Screening Late Ottoman Memory in Payitaht Abdülhamid

Abstract

In viewing historical rehabilitations as objects that have the capacity to transform people, this thesis seeks to explain the popular consumption of one such rehabilitation as a function of its resonance with an existential memory of social transformation. This thesis’ deep reading of the Turkish television series Payitaht Abdülhamid, a show about the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1876-1909, yields a new vantage point from which to view a cultural product’s inherent historicity – in spite of its historical inaccuracies and revisionist position. This paper demonstrates how, through an analysis of the cinematographic language of Payitaht Abdülhamid, we may access a subtextual articulation of an existential memory that explains its wide resonation today.