Proceedings of the 48th International Academic Conference, Copenhagen

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STAR SYSTEM AND THE POPULAR CULTURE AND TURKEY’S “SUPERSTAR” AJDA PEKKAN

SANEM BENGÜ UYGUNKAN

Abstract:

Mass communication and mass media that bring new dimensions to communication among people affect the individual’s accordingly the masses level of knowledge, manner and attitude. According to Mills, mass media is the mirror of modern life of society. Mass media guides the society’s potential of motivation by selling image and data; with the data they disseminate mass media can give information about other societies and cultures’ standard of living, relations of individuals and consumption areas of them (Quotation by Aziz, 1982, s. 48-50). While making sense of external reality, human beings starts out from his existing life and as the means of justification he uses his own popular culture icons (like actors, pop singers and etc.). But still he can’t change the external reality and it makes the icons meaningful unconsciously. This show the differences between mass culture and popular culture (Aydogan,2004, s.37). Popular culture is a consumption culture. While creating something popular, the existing popularity is used. Popular sport, sportsman, singers, ideas, manners, magazine heroes…something popular is covered and packed and consumers take part in the process making something popular by taking it (Erdogan, 1999, s.3). A material is sold directly. There is an indirect marketing through media. Stars can be called popular as they present sustainability, permanency. Stars are related with cultural industry with their trends, looks and novelty. Scanning model is a research method which aims to describe the situation existing in the past and today as it is (Karasar, 1995, s.77). This research is sample of scanning model. The research contains popular culture, connection of the stars, function of stars at creating and dissembling the popular culture and analyzing Ajda Pekkan who is the superstar of Turkey. During the research, related publishing İn Turkish and English about image, icon, consumption, popular culture, development of star system are scanned. Super star Ajda Pekkan’s life is analyzed to discover the relation between popular culture and star system. Ajda Pekkan joined a contest to become the cover girl of “Ses Magazine” in 1963 and chosen the first, then she started her professional career. So for this research all the news about her are scanned at this magazine to see the duration of her becoming a star. “Popular culture” and “star” terms give essential clues about the cultural, economic, social features of society so the results of this research may be illuminating for this field.

Keywords: Popular culture, Star system

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2019.048.005

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