THE APPERANCE OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TV SERIES IN THE CONTEXT OF REALITY, REPRESENTATION AND ALIENATION

Abstract

The pandemic period has changed life all over the world in various ways and this change has manifested itself in every field. Mass media has been one of the areas directly exposed to this change. Especially when the current content production of television came together with the Covid-19 problem, which puts daily life at risk, it caused uncertainties and disruptions. For this reason, the shooting of the series was stopped and the broadcast continued with the previous episodes of the series for a while. However, when life was almost completely moved into the home, the TV series continued from where they left off with their current topics, and even new ones were added to them. While the new rules brought by the epidemic and the vital importance of living with these rules have been emphasized many times, whether this emphasis is included in the TV series is a question mark. In this study, it is sought to answer the questions of how much the series carry the epidemic effect to the screen, whether the content has been changed for this and what kind of world is presented to the audience who spend more time in front of the screen. For this purpose, the reality of the TV series and the reflections of the reality of daily life in the epidemic period will be examined with the series Gönül Dağı, Sadakatsiz and Eşkiya Dünyaya Hükümdar Olmaz within the framework of the media representation of Stuart Hall and the reality theories of Jean Baudrillard. The TV series to be analyzed have been determined according to their viewing rates for the February, March, and April in 2021. Although the pandemic process has created a powerful change in life, it is seen that this change does not find enough place in the contents of the TV series and even completely detaches the audience from this reality.