Paper short abstract:

This paper will take a comparative look at women audiences watching Hindi TV serials in two cities of southern India, and following them on online platforms, through ethnographic research.

Paper long abstract:

The few indepth ethnographic studies of Indian television daily soaps, referred to as TV serials, on audience reception (Mankekar 2009) and the process of production (Munshi 2009) show the nuanced ways in which various stakeholders view daily soaps, the stories and the characters. Even so, representation of women in daily soaps has come for widespread attention and criticism (CFAR, EPW 2003). Television serials in India are often dismissed as being regressive, unrealistic, and melodramatic, presenting some form of 'hyper-reality' (Ranganathan 2006). In the popular media, the "decontextualised television watcher" (Abu-Lughod1997), usually a woman, and a 'housewife', is assumed to be devoid of any agency in deciding on the serials to be watched, and to be rejected. However, the tremendous popularity of TV serials, and constant reference to well-known characters from the television world in everyday conversations, call for more scholarly attention. Based on recent fieldwork amongst women viewers, in Chennai and Hyderabad, and amongst online members of a forum dedicated exclusively to discussing Hindi television soaps, this paper argues that the 'average television serial viewer' is a non-entity. It will focus on the complex ways in which women viewers 'connect' to the characters, stories, and TV channels. The various ways in which live audiences and online fans simultaneously engage with, challenge, manipulate and internalise the stories and characters, bring forth the tremendous sense of agency and articulation, through use of multiple technologies, including the social media networks.