Snow

Mass communication symbolizes the modernization of Kars. The influence that the newspaper, television, and radio have on the people of Kars’s emotions and perceptions of the world shows the mass media’s power.

The television’s role in family life is especially clear in Turgut Bey’s household. However, they are not remarkable or unusual in this regard: Ka notices that most families in Kars spend hours glued to their televisions. When Hande is grieving Teslime’s death, the family tries to distract her with a TV show depicting “two giraffes in slow motion, in a faraway land, perhaps in the middle of Africa” (120). The escapism that the television represents resurfaces when Ka and Fazıl sit at the teahouse after Necip’s death. As Fazıl is crying over his love for Kadife and his fear that he has become an atheist, they see a TV playing in the background and “forget their troubles and [sit] laughing at the antics of the American children” (288). Television allows the people of Kars to forget their present troubles and escape into beautiful, faraway places that are more serene and more peaceful. The flipside of this escapism is alienation, both from one’s own culture and from one’s own life.