Abstract
This chapter is based on fieldwork with Sri Lankan migrant women at a diasporic soap opera club of a Sinhalese cultural association in Melbourne, Australia. The transnational nature of nationalist discourses on womanhood and the quotidian interpretations of those meanings in diasporic spaces are examined in this chapter through analyses of women’s conversations of mega teledrama narratives at the teledrama club. This chapter shows how the women extended watching soap operas in the homes to a social act of talking about the narratives and exchanging DVDs in the diasporic cultural space of the teledrama club. It discusses how the women’s teledrama club enabled the construction of emotional support networks in the diasporic space, also facilitating a space to practise their home country media cultures where they seek a symbolic cultural identity as a television audience in Australia.
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Notes
- 1.
Members did not only reside in Dandenong but those from Northern and other South Eastern suburbs also attended the meetings.
- 2.
The existence of Sri Lankan Tamil, Muslim and Burgher associations in Melbourne prior to this time and the absence of a Sinhalese collective presence in Melbourne is stated as a ‘problem’ that was addressed by this association in their inaugural newsletters.
- 3.
Many Sinhalese diasporic association gatherings in Melbourne are held in council-run community centres.
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Gamage, S. (2021). Soap Operas and Long-Distance Audiences. In: Soap Operas, Gender and the Sri Lankan Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70632-6_4
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