Watching soap opera in the diaspora:
cultural proximity or critical proximity?
Myria Georgiou
(First submission May 2010; First published November 2011)
Abstract
This paper focused on an area of transnational Arabic television, which
has attracted little scholarly attention: soap operas and their consumption
among women in the Arab diaspora. Focus groups with Arab
audiences in London revealed the significant role that soap operas play in
sustaining a gendered critical and reflexive proximity to the Arab world.
The paper shows that soap opera viewing provides female audiences in
the diaspora with opportunities to reflect on their own gender identities
as distant from hegemonic discourses of gender in their region of origin
but as proximate to a moral set of values they associate with this same
region. This was especially, but not exclusively, the case with young
women born in the diaspora.
Keywords: Arab diaspora; proximity; distance; transnational television; audience;
soap opera.
The rise and rise of Arabic television has both fascinated and troubled
the west. While its transnational appeal is recorded both in research
and public debates, the nuances and tensions associated with its
consumption are far less understood. Knowing about the success of
television networks among audiences is not enough to understand the
socio-cultural significance of Arabic transnational television. It is in
the close examination of what audiences watch and how they make
sense of television within gendered and generational contexts that we
can observe its complex cultural role. This paper focuses on Arab
women in the diaspora and soap operas, two subjects having received
little scholarly attention.
It is tempting to interpret transnational Arabic television’s success
as a cross-border reaffirmation of the thesis of cultural proximity. In
Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 35 No. 5 May 2012 pp. 868Á887
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
ISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 online
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.628040
La Pastina and Straubhaar’s words, aspects of cultural proximity ‘are
purely cultural and linguistic. . .when migrants continue to have a
strong layer of identity linked to their ‘‘home’’ country or culture’
(2005, p. 274). Is this the case with dispersed Arab communities? Are
diasporic women’s identities directly linked to a distant ‘home’ as if
there was an uncut and ever-present umbilical cord connecting the two
ends? And is there any evidence demonstrating that diasporic female
audiences engage with cultural politics in their region of origin? In
order to understand if and under what circumstances diasporic
audiences locate themselves close or far away from the Arab region’s
cultural politics, I examine cultural proximity’s relevance within a
diasporic gendered context.
Television, and the genre of soap opera in particular, provides a
vivid case study. As will be shown, the thesis of cultural proximity is
still relevant when it comes to diasporic Arab women’s soap opera
viewing. Yet, and importantly, it is reincarnated as a critical and
reflexive negotiation of proximity and distance. Specifically, I argue
that soap opera viewing provides female audiences in the diaspora with
opportunities to reflect on their own gender identities as distant from
hegemonic discourses of gender in their region of origin but as
proximate to a moral set of values they associate with this same region.
This is especially the case for young women who have grown up in the
diaspora.
Drawing from focus group research in London1
, I locate this
discussion at the juxtaposition of research on gendered media
consumption as this is informed by the study of diasporic, transnational
and Arabic audiences. I discuss empirical findings under three
sections. These correspond to the main themes that emerged in
participants’ discourse when they talk about soap operas, Arabic
television and their affiliation with their region of origin2
: (1) distance;
(2) proximity; (3) critical proximity. The theme of distance highlights
detachment from the Arab region and its cultural politics. The theme
of proximity captures soap operas’ emotional and commodity value in
supporting a sense of belonging in a transnational community. The
theme of critical proximity demonstrates how the sense of distance and
of proximity from the Arab region merges into a reflexive realization
of its internal contradiction: participants sustain a cultural attachment
to the Arab region beyond geographical distance, but keep a distance
from its hegemonic representations of gender. Within this theme, I
discuss the subgenre of Turkish soap operas, as audiences’ engagement
with it exemplifies critical proximity. Turkish soap operas and their
controversial role in Arabic mediascapes provide participants with
opportunities to reflect on what it means to be an Arab, as well as a
member of a gendered transnational audience.
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 869
Transnational audiences and soap opera consumption
Studies of media and diaspora, gendered soap opera consumption,
and cultural proximity have historically followed parallel routes.
Effectively, there has been little cross-fertilization of our understanding
of diasporic women’s relation to soap operas. Research on
diaspora and the media has demonstrated the expansion of communication
across transnational diasporic spaces, which can support
diasporic identities and communities (Gillespie 1995; Brikenhoff 2009;
Karanfil 2009). This research has also contributed to conceptualizations
of diaspora as a complex and contradictory condition; diasporic
affiliation might persist alongside internal power struggles. As
dispersed audiences get access to and consume the same media across
space, a sense of commonality is reinforced and even reinvented
(Georgiou 2006). Sharing media provides diasporic groups with
opportunities to develop common cultural practices and thus, at least
momentarily, to surpass internal generational, class and gender divides
(Karanfil 2009).
Arabs in London represent a diverse group with the majority
originating in the Middle East (Miladi 2006). Previous research, as
well as the present study, have recorded a persistent and strong
identification of many Arab-speakers in Britain with a group identity
(Gillespie 2006; Miladi 2006), in ways similar to those identified by
Cohen as key diasporic qualities (1997). These include a strong sense
of solidarity towards other Arabs and a group consciousness based on
a sense of distinctiveness and a belief in a common fate (ibid.).
Identification with the Arab diaspora does not necessarily compete
with particular Arab regional or national diasporic affiliations.
As in the case of other diasporic audiences, the one studied here
cannot be singularly understood by their Arabness. Diasporic audiences
occupy different social and cultural spaces (Karanfil 2009).
Importantly though, the spread and success of transnational Arabic
television provides a significant indicator of the emergence of a
powerful Arabic linguistic and cultural mediascape3
. Kraidy (2010)
locates transnational television in the core of Arab modernity. AbuLughod
(2005), with reference to television in Egypt, demonstrates
that it has played a key role in shaping social and political debates on
modernity and providing a platform for self-making, especially for
women. Both Kraidy and Abu-Lughod locate their analysis of Arabic
television within the battlefield of conflicting perceptions of modernity.
In his study of Arabic reality shows and the public debates around
them, Kraidy argues that ‘disputes over reality TV were proxy battles
to draw boundaries between reality and image, the masculine and the
feminine, the pure and the hybrid, the authentic and the foreign’ (2010,
p. 15). Arabic audiences in London consume transnational television
870 Myria Georgiou
and find themselves caught in these battles for modernity. At the same
time, they constitute an element of western audiences. Thus, their
practices need to be understood at the juxtaposition of cultural
politics associated with Arabic and with western television4
. Like for
other audiences, television consumption represents an ordinary
and banal element of everyday life (Silverstone 1994). Thus, the
audience discussed here is not by definition different to other
audiences.
Diasporic Arab audiences are on the receiving side of cultural
politics in the Arab world, mainly through regular consumption of
transnational television. Female participants showed they are well
aware of the tensions around modernity and tradition in the Arab
world, especially in terms of gender representations. At the same time,
they are located outside the region. Their engagement with its cultural
politics presents an interesting twist to struggles around the representation
of women on the screen and in the public sphere. The interplay
between proximity and distance becomes an everyday reality for
diaspora; it is about being with distant others without being in distant
places. A sense of distance Á and relative ‘objectivity’ in the form of
reflexivity Á might be the inevitable result of geography, but it is also a
socio-cultural reality associated with living in different places Á in this
case London Á and having multiple identities (Rizvi 2006).
Theorizations of cultural proximity are useful here as they make
links between media industries’ intensions, systems of distribution and
media consumption. The concept was introduced by Straubhaar
(1991) to articulate the persistent success of national and regional
media products vis-a`-vis global products, especially those produced in
Hollywood. Cultural proximity links changes in media industries and
technologies to cultural, linguistic and historical profiles of audiences.
In Straubhaar’s definition, cultural proximity refers to ‘nationally or
locally produced material that is closer to and more reinforcing of
traditional identities, based in regional, ethnic, dialect/language,
religious, and other elements’ (1991, p. 51). Audience preferences are
dynamic and relational: they respond to the limitations characterizing
national production, to social and historical subnational and supranational
differences that influence different groups’ media choices
(Sinclair 1999) and to state strategies of nearing and distancing (Murji
in Qureshi 2007). As put by Qureshi (2007, p. 295): ‘Relations and
perceptions of distance and proximity are not given but created in
processes involving the national state, the media, local authorities and
people themselves’.
As La Pastina and Straubhaar argue, shared histories of migration
can also trigger interest in programmes originating in geographically
distant territories. Soap opera is such a case: ‘Melodrama builds on
underlying oral structures, formulas and archetypes than can be
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 871
shared by cultures’ (2005, p. 275). In discussing migrant audiences, La
Pastina and Straubhaar (2005) talk of transnational continuities in
cultural proximity. However, the interlocking of ‘closeness and
remoteness’ (Simmel 1908) remains outside this analysis. While
literature on media and diaspora on the other hand has addressed
the tensions between origin and diaspora (cf. Gillespie 1995; Georgiou
2006; Qureshi 2007; Kandifil 2009), the conceptual debate remains
open: is diaspora contained in the cultural space of its region of origin
or is it positioned in a parallel Á or even competing Á space?
Soap operas and cultural proximity
Changes in transnational television challenge the limits of cultural
proximity debates, but also of soap opera consumption as a private
affair, primarily associated with white western middle-class women.
Research which has historically looked at the transnational success of
soap opera has focused on three main areas: (1) exploring the role of
the genre’s circulation in relation to questions of cultural imperialism
(Lee 1980; Mattelart, Delcourt and Mattelart 1984); (2) examining
gendered patterns of consumption and whether they reaffirm female
subordination or emancipation (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Mayer 2003;
Abu-Lughod 2005); (3) interrogating (dis-)continuities between migrants
and national imagined communities (Liebes and Katz 1990;
Burch 2002). Transnationally-oriented research has drawn from long
and established research on soap opera, which has primarily been
located in the west. Connections between soap opera viewing and
female reflection on sexuality (Geraghty 1991), the possibility of
making alternative life choices when identifying with soap operas’
heroines (Livingstone 1991), and the limits (or expansion) of female
silence within patriarchal family structures (Modleski 1982; Brown
1994) have been themes addressed in the analysis of transnational, as
well as national audiences. Abu-Lughod (2005) explains how melodrama
in Egypt provides a sense of visibility to ordinary people and
how progressive values are circulated in its themes. Soap operas
support female audiences’ sense of individuality, which many of them
are deprived of, especially in working-class and rural environments. At
the same time, Abu-Lughod argues, ideals of female emancipation on
the screen have little relevance to these audiences. This comes as no
surprise taking that the life of working-class women in Egypt could
not be more different from the life of the urban middle class that
produces them. The huge discrepancy between the experiences of
audiences and producers which Abu-Lughod describes in the case
of Egypt has no parallel to the social experience of most members of
Arabic soap opera audiences in London. These audiences are urban
and in the case of younger women especially, well educated.
872 Myria Georgiou
Migrant women’s viewing of soap operas has been addressed to
some extent in research, primarily in the US. Barrera and Bielby
(2001), who studied Latina viewers in the US, argue that telenovelas5
bridge geographical distance between women and their country of
origin. Mayer (2003) suggests that telenovela viewing among young
Mexican women in San Antonio challenges male domination in their
lives, especially as women take breaks from hectic housework to watch
their favourite shows. Such studies recognize the ordinariness and
banality of transnational soap opera viewing among migrant women.
At the same time, they export to a transnational context some of the
limitations of earlier soap opera reception research. For example, they
retain an almost exclusive focus on a single social group (i.e. first
generation migrant women) and a preference for cases within bounded
places. Transnational research, which is open to multi-generational
diasporic experiences and disrupted geographies remains marginal.
Soap operas and gendered Arab audiences
The relation between gender and soap operas on Arabic television
needs to be understood within the context of modernity. Abu-Lughod
(2010) explains how feminism has become a contested ideology in
Egypt with Islamists gaining ground by resisting it as an instrument of
colonial domination. Gender relations have been at the core of many
social and political struggles in the Arab region throughout modernity
with women often being targeted either as the bastion or a threat to
morality. Abu-Lughod’s writes about the current advance of ‘retraditionalization’
ideologies in Egypt, with women finding themselves
praised for modesty and for staying at home and criticized for having
career aspirations (2010). Kraidy (2010) shows that young men have
found some of the conservative Islamist ideas about gender relations
attractive at times of rising unemployment and increased public female
visibility. Media have played a key role in the struggles for female
emancipation, Abu-Lughod writes with reference to Egypt, as television
melodrama has become one of the ‘technologies for the
production of new kinds of selves’ (2005, p. 113). While television
programmes that challenge hegemonic perceptions of gender identities
might not influence people in radical ways, Abu-Lughod (2010) adds,
they do reflect processes of modernization.
Soap operas have an established presence on Arabic television.
Egyptian and Syrian soap operas have been successful across the
Middle East since the 1980s. Some of those series touched sensitive
issues, such as rape and stigmatization of women in the Arab world
(Hafez 2008). Turkish soap operas, which are dubbed in a colloquial
version of Arabic has marked recent developments within the genre
and its reception. They have captivated Arabic audiences since 2008,
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 873
breaking all viewership records. Noor6
became the highest rated show
ever (Al Arabiya 2008; International Herald Tribune 2010). One of
Turkish soap operas’ key characteristics, which has since been taken
over by Arab ‘home grown’ productions, is the central presence of
beautiful, career-oriented and aware of their sexuality heroines. The
representation of emancipated women on the screen has turned into a
battlefield, celebrated by audiences and condemned by religious and
political conservative leaders (Buccianti 2010).
Methodology
The paper draws from nine focus group interviews conducted in
London over two periods: June 2009 and February 2011. The six focus
groups conducted in June 2009 were divided between single gendered
adult female and male groups with 6Á8 participants each. The focus
groups were organized in three age groups: 18Á25, 26Á45, 46Á65.
Following the same structure, three additional female focus groups
were conducted in February 2011 in order to enrich further our
understanding of gendered discourses of media consumption and
identity. First and second generation migrants were almost equally
represented in the two younger groups. The migrant generation
predominated in the 46Á65 groups. Most participants originate in
the Middle East and all are settled in Britain, though not all have
citizenship rights7
. Class and education background varied with
working-class and middle-class participants almost equally represented.
This diversity broadly represents the demographic composition
of the Arab population in Britain (Miladi 2006). For this study, sample
diversity did not present an obstacle but a strength, as its purpose was
to record the range of experiences and opinions in relation to
transnational television. Participants were chosen based on their
self-identification as Arab-speakers8
and the fact that they all have
access to transnational Arabic television. The snowballing technique
was used for recruitment. Focus groups were conducted in either or
both languages Á i.e. Arabic and English Á and according to
participants’ preference.
Questions asked fell within two broad themes: media use and sense
of belonging. In the case of both themes, questions were open-ended.
Participants were asked questions such as: ‘How would you describe
yourself?’ and ‘What did you watch last night?’ The research team
made no assumptions about the meanings of Arabness or of Arabic
television. Analysis was inductive and showed that transnational
television holds an important role in everyday life and that most
participants identified as Arabs9
.
874 Myria Georgiou
Watching soap operas in the diaspora
Soap operas on Arabic television proved to be very popular among
participants, especially women. Most female participants, no matter
their social status, said that they watch some soap operas on Arabic
television. Gender, age and education informed the level of reflexive
engagement with soap operas with the younger, better-educated
women appearing as the most critically engaged. For most participants,
soap opera viewing is diverse and transnational. They might
watch Turkish soap operas alongside Egyptian and Syrian productions
(musalsalaat), such as Bab AlHarrah10
, as well as British soap operas,
such as Eastenders, and American ones, such as Glee and Desperate
Housewives. The genre’s integration in familial life both captures and
reproduces some of the tensions associated with divides along the lines
of age, generation and gender, as in the case of other households in
western societies (Livingstone 1995). For example, participants of all
ages confirm that it is the elderly and male family members who
mostly control the family’s main television set.
I watch TV with my husband, he is the boss, he decides on what to
watch . . .When my husband is absent, I am the boss and I choose
(Female, 26Á45).
My dad controls the remote control up to about 8 o’clock in the
evening. After that he falls asleep and then my mum gets it for the
musalsalaat [soap operas] (Male, 26Á45).
While gender hierarchies are confirmed in these comments, control is
always conditional and subject to familial daily life changes. Alongside
established routines, many participants describe the temporality of
Arabic language soap opera consumption. This is especially the case
during Ramadan, when soap opera viewing peaks.
We are not a big musalsalaat family unless it’s Ramadan when we
call each other from different floors to get down and watch TV
(Female, 18Á25)
Participants’ words did reflect the ideological and cultural diversity of
the Arab diaspora and so did the patterns of their use of television.
Overall, more selective and individual media use is common among
younger men and women:
Honestly, my grandmother holds the remote control and watches
soaps. She doesn’t give me a chance to do anything so I go to the
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 875
internet to watch whatever I like. When she is not there, I choose
whatever I want to watch on TV (Female, 18Á25).
With a focus on the negotiation of cultural proximity and distance, the
following three sections discuss the ways in which individuals locate
themselves close or far away from what they perceive as the value
system associated with soap operas. I draw primarily from women’s
words and only selectively refer to male participants in order to
demonstrate how some discourses become gender-specific.
(1) Distance
One of the main findings of this study is the contradiction revealed in
sustained viewing of soap operas on the one hand and the dismissal of
their value on the other. While most women admit watching soap
operas on Arabic television, the persistence of a discourse of distance
from the cultural politics these soap operas represent is striking.
Women distance themselves from the dominant discourses they see
reflected in the soap operas in different ways. Some are not dissimilar
to the resistance to soap operas’ cultural politics recorded among
western audiences in earlier studies (Livingstone 1995). Others have a
distinct transnational tint and relate to diasporic processes of
distanciation from regional cultural politics and regional hegemonic
perceptions of gender relations. I discuss different expressions of a
‘sense of distance’ as the tendency to locate one’s subjectivity as much
as possible outside the cultural and moral framework associated with
Arabic language soap operas.
The subgroup that most notably distant themselves from the soap
operas are middle-class younger women, though this is not an
exclusively middle-class discourse. One of the reappearing discourses
of distance is that of emphasizing the disconnection between watching
and taking soap operas seriously.
I watch them but they don’t affect my life (Female, 18Á25).
The only reason I watch this stuff is people. People influence me
(Female, 18Á25).
They [relatives] will impose soap operas upon me because it’s very
important part of their lives (Female, 26Á45)
Locating one’s self outside what is seen as a ‘mass’ of viewers of Arabic
television is usually associated with a middle-class identity and a
transnational version of media literacy. Women who position themselves
in this way also demonstrate a sense of critical viewership
876 Myria Georgiou
informed by their own experience within and across different cultures.
These same women often ‘compare and contrast’ programmes of the
same genre they watch in different television networks (e.g. British and
Arabic).
I don’t understand why this [fascination] is seen as only in the Arab
world. It’s the same with Gossip Girl11
. It’s not deep but people still
watch it and relate to it. (Female, 18Á25).
Eastenders . . . is a perfect representation of how the English live
their lives. I think they got it spot on . . . It is like our soaps (Female,
18Á25).
These women draw from their media literacy in dissociating themselves
from the soap operas and the perceived cultural context of their
consumption. As media savvy audiences they also project an awareness
of the banality of soap opera consumption in the context of
everyday life.
A variation of this position emphasizes ‘western’ identity vis-a`-vis
migrant generation’s dependence on an inevitably limited placespecific
understanding of the wider world.
My mum actually thinks it’s real [stories of women being taking
advantage by men in soap operas] . . . I suppose it’s ’cause of the way
they grew up back then. We live in the western world so we are
exposed to this stuff anyway, whereas for them these things are
new . . . a big shock (Female, 26Á45).
This distancing mechanism reflects more than an attitude towards
specific programmes; it also reflects discourses of a gendered diasporic
self. It is also supported by a critical reading of gender relations in the
Arab world. The historical Bab AlHarrah provided a reference for a
number of women to express their disapproval of conservative systems
of marriage in the Arab region. Some linked the serial’s conservatism
with the dominant framework of its consumption.
There are a lot of Arab women who are dying to get married and I
think this kind of programmes teach them what to do and what guys
want (Female, 18Á25).
I kind of feel sorry for them: housewives who see these things and
want to be like that (Female, 18Á25).
Emphasizing their distance from female audiences in their region
of origin, appears as a classist, even an Orientalist, discourse. It
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 877
sometimes reveals another side of the story: a detachment from gender
politics these women want to be dissociated from and which they try to
resist.
Most of the Arab families we met in London put themselves in this
bubble where they think their culture is so pure . . . they become very
protective, very extreme . . . their daughters wear veil from the age of
10 . . . We’ve been exposed to a lot of that, especially because we are
not veiled (Female, 18Á25).
This example shows that for some the tensions associated with gender
relations are not only located on the screen and in the Arab region but
also within the local community where they live.
Women participating in most focus groups expressed some sense of
distance from the Arab world and its perceived dominant value
system. However, only a small minority would rigidly dissociate
themselves from this system. For most, a sense of distance was
ambivalent and often interchangeably used as a discourse alongside
that of proximity. This ambivalence is best captured in the discussion
on critical proximity in section 3.
(2) Proximity
The flip side of distance is proximity. With proximity I refer to
participants’ strong identification with their region of origin and its
culture.I draw from La Pastina and Straubhaar’s (2005) discussion on
cultural proximity and migrant audiences. A sense of proximity was
primarily revealed in two ways. First, women used soap operas as a key
reference when constructing a sense of homeliness around a value
system they identify as Arabic and which they recognize in televisual
representations. These include family values, decency, solidarity,
bravery. The second way they identify with the soap operas is
expressed as genre proximity (La Pastina and Straubhaar 2005). In
this case, Arabic soap operas play a comforting role in everyday life,
especially through escapism, not dissimilar to other soap operas (Ang
1985; Livingstone 1991).
Alongside other media genres consumed regularly, soap operas play
an important role in managing distance from people and places in the
region of origin. The sense of proximity takes two generation-specific
incarnations. Among older migrant women, soap operas tend to
bridge geographical distance and reconcile separation. This is
expressed as a nostalgic discourse, for example when older migrant
women describe watching familiar places on the screen and feeling
‘home-sick’. In its younger generation version, soap operas are not
only supporting existing systems of communication. They also thicken
878 Myria Georgiou
and reinvent their qualities, especially when there is a sense that other
people share the same products across territories.
All my cousins watch it [Bab AlHarrah] in Iraq, the USA and
Germany. I think everyone around the world watched Bab AlHarrah
(Female, 18Á25).
Arabic TV feels like home cause when you watch something you can
talk about it and you feel connected (Female, 18Á25).
Such comments demonstrate the role of television in supporting a
sense of community, perhaps not unlike a national imagined community
(Anderson 1993). A community of viewers also comes together to
talk about their consumption at different platforms. Pictures associated
with viewing uploaded on Facebook, participation on Facebook
soap opera fan groups, Skype conversations with relatives are some of
the examples given in explaining how the shared cultural experiences
are sustained.
Zahra12
reached such a wide demographic. My 9-year-old brother
was speaking on Skype to my uncle who’s 55 in Cairo and was
asking him ‘Did you watch Zahra?’ (Female, 18Á25).
People put on Facebook pictures of Muhanad’s house13
(Female,
26Á45).
A sense of community is supported by moral values many recognize as
qualities of Arab culture. Bab AlHarrah, a historical serial, is often
referred to as a vehicle for travelling through time and space to an ideal
Arab world. While for some, as discussed in the previous section,
representations of gender relations in this serial reflect an Arabic
dystopia, for others Bab AlHarrah’s gender representations are
admirable. Some of the youngest participants make comments such
as: ‘I like the bravery of its characters’; ‘Women are so feminine and
men so brave’; ‘I think it’s enabling communication, what is missing in
any relationship’. Serials such as Bab AlHarrah reveal most vividly the
significance of television in providing material for imagining a
transnational community.
[Bab AlHarrah] kind of reminds you of home. It’s familiar.
Circumstances are so different to our lives here. Like here, our lives
are so planned. There, it’s more spontaneous (Females, 18Á25).
It is important to locate soap operas on Arabic television within a
particularism-universalism continuum (Robertson 1993). While soap
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 879
operas play a distinct role in supporting a sense of moral particularism,
they are also located within a global system of television
production and consumption. Earlier discussions on melodrama as a
genre for female escapism (Ang 1985; Livingstone 1991) remain
relevant. Only in this case, escapism takes a diasporic twist,
particularly for some of the women who express their anxiety about
news and events that take place in their region of origin. Soap operas
represent an alternative to the news-intense televisual environment of
Arabic transnational television. The words of two female participants
from the 46Á65 age group capture this particularity:
Sometimes your health can’t take it and you want to switch off and
watch a silly soap opera.
I watch lots of things apart from news to be honest because my
nerves can’t take it. Especially when something big is happening in
Iraq or Palestine or Lebanon I get really stressed. So I watch soaps.
Daily media consumption of different genres becomes a way of
sustaining a cognitive proximity with a region of origin (through
news), while filtering it through the emotional distance offered in
‘escapist’ genres, such as soap operas. In this way, soap operas become
supporting mechanisms of proximity, especially because they surpass
tensions associated with political geographies.
(3)Critical proximity
For many Arab women in the diaspora, making sense of their viewing
reveals an ordinary and constant shift between proximity and distance
from their region of origin. Some distance themselves from the
hegemonic meanings associated with soap opera production and texts,
reflecting a transnational cosmopolitan habitus, while others embrace
them as an element of diasporic everyday life that supports their
connection with distant people and places. Cutting across proximity
and distance, critical proximity demonstrates that it is possible to
sustain cultural links with the region of origin without surrendering a
set of values associated with their life in the diaspora. Diasporic
affiliation thus becomes less of a process of choosing between either/or
and more of a process combining this and thus (Beck 2006). This is
particularly the case for younger participants, who tend to use a variety
of media to manage relations of proximity and distance more
effectively. Here, I discuss critical proximity in relation to the integrated
media consumption of these participants and in relation to their
reflexive engagement with mediated gender representations.
880 Myria Georgiou
The case of the Turkish soap operas represents a fascinating case for
illustrating critical proximity, especially because it has challenged the
limits of gender representation. It represents a globally-recognized
televisual genre of popular appeal, but it also represents a particular
regional version of it: circulated and consumed in Arabic cultural
spaces but not originating in the Arabic cultural space, Turkish soap
operas are characterized by a cultural ambivalence which has parallels
to diasporic ambivalence. As in any case of transnationally circulated
soap operas, there is always an interplay between the universality of
themes and the particularity of the context they are interpreted in
(Liebes and Katz 1990). The thematic specificity of the Turkish soap
operas has no doubt played a role in their success. Turkish soap operas
are not ‘other’ to Arab audiences; Islam is part of the shared history of
the audiences, so are arranged marriage Á one of the themes in Noor Á
and family ties, especially around patriarchal figures. As the soap
operas themselves play with conflicting values of tradition and
modernity, and conservative religious values and secularism, they
make available to diasporic audiences different layers of proximity.
Women often reflected on the public debates around the Turkish soap
operas and the ways in which they have challenged hegemonic models
of gender relations. An exchange in one of the 18Á25 groups on the
main character of the soap opera Nour is revealing:
- Roles have been overemphasised in Arab families, you know,
patriarchy. Mother is home cooking. The fact that Nour is working
and leading her own life and is strong-minded makes women think:
‘why am I not like this? Why can’t I get someone to admire me like
Muhanad14
?
- Exactly, it raises awareness about patriarchy and female oppres-
sion.
It is important to locate this discussion at the juxtaposition of a
middle-class urban Arabic experience Á which has similarities to social
experiences of urban middle-class women in Cairo (Abu-Lughod
2005) Á and the experience of media savvy members of a western
audience. Turkish soap operas usually represent an element of young
women’s integrated media consumption. As some say: ‘I watch
different television serials really’; ‘Percentage-wise I used to
watch more Arabic than English, but now it’s the same’; ‘Mostly I
watch BBC and I read the news’.
In an integrated media environment where genres and formats are
circulated transnationally, proximity and distance seize from being
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 881
exclusively a matter of diasporic and linguistic particularity. They also
become elements of gendered, generational, and classed media
consumption.
We always have this discussion. It’s not just Arabic TV. Look at
90210 and the girls are over the top and extreme and everything
(Female, 18Á25).
I don’t watch Arabic TV. It’s usually my parents (Females, 18Á25).
I watch a variety to see the different points of view and to make my
own conclusions (Female, 26Á45).
The more media-literate participants were, the more likely they were to
locate media in the socio-political environment where they take their
meanings.
I don’t think there’s anything special about Nour . . . Producers look
for something different and conservatives look for something to
attack (Female, 18Á25).
If you watch old Arabic movies, they make Noor look like a
nun . . . .My grandmother could wear a mini dress and go
around . . . now you have to wear a full veil and there’s a certain
decorum about how you carry yourself as a woman. Noor just goes
full circle (Female, 18Á25).
Religious conservativism was attacked by many women of different
ages. For some, it merges with liberal gender conservativism in the
soap operas.
My mother is a feminist and so she says they [soap operas] are
objectifying women and making fun of women (Female, 18Á25).
The above represents a rare example of critique on soap operas’ role in
gender politics. In a variation of this discourse, some men focused on
soap operas’ negative effect for public debate. The words of a man in
the 26Á45 group capture some of these concerns:
I was in Egypt last summer and the only thing that mattered in
everyone’s house was what’s going on with Muhanad . . . It’s funny
’cause when I was there no one had any time for politics. Whichever
house you went to it was like ‘How good looking is Muhanad’ and
‘Did you see that episode last night?’
882 Myria Georgiou
In these words, this man locates himself in a position of inside outsider
(Simmel 1908) as he feels both concerned and able to reflect from a
distance on the problems with political deliberation in Egypt. His
frustration about the commodification of the public sphere could also
be read as frustration with the ‘feminization’ of the domestic and the
public sphere. His comments sparked a lively debate on Turkish soaps
and morality. Another participant described how an Imam in London
asked men to ban these soap operas from their homes and how he was
shocked with a discourse he found irrelevant to his life in London. In
dismissing the conservative religious leader’s inappropriate call, a third
man expressed his own concerns in a way that is more compatible with
western liberal values:
You can say that these programmes have had an effect on
families . . . I think we need to take some of the blame.
As this man dismisses the Imam’s call, he appears both media literate
and politically critical. At the same time, he dismisses the soap operas,
reconfirming hegemonic patriarchal politics about the inferiority of a
genre associated with female pleasure.
It is perhaps in genres like soap operas that some of the tensions
associated with the conflicting ideologies of Arab modernity, as
recorded by Kraidy and Abu-Lughod can be most vividly revealed.
The space around soap opera consumption becomes a battlefield of
ideas around the representation of gender, the self, and morality, in
similar ways as in the case of their production (Abu-Lughod 2005).
Diasporic audiences engage with the battle of ideas between the urban
middle classes against Islamist ‘neotraditionalization’ (ibid.) and, in
this way, become actively engaged with the political and cultural life in
the Arab world. Yet, their exposure to these ideological struggles
inevitably forces them to reflect on their own position in Arabic
cultural politics. Critical proximity appears as a way, especially for
younger generation, to manage ambivalence.
Critical proximity does not oppose the thesis of cultural proximity,
rather it updates it in the context of the transnationalization of
mediascapes. This is particularly the case with audiences who use
media associated with different cultural and linguistic zones and whose
engagement with most media becomes increasingly conditional and
subject to a daily system of comparing and contrasting.
Conclusions
What this discussion has demonstrated is that a popular genre, such as
soap operas, can become a vehicle for imaginative travel towards the
region of origin but also a vehicle for travelling back into a diasporic
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 883
space. Diasporic Arab women’s practices and reflections are shaped at
the meeting of the soap operas’ textual specificity and the realities of
the social and cultural worlds they occupy: as women, as Arabs, as
Muslims, but also as members of a diaspora, as Londoners, and as
members of western societies. They also reflect the banality and
ordinariness of media consumption, which is observed among
transnational audiences as much as among other audiences (Aksoy
and Robins 2000; Karanfil 2009).
Arab women in London reaffirm their sense of cultural proximity to
the Middle East, but in their own gendered diasporic terms: they adopt
a position of distance and relative strangeness, as this is defined by
Simmel (1908, 1976)) to be a position of inside outsider. A diasporic
sense of critical proximity retains some of the characteristics of the
stranger in Simmel’s sense. The stranger is a wanderer, but also
represents the ‘union of closeness and remoteness’ (Simmel
1908(1976), p. 143). The stranger can confront all elements of a group
‘objectively’ because she is not bound to any particular element of it;
‘an attitude that does not represent mere detachment and nonparticipation,
but is a distinct structure composed of remoteness and
nearness, indifference and involvement’ (Simmel 1908(1976), p. 144).
The interplay between remoteness and nearness captures some of the
realities of diasporic attachment to cultural politics of their origin. The
reaffirmation of cultural proximity through distance is a political
position that destabilizes hegemonic understandings of Arabness and
more specifically of female Arabness. It is a politics emerging in a
three-dimensional space of belonging that Arab female participants
construct: when they reflect on what it means to be an Arab through
female practices, such as watching soap operas; when they voice
desires and concerns about their life at home and in the diaspora by
making comparisons and connections; when they critically reflect on
the political and moral limits of an assumed singular transnational
Arabic imagined community.
Notes
1. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European
Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007Á2013 under grant agreement n8
217480.
2. I prefer the concept of ‘region of origin’ to ‘country of origin’ as the latter misses the
association of diasporic groups with regions and not just nations.
3. Arabic language broadcasts take the sixth place in the world with 526 channels (Albizu
2007). The rise of satellite Arabic television emerged as a counter-point to the controlled and
censored Middle Eastern national mediascapes (Kraidy 2010) but also to western media
which are often seen to misrepresent Arabs and the Muslim world (Downing and Husband
2005; Gillespie 2006)
884 Myria Georgiou
4. Television and the ideological battles it represents are of course located and linked to
the broader socio-political domain where television is produced and consumed. Television
audiences thus are not only audiences but also members of social groups with specific
interests and experiences.
5. Telenovelas are the Latin American version of soap operas.
6. Noor is the name of the first very successful Turkish soap opera on Arabic television.
7. Taking the sensitivity of the issue, we did not directly ask participants about their legal
status.
8. We chose the neutral ‘Arab-speaker’ definition in order to avoid assumptions about the
participants’ identities.
9. While identifying as Arabs was common among participants this was rarely the only
way people would identify. Many also identified as British, Londoners, and/or members of
another national community (e.g. Egyptians).
10. Popular historical soap opera produced in Syria.
11. American soap opera popular with youth.
12. Egyptian soap opera with an over-sexualised female protagonist.
13. A site reproducing Noor’s settings in Turkey has become a tourist attraction.
14. The main male character in the Turkish soap opera Noor.
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MYRIA GEORGIOU teaches at the Department of Media and
Communications, London School of Economics.
ADDRESS: Dept of Media and Communications, London School of
Economics, London WC2A 2AE. Email: m.a.georgiou@lse.ac.uk
Watching soap opera in the diaspora 887
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