Rituals of Transition in Turkish TV Drama: The Case of Henna Night

Abstract

Externalizing social beliefs and values the rituals are of vital importance since they make individuals feel as part of a society. The rituals of transition (during death birth and marriage) make people's lives meaningful by reinforcing their relationships even though these rituals have changed through time within the social structure. The rituals of transition are procedures that allow the individuals to feel secure during status changes and occur when they demonstrate behavior patterns which indicate a belonging to the society. It is accepted in international literature that the structure of the rituals is also changing according to changeover from the traditional social structure to modern social structure especially considering the context of consumption society. The daily life practices getting the matter of consumption from folkloric culture connected to traditions has been evolving to a structure sustained from the popular culture elements in modern societies. The rituals are affected similarly from this change in a society tending towards more exaggerated consumption elements in daily life practices under the name of modernization. The main problem of this study is to analyze whether the rituals reveal any differences during implementation in Turkey in terms of preserving the traditional structure as well as showing the modern social structure characteristics. The mass media reproducing the consumption-oriented lifestyle inured people to these changes. The Turkish TV drama in this sense offers a practical area through which the clues of the social changes can be traced. For this purpose. the content analysis method is implemented to 34 henna night scenes appearing in the top TV dramas of rating lists between the years of 2003-2019. The findings of the research indicate that the traditional henna night rituals are maintained along with the modern elements. When the TV dramas are examined according to their broadcasting date it is seen that the henna night ritual has drifted from traditional and has become consumption-oriented. It is also determined that the sceneries of the henna nights in recent TV dramas. are extravagant in the context of consumption society without diverging from traditionality.