Valley of the Wolves- a Zizek moment

On my latest to trip to Thessaloniki (on my way to Korça) across from the aisle where I sat, there was a man of quite some stature, bald head, quiet manners, presence. I was thinking it must be in the image of this sort of man that the director of Valley of the Wolves must have painted the various characters in his ultra-nationalist drama series, and I was thinking, there is no shortage of such men to be drawn upon on the streets of Istanbul. The puny extent of my knowledge of the series was revealed (puny, but knowledge it was!) when during the break a group of Turkish/Greek students (we need some qualification here, Turks from Thrace who are citizens of Greece) who studied in Istanbul who were going home for holidays surrounded the man and asked him whether he was a particular character in the series. Of course he was! So what I thought was the signified, was in fact the signifier! That was the cause of his presence.

Here we have the dangers of passive TV watching, much much worse than the active one.