“What is Fatmagül’s Guilt?” Ethnology at the End of the Workday
“What is Fatmagül’s Guilt?” Ethnology at the End of the Workday

Summary/Abstract: The paper offers an ethnological reading of the Turkish TV series “What is Fatmagül’s guilt?” as well as a critical view on its broadcast on Bulgarian television. The central subject matter is a group rape which sets the main theme of the series: violence against women. The authors develop the theme in two main forms:physical/sexual and symbolic violence, the latter regulated and maintained by thewedding ritual. The core of the latter is the problem of virginity.Special focus is paid to the script and the way in which pre-modern culture is presented. There are examples which show that the literary text is not only a super structure over cultural facts or their basic illustration, but in many cases it conducts a dialogue with them, transforms them and even rejects them as cultural practices (the problem of guilt, the ‘besmirching’ of the woman, the first wedding night complex,the cultural meaning of the red colour in a man’s relationship with his wife, the bed,material and spiritual, etc.). The series represents a good example of creative work on and analysis of pre-modern culture.

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