Past Read: Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. (University Of Chicago Press, 2004)

Among the issues facing scholars of various areas of twentieth and twenty-first century history, including nationalism, transnational identities, cultural flows, and migration, is the thorny issue of the near pervasive - and increasing - influence of modern media. From the rise of satellite television in the late 1970s, to twenty-four hour news and infotainment by the end of the '80s, to the internet in the '90s, and finally social media in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the way that whole populations interact with mass media-produced and -distributed information has shifted fundamentally. Even more crucially, media have also sped up exponentially. There is little question that it will take some time yet for scholars to develop methodologies and theoretical approaches capable of adequately accommodating this quantum leap. Yet it is equally clear that any discussion of culture and modernity will be lacking if it does not include the acknowledgement that television and media are integral parts of daily life starting in the late twentieth-century, and that this is the case among the rich and the poor, the global south and the global north. The way that the media present, comment upon, react to, and relate with identity is increasingly essential to any commentary on contemporary history.

In the mid-90s, media studies scholars coined the term "parasocial identification." It means, in essence, the viewing audience's feeling of friendship and kinship with television characters; the sense of personal loss that members of the viewing audience feel when a television show is cancelled or reaches the end of its run and they are no longer are able to "see" the characters with whom they have spent so much time. Parasocial identification is unique when compared to the way that people feel about characters in books or on the stage; as much as many describe a sense of familiarity and affection for characters in novels, as much as they may see themselves mirrored when watching Iago, Juliet, or Hamlet, parasocial identification is much closer to a feeling of actual friendship with someone who exists on the screen. It is a uniquely, quite literally "mediated" sense, and it creates interesting implications for national and religious identification, as well political affiliation. (Is it any wonder that modern Americans have voted for presidential office based on their feeling of parasocial identification with a candidate? Why else would whether or not they would have a beer with a candidate be a subject for consideration?) Though abu-Lughod does not use the term, her analysis weaves around it as a concept. How do television serials represent us? Shape us? Reflect us? How do they interact with and inform our way of perceiving ourselves within the complex relationships of both nationalism and internationalism?

Lila abu-Lughod seeks to tackle these issues in her ambitious and very perceptive work, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (2009). Methodologically, she works with three different groups, first:

...interlocking networks of writers, directors, producers, actors, government officials, and critics who make serials, put them on air, and debate their significance in publications and social gatherings. The second research site is a peri-urban village near Luxor, Upper Egypt. This community is deeply involved in the tourist industry bringing visitors to ancient Egyptian sites, but it is on the margins of the contemporary Egyptian state. The third 'site' comprises conversations with a selection of impoverished women household workers in Cairo - women who, though regarded as the stereotypical audience of dramatic serials, have a marginal place in the rural communities from which most of them come and in the city in which they are employed (x).