Powerful women, postfeminism, and fantasies of patriarchal recuperation in Magnificent Century

ABSTRACT

This article examines the complex and contradictory gendered desires and anxieties that reveal themselves in the representation of powerful women in contemporary global television. Focusing on the internationally most popular TV series of the Turkish TV industry, Magnificent Century, screened in over 75 countries and seen by more than 500 million people, the central objective of this article is to assess the cultural implications of the series’ portrayal of influential and dominant women. Set in the 16th-century, Magnificent Century projects into the past a postfeminist interpretation of history, celebrating competitiveness, self-interestedness, and ambition, especially for its central character Hurrem Sultan, who rises from her slave origins to become a powerful empress. The series promotes women’s individualistic empowerment in a patriarchal world, while recurrently re-asserting male hegemony. Magnificent Century relies on gendered power reversals between femininity and masculinity as its main narrative and affective structure in which postfeminist empowerment and misogyny co-exist. Close textual analysis of the series coupled with examination of online viewer responses demonstrate that popular feminism and popular misogyny have concurrent audience appeal and that the powerful woman is a figure of cultural disquiet in the contemporary global mediascape.

KEYWORDS:

• Postfeminism
• misogyny
• patriarchy
• gendered power reversals
• popular history
• Turkish television series

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All translations from Turkish are that of the author.

2. Pasha is a title used by high-ranking state dignitaries and Grand Vizier is equivalent to the modern-day Prime Minister.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deniz Zorlu

Since September 2018, Dr. Deniz Zorlu has worked in the Department of New Media and Communication at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. from Queen’s University Cultural Studies program in Kingston, Canada in November 2017. He worked as a Teaching Fellow and Teaching Assistant at Queen’s University from 2012 to 2017. His current research focuses on the political uses of popular television and media in Turkey.