Mediated mythical discourses: A critical analysis of the female docility and religious discourses in Indian TV soap operas

Abstract

Media representations have the power to evoke and circulate meanings about a dominant favoured ideology. Like films, television soap operas too may become the sites of hetero-patriarchal representation. This article foregrounds the visual and textual tropes applied to coerce the audience into accepting patriarchal gender roles in the disguise of religious discourse. Using critical discourse analysis of three select Hindi soap operas Saath Nibhana Sathiya, Choti Bahu and Bade Achche Lagte Hai, this article flags the use of religious motifs as disciplining strategies of patriarchy. The resort-seeking behaviour of the female protagonists towards the male Hindu deity for the resolution of crisis becomes a marker of sexism. Furthermore, this one-dimensional representation of a multicultural and multireligious Indian society in these Hindi soap operas has evolved them into Hindu Socials with their dominant tropes of Hinduness within the storyline, rituals, melodrama and misogynism.