Looking at Television: An exploration of the different ways Gujarati-speaking Indian Hindu diasporic women look at and engage with television during their daily viewings of prime-time Hindi serials

Mita Lad

This is the title of my PhD thesis that set out to break away from long established discussions around how an audience member looks at and engages with television. In the thesis I actively tried to move away from simplifying an audiences’ look and engagement down to the gaze (Mulvey, 1975) and the glance (Ellis, 1981). I take approaches grounded in cultural studies to explore what impact, if any, an audience members’ religion, background, experience of television, life experiences may have on how a person looks at and engages with television. With this in mind I focused my research on a small group of Gujarati speaking Indian Hindu diasporic women, who live in the UK as my audience. The research centred on their daily viewings of prime time Hindi language serials to see if other ways of looking and engagement could be established, not necessarily for general use, but specifically applicable to these women.