Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
19th International Symposium Communication in the Millennium, Eskişehir, Türkiye, 12 - 14 Ekim 2022, ss.231
PEN15 (Hulu, 2019-2021) is an American coming-of-age comedy series, mainly about adolescent struggles and insecurities. This study argues that PEN15 constructs the adolescent gaze through ironic sincerity, i.e., the metamodern juxtaposition of irony and sincerity. Metamodernism as a contemporary cultural phenomenon continues to gain significant importance in academic research. Metamodernism, which stands out among the conceptualizations put forward to make sense of the world after postmodernism, tries to rediscover the ‘human intimacy’ that postmodernism inhibits. It questions the legacy of modernism and postmodernism and tries to transcend them without denying them. In order to analyze the metamodern qualities of the series, a descriptive qualitative method has been employed. The co-creators of the PEN15, who are in their early thirties, play thirteen-year-old best friends while the rest of the middle schoolers are cast true to age. The series takes place in the early 2000s; featuring pitch-perfect details, pop-culture references, and the fashion of the era. These seemingly postmodern ironic and nostalgic premises of the series transform into a metamodern structure of feeling through its idiosyncratic affective tone. The structure of feeling signifies the unique character and quality of a common cultural feeling, and it is possible to explore the current metamodern structure of feeling in arts and culture. The series possesses this structure of feeling in a unique way. This study attempts to reveal the role of ‘oscillation’, which is essential to metamodernism, in the emergence of this tone. Metamodernism can be characterized by the oscillation between the modern and the postmodern modes, as well as enthusiasm and irony, hope and nihilism, apathy and affect. The series oscillates between various polarities. Metamodern comic sensibility emerges from the tensions between the humorous nature of the middle school and the struggles that the teenagers endured during that period. The series touches on a wide range of subjects, including racism, homosexuality, immigration, cancer, poverty, and divorce. The limitations of the genre are transcended when the seriousness of these topics is integrated with the naivety and the innocence of adolescence. Awkward situations lead to cringe-inducing scenes whilst the earnestness of dealing with the above-mentioned topics creates an emotional depth. Thus, the series allows viewers to feel both secondhand embarrassment for and empathic engagement with the characters. An aesthetic-affective response called ‘New Sincerity’ operates throughout the series. As a consequence, this study argues that the reconstructive and whimsical nature of PEN15 bears vital signs of the metamodern sensibility, apropos of adolescent discourses.