Copying Turkish drama is sweeping Arab productions…and Morocco faces the challenge of competition

The phenomenon of copying Turkish dramas has become sweeping Arab drama productions in recent years, after the success of the first experiments in this context by Arabizing the famous Turkish series “The Bride of Istanbul” to become “The Bride of Beirut”, which was able to win the bet and achieved very high viewership rates that made it top the “trend” across the world. Various social media platforms.

In this context, Moroccan film and art critic Mustafa Taleb said in a statement to Hespress, “It is certain that Turkish drama has greatly influenced Arab drama with its new scenarios and beautiful decorations that abound in the ancient land of Turkey and its vast internal and external spaces, so that it has created great competition not only At the Arab level, but also at the international level, thanks to its huge productions, as it has been translated into many foreign languages.”

Mustafa Al-Taleb added that the influence of Turkish drama on the Arab world is due to “its inspiration from an Eastern environment in a modern form.” Therefore, its impact on Moroccan drama is clear and evident, even though the dubbing was not at the required level,” he said, highlighting that the question that imposes itself today is, “Is Moroccan drama able to reach that level, raise the challenge of competition, and produce like Turkish series?”

Regarding the possibility of the success of this experience in national productions, the speaker said: “The truth is that we do not want dramatic creativity to copy the Turkish experience, which undoubtedly has its own artistic, cultural, and productive characteristics. Rather, we want a national product with Moroccan features that draws from Moroccan culture, authentic Moroccan historical and social spaces, and all “This highlights the cultural, geographical and natural richness of Morocco.”

The Moroccan critic explained that what Moroccan drama must succeed in, similar to what Turkish drama has done, “is investment in production, and awareness of the importance of dramatic artistic work in marketing the national, tourism and cultural product,” considering that the weak link in Morocco is “weak production; Because we do not have a national dramatic industry, and the works, as we saw in Ramadan, also still suffer from technical (writing and directing) and thematic deficiencies, but this does not mean the absence of some works that tried to approach this given, but they are few and mediocre artistically.”

Mustafa Al-Taleb concluded his speech to Hespress by calling on those responsible for the cultural, artistic, and audiovisual sectors to invest their efforts in creating a national drama with the specifications he referred to, especially since they underestimated the Turkish production, adding that “this requires a real will that is not seasonal, but a permanent national strategy.”

For his part, Moroccan critic Abdel Karim Wakrim said: “We have recently been watching some Arab series that reproduce the model of Turkish television drama, which is a drama that transcends reality and whose events often take place in a wealthy class,” adding: “In Turkey, when we watch real cinematic films that… It has brought Turkish cinema to the international level. We find that it deals with the real reality of Turkey, but although it has reached fame and has been dubbed, it transcends the Turkish reality in particular.”

Wakrim added, in a statement to Hespress, that “Arabic series that follow their example and do the same thing, in which we only see events that take place in classes and with characters that belong to them and artificial problems, also means that for those who broadcast, they are transmitting things that are foreign to the societies to which these series belong.”

The Moroccan critic continued, saying: “At the national level, we have recently begun to watch some series that lean towards this trend and try to imitate Turkish series,” explaining that “what appears in them is the complete absence of the Moroccan character and nothing in them belongs to Moroccan soil except the dialect, and the latter is also not Stemming from characters from whom the good dialogue in the series originally stems, whether in drama, cinema, or theater.”

Regarding the possibility of the success of the experience of “Arabizing Turkish drama” in Morocco, Wakrim said: “We have not yet succeeded in the series that are trying to succeed, and we have not yet achieved the production of real dramatic series that deal with the Moroccan reality, let alone those that rise above this reality and try to imitate models.” Far from us, and as they say, whoever tries to imitate is like the crow that tried to imitate the walk of a dove but forgot his walk.”

The author concluded by saying to Hespress, “Even in the series that we watch in Ramadan in particular, which try to deal with the Moroccan reality, we have not yet reached this good model from an artistic standpoint that deals with reality, let alone imitating other models that do not belong to our reality or to our art, and I think they will not succeed.” Even with the audience who loves this quality. Those who follow these series will prefer watching Turkish series rather than watching poorly copied models.”