https://alparslannas.com/essays Critical essays on film, television, advertising, and culture by Alparslan Nas — adapted from the CultPost podcast and elsewhere. en https://alparslannas.com/posts/aylak-adam-anayurt-oteli https://alparslannas.com/posts/aylak-adam-anayurt-oteli Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Arzu, Yoksunluk ve Baba: Aylak Adam ile Anayurt Oteli'ne Psikanalitik Bir Bakış https://alparslannas.com/posts/cache-haneke-paris-massacre https://alparslannas.com/posts/cache-haneke-paris-massacre Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 This essay is a revised English translation of “1961 Paris Katliamı ve Saklı Anılar”, originally published in Turkish by Birikim on October 28, 2008. The translation preserves the article’s... https://alparslannas.com/posts/kadro-movement https://alparslannas.com/posts/kadro-movement Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 This essay is a revised English translation of “Kadro ve Kadrocular: Marksizmden Kemalizme”, originally published in Turkish by Birikim on July 21, 2008. The translation preserves the article’s... https://alparslannas.com/posts/lines-of-flight-unchosen https://alparslannas.com/posts/lines-of-flight-unchosen Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Netflix's six-part British miniseries Unchosen is set inside a fundamentalist Christian community living cut off from the outside world, and it is about the relations between femininity,... https://alparslannas.com/posts/museum-of-innocence https://alparslannas.com/posts/museum-of-innocence Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence (Masumiyet Müzesi in Turkish) occupies an unusual place in contemporary culture because it exists in three distinct forms. It is a... https://alparslannas.com/posts/die-my-love https://alparslannas.com/posts/die-my-love Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love (2025), starring Jennifer Lawrence as Grace and Robert Pattinson as Jackson, offers a striking account of motherhood, desire, and psychological disintegration. Adapted... https://alparslannas.com/posts/absurdity-as-resistance https://alparslannas.com/posts/absurdity-as-resistance Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Originally published: 2012 https://alparslannas.com/posts/nomadic-brands-rhizomatic-advertising https://alparslannas.com/posts/nomadic-brands-rhizomatic-advertising Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/nomadik-markalar-rizomatik-reklamlar https://alparslannas.com/posts/nomadik-markalar-rizomatik-reklamlar Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/popular-culture-struggle https://alparslannas.com/posts/popular-culture-struggle Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Popular Culture as a Site of Struggle https://alparslannas.com/posts/secrets-we-keep https://alparslannas.com/posts/secrets-we-keep Sat, 24 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 The six-part Danish miniseries Secrets We Keep—originally titled Reservatet—takes place among two wealthy families in an affluent suburb north of Copenhagen. Both households employ Filipina au... https://alparslannas.com/posts/reading-cassandra https://alparslannas.com/posts/reading-cassandra Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 The six-part German science-fiction thriller Cassandra tells the story of a family who move into a vintage smart home and encounter a cybernetic presence that has been dormant for decades.... https://alparslannas.com/posts/squid-game https://alparslannas.com/posts/squid-game Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 When the second season of Squid Game arrived on Netflix in December 2024, it became the focus of an intense global marketing campaign and once again generated enormous public interest. Yet only a... https://alparslannas.com/posts/the-substance https://alparslannas.com/posts/the-substance Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance (2024) stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in a disturbing exploration of female identity, socially imposed beauty standards, and the... https://alparslannas.com/posts/anatomy-of-a-fall https://alparslannas.com/posts/anatomy-of-a-fall Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall begins with an event that neither its characters nor its audience can fully recover. Samuel, a writer, is found dead in the snow beneath the window of his... https://alparslannas.com/posts/poverty-advertising https://alparslannas.com/posts/poverty-advertising Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Advertising has faced sustained criticism for its representations of gender, race, age, disability, and other forms of social difference. In response, many brands now attempt to present more... https://alparslannas.com/posts/emily-in-paris https://alparslannas.com/posts/emily-in-paris Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Reading Emily in Paris with Barthes https://alparslannas.com/posts/nation-branding https://alparslannas.com/posts/nation-branding Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I have been studying nation branding since 2017, when I published the first edition of my book Nation Branding: Theory and Practice. The book examined the conceptual foundations of the field as... https://alparslannas.com/posts/poor-things https://alparslannas.com/posts/poor-things Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/la-casa-de-papel https://alparslannas.com/posts/la-casa-de-papel Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Few television dramas of the past decade have traveled as widely as La Casa de Papel (Money Heist). First broadcast in Spain in 2017 and later acquired by Netflix, the series became a global... https://alparslannas.com/posts/a-round-of-applause https://alparslannas.com/posts/a-round-of-applause Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/one-love-red-roses https://alparslannas.com/posts/one-love-red-roses Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 The increasing visibility of religious-conservative lives has become one of the most significant developments in recent Turkish television. Two mainstream dramas are particularly important to this... https://alparslannas.com/posts/handmaids-tale https://alparslannas.com/posts/handmaids-tale Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, and the television adaptation that premiered in 2017, imagine a near future in which the United States has been replaced by Gilead: a theocratic,... https://alparslannas.com/posts/the-club https://alparslannas.com/posts/the-club Sat, 07 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Netflix’s The Club begins as the story of a mother and daughter. Matilda Aseo, a Sephardic Jewish woman released from prison in 1950s İstanbul, attempts to reconnect with Raşel, the daughter from... https://alparslannas.com/posts/holidays-in-greece https://alparslannas.com/posts/holidays-in-greece Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Holidays in Greece Through Bourdieu https://alparslannas.com/posts/burning-days https://alparslannas.com/posts/burning-days Tue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/brand-activism https://alparslannas.com/posts/brand-activism Tue, 09 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 This essay presents my reflections on the subject of my Turkish-language book Marka Aktivizmi: Eleştirel Bir Bakış, published by Çizgi Kitabevi in 2023. Its title can be translated as “Brand... https://alparslannas.com/posts/chokehold https://alparslannas.com/posts/chokehold Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/intersectionality https://alparslannas.com/posts/intersectionality Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Intersectionality has become an increasingly influential concept in feminism, media studies, and popular culture. We now encounter references to intersectional feminism, intersectional cinema,... https://alparslannas.com/posts/femvertising https://alparslannas.com/posts/femvertising Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Nike presents women who challenge the limits imposed on them. Always transforms “like a girl” from an insult into an expression of confidence. Dove features women of different ages, appearances,... https://alparslannas.com/posts/oh-belinda https://alparslannas.com/posts/oh-belinda Tue, 11 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/who-were-we-running-from https://alparslannas.com/posts/who-were-we-running-from Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/brecht-mother-courage https://alparslannas.com/posts/brecht-mother-courage Wed, 19 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000 In one of the most revealing exchanges in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, Mother Courage asks the Chaplain whether he thinks the war might end. The question initially sounds like... https://alparslannas.com/posts/zelig-cultural-theory https://alparslannas.com/posts/zelig-cultural-theory Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler, 2022), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, is a tense political thriller set in Yanıklar, a fictional town... https://alparslannas.com/posts/entartete-kunst https://alparslannas.com/posts/entartete-kunst Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000 Entartete Kunst and the Fascist Appropriation of Modernism https://alparslannas.com/posts/vico-after-the-enlightenment https://alparslannas.com/posts/vico-after-the-enlightenment Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000 Giambattista Vico’s New Science belongs to the eighteenth century, yet many of its central concerns resonate with debates that became prominent in twentieth-century philosophy and literary theory.... https://alparslannas.com/posts/writing-the-self-in-fragments https://alparslannas.com/posts/writing-the-self-in-fragments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 Writing the Self in Fragments: Barthes, Nietzsche, and the New Autobiographer https://alparslannas.com/posts/minor-literature-performativity https://alparslannas.com/posts/minor-literature-performativity Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000 How Literature Performs: Autobiography, Minor Literature, and the Politics of Repetition https://alparslannas.com/posts/herland-left-hand-of-darkness https://alparslannas.com/posts/herland-left-hand-of-darkness Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000 Literature can create a space in which alternatives to society’s established values become imaginable. By constructing fictional worlds, literary texts can question ideas that social discourse has... https://alparslannas.com/posts/macbeth-trauma-repetition https://alparslannas.com/posts/macbeth-trauma-repetition Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000 William Shakespeare’s plays have frequently been examined through psychoanalytic literary criticism. Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of Hamlet in The Interpretation of Dreams focused on the... https://alparslannas.com/posts/gogol-the-overcoat https://alparslannas.com/posts/gogol-the-overcoat Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” is structured around repetition. Names, ranks, bureaucratic procedures, acts of copying, and scenes of dispossession recur throughout the story. The most visible... https://alparslannas.com/posts/french-new-wave https://alparslannas.com/posts/french-new-wave Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 The French New Wave—or Nouvelle Vague—emerged during the late 1950s and became one of the defining cinematic movements of the 1960s. It did not possess a single, coherent style. The films of... https://alparslannas.com/posts/poe-lacan-purloined-letter https://alparslannas.com/posts/poe-lacan-purloined-letter Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” has become one of the most intensely interpreted stories in modern literary theory. Its plot appears deceptively simple. A compromising letter is stolen... https://alparslannas.com/posts/bakhtin-carnival-grotesque https://alparslannas.com/posts/bakhtin-carnival-grotesque Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Mikhail Bakhtin begins Rabelais and His World by arguing that François Rabelais is among the most difficult authors in world literature. Rabelais cannot be adequately understood through... https://alparslannas.com/posts/deleuze-cinema-movement-time https://alparslannas.com/posts/deleuze-cinema-movement-time Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 This short reflection considers Gilles Deleuze’s ideas on Italian neorealism and cinema more broadly. Deleuze presented his influential theory of cinema in two volumes: Cinema 1: The... https://alparslannas.com/posts/classical-hollywood-cinema https://alparslannas.com/posts/classical-hollywood-cinema Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 The development of classical film language is closely associated with Hollywood, historically the world’s leading center of film production. Before summarizing this development, however, it is... https://alparslannas.com/posts/italian-neorealism https://alparslannas.com/posts/italian-neorealism Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 The period between the late 1920s and 1950 witnessed the height of the Hollywood studio system’s influence in the United States and Europe. The year 1927 holds particular importance in film... https://alparslannas.com/posts/vertov-kino-pravda https://alparslannas.com/posts/vertov-kino-pravda Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Dziga Vertov's Kino-Pravda: Modernity, Labor, and the Limits of Revolutionary Vision