I initially focused on the dizi as a modern phenomenon, it was important to begin with the historical process that gave rise to the genre. First, it is important to recognize how the technical and professional skills developed during the early years of TRT (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) had a strong impact on the privatization of television broadcasting. TRT prioritized the creation of “national content,” where innovative filmmakers developed distinctive ways of incorporating Turkish cultural themes into the television drama. Nevertheless, as the only national network up until 1990, TRT had also expanded outside of Türkiye, buying American and European content from international markets. As a founding member of the EBU, TRT’s programming included top quality foreign series, mostly American, but also French, British and Italian. Audiences grew up with the TRT programming in the 1970s and 80s, were therefore exposed to good quality television drama, and simultaneously watched many hit se-
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