Soap Operas, Gender and the Sri Lankan Diaspora : A Transnational Ethnography in Australia and Sri Lanka

This book is a transnational ethnographic study of Sri Lankan women's television soap opera cultures in Australia and Sri Lanka. Both Sri Lankan migrant women's soap opera clubs in Melbourne, Australia, and female friendship groups watching soap operas in Colombo, Sri Lanka, are examined. Conducted in the sociopolitical backdrop of post-civil war Sri Lanka, this study examines how nationalist ideologies of womanhood shape meanings in Sri Lankan television soap operas that predominantly cater to female audiences. How women interpret, resist, deconstruct, and reconstruct good-bad binaries of women's bodies, freedoms, and rights as represented in the soap operas are mapped, providing an ethnographic examination of how nationalist meanings translate into cultural capital in spaces of television production and reception, in national and diasporic everyday lives. Shashini Gamage is Research Associate of the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, examining gender, media, and migration. She holds a PhD in Media and Communications from La Trobe University. She is a journalist and fi lmmaker, and has produced documentaries on women, peace, and security during the civil war in Sri Lanka. Preface Acknowledgements Contents About the Author List of Images Chapter 1: Introduction Soap Operas and Audiences of Women Gender, Nationalism, Diasporas and Soap Operas Sri Lankan Women, Gender and Nation Soap Operas and Cultural Capital Field Sites: Sri Lanka and Australia Colombo Melbourne The Participants Strangely Familiar: Positionalities in the Field and Power Relations Trope of Return As a Feminist Media Maker Being a Conscious Fan of Megas Trust and Fieldwork with Women Writing the Ethnographic Text Conclusion References Chapter 2: Producing Meanings in a Soap Opera: Making Appropriate Femininities The Development of Sri Lankan Mega Teledramas The Funding Model of the Mega Teledramas The Mega Formula and Class Distinctions of the Lovers Closure in the Megas The Imagined Audience and Self-Censorship Conclusion References Chapter 3: Soap Operas, Women and the Nation Care and Women’s Television Spaces Cooking in the Television Space Working from Home Meanings of Womanhood in Megas Women Who Transgress Good Mothers and Sacrifices Conclusion References Chapter 4: Soap Operas and Long-Distance Audiences A Sense of Community The Teledrama Club: A Place to Talk Cultural Cacophony in the Diasporic Space Women’s Friendships and the Teledrama Club Belonging at Home ‘I Don’t Understand Australian’ Conclusion References Chapter 5: Gender, Media, Migration and Culture: An Intersectional Conclusion Nationalist Meanings and Cultural Capital Women’s Care Spaces of Leisure Soap Opera Cultures in the Digital Era The Ethnographic Effort Conclusion References Index