FEMINISM AND THE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN INDIAN SOAP OPERAS- It’s time to have that conversation

Pratik Maitra

BBA LLB, Batch: 2020-2025

The media is a powerful weapon for change. Cable television has quickly spread across India due to its low cost and ease of use. The purpose of this blog article is to look at how Indian soap operas represent women from a feminist perspective. The author has employed a content analysis technique to investigate how women are portrayed in Indian soap operas (from a feminist perspective) in order to discover the patterns of values and ideologies conveyed by these shows in terms of women empowerment.

INTRODUCTION

Women have long been represented as objects of desire by the media, and they have been looked at as a commodity in a male-dominated society. Despite the fact that the world has changed, women continue to combat gender stereotypes, exploitation, and inequality today. In terms of the objective portrayal of gender issues, media intervention is still several notches below the realistic graph. There is a chasm between the media’s portrayal of women and women’s expectations which perpetuates gender stereotypes. Today, women are becoming the primary capital of the media economy in general and the TV economy in particular. Regional television stations have evolved into a pillar of local culture, reflecting the region’s language, lifestyle, socioeconomic standing, and aspirations. The information we acquire from the media has ramifications for how we perceive our own and other cultures. Mediated communication is an important form of cross-cultural communication.[i] Creating possibilities, recognizing their existence, employing the language of acceptance, and bridging the gap between media and the regional language audience are all part of media inclusion. Regional television stations have evolved into a pillar of local culture, reflecting the region’s language, lifestyle, socioeconomic standing, and aspirations. The information we acquire from the media has ramifications for how we perceive our own and other cultures. Mediated communication is an important form of cross-cultural communication. Creating possibilities, recognizing their existence, employing the language of acceptance, and bridging the gap between media and the regional language audience are all part of media inclusion.[ii] The depiction and mediated experience of gender is complicated due to social and cultural variables. From a gender viewpoint, media speech must be encoded and decoded. The audience, particularly women, has evolved into a consumer market. The content on television is referred to as ‘Gender Blind.’

Feminist media studies should focus on the meaning that audiences derive from characters depicted on television. The necessity for feminist study, particularly in relation to cultural feminist media studies, is urgent. We need to take a hard look at how men and women are positioned. Media texts are gendered according to the audience’s expectations, and they are primarily male-dominated. Politics, sports, and economics are all more geared towards masculine audiences. 

CONCLUSION

 Women continue to be drawn to patriarchal messages in the media. Gender is reflected in both production and content. Women in their 70s are becoming more marginalized, but soap operas and chat shows with female audiences are reinforcing prejudices once more. Women’s purchasing power is growing, and as a result, feminizing tendencies in the media are emerging to appeal to a female audience. Women are frequently depicted in traditional frames on regional television. Women are depicted in TV serials, news, and criminal stories using stereotypical gender frames.[iii] The Aarushi murder case, in which the victim was stigmatized under patriarchal cultural gender construction and the news was nothing but tabloidization. 

To sum up, soap operas are a difficult television genre to analyze. Its entertainment value cannot be overlooked, and the social subject of women’s freedom cannot be ignored. Soaps have somehow failed to combine the two for solely commercial reasons. The ideological formation of nation, womanhood, and identity is heavily influenced by popular culture. Soaps have the opportunity to portray contemporary women in a less stereotyped and more positive light. Indian soap operas have shown to be yet another upholder of the status quo when it comes to women, with the framework of “family” and “kitchen” as her realm and gossip as her interest. Soaps are heavily influenced by patriarchy, which maintains women’s submissive position within the household. In today’s Indian soap operas, the hunt for a ‘future’ is sadly hopeless.

REFERENCES

[i] Jeanne Prinsloo, Where Are the Women? Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 40–49, (1996).

[ii] Ojha, P. (2011), Women’s Issues in India: Role and Importance of Media, 72(1) THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, 87–102. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42761809.

[iii] Mankekar, P, National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City, 20(3) AMEICAN ETHNOLOGIST, 543–563 (1993). https://www.jstor.org/stable/646641.