This long video doesn’t have great sound quality, but is well worth a peek. It goes into the history behind the popularity of Indian serials, and the implications of the ways in which women are depicted in them.
In the 80s, women were depicted in the ‘insider’ role of housewife, while men had the ‘outsider’ role. Usually the women were loving, caring etc, portraying the feminine ideals, but if not, they were the deviant and ultimately ended up suffering because of her mistakes. ‘There was always that kind of black-and-white characterisation of female roles.’ This began to change in the 90s, where women were moving out of the house, which was followed by a backlash and women moved back into the households! But this time she was portrayed as having more of a personality, very well dressed, and could also be working. Ms. Kidwai says that Ekta Kapoor has ‘a complete ritualisation of the family’, portraying them as very large, and is a ‘hegemony of the middle class’ (‘invisibilisation of the working class’).
Can we, as academics or as women, condemn a genre or a way a genre portrays women, despite the fact that women derives a certain amount of pleasure from it?
It’s a very sanitised version that you get, even of a middle class family… So we need to question, whose reality is reflected?
In the discussion on Ekta Kapoor, and the return to ritual as the antidote to modernity, the host remarks, ‘They’ve reduced constraint to the level of fun.’ Even despite the raising of taboo issues like rape, the focus remains on the individual and the message is that it should be dealt with only by the family.
‘There is an attempt to delimit and carve out a niche for her, that that is where she belongs; it is the home. And that is something which is very sick… That is very pernicious, because nowhere is there an attempt to redefine gender roles and stereotypes.’
I agree with Dr. Dighe:
‘I’d like to see women characters who’ve defied certain social norms and who’ve made it in life, have succeeded… Then women in a similar predicament could identify with those characters. Because right now we have no such role models at all. I’d like to see more of the kinds of struggles that women are engaged in… because now with the women’s movement also in a sense is probably not as strong as it used to be, but nevertheless it is still very vibrant. Gender, women’s issues can no longer be ignored.’
