Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul: Appropriation and Performance as Trauma Narrative/Cure in Çağan Irmak’s Creature (2023)

Öz

Çağan Irmak’s 2023 Netflix series Yaratılan (Creature) is an adaptation inspired by Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Çağan Irmak reappropriates the novel into the nineteenth-century Ottoman context. The series presumably has the cholera outbreak (1840s or 1890s) as the triggering point of one of the main characters’, Ziya’s (Dr Frankenstein’s equivalent), search for immortality, and falls in line with the questions raised by the novel, as well as the traumatic history of not only the nineteenth century dynamics but also the human helplessness in the face of pandemics/epidemics, including COVID-19. Ihsan (the creature) as an unusual doctor, who quite extraordinarily becomes the “monster” of this adaptation, helps raise questions concerning (bio-)ethics as well as trauma and recovery. He is re-educated and regains his memory through his encounter with a theatre troupe and heals through his interactions with others who are social outcasts like him. Thus, performance (acting and narrating) functions as a way of facing and dealing with traumatic memories. In the context of cultural adaptation and appropriation of a classical novel, this paper aims to discuss how the act of adaptation itself and the choice of theatrical rehearsal, performance, and storytelling serve as a LaCapraesque acting out and working through to help deal with fictional and non-fictional traumas.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Çağan Irmak’s Creature
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• cultural appropriation
• transcultural adaptation
• trauma narratives

Kaynakça

1. Amicis, E. D. (2005). Constantinople (S. Parkin, Trans.). Hesperus Press Limited. (Original work published 1877) google scholar
2. Ayalon, Y. (2015). Natural disasters in the Ottoman empire: Plague, famine, and other misfortunes. Cambridge University Press. google scholar
3. Barthes, R. (1974). S/Z (Richard Miller, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1970) google scholar
4. Barthes, R. (1977). From work to text. In Music, image, text (Stephen Heath, Trans.) (pp. 155-169). Fontana Press. (Original work published 1977) google scholar
5. Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Johns Hopkins University. google scholar
6. Cartmell, D. (1999) Introduction. In D. Cartmell & I. Wheelan (Eds.), Adaptations: From text to screen, screen to text (pp. 23-28). Routledge. google scholar
7. Cutchins, D. R. & Perry, D. R. (2018). Introduction. In Cutchins, D. R. & Perry, D. R. (Eds), Adapting Frankenstein: The monster’s eternal lives in popular culture (pp. 1-19). Manchester University Press. google scholar
8. Dillon, S. (2007). The palimpsest: Literature, criticism, theory. Continuum. google scholar

9. Felman, S. (1992). Education and crisis, or the vicissitudes of teaching. In S. Felman & D. Laub, Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis and history (pp. 1-56). Routledge. google scholar
10. Freud, F. (2003). Beyond the pleasure principle. In S. Freud, Beyond the pleasure principle and other writings (J. Reddick, Trans.) (pp. 43^102). Penguin Books Ltd. (Original work published 1940) google scholar
11. Freud, F. (2003). Remembering, repeating, and working through. In S. Freud, Beyond the pleasure principle and other writings (J. Reddick, Trans.) (pp. 31^42). Penguin Books Ltd. (Original work published 1940) google scholar
12. Genette, G. (1997). Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (C. Newman & C. Doubinsky, Trans.). the University of Nebraska Press. (Original work published in 1982) google scholar
13. Gündoğdu, C. (2018). The state and the stray dogs in late Ottoman Istanbul: from unruly subjects to servile friends. Middle Eastern Studies (pp. 1-20). https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2018.1432482 google scholar
14. Hindle, M. (2013). Introduction. In Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or, the modern Prometheus (pp.xi-l). Penguin Classics. google scholar
15. Homer. (2008). The Odyssey (W. Shewring, Trans.). Oxford University Press. google scholar
16. Hutcheon, L. (2013). A theory of adaptation. Routledge. google scholar
17. Irmak. Ç. (2023). Yaratılan [TV Series]. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com/tr/title/81504235 google scholar
18. Karadağ, Ö. (2022). Rewriting women and trauma: Zinnie Harris’s This restless house. Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi(34), 19-37. https://doi.org/10.26650/jtcd.2022.1097604 google scholar
19. Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection (L. S. Roudiez, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published in 1980) google scholar
20. Kristeva, J. (2024). Bounded text. In J. Kristeva (L. S. Roudiez, Ed.), Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art (pp. 37-61) (T. Gora, A. Jardine & L. S. Roudiez, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1969). google scholar
21. LaCapra, D. (1989). Sounds in critical theory. Cornell University Press. google scholar
22. LaCapra, D. (2001). Writing history, writing trauma. Johns Hopkins University Press. google scholar
23. Laub, D. (1992a). Bearing witness or the vicissitudes of listening. In S. Felman & D. Laub, Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis and history (pp. 57-74). Routledge. google scholar
24. Laub, D. (1992b). Bearing witness or the vicissitudes of listening. In S. Felman & D. Laub, Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis and history (pp. 75-92). Routledge. google scholar
25. Nicklas, P. & Lindler, O. (2012). Adaptation and Cultural Appropriation. De Gruyter. google scholar
26. Sanders, J. (2016). Adaptation and appropriation. Routledge. google scholar
27. Shelley, M. (1818, 2013). Frankenstein or, the modern Prometheus. Penguin Classics. google scholar
28. Turna, N. (2022). Limits and opportunities: Women and their experiences in the entertainment sector during the late Ottoman era. Osmanlı araştırmaları/The journal of Ottoman studies, LIX (2022), 195-223. 10.18589/oa.1145928 google scholar
29. Yılmaz, Ö. (2017). The cholera epidemic of 1847–1848 and its effects on the Ottoman empire. Journal of Eurasian Inquiries, 6(1), 23-55. https://doi.org/10.26650/jes371499 google scholar
30. Whelehan, I. (1999) Introduction. In D. Cartmell & I. Wheelan (Eds.), Adaptations: From text to screen, screen to text (pp. 3-19). Routledge. google scholar