Televized Sisterhood

I’m sorry this post is a week too late but I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between the suburban housewife and television programming and how, following McLuhan’s assertion that we are the media we consume, we can ratify the response this particular demographic exhibits to primetime programming, especially, in the Indian context.

Television in India took off to stratospheric heights post liberalization in the early 90’s which allowed both private and foreign investors to engage in industry operations. Following the subsequent channel explosion primetime programming, in its most popular (and lucrative) format came to rest upon a genre similar to the western soap named the ‘serial’ (ostensibly owing to the serialized format of programming). While there has been a fair amount of experimentation in theme and content, one can reasonably describe the bulk of this programming as focused on women-related issues, specifically the relationship between a woman and her husband’s family, with all its attendant concerns ranging from grave social issues such as women’s emancipation, child marriage, dowry etc. to somewhat antiquated (nonetheless selectively relevant) familial concerns such as a nitpicking mother-in-law, a conniving sister-in-law, caste issues etc.

What amazes me about these serials is their capacity to reaffirm, even as they strangely subvert, some truly regressive notions of femininity as they display a male subjugation that borders on servitude and an idealized womanhood that is both incongruous and self-defeatist in contemporary times. The woman in this televised world is always decked up in heavy-duty saris (traditional Indian garb), dripping with gold and diamond jewelry and caked with makeup fit to warrant an effortless entry into the Indian version of What Not to Wear (were such a show to exist)! What makes the whole setup even more bizarre is that these women cook, talk, dance, sing, eat and even sleep with this highly contrived look in place 24/7 in the plotted world of their televised existence.

As an ex-advertising brand manager, I often had the chance to interview middle class and lower middle class housewives (as defined according to a socioeconomic grid created by research analysts specifically for urban metropolitan cities) and the conversation would more often than not steer to their media consumption habits, prominent amongst which was their viewership of these serials. Contrary to my excessive disparagement at what I felt was (and continues to be) a shamefully regressive pattern of allegiance to a nationally inscribed feminine identity; here was roomful after roomful of women who were most vocal in their subscription to the viewpoints propagated in these texts. Was/ is the average Indian housewife a relapsing figure who only aspires to submit to a patriarchal domination? Strangely enough, what these women were getting out of the serials was a subliminally coded message of female empowerment even though the approach was decidedly orthodox. Somehow, the daily squabbling between mother and daughter-in-law, the family’s fall to disgrace because of a relative’s betrayal or the differential treatment accorded to the daughter-in-law from a wealthier family was getting decoded as an empathetic representation of daily struggles combined with a strangely feminist advocacy that prescribed noble suffering and resilience as the logical path to achieving a matriarchal familial status. Opinions ranged from (paraphrased here) “that is exactly my story”, “… I learned that confrontation does not always help and when my mother in law tried to incite my husband against me, I just kept quiet like she (character in serial) does…” to “whenever I get overwhelmed with what’s happening in my life, I ask myself what Tulsi (character) would have done” thereby essaying the significance of the role the shows were playing for these women’s lives. For, while the roles essayed may have a traditional bent, the setting is blatantly a feminine space; male characters play at best supporting roles (even in romances) and conflicts are staged largely between female characters.

Updated to cater to contemporary audiences, today these serials incorporate a (relatively) more refined sartorial sensibility, characters that are somewhat more realistic and themes that extend outside the domestic homefront to the working world and, in the other direction, to rural settings; yet they are still all about the average Indian middle-class woman, her concerns, her frustrations and, perhaps most importantly, her much strived for triumphs.