What do audiences think about literary adaptations: a reception study on Turkish TV series and fidelity

Abstract

Fidelity discussion has a long history in adaptation studies and despite all negative criticism towards fidelity concern, the discussion about fidelity still remains. This thesis, with its audience based perspective, aims to contribute to this discussion by exploring the spectators’ perception about fidelity with a discourse analysis in respect of two main questions: Do audiences care about fidelity? If so, what does fidelity mean according to them? To investigate these issues, two Turkish TV series, Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love) and Behzat Ç. Bir Ankara Polisiyesi (Behzat Ç. An Ankara Detective Story) are selected as case studies and discourse analysis, as a method, is used. In order to gather information about their reception, analyzing Ekşi Sözlük (Sour Dictionary) entries about these two series’ is used as the methodology. Susers’, who are also readers and spectators, entries who mentioned their idea about fidelity and adaptation are collected and they compared between these cases. As main results, it reveals that fidelity care is fairly low for both of them but they have different kind of fidelity notions. Furthermore, this study also demonstrates these susers’ comparative fandom behaviors and it attempts to enlighten how do their habit of writing entries and being a part of a specific online community enrich their experience of watching these shows.