The conversion of media-centered hero: From alp/alperen to postmodern youthfulness [Medya merkezli kahraman dönüşümü: Alp/alperenden postmodern delikanliliğa]

Abstract

Today, television is one of the important tools providing socio-cultural changes with society. In creating a new culture, its major source is folk culture. By removing national boundaries, it has accelerated and increased intercultural interaction. People who get to know different cultures more closely have recognized new images, themes and perspectives. Television has benefited from people’s oral memory to provide and maintain a specific audience. Word has lost its former power, seen in oral and written cultural settings, in television that mostly benefitted from visual images and expressions. The depictions of long events / person / space in the oral narratives have been replaced by the revival of the audience’s life scene. Television has created new social characters. The hero of the electronic culture environment has been created in accordance with the mental and cultural background of the target audience. In this study, the altered form of epic hero alp / alperen in electronic cultural context is investigated. The form of the epic heroes got in the new socio-cultural context was aimed to be explained through television products. Firstly, the changes that television has caused in the Turkish socio-cultural field are discussed, and then the relationships of some series heroes with the epic hero model are examined. As a result of the study, it is seen that the oral tradition has equipped with new meanings with the change of context of the narrative heroes. The hero pattern of the oral culture environment has changed, and the new hero type created on television has been shaped according to the expectations of the target audience. The new postmodern hero has continued the functions of the old epic hero. However, the content and handling of these functions have changed. The change of contextual structure has created new needs and functions. This situation has also changed the generic structure of the narratives. While cultural factors change according to time / place, the traditional Turkish narrative hero has also been affected by this change. The traditional hero, who confronts us with new meanings, has updated himself. The alp / alperen of the oral culture environment has been replaced by the postmodern youth of the electronic culture. © 2020, Milli Folklor Dergisi. All rights reserved.