POPULAR CULTURE AND WOMEN

 POPULAR CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN

Our world has now become much more smaller and reachable through various ways, be it in terms of connectivity, transportation, technology due to which the exchange of cultural practice and way of living has highly impacted through various media platforms like films, books, social media though rapid technological advancement.

the positive side of this transformation is that we are able to connect and exchange our culture and thoughts but when we talk about the negative aspect of it then we can see that it has given rise to many problems like gender roles in culture, objectification of women, portraying different gender for specific purpose and penetrating such rules and thoughts in the mind of consumers in which majority of population are Millennial.

Culture is something which is not stable for which we always fight over and it's a constantly changing dynamic field where various forces stakeholders seek to negotiate what they understand as a culture. Culture is constantly evolving and the things which are acceptable at one time may not work in current situation.

According to Raymond Williams, culture is:  A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development. A particular way of life, weather of people, a period or a group. The works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity.

The term popular culture is nothing but the transformational form of the word “culture” which is generally based on sets of beliefs and thoughts of common people or population. For example the cricket sport was born in England, but now everyone knows what is cricket. Similarly in India hockey was played and popular, but now due to transformation of our culture and spreading of the most popular practices and things of the country, the game hockey is famous and known in each and every part of the world.

Gender role in popular culture is something which is influenced and spread across the globe very rapidly and it’s impacted the life of individual in terms of their behavior, thinking and actions against each other or different genders. In contemporary India, there are three grounds on which the gender role and its importance in popular culture depends. Which are as follows.

The 1st one is India’s new economic policy,

The 2nd one is Indian women’s movement, and

The 3rd one is importance of media in current scenario/contemporary India.

The first two developments i.e. economic policy and women’s movements are historically present and are the important and dominant historical legacy and unbreakable developments of popular culture. Involvement of the third development i.e. media in recent transition period of popular culture has created an unprecedented growth of media and communication industry, through the way of conveying messages and influencing people to involve and adopt the new trend and consume the content which higher body wants people to follow. Therefore the role of media in contemporary Indian culture plays an important role in developing and influencing people of the current generation.

The formation of a new economic policy of India has initiated in 1991 for the purpose of increasing the country into a global capitalist. This marked a radical break from a long period of state-initiated development based on import substitution and a focus on equity rather than growth. India’s new economic policy towards greater integration into global capitalism was formally initiated in 1991. It was a radical break from a long period of state initiated development which was based in substitution and it was focused on equity rather than growth. Before the new economic policy the spirit of austerity was considered to be important because it has inspired by the Gandhi’s lasting impact on the Indian nationalism. This has changed after the implementation of policy and over the next few decades in which media has played a decisive role in making profligacy socially legitimate and even a national duty.

In this process of recasting the image of nation the basic elements of Indian nationalism has been reconfigured. Every aspect has changed, except the deployment of gender as a key icon of public discourses. Now the change in the aspect of gender has begun and start taking shape because of the second phase of women’s movements in the era of 1970s. After the 1st movements and in the earlier decades, one of the main issues that the movement raised was the equality of gender and invisibility of gender in different field of work both in public and private sphere. along with the movements there was the emergence of women’s studies, and its expansion and steady institutionalization has took place over the next three decades in India starting from 1980s. On one hand there was a starting women’s studies in college and universities and on the other hand the development sector has started do understand the role and importance of gender? The media industry on the other hand has covered issues such as dowry, rape and legal rights which was raised by women’s movements. In the period of 1970s to 1980 theses issues has been raised and debated publically in media. From 1990s there was a shift in the perspective and now the gender has become even more visible but its purpose has shifted. The issue raised by women’s movements did not resolved entirely. “Instead what happens is, the increasingly glossy features and advertisements, collective ideas of women’s liberation and freedom become reconfigured as essentially individual desire and goals, which the new opportunities that the growing market offered could gratify.”(Chaudhuri 2000).

The logic of culture in which self-representation, image construction, brand building and communication are extremely important. And the media has been the reason to give acceleration to such ideas in past as well as in. Present.in Mass culture or popular culture what matters is how you appear and present yourself, weather as an individual, as a company, as a political party.

“In the initial years after the liberalization, the rapidly growing advertisement industry’s influence on the media was the driving force in publicizing the new era of globalization.” (Chaudhuri 2001)

In more recent years the media and the public relations industry have become critical not just for corporate institutions but also for political parties, government and social movements. Publicity about Brand India was important for global investment as well as for its own citizenry. Both the nation and its people were to be recast economically and culturally. The industrialization of representation and communication that began with the modern era has acquired an unprecedented scale, convergence and speed in contemporary India. Speed is critical for effective communication today. Therefore, catchy phrases, smart sound bites, powerful visuals, sexual images, hidden cameras, sting operations and incessant exposure are indispensable for communication. Therefore in such circumstances gender and sexuality forms and extreme powerful ways for effective communications.

As discussed the representation of gender in popular culture in the context of three main development viz. political, historical and women’s movements. There is one more prominent factor which is influencing the current popular culture which is western influences and objectification of women in each and every field. Be it media industry, political or industrial and corporate, women’s have been represented as an object for getting more and more attraction for the business, customers, buyers and entertainment’s. Talking about objectivism, have you noticed that why every Bollywood movies comes with an item song? Why some T.V. ads shows women’s body parts in such a bold way?, and many times the movie itself becomes popular because of the item song with some women dancing and wearing attractive costumes which will attract other genders. Educated people, business mans, entrepreneurs who runs such big brands also pays more money for such advertisements to attract the customers. This objectivism of women and the basis of the entire dispute is the belief that women are inferior to men and they are naturally incapable of doing the things which man can do. Using women as an object is a practice which is so common and casual in our country that no one is bothered about it but people will never understand the psychological effect of such display of objectification in our day to day life can affect the individual life in a very deep way which can lead to sexual violence, harassment, rape and oppression of women.

A paper commissioned by Mudra, one of the biggest advertising firms “to delve into the Practices of the urban youth to give insights to the Marketer,” observes that gender has been a major focus of investigation by market research and “has been widely used in brand communications to achieve better segmentation and targeting of consumers” (Jetley 1998).

Similarly, The Axe Body Spray advertisements have made popular sexually charged images. In which a formally dressed man in an office similarly “attacked” by women in various states of undress. These examples are overt expressions of women’s sexuality, a taboo subject for much of modern India’s history.

There are more such examples of women being used as an object to attract and sell the product for more and more earnings like, advertisement of slice mango drink in which a very famous Indian actress portrayed in a very bold and sexually appealing way. Another example is an advertisement of whisky brand “imperial blue” in which men’s behaviors around the women is shown to be very charming and appealing.

This is one of many examples in the media of individuals who are depicted as completely free to make her or his choice – to lighten their skin tone or go for a nose job. We need to take note of the fact that such advertisements do not operate in isolation but in tandem with a surfeit of sponsored features, news, editorials, interviews of professionals such as doctors, beauty specialists, hair-stylists, sports icons, CEOs, etc. to promote new ideas of “self-realization,” aspirations, achievement and pleasure. An example that I draw here is from an article entitled “Like Daughters, like Mothers” which begins with the caption, “With the anti-ageing fad kicked off, mothers and daughters can pass off as sisters.” Ruchika Mehta writes:

India is definitely well on its way to a youth obsessed society. It’s now common to see mothers and daughters sharing outfits and make up, going to the same gyms, following the same fad diet, shopping at the same places, hanging off at the same bars. Like daughters, moms too are doing their girlie, oops ladies’, night’s outs, a catalyst, catering to all their needs. Anti-ageing capsules and creams, anti-cellulite oils, diet supplements, spas and rejuvenation centres, health foods, are easily available. Mothers with all their diets, gyms, YSL concealers, personal trainers, yoga classes, Ayurveda skin care, and plastic surgeons, look years younger. While the daughters, with early maturing, loads of make-up, and a hard party life, look much older. (Mehta 2004)

There are many examples social media and other apps like Facebook, Instagram, snap chat etc... Which are very popular in India. People are watching crap content throughout the day in which women’s sexuality is exposed in a very bold way, and many a times women and men are both involved in showing their body parts for getting more likes and earn money. I believe that these apps, media, social media, advertisement industry has penetrated in the mind of the youth. Rational thinking has been vanished, because I believe if people are okay with showing their body parts in an open platform specially women then there is some kind of miss understanding and misconception or we can say that lack of rational thinking. This what today’s popular culture is inspired of, largely from western society where everything is different bet it standard of living, education, economic status as compare to India.

Hopefully there are not only the drawbacks of social media and popular culture. Sometimes what we are seeking is already inside us, similarly in our problems have the answer for our solution. Control, self-discipline, and time management are some of the key elements to become a successful in making an impact in this rat race of social media, popular culture. The best advantage of popular culture is everything is in our hand we can see what we want, we can have what we want at the tip of our figure. Just one click and its gone, deciding what you want to see is a choice and there are good and bad in everything in this world. Having a higher motive in life and motivation to do something good for society is a step towards improvement of every gender. Women who have higher priorities and self-esteems are more disciplined and active in personal life than the one who are posting in social media and showing what people want to see. Similarly it goes with other gender. It’s not all about choice but sometimes it’s all about self-respect and self-esteem. We have to think critically about each and every thing, like why social media is showing sexually aggressive content?  Why people wants us to advertise such things repeatedly to us? Why women portrayal in Bollywood item song is always sexually appealing? And be decisive about our action and thought.

We must examine all aspects of popular culture for parity and question the positioning of women in these spaces so as to create more dialogues about the need to be more inclusive and befitting of a modern, egalitarian society.

 

References –

Fernandes L., (2014). Gender, media, and popular culture in global India. In Chaudhuri M. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of gender in south Asia. (pp. 145 – 159). Routledge.

Sen P., (November 8, 2021). Popular Culture And Gender: We Must Scrutinise Narratives That Promote Stereotypes. Feminisminindia. https://feminisminindia.com/2021/11/08/popular-culture-and-gender-we-must-scrutinise-narratives-that-promote-stereotypes/

Szymanski D.M., Moffitt L. B. and Carr E.R., (2011), Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research. (39(1) 6–38), DOI: 10.1177/0011000010378402.

 

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