Star director as symptom: reflections on the reception of Fatih Akn in the Turkish media

The emergence of transnational cinemas has effected a shift in the existing paradigm of national/cultural identity. Critical work produced by writers such as Deniz Gktrk, Mahmut Mutman and Asuman Suner points to the possibilities that these films, made for the most part by directors with hyphenated identity, may offer. However, the popular discourse of newspapers and magazines appears to follow an entirely different path. Roland Barthes once said: Those who do not read a text twice are destined to read it everywhere. This essay seeks to observe how popular media discourse writes itself into the star director Fatih Akn, thus making him a symptom of its ideological structure.