Netflix's long-awaited adaptation of Museum of Innocence has finally hit the screens. Zeynep G\u00fcnay's direction presents Istanbul in the 1970s like a painting, while the performances of Selahattin Pa\u015fal\u0131 and Eyl\u00fcl Lize Kandemir take the story beyond a period drama and turn it into a psychological thriller. However, the success of the series does not distract us from the ancient and disturbing question: Is it love that Kemal feels, or is it class arrogance woven with a passion for property?<\/p>\n
Based on Orhan Pamuk's cult novel, the film begins in 1975, when Kemal Basmac\u0131, the son of a wealthy family, is about to get engaged to Sibel, a member of his own class, when he meets his distant and poor relative F\u00fcsun. The forbidden and passionate relationship between Kemal and 18-year-old F\u00fcsun, who works as a clerk in a boutique, culminates in Kemal breaking off the engagement. However, F\u00fcsun disappears. Finding F\u00fcsun eight years later as a married woman, Kemal goes to the house for eight years to see her and builds a \u201cmuseum\u201d by collecting every object belonging to F\u00fcsun (from cigarette butts to salt shakers).<\/p>\n
The question of whether F\u00fcsun is an object in Kemal's labyrinth is also on the viewer's mind. Although Kemal Basmac\u0131 seems to be a modern bourgeois with a Western upbringing, he acts with a \u201ccollector\u201d instinct from the moment his interest in F\u00fcsun begins. The mesmerizing use of light and space in the series perfectly reflects how Kemal transforms F\u00fcsun into a \u201cmuseum piece\u201d at the point where he finds her unattainable. Are the stolen objects a memento of a love affair, or is it Kemal's domination over objects because he cannot confine F\u00fcsun to his own world?<\/p>\n
To put it critically, we can say that Kemal does not love F\u00fcsun, but he loves the effect of \u201cinnocence\u201d that F\u00fcsun has left on him and appropriates her as a collector's item.<\/p>\n
Let's come to the most debated question: Was F\u00fcsun's emotion really love? How effective was the desire to \u201cmove up in class\u201d in the bond between an 18-year-old girl with dreams and Kemal, her rich relative who was about to get married? In the rigid class divisions of the 1970s, was F\u00fcsun's attraction to Kemal only a matter of the heart? If Kemal had not been rich, would F\u00fcsun have taken the social pressure of virginity so easily? The fact that F\u00fcsun's mother is aware of this situation and remains silent can be read as the silent approval of a lower middle class family's hope of climbing to the \u2019upper league\u201c through their daughter. For F\u00fcsun, Kemal had the potential to be both an object of desire and a ticket to class salvation.<\/p>\n
The show's approach to bold scenes is a real bar-raising for the Turkish TV series industry. However, what draws attention here is not only the aesthetic success of these scenes, but also the perspective on women. While in Turkey, such scenes are usually discussed by bashing the female actor, the performance in this series serves the dramatic structure of the story (the taboo of virginity and the class difference at the time). F\u00fcsun's surrender in those scenes is actually proof that she took the biggest gamble of her life. While the man (Kemal) can always return to his status, the fact that the woman (F\u00fcsun) invests her entire existence in this relationship is a mirror held up to the social hypocrisy of that day and today.<\/p>\n
What we are left with after watching the series is not only a sad love story, but also how the sense of ownership eats away at love. Kemal is in love not with F\u00fcsun, but with the \u201clack\u201d in F\u00fcsun's life. And F\u00fcsun is perhaps not in love with Kemal, but with the unattainable and glittering world that Kemal represents. The Museum of Innocence shows us not the purest form of love, but the wounds inflicted on the human soul by class difference, the taboo of virginity and the desire to possess.<\/p>\n
Zeynep G\u00fcnay and the entire team should be congratulated for translating this difficult text into cinematic language so successfully. The increase in the number of such quality works in Turkey is the most concrete proof of how far the industry has come.<\/p>\n
Is it successful in the end? Yes, absolutely.
\nI have a few more sentences that I don't want to end without adding. Another topic on the agenda is that book sales have exploded in Google searches since the series went on air, stocks are sold out, and Orhan Pamuk is \u201ctrending\u201d again.
\n\u201cThe fact that digital searches peaked with the release of the series and bookshelves started to be filled with the Museum of Innocence once again proved the \u2018reminder\u2019 power of popular culture over literature. \u201d<\/p>\n
However, a comment should be made on this picture: How healthy is it for literature to be \u201cremembered\u201d only when it becomes an object of visual consumption?<\/p>\n
Does the modern reader have to wait for an approval from the Netflix library to dive into a 600-page text? The fact that movies and TV series feed literature is an industrial success, yes; but the fact that the value of the book is tied to an algorithm leap is proof that the culture of in-depth reading has succumbed to the speed of \u201cwatch and pass\u201d.<\/p>\n
With love<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The show's approach to gritty scenes is a real bar-raiser for the Turkish TV series industry.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":282784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286],"tags":[289],"class_list":{"0":"post-282783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-yazarlar","8":"tag-manset"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282785,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282783\/revisions\/282785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}