Shifting Dynamics: A Reflection on Ramadan Living Room Connections

• Reporter: Tia Khalil
• Edited by: Maya Abouelnasr
• Photographer: Mariam Galal

As the Maghreb call to prayer floods the country, families and friends sit in unison breaking their fast with Ramez, an Egyptian TV host’s annual prank show, playing in the background. Hands stretch across the table moving plates from one end to another with conversations building around what Ramadan shows are good this year. 

With full stomachs and curious minds, a migration to the living room begins as dessert and warm cups of Al Arousa red tea are passed around, with all eyes glued to the television waiting for the newest episode of their latest fixation. 

During the influx of advertisement breaks, political commentary of the outside world seeps into the four-walled room, interjected between quick reviews of what’s being displayed on the screens before them. 

As the latest episode of Ramez resumes, so does the redirection of focus and the cycle repeats itself throughout Ramadan.

But this dynamic has slowly dissipated with the increase in on-demand streaming. Now there’s no need for people to gather around a television set to watch the newest episodes of their desired show—it’s all available with a click of a button.

Yet, this leaves room for a larger conversation to take place of whether there is a shift in the living room dynamics, having it not be a place during Ramadan where people sit and watch series together but rather a room with a repurposed narrative. 

On-demand streaming platforms have allowed more space for privacy and created rather new dynamics, especially within tight-knit societies. People in the same household could watch the same show but have an element of connectedness fostered in different ways. 

“Siblings could be watching the same shows, each person on their own time and they could text at night recapping each other or they can bump into each other in the hallway and ask each other what they thought of the newest episode,” said Noha Ezz El-Din Fikry, adjunct professor at the department of Sociology, Egyptology, and Anthropology. 

This shift in dynamic can be extended to families throughout the region, creating a collective experience, but the differentiating denominator predominantly falls on social class. Social class not only creates a transformation in family mobility within the home but also the means of watching television or the shows in question. 

Fikry explained how there’s a formal market of on-demand streaming platforms like Saudi’s Shahid and Egypt’s WatchIt, as well as a parallel informal market of streaming such as Telegram groups. 

These interwoven dynamics lend themselves to be presented in online communities, taking personal conversations into the collective as the need for connection extends beyond the physical living room and into the digital sphere. 

“The structure of the nuclear family has changed, now we have online WhatsApp family group chats, and that allows for us to text more and so on,” said Fikry. 

She further added that larger online communities have created conversations around popular culture, especially during Ramadan times, and discussing the episode’s content through hashtags and memes probing a different type of dynamic. 

Given how these shifts are intimate to the Egyptian nuclear family, within the confinement of their own space, this topic was extended during a focus group conducted with two courses taught by Mennatallah Khalil, adjunct professor at the Department of Sociology, Egyptology, and Anthropology, called Arab Family Structure and Dynamics and Family, Kin and Friends in Egypt. 

The first course interacts with the Arab family as a social institution, while understanding the Middle Eastern qualities that intersect with shifting family dynamics. The latter course offers a zoomed-in exploration of understanding the thematic experiences of change in respect to family/societal structures shifting in conversation with the world’s state. 

These courses offer a space for students to discuss current issues that might be seen in their own homes as a response to the ever-changing nature of the world that surrounds them, with that they’re able to recognize whether these changes exist or not. 

A point that was brought up consecutively during the discussion was how the emergent presence of on-demand screening either tightly brings the family together or pushes them further apart. Those who believed that bonds were strengthened over watching a show together credited this to the family wanting to set time dedicated to being in each other’s presence, given everyone’s eclectic schedules. 

A student in the focus group expressed how she and her family members would eat at disorganized times throughout the day, but that this disconnectedness all changes during Ramadan as they guarantee at least one meal together. The same applies to entertainment series: when they do have Iftar separately, they would reconvene in the living room and watch their shows together. 

She explained that they normally all sit and watch the same shows even if someone isn’t a fan. She gave an example of her father being the only family member who liked Karim Abdel Aziz’s Hashashin (Assassins) in 2024 yet they all sat and watched it with him. 

It could be seen that Ramadan shows act as the glue that connects the family even if they’re physically separated, that was evident when a student expressed how she normally doesn’t watch Arabic shows but that doesn’t stop her from overhearing conversations between her family members during the desert segment of iftar discussing this year’s Ramadan series during their video call with their other daughter who lives abroad. 

However, the same point regarding disorganized scheduling was the reason why others believed that the presence of streaming platforms pushed the family further apart. Some families struggle to find a time that’s suitable for all, which enables each person to watch on their own time, shifting what was once a collective activity into a more solitary one. 

Another common point that was brought up during the focus group was closely related to the time of year in which Ramadan falls. Because the month of fasting follows a lunar calendar, it is 11 days earlier each consecutive year. This translates to mean that in some years it might fall during the summer vacation months, where most may be on vacation and therefore have more free time to partake in Ramadan entertainment.

Case in point, several students pointed out that when Ramadan was in summer, they were able to collectively watch a show. This year, however, Ramadan coincides with the midterm weeks at AUC and is therefore considered one of the busiest times for students.

Despite the students’ collective experience, both focus groups revealed that these transformations and the responses to external forces differ from one family to another.

This led to another aspect that indicated people’s attachment to watching televised episodes with ads that used to serve as an unspoken point of reference between people, but as viewers have shifted from local television to streaming platforms, this language has weakened and people haven’t been able to connect the same way they did before.