The politics of pleasure in global drama: A case study of the TV series, The Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl)

Abstract

This article is concerned with the ways in which local/national drama becomes a global success, which strategies are developed to appeal to viewers within different cultural settings and how far this shift is important when re/thinking audience reception studies. The study answers this question by exploring the television (TV) drama series, The Magnificent Century (2011–2014) by conducting in-depth interviews in the Greek capital Athens and the Moroccan capital Rabat with viewers and the production and distribution team of the series. The findings show that potentials for pleasure in the consumption of drama are designed from the very beginning when thinking globally, to reduce cultural differences to a minimum, to finally fuse audiences’ interpretative practices beyond cultural polarization to common understandings.