Keywords
Myth
Ideology
Identity
Stereotype
Categories
How to Cite
Abstract
Television soaps and serials in private television channels have swept the Indian market in the last few decades. These soap operas have been upholding the socio-cultural patterns of the country through their contents. In the construction of Indian cultural landscape Indian women and their roles in society are the most vulnerable sites. The linkage of national identity and tradition with Indian women’s roles in society places them in a problematic position, given the patriarchal nature of Indian society. Soap operas on Indian television mostly depict women as homely and tradition-bound. Though there are portrayals of educated, professional women but they are also shown to find solace in the family. This paper tries to trace the image of the Indian Woman that has been endorsed by the Indian soap operas since its beginning and in doing so it tries to explore the implications of certain myths and ideologies that drive the story writers and the producers to de-recognize the changes in the contemporary society and to fall back on projecting stereotypical images; thus giving preference to social identity while ignoring individual identity of a woman.
References
Allen, R. C. (1995). To Be Continued - Soap Operas Around the World. New York: Routledge.
Centre for Advocacy & Research (2007). Packaging the contemporary woman intelevision fiction: Deconstructing the role of 'commerce' and 'tradition'. In R. Ghadially (Eds.). Urban women in contemporary India: A reader (183 - 196). New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments. Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691201429
Chaudhury, M. (2001). Gender and Advertisements: the Rhetoric of Globalization. Women's Studies International Forum, 24(3) 373-385. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-5395(01)00174-1
Dasgupta, S., Sinha, D. & Chakravarti, S. (Eds.) (2012). Media Gender and Polpular Culture in India - Tracking Change and Continuity. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Derne, S. (1995). Culture in Action: Family Life, Emotion, and Male Dominance in Banaras, India. New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Despande, A. (2009). Class, Power and Consciousness in Indian Cinema and Television. Delhi: Primus Books.
Fazal, S. (2009). Emancipation or Anchored Individualism? Women and TV soaps in India. In W. Dissanayake & M. K. Gokulsingh (Ed.). Popularculture in a globalized world (p. 41-52). New York, NY: Routledge.
Fernandes, L. (2000). Nationalizing 'The Global': Media images, Cultural Politics and the Middle Class in India. Media, Culture and Society, 22(5), 611-628. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344300022005005
Fiske, J. (1987). Television Culture. London: Routledge.
Gupta, N. (1998). Switching Channels - Ideologies of Television in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Jaggi, R. (2011). The Great Indian Television Soap Opera: Issues of Identity and Socio-cultural Dynamics. Media Asia, 38(3), 140-145. https://doi.org/10.1080/01296612.2011.11726893
Jung, C. G. (1970). Archetypes and the collective unconscious. Buenos Aires: Ed. Paidos.
Krishnan, P. & Dighe, A. (1990). Affirmation and Denial. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Kumar, J. K. (2011). Mass Communication in India. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House.
Mankekar, P. (1993). National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City. American Ethnologist, 20(3), 543-563. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1993.20.3.02a00050
Mankekar, P. (1999). Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smpn1
Mazzarella, W. (2003). Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822385196
McMillin, D.C. (2002). Ideologies of Gender on Television in India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 9(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/097152150200900101
Mitra, A. (1993). Television and popular culture in India: A study of the Mahabharat. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Morgan, M. & Signorielli, N. (1990). Cultivation analysis: conceptualization and methodology. In N. Signorielli, & M. Morgan (Eds.) (1990). Cultivation analysis: New directions in media effects research (p. 13-34). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Munshi, S. (2010). Prime time soap operas on Indian television. New Delhi: Routledge.
Narayan, U. (1997). Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Tradition and Third-World Feminism. New York, NY: Routledge.
Parameswaran, R. E. (2004). Spectacles of Gender and Globalization: Mapping Miss World's Media Event Space in the News. The Communication Review, 7(4), 371- 406. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714420490886970
Punwani, J. (1988). Woman versus womanliness in India: An essay in social and political psychology. In R. Ghadially (Ed.) (1988). Women in Indian society (p.225-232). New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Rajagopal, A. (2001). Politics after television: Hindu nationalism and the reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489051
Singhal, A. & Rogers, E. M. (1999). Entertainment-Education: A communication strategy for social change. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.