

Within this context Turkish soap operas, Noor being the most significant case, have generated a media revolution. Researchers have thus observed a relative “depoliticization” of media over the years with the progressive development of mass entertainment programming.ĭespite the spectacular success of Arabic musalsalat (soap operas), Arab audiences have always shown great interest in foreign productions. The Arab market is indeed unique: a large and essentially young audience with some 20 countries sharing a common language.

As Naomi Sakr explains, many factors fuel the field’s potential including the fact that “Media flows are (…) facilitated where the language is shared 3 ”. The mastermind behind this phenomenon has been the MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center) media empire, a combination of Saudi capital and Middle Eastern know-how, and a success story that started in the 1990s with the birth of a private Arab media field. After falling in the past for Victoria Principal, Ridge Forrester, and Latin American telenovela characters Kassandra and Rosalinda, Arab audiences are now turning to Turkey, a close yet estranged neighbor with whom they share a tumultuous history.
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Except for experts and visionaries, no one was predicting that it was “the beginning of the end” for the state domination of television in the Arab world.Īlmost a quarter of a century later, on August 30, 2008, 85 million Arab viewers were glued to their TV sets for the finale of the Syrian-dubbed Turkish soap opera, Gümüş 1 (Noor 2 in Arabic), a Kanal D production that received little attention in its homeland in 2005. Five years later, the Arabs were shooting at the stars with the launch of the first Arab satellite system, Arabsat-1.
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It was the first time that a TV series had captivated simultaneously so many people around the world.

The shot was heard around the world, with millions of fans desperately wondering “Who shot J.R.?”. Ewing was shot and injured in the hit series Dallas, which featured an unconventional family’s struggles over power, wealth and sex. Social liberation or cultural alienation? The Noor phenomenon created a forum where conflicting notions of Middle Eastern identity, sexual agency and gender relations vie for dominance.Dubbed Turkish soap operas conquering the Arab world: The series' ambiguity, like that of Turkey itself, invokes binaries of East and West, Islam and secularism, tradition and modernity enabling a range of commentary on the state of Arab society in general and sexual relations in particular. Opposition to Noor-and to the idolization of its male lead-invokes older notions of women's potent sexual desire as a threat to the social order, and justifies their containment and control. It explores women's use of new media forms-satellite television and the Internet-to articulate desire and discontent, and the media panic these expressions induced among social and religious conservatives. This article combines content analysis of Noor, examination of online discourses surrounding the series, and interviews with its producers. Arab news media attributed a wave of domestic violence and divorce to the series' handsome lead actor, and his character's romantic deportment. Abstract : In the summer of 2008, the Saudi-owned, pan-Arab satellite television network Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) aired a failed Turkish soap opera, Gumus, as the Arabized Noor, creating an overnight sensation and a media panic.
