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Encoding women: popular culture and primetime Indian television
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Content
ENCODING WOMEN:
POPULAR CULTURE AND PRIMETIME INDIAN TELEVISION
by
Joyee Shairee Chatterjee
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
May 2012
Copyright 2012 Joyee Shairee Chatterjee
ii
DEDICATION
Dedicated to Rekha Mitra and Sathi Chatterjee – my grandmothers – who
continuously inspire me to reflect and challenge binaries of ‘the norm’ and ‘the
extraordinary’, with their life paths and through the ways they lived their everyday lives.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my Professors Michael Cody, Sarah Banet-Weiser and Doe
Mayer for their unstinting encouragement and intellectual inputs along the way. I am
also deeply indebted to all the participants in this project who took time out to share their
thoughts and insights with me. The fieldwork for this project was financially supported
by the USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship Grant and the year away from Los Angeles
was made possible through the assistance and collaboration of staff and faculty at the
Annenberg School.
To my friends and family members who generously opened up their homes and
let me live with them through the months of traversing the suburbs of Mumbai for
interviews. Deepika, Arijit, Sanaya, Payal, Rohit, Trisha, Tanishka, Krishna Dida, Arup
Meshomoshai, (in Mumbai); and Jeeya and Raabiya (in Delhi) thanks for housing and
feeding me through all those months. A special acknowledgement for the Nongbet
family who were stellar hosts and along with a roof provided me with valuable contacts
in the industry. Uday Kaku and Rinku Kakima – thanks for being so warm and
hospitable and setting up the introductions and the invaluable meetings. Heartfelt thanks
to Sunitha Chitrapu for letting me access the institution’s alumni network.
To my dissertation support group – Janel, Russel and Charlotte – and my peers
from the dungeon – this last stretch would not have been possible without you.
Finally to friendship beyond words – Gauri and Anamika – thanks for always
being a phone call or email away and keeping me on the path. This project owes as much
to the times I spent on your couches, through the year of fieldwork, watching television
iv
and working on my laptop as it does to all the hard work you put in to reading, providing
comments, haranguing me to get done, and lending an ear and diverting me when I
needed it. Anshuman and Anandorup – thank you for becoming part of the circle and
being there through the good times and bad!
Last but not the least a special thanks to my parents, sibling and extended family
for unstinting encouragement through this journey and the joys and loss we have
experienced in this process. I would not be here without all of you…
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
Abstract ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Gender Representation and Indian Cable Television 3
Goals of the Study 8
Theoretical Approach 11
Prime Time Indian TV: Background, Structure and Content 16
Chapter Outlines 30
Chapter 2: Methodology and Fieldwork 34
In-depth Interviews 35
Recruitment 37
Participants 41
Research Protocol 44
Chapter 3: Locating the Prime Time Storytellers in the Industry 47
Storytellers at Work 50
The Storytellers and the Industry 61
Conclusion 78
Chapter 4: The Storyteller and the Indian Housewife 81
The “Feminine Audience”: Creating Women’s Programs 82
The “Mass Audience” 92
The Indian Housewife: Locating the “Real” Audience 105
Conclusion 115
Chapter 5: Identity Politics, Television Stories, & Self-reflexive Storytellers 119
The Storyteller and the Heroine 123
The Storyteller and the Vamp 132
Women and the Industry 136
Chapter 6: Epilogue 149
Practice of Solidarity 153
vi
Endnotes 160
References 162
Appendices
Appendix A: List of Channel and Show Affiliations of Participants 172
Appendix B: Discussion Guide 174
Appendix C: Script writing Flow Chart 177
vii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1. Participants with Channel Affiliations 43
Table 2.2. Participants with Production House Affiliations 44
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Growth in Cable and Satellite Audience through the 2000s 24
Figure 2. Perceptions of the Ideal Woman 106
Figure 3. The Goddess and the Nation 107
Figure 4. Script Writing Flow Chart for Daily Prime Time Soaps 177
ix
ABSTRACT
This dissertation, Encoding Women: Popular Culture and Primetime Indian
Television, is a unique field study of the exponentially growing Indian cable television
industry. It examines the institutional and everyday work-practices of the storytellers
who create popular primetime entertainment programs for cable and satellite channels,
and the contradictions that mark issues of gender representation and social change in
contemporary Indian media. As my project highlights, this is a distinctive moment in
Indian popular culture where women, social issues affecting women, and women’s
everyday experiences dominate primetime entertainment. Using in-depth interviews and
industry reports, collected through 2009-2010, I put forth how the storytellers’ self-
reflexivity underscores how dominant ideology gets reproduced through the daily
functioning of the industry in service of the status-quo. My work draws attention to the
unsung enabling space these primetime programs have opened up for young, educated,
middle class women to be employed through the creative ranks, forge successful careers
and be independent – i.e. challenging and producing an alternate narrative, & producing
role models of gender empowerment from within the very same industry.
Keywords: popular culture, gender representation, Indian television, soap operas,
production study.
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The origin and production of Hum Log, India’s first television entertainment
program fascinates me. First encountered in graduate school in the US while taking
classes on communication for social change, it was a history that evoked both personal
memories – gathering each week in front of the television with my family to follow the
trials and tribulations of the Hum Log family as a child – and professional curiosity about
popular culture and social change. Twenty-five years after it was first telecast Hum Log
not only lingers in the personal subconscious of an entire generation of Indians, it
continues to have historical relevance to academics and non-academics alike, both as a
foundational text of the Indian television industry and of those vested in role of popular
culture in social change.
On my annual visit back home in the winter of 2008 as I was grappling with what
the dissertation project would look like, I repeatedly heard people around me talk of a
particular new show – Balika Vadhu (Child Bride) – when I talked about my research
interest in the intersections of popular entertainment, gender representations, and social
change. This new show, about child marriage and its impact on the families and children
involved, was the newest offering on a recently launched cable channel Colors. It was
generating a lot of buzz in both the industry and audiences; and was often referenced as a
contemporary avatar of Hum Log of two decades ago. This piqued my curiosity to start
looking more closely at what, in the span of 10-15 years, since the first advent of private
owned commercial cable and satellite television in India, had become mainstream in
Indian television. A mainstream – as I discovered the further I delved into it – that had
2
prime time dominated by ‘women protagonist’ driven stories telecast in the soap format.
In other words, a mainstream defined by an audience moving away from its sole reliance
on State television for entertainment, merely two decades back, to a prime time that was
cable/satellite-dominated, market-driven, highly competitive and rapidly evolving.
The first decade of the Indian television industry had been almost exclusively
dominated by the State-owned television channel Doordarshan (DD). This resulted in a
plethora of entertainment programming that dovetailed with State development agendas
and gender empowerment goals and received active government support and backing.
Through the 80s, entertainment programs on Doordarshan - in sync with prevailing
national and global concerns on family planning, promotion of smaller family norms,
literacy, rights of the girl child, gender biases in child rearing, domestic violence, career
opportunities for women, community development and the like – engaged at differing
levels and degrees of success with the questions of ‘status of women and girls’ in society
(Centre for Advocacy & Research, 2007; Mankekar, 1999; Poindexter, 2004; Singhal &
Rogers, 1999). Historically, we find that entertainment programs with overt
development/gender empowerment agendas, such as Hum Log have typically been
predominant in geographical areas where there is nationalized media (like India). The
nexus of national/state media entertainment programming and the promotion of a
“development” (modernization) agenda have been well-documented in India and
internationally (Abu-Lughod, 2004; Golkulsingh, 2004; Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal,
2001). However, the monopoly of the national broadcaster has eroded in India over the
past few decades with the rise, proliferation and penetration of global, commercial, cable
3
and satellite television. Commercial players have entered the TV industry, and
successfully competed for audience attention, viewership and loyalty that were once part
of the Doordarshan domain.
Gender Representation and Indian Cable Television
Granted that neither the dominant primetime entertainment genre (soap operas)
nor the women-centered storytelling was new to the industry (see discussion in chapter
4), what is arresting about the shifting trends in the Indian commercial television industry
is the continued focus of these stories on "real" social concerns – in many ways an echo
of the earlier Doordarshan era. These "real issues" on contemporary prime time dramas
included gender issues that are and have been at the core of agendas and critiques across
institutions ranging from government, to civil and political groups – from dowry, child
marriage, the rights of the girl child, female literacy rate, female infanticide, domestic
violence, sexual harassment, to women's participation in local governments and political
processes, and questions of gender roles and beauty norms and economic and class
issues. Here was a moment when, what in terms of storytelling and pushing women’s
issues/development messages could easily be coming out of the State media and social
advocacy arena, was nevertheless emerging out of a commercial space and for the most
part without any institutional involvement and/or structured agreements and lobbying
from those overtly vested in women's social and political rights.
At the same time even the most fleeting engagement with the stories currently on-
screen would undeniably also point to the contradictions that existed in these depictions
vis-à-vis a pro-social agenda and the continued and in part reinvigorated primacy given to
4
traditional gender roles, patriarchal norms, consumer culture and hegemonic nationalism
(Centre for Advocacy & Research, 2007; Fazal, 2009; Gokulsing, 2004; Malhotra &
Rogers, 2000; McMillin, 2002a; Munshi 1998; Munshi, 2010; Rao, 2001; Zacharias,
2003). As Tharu and Niranjana (1994) note, in postcolonial India,
Films, novels, histories, television programmes, the press in general, the curricula
and a range of other institutions of civil society address potentially rupturing
questions of caste, gender or community and rework them into narratives that
legitimate the middle-class, upper-caste Hindu, patriarchal and internationalist
markings of the hegemonic subject. (p.108)
Study after study of both Indian Sate television channels and commercial cable
television channels have found this assertion to be upheld to a large extent in the past two
decades. For instance one of the early studies of gender representation on Indian cable
and satellite television by Malhotra and Rogers (2000) content analyzed the top 10
programs in telecast in summer 1997. Their study found that although men only slightly
outnumbered women on-screen in their sample (56:44); 90% of the female characters
depicted in the Indian produced television programs were housewives, indicating
stereotypical and traditional gender role representation. A corresponding qualitative
analysis of these soaps evidenced that the “one characteristic usually ascribed to female
characters was selflessness or self sacrifice. (And) this characteristic often took on
regressive forms” (Malhotra and Rogers, 2000, p.422).
Similarly a study of prime time cable television soaps by the Centre for
Advocacy and Research (2007) concluded that the gender roles promoted on television
5
still largely adhered to patriarchal ideology and primarily depicted women as wives,
mothers and daughters and what remained unchanged was the representation of women
within the traditional spaces of the household. Their content analysis of fifteen prime
time soaps broadcast in early 2002 on cable television found that “approximately 80% of
the female character are confined to the kitchen, living room, dining room and
bedrooms… they enter the professional space only when they have to save their spouses
or family from clutches of others” (Centre for Advocacy and Research, 2007, p. 188). In
all the majority of scenes were confined to the family room or the bedroom (30.8% in the
family room and 26.5% in the bedrooms) with the families primarily being depicted as
Hindu joint families. Further they found that the “women in the narrative structure of
soaps were either victims of the conflicts within the family, or the agents of its troubles.
The family conflict plays either upon their vulnerability or on their hegemonic role as
perpetrators” (Centre for Advocacy and Research, 2007, p. 190). A thematic study of
serials, documentaries and song-based programs of the 1990s by McMillin (2002a) found
that overall not much had changed in terms of portrayals of Indian women on television
from the 80s State television era to the 90s commercial cable introductory era.
Women in the programmes analyzed in this study were shown as creators of
social problems (such as AIDS, prostitution, bad parenting and stressed
marriages), yet rarely as creators of solutions to those problems. They were
portrayed as lively, yet submissive housewives, sacrificing their love in order to
conform to the pressures of society. (McMillin, 2002a, p.20)
6
A more current study by Fazal (2009) similarly argued that although there has
been a rise in the volume of representation of women on screen these continue to be
bound by patriarchal and national considerations. According to her, women characters in
soap operas were being represented using multiple frames. “Women are expected to be
modem, (yet) continue to unify the family and preserve the cultural heritage whilst the
globalization process re-positions India's ranking in the global market place” (Fazal,
2009, p.50). Her analysis thus led her to conclude that popular dramas on television had
in fact moved farther away from earlier emancipated representations of women on-screen
with a renewed focus on traditional cultural values in conjunction with consumerism.
Conversely, despite the depressing picture painted by these and many other
studies of the television texts of entertainment television in the past decade in India,
audience reception studies from the same period also point to gains made by the
introduction and exposure to cable and satellite television. Jensen and Oster (2008) in a
three year panel study found that the introduction of cable television in a rural area was
firstly associated with increase in TV watching in general and led to visible changes in
attitude and behavior towards women and improvement in their status. That is cable TV
viewing was significantly associated with decreases in preference for sons, the social
acceptability of domestic violence, and the fertility rate and a corresponding increase in
women’s autonomy within the particular community. In the urban area, McMillin’s
(2002b) ethnographic study and analysis of television reception among urban Indian
audiences showed that to a certain extent the audience members resisted gender and
religious hierarchies depicted on-screen. That is, “women were, to a large extent, strong
7
voices in the private sphere, and the respondents, in general, resisted Hindu ideologies of
nation, woman and family” (McMillin, 2002b, p.133). Similarly a qualitative study by
Gokulsing (2004) among urban women indicated high agreement among the respondents
that soap operas helped women know about their rights and broadened their world view
and attitudes indicating support for equal rights for sons and daughters, the importance of
educating girls, and women’s day in family matters. Conversely respondents were also in
major agreement with the traditional view that women should be more accommodating
than men, and had an accepting attitude towards the practice of dowry.
Clearly popular culture has a long history of entanglement with gender and social
change. In India too, whether we examine India’s colonial past, freedom struggle or
more recent history, including the birth of Indian television, popular culture has been a
dominant force in circulating nationalist thought, ‘modernizing’ agendas, and the
“woman question” (Chatterjee, 1993; Kumar, 2006; McMillin, 2002b; Mankekar, 1999;
Parameswaran, 2004; Rajagopal, 2001; Zacharias, 2003). Given entertaining media
programs highlighting social concerns (say HIV/AIDS, domestic abuse, dowry or child
marriage etc.), quality notwithstanding, the average audience member is not likely to
make a distinction between programs produced as part of a (State sanctioned) a
progressive women’s rights agenda and those produced for entertainment & commercial
profits alone. The Indian context thus provides a unique context to study how industry
structure, convergence and competition make the demarcations between storytelling in
the commercial and the non-profit realm increasingly blurred and points to the need to
engage in projects that seek to interrogate the overlaps and interconnections as well as the
8
divergence and dissentions that particular national and institutional discourses and
practices may engineer and its related influence on changing gender representations on-
screen and off.
Goals of the Study
Given the shifting terrains of India’s political economy and ideological base, the
media industry is at an interesting juncture, reconfiguring old alliances and figuring out
new spaces and audiences. This research project takes place at a time when the
broadcasting industry contours (specifically television) are in rapid growth and flux in a
country where pro-social programming has a long and significant history. It enters the
conversation at a time when the old Doordarshan dominated model is no longer the
reality in India and the contours of both the country and the industry are in flux; and in a
narrative where prime time television – mainstream popular culture – is ‘dominated’ by
women (Centre for Advocacy & Research, 2007). It aims to try and understand how
these shifts impact storytelling practices and patterns, and how the discourses engineered
through industry rationale and working are embedded in and in turn circulate particular
representations of womanhood, nation, and questions of development/social change on
television.
The core question guiding the research was, ‘What are the institutional and
everyday practices of storytellers of prime time entertainment programs on
commercial television in India, which frame and contribute to particular discourses
and representations of contemporary Indian woman?’ The aim was to explore the
vision of the stakeholders involved in the production/implementation of media content
9
and the challenges and learnings that emerge from their everyday work. Theoretically the
goal was to unpack the discourses within and about the industry which lead to particular
‘representations’ of what or who constitutes the Indian woman and the visible and
invisible spaces she occupies. The research contributes to both the emergent literature on
Indian media as well as continues the ongoing work of feminist enquiries and scholars of
global communication and social change on interrogating gendered agendas, women’s
empowerment and nationalist discourse, and the role of popular culture.
My interest is distinctively focused on the work of the producers of popular
culture in India, how they relate to their texts and audiences and the practices and
agendas that lead to particular gendered ideologies getting translated into creative
content. While there is an emerging body of work on television in India which engages
specifically with the popular representations on-screen (texts) and the meaning audiences
make of them (see Centre for Advocacy & Research, 2007; Chanda, 2003; Gokulsing,
2004; Kumar, 2006; Malhotra & Rogers, 2000; Mankekar, 1999; McMillin, 2002b;
Munshi, 2010; Murthy, 2009; Rajagopal, 2001) the endeavor here is to shine the light on
the encoders of text
1
. While these former projects are incredibly valuable in
understanding what representations and discourses currently exist in the media and their
relation to mobilizing political critiques and possibilities; an in-depth engagement with
the producers themselves is of vital importance for engaging with the dialectical process
that is social change. Such engagements with cultural producers are complimentary to
the ones that study the representations in the texts produced by these cultural workers and
the audience reception of the same and together provide insights into the identity
10
struggles and politics of representation that mark contemporary cultures (here
postcolonial India). That is,
In many postcolonial contexts, professional cultural producers have the burden of
creating images of the nation that address such potentially divisive issues as
differences of class, gender, region, and ethnicity, that articulate which aspects of
culture will “count” as representative of the nation, and that manage the tension
between tradition and modernity. Such challenges speak to the larger struggles
associated with nation building and more generally to the cultural politics of
representation. (Mahon, 2000, p.471)
As a scholar I am particularly vested in understanding the tensions and the
enabling spaces that can thus emerge within a commercially dominated mediascape,
especially related to the Indian industry, for engaging/involving cultural producers on
questions of gender empowerment and social and political change. As my analysis and
the following chapters highlight for the first time the minutiae of women’s lived
experiences are a part of the mainstream popular culture – women and women’s
experiences dominate prime time. Yet, conversely, through the industry’s own self-
reflexivity this study explores how the dominant ideology gets reproduced through the
daily functioning of the industry promoting representations bound by capitalist,
hegemonic, patriarchal and nationalist ideals.
11
Theoretical Approach
Culture, Power and Media Representations
It can be argued that culture has always been deeply entrenched in visions of
nationalism and development. If one were to go back to the modernization ideal, the
vision was deeply embedded in particular Western, capitalistic values and beliefs.
Culture, drawn specifically from a cultural studies perspective, can be understood as “a
network of representations – texts, images, talk, codes of behaviour, and the narrative
structures organizing these – which shapes every aspect of social life” (Frow & Morris,
1993 in Schech, & Haggis, 2000). Culture, thus, is not a discrete, bounded set of ideas
distinct from the economic and political but rather intrinsic to how we experience and
shape social reality. Culture is simultaneously a way of life and the production of social
meaning. This complex understanding of culture helps move us away from binary
understandings that view it as a possession of a particular group (be it class, race, or
nations) or marked by a particular form (modern/ traditional).
By its very nature, social change implies looking at an interconnected web of
economic, political and cultural realities. And whatever our point of entry (be it gender
equity, poverty, health, or social justice), engagement with the questions of social change
necessitates a study of shared values and the examination of their multifaceted
transformation. If culture is intrinsic to how we understand the world then any media
products that seeks to represent and make sense of change, whether purposive or not,
necessarily works within and through culture. Points of contact between culture and
12
change agendas (overt or otherwise) therefore always need to be examined, discussed,
challenged and reinvented.
If we think of popular culture and media representation as inherently political
activities, it leads us to examine and rethink power dimensions in our analyses. The
examination and articulation of structural conditions and the dynamics of power and
resistance in turn, help provide us with insights into the process through which social
change come to be enacted (or not). Here, I would like to specifically draw upon the
theorizing of Foucault on power/knowledge to frame the discussion. At its most basic
level, Foucault’s conceptualization of power as a dynamic concept, embedded in complex
social relations and always in flux, keeps us grounded in conceptualizing empowerment
as a socially/ historically constructed dynamic ongoing process rather than a static goal.
For Foucault, domination does not come from above and resistance from below.
Rather, power is always everywhere. That is,
Power must be analyzed as something which circulates, or rather as something
which only functions in the form of a chain. It is never localized here or there,
never in anybody’s hands, never appropriated as a commodity or a piece of
wealth. Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization. And…
individuals … are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and
exercising this power (Foucault, 1980, p. 98)
Foucault’s conceptualization helps us overcome a binary vision of power and
powerlessness which ends up privileging power as a commodity exercised (possessed) by
one over the other. Instead it locates power as a dynamic network of forces – and all of
13
us (creative workers/ audience members/ industry experts/ researchers) as constituted
simultaneously in positions of power and powerlessness. Empowerment, it follows, is
then something that arises from within and situated in the specific and the local, and not
something that one group (elites) accords another (masses). Corollary to the idea of
power as a dynamic network of forces, it must be understood that these forces are not
random or chaotic but instead configured to assume particular historical forms, within
which certain groups and ideologies do have dominance (Bordo, 1995; Foucault, 1990).
Structures and relations are thus not static in nature, and change rather than being
thought of as a break/overthrow of the system, is something that is inherently built into
the logic of social relations itself … “transformations do not occur in one fell swoop; they
emerge only gradually, through local and often minute shifts in power” (Bordo, 1995, p.
28). As media scholars we must therefore continually locate media representations
within these shifting domains of power and be reflexive in our examination and practice
about whose voice/silence these representations align themselves with.
However while this re-conceptualization of power is empowering in terms of
locating agency and power among even the most marginalized, it cannot be simplified to
mean that all players in the field are equal. That is to say, “the fact that cultural
resistance is continual does not mean that it is on equal footing with forms that are
culturally entrenched” (Bordo, 1995, p. 28). Thus for instance television dramas that
may represent women who are subject to domestic violence as mere victims incapable of
agency makes invisible the many local and particular forms of strategies and resistance
14
that already exist in the community or which may emerge, however it also does not take
away from the very real, legitimized and entrenched nature of the issue.
Power and discourse are thus inextricably linked. Discourse as elaborated by
Foucault refers to “a group of statements which provides a language for talking about –
i.e. a way of representing – a particular kind of knowledge about a topic” (Hall, 1996, p.
201). This knowledge - which is produced through a network of language and practices
and emanates from different individuals and institutions - in turn (re)produces the very
network itself (Hall, 1996). Further, questions of power are central to the concept of
discourse as
Power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation
without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge
that does not presuppose and constitute… power relations (p. 27)… Discourse
transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it,
renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. (Foucault, 1990, p.100–101)
In other words media entertainment programs as a field of knowledge privileges
certain (power) relations while at the same time particular positions of power within the
industry/ institution enable individuals and organizations to articulate and implement
particular representations of women and social change/empowerment. “The emphasis in
the discursive approach is always on the historical specificity of a particular form or
‘regime’ of representation…(i.e.) the way representational practices operate in concrete
historical situations, in actual practice” (Hall, 1997, p.6). This project therefore seeks to
unpack and take into account, who speaks, from what position, for whom, and for what
15
purpose; how particular gender representations are made possible through the daily
functioning and micro-power relations within the contemporary Indian cable television
industry and how these representations in turn, are used to support/ disrupt power
relations?
Encoding/Decoding
I approach this enquiry through Hall’s (1980) encoding/decoding framework
where television communication is seen as a process structured, produced and sustained
through distinct albeit linked moments – production, circulation, distribution,
consumption, and reproduction. Production or encoding is the moment where the
construction of the message takes place and to that extent signifies the beginning of the
process/circuit. But the moment (the production process itself) is embedded in the
discursive framework, “it, too, is framed throughout by meanings and ideas: knowledge-
in-use concerning the routines of production, historically defined technical skills,
professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions,
assumptions about the audience and so on…” (Hall, 1980, 129).
Further, as Hall argues, although the television discourse originates at the
production structures, it by no means constitutes a closed system. It draws “topics,
treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the audience, 'definitions of the
situation' from other sources and other discursive formations within the wider socio-
cultural and political structure of which they are a differentiated part” (p.129).
This research project is thus uniquely focused on the work of the cultural
storytellers (of the television industry) in India, how they relate to their texts and
16
audiences and the practices and agendas that lead to prevailing social/ideological
concerns getting translated into creative content (or not). Investigating the dialectics
between the physical, cultural and symbolic location of those producing content for
television in India, and their related practices and perceptions provides for a macro
perspective on the implications for social change
Prime Time Indian TV: Background, Structure and Content
The Era of Doordarshan (State television): The “Pro-social” Mandate of Prime Time
Entertainment
National development agendas and the television history in India are inextricably
linked. The emergence of the state television’s national programming as a pan-Indian
genre was crucial for the post-colonial project of nation building (Rajagopal, 2001).
While television services were launched in 1965 (with daily one hour transmission of
programming emphasizing issues like adult literacy, rural development; and documentary
films) it was the Asian Games held in 1982 which marked a watershed in broadcasting
history.
The prevailing television infrastructure was overhauled to introduce color
transmission services and the aftermath of the successful coverage of the Games led to
the impetus for expanding the reach and programming on television and this is when the
commercial contours of the industry started to take shape (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010;
Kumar, 2006). Kumar (2006) quotes the 1982 official diktat for expanding state
television programming, the Joshi Committee Report, which clearly noted the plan “to
prepare a software plan for Doordarshan, taking into consideration the main objectives of
17
television of assisting in the process of social and economic development of the country
and to act as an effective medium for providing information, education and
entertainment” (emphasis mine) (p.31). Various scholars have noted the subsequent rise
of television programming in India through the 1980s in direct response to political
ambitions and ‘nationalist’ ethos (Kumar, 2006; Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal, 2001).
The first entertainment program telecast in July, 1984 on Doordarshan, Hum Log
was thus intentionally formulated on the Entertainment Education
2
strategy imported
from Miguel Sabido’s work on telenovelas for social change in Mexico. “More than 80
per cent of the 3.6 million Indian television sets at that time tuned in to Hum Log every
week” (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p. 73). And Hum Log was where the links between
commercial programming, pro-social messaging and the Indian television industry began
to be forged. Hum Log was not only the first entertainment program on Indian television
but equally noteworthy the first advertising sponsored show on Indian television. “Nestle
used the serial to launch Maggi noodles, which soon became a household name” (Ghose,
2005, p. 35). The tremendous success of Maggi across the country and all income
groups, prompted advertisers to rethink their attitudes towards advertising on television
and provided the impetus for commercially sponsored programs on Doordarshan. Hum
Log marks a watershed in Indian broadcasting and a transformation of the political
economy of television programming in India (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010; Kumar, 2006;
Singhal & Rogers, 1999).
As Singhal & Rogers (1999) note, “Hum Log was an attempt to blend
Doordarshan’s stated objectives of providing entertainment to its audience, while
18
promoting within the limits of a dominant, patriarchal system, such educational issues as
family planning, equal status for women, and family harmony”(p. 75). Further, not only
is the history and impact of this program as a development intervention well documented
(Brown & Cody, 1991; Singhal & Rogers, 1999) but, this and similar prime time
programming on state television from the era have also been separately scrutinized by
media scholars for the role it played in fostering nationalism, discourses on Indian
womanhood, and Hindu religious identity (see Kumar, 2006; Mankekar, 1999, Rajagopal,
2001).
Stiff competition from the rapidly expanding cable television industry, expanding
infrastructure, and migrating audiences have led to a decline in Doordarshan’s
dominance over the past decade, yet Doordarshan and its legacy of pro-social
programming continues to layer the industry discourse and the contours of commercial
programming. Currently with cable and satellite penetration growing in rural areas –
Doordarshan’s stronghold – DD’s captive audience has diminished to the 51 million
homes that don’t have an alternative due to issues of infrastructure and access. “Today,
many of us dismiss DD and what it dishes out. All the same, it was DD that shaped the
television broadcasting industry in India – not by design, but by its very existence”
(Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p. 72).
Commercial Television: Development and Penetration of Cable and Satellite
Television
The structural adjustment policies undertaken by the Indian state in the early
1990s opened up the media market to foreign investment and cable competition and with
19
those policy shifts the television landscape and popular television content has been
undergoing tremendous shifts through the 90s – to the point of having been completely
transformed structurally and aesthetically in the last decade. Commercial cable television
(STAR TV based in Hong Kong) first started broadcasting in India in 1991 – offering six
channels covering news (BBC), music (MTV), sports (Prime Sports) and entertainment
program content from their US and UK affiliates (Kumar, 2006; Thussu, 2007). From
this small foray in the beginning of the 1990s, when it was largely limited to English
speaking, upper class segments of the population, satellite cable programming content
underwent expansion, experimentation and a sea change in structure and format.
The first indigenous, privately-owned Hindi satellite channel, Subhash Chandra’s
Zee TV, was launched in October 1992. Starting from three-hour broadcasts it soon
advanced to twenty-four-hour broadcast of programming consisting of sitcoms and soaps
(Kohli-Khandekar, 2010; Kumar, 2006). “Zee was what Indian television audiences had
been waiting for” (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p.78) – the first opportunity to experience
Hindi-language programming that was not Doordarshan! It provided an added push to
the market and penetration of cable and satellite increased rapidly. From 1.2 million
cable homes in 1992 the number doubled to 3 million cable homes in 1993 and by 1994
the figure was pushing 11.8 million (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010).
It was during this period that Murdoch’s Star and Chandra’s Zee entered into a
joint venture. Part of the agreement had Star restricted to no more than 50 percent of its
programming to be in Hindi. Essentially, Zee provided an indigenous, Hindi-language
counterpart to Star’s existing bouquet of soaps, talk shows, music (Bollywood) videos,
20
and game shows. By the mid-90s Zee TV had established itself as a market leader in
catering to Hindi speaking audiences in India and abroad, with deeper penetration into the
Indian market and services in eminent Diaspora markets of UK, Africa, and USA.
A sign of the way the programming winds in the industry were blowing was
evident from Zee emerging as the stronger partner in the venture and eventually buying
out Murdoch’s stake in the joint venture for $32 million in 1999 (Kohli-Khandekar,
2010). Star’s flagship channel, Star Plus, lost no time in re-launching itself as a full-
fledged Hindi channel as soon as it was free of the limited Hindi programming clause
(Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). As Kumar (2006) notes, “ in the wake of the rising popularity
of Zee TV’s programming strategies in India, other privately owned, commercial
networks, such as Sony TV, began offering varied Hindi-language programming” (p.9).
The race to capture and grow the Hindi-speaking audience and dominate prime time was
on! The mid 1990s also saw the beginning of what was to become a vibrant regional
language commercial network industry, especially in the Southern States. These
channels and industries have their own legacy, growth pattern, cultural imperatives,
unique characteristics and complexity. The scope of this project is limited to the Hindi
television industry and its primetime narratives.
It wasn't until 2000, when Star Plus began broadcasting two shows created by
independent production house, ‘Balaji Telefims’ – the now iconic Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi
Bahu Thi (Because the Mother-in-law was once a Daughter-in-law) and Kahaani Ghar
Ghar Kii (The Tale of Every Household) – that the industry lucked into its (current)
winning formula of prime time programming. These were soap format family dramas,
21
where the central heroic and villainous characters were female, which were telecast daily
(4 or 5 times a week) and aimed strategically and exclusively at 'wooing' the female
audience. What has followed in the decade since has been a near dominance of the soap
genre in Hindi programming, especially the prime time band and a near
institutionalization of – to use Munshi’s (2010) characterization – the “parivaar aur
parampara” (family and tradition) formula. A no-holds barred winning combination
which due to its unprecedented economic and cultural success saw such rapid imitation
and proliferation that it has, as my field interviews show, created its own set of industry
logic and boundaries.
The rapid rise of indigenous cable channels, production companies and audience
penetration has created a complex, competitive industry structure that looks much
transformed from the days of the single channel, monopolized broadcasting and huge
captive audience numbers. Estimates in 2005 indicated that there were more than 200
digital channels, serving the home and Diaspora market, ramping up to 500 by 2009
(Basu, 2010; Thussu, 2007).
Despite the growth of numerous niche channels the “General Entertainment
Channels” (GEC), of which Star Plus and Zee TV were the original models, continue to
be the industry leaders. Domination (top ratings) in the GEC category is the yardstick
used to measure industry leaders and tastemakers. Adding to the decade long domination
by the Star -Zee-Sony triumvirate, 2008 saw several new players make a significant foray
into the GEC ratings race. Of these, Viacom Inc. & TV 18 owned Colors, launched in
July 2008 and at the time NDTV owned NDTV Imagine have been the most successful in
22
chipping away at Star and Zee’s dominant audience share. Colors tends to give its soaps
a rural and/or distinctly ethnic flavor – setting it in sharp opposition to the urban, upper
class settings of the previous generation soaps. It has, in a very short time, become the
industry trendsetter with several of its shows dominating the Top ten in the GEC ratings
soon after its launch. And it is not coincidental that the longest running indigenous soaps
on Indian television, (Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and its companion Kahaani Ghar
Ghar Kii, both of which ran for eight years) finally wound down at about the same time
that the new channels on the block began successfully challenging Star’s prime time
domination with their ‘new and improved’ soaps.
This rise of competition for the ever growing eyeballs and revenues creates the
competing tension of carving out new spaces for innovative storytelling, in order to set
oneself apart, even while conforming to the established industry (storytelling)
conventions so as to not alienate the audience. It is these dueling compulsions,
experienced daily, that shape, confine, and liberate the work of the prime time
storytellers.
Audience Reach – Cable TV’s Rise as a “Mass Medium”
Despite the higher visibility of its older sibling, the movie industry –
internationally recognized as ‘Bollywood’ – it is television, at 36% of total media and
entertainment revenues, which is the largest segment of the Indian media market (Kohli-
Khandekar, 2010). With 134 million TV homes (as of 2009-10), India is one of the
largest TV markets in the world. And the viewership size of its cable television market –
83 million homes – is second only to China. In revenue terms too, it is growing in double
23
digits compared to other developing and mature markets (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). As
she points out, the television industry is at the heart of the Indian media business and
“controls, decides, and shapes the course of several other sub-segments – music, film,
sports, software production, and an array of distribution businesses such as cable or DTH
– that rely on television content to sell their services” (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p.55).
From reaching a minority of the audience (1.2 million homes) in the early 1990s
cable and satellite television have reached dominating proportions in this decade.
Industry estimates for 2009 indicated that India has 134 million TV homes with 83
million cable users (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). This is a substantial growth from the
approximately 120 million television homes
3
in 2008, and a big leap from the roughly
105 million homes in 2005, and 88 million in 2000 (Basu, 2010; Thussu, 2007). The
numbers are expected to rise. As various industry reports have indicated, the growth and
penetration of the cable and satellite industry is only limited by infrastructure concerns
and as these get addressed, it will help the industry expand deeper into untapped markets
– the domination and omnipresence of cable programming is only likely to grow (Kohli-
Khandekar, 2010; Jensen & Oster, 2007).
This growth in the industry will largely be fueled by deeper expansion into semi-
urban and rural areas. The growth of the industry in the 1990s was confined to largely
urban, middle and upper class audiences. It is only once programming embraced greater
localization, including pushing for more and more content in Hindi (and other
indigenous) languages that cable and satellite found its firm foothold in the country. At a
time when television audiences are fragmenting or migrating to other mediums in other
24
developed media markets, in India the television audiences’, influence and
mainstreaming continues to grow. In a country with over 1.21 billion people, a rapidly
expanding economy, increasing discretionary income and a rising middle class, it’s clear
that the potential and size of the TV industry has far from peaked.
Figure 1: Growth in Indian cable and satellite audience through the 2000s (Basu, 2010).
The “Business” of Cable and Satellite Television
There are three main components of the industry – the broadcasters, the
distributors and the television “software” (content) makers. The software makers are the
ones who provide the content in the industry and thus can be considered as the key value
generators in the business. Broadcasters buy the programming from the software creators
and package channels around the programming which is then telecast and distributed
through one of three streams (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). At the broadcast level there are
25
primarily two models of functioning: the original (Doordarshan ) model of lease and
telecast – where the program is originally broadcast on a particular channel and time slot
but the ownership and syndication rights continue to belong to the program creators
(production houses). And the second, currently more prevalent model of buy and telecast
– where the programming is created for a specific broadcaster/channel who then has
telecast and syndication rights of the programming (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). The latter,
of course, has strong implications for the ongoing creative process as the channel has the
final say in the “product” that they are buying and have rights over.
The third component is the distribution or setup structure, and defines the growth
and the boundaries of the audience reach to a significant extent as well. Distribution via
the terrestrial signal is exclusively Doordarshan’s domain and with over 1400 towers at
its disposal nationwide, it accounts for the breadth and depth of DD’s reach in the country
– including a captive audience of approximately 50 million who live in areas where cable
and satellite infrastructure has not yet penetrated. (A reach that is, however, being
challenged everyday by the growing infrastructure development and institutionalization
of the cable industry). Cable and Direct-To-Home (DTH) signal account for the two
other ways that consumers receive television programming to their homes. Of the three,
DTH is currently the fastest growing market with more players and competitive offerings
to entice more and more audience members into their folds (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010).
While cable broadcasting provided the original backbone for the industry through the
90s, it involved several intermediaries and reached consumers through local
(neighborhood level) cable operators who had little oversight, regulation or price
26
monitoring. In contrast, under the DTH system the consumer buys a dish or set-top box
and then receives signals that the DTH operator sends directly – creating a far more
standardized, “reliable” and corporatized model. With a move towards DTH distribution,
the most unregulated domain of the industry is therefore now also beginning to be
regularized and folded into a tangible revenue stream.
Of the three components however it is the software (content) component which,
although the smallest in size of the three, is the “origin of all value creation in the
broadcast industry” (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p.87). At the dawn of the industry, most of
the successful content providers for Doordarshan and subsequently the fledgling cable
and satellite industry were largely drawn from the more established film industry,
whether it be for writing (Manohar Shyam Joshi), directing (Ramesh Sippy) or producing
(Dheeraj Kumar, Asha Parekh, Aruna Irani, Jeetendra and Ekta Kapoor), to say nothing
of acting.
In the initial days when DD was looking for software, it was the film industry that
had the people, the skills and the equipment needed to churn out entertainment
software. The trend continues. Some of the best known names in the business
have their roots in the film industry. (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p.67)
The rapid growth of the cable sector over the past decade and a half has translated
into a huge demand for fresh content providers. While the 80s saw just a handful of
production houses dominating the field, current industry estimates put the numbers in
thousands – almost 6,000 as of this decade. While these numbers indicate the ever-rising
level of demand and lower entry barriers for content makers, on the flip side they also
27
translate into extreme revenue fragmentation and overall lower profits for the production
houses – especially the newer, smaller firms (the one clear exception being Balaji
Telefilms which dominated the cable industry in the first half of first decade of the
twenty-first century). Indeed as Kohli-Khandekar (2010) points out, “There are very few
firms with the scale and the staying power to generate hundreds of hours of software
consistently over several years like the Rs. 3.78 billion Balaji Telefilms (as of 2007-08)”
(p.88).
Nevertheless, it can be safely said that the potential of the industry has barely
been scratched and business opportunities continue to abound as newer audiences and
markets open up and competition among broadcasters develops and multiplies. Unlike
the limited transmission of entertainment programming in the DD days, in the current
'crowded' scenario there is need for upwards of five to eight hours a day of original
entertainment software for over 50 channels. “That’s a mind boggling 91,250 hours a
year, not including news channels that do their own programming. An average cost of
Rs. 150,000 (approximately $3400) for every 30 minutes, pegs the industry’s size at Rs.
13.68 billion (approximately $306 million)” (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p. 88).
For software providers it is an industry that is marked with high returns for
success but equally harsh losses for failures and the distance between the two may be as
small as a few failures in the weekly ratings game. When the first successful cable prime
time soap, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi was sold by Balaji Telefilms to Star Plus in
the year 2000, they got Rs. 180,000 (approximately $4000) per episode. Once it entered
its golden run and began dominating the ratings charts, the stakes went up high as Rs.
28
600,000 (approximately $13,400) per episode, plus incentives (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010).
Content contracts are driven by a show's ability to continuously deliver audiences
(ratings) and the ones that do not make the weekly cut are given little opportunity to
wallow in their misery and are quick to have their plug pulled.
Prime Time Programming aka Soaps!
Notwithstanding the trend of channel proliferation and niche audience segmenting
in the past decade, it is still the General Entertainment Channels (GECs) – the likes of
Star Plus, Zee TV, Colors, Sony TV etc. – which dominate the “mood of the industry”
(Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p.57). What matters on these channels is what matters to the
industry and what matters are soaps! And thus the demand for fresh, indigenous GEC
content continues to spiral. While this has created tremendous pressure on creative and
material resources it has also meant, in keeping with the logic of simple demand and
supply economics, skyrocketing profits and incomes for those who “make it”. As far as
revenues and potentials go this is/has been indeed a golden period for those in the
business of content.
Prime time soap operas were what allowed the Hindi cable and satellite channels
to find a toehold and rapidly take over the national popular consciousness and these soaps
continue to be the bread and butter of the industry. National prime time programming
(across GECs) is currently dominated by dramas telecast in the daily soap format – the
only other form of programming to garner attention being reality based programming
(www.Satellite and Cable TV.com; www.Indiantelevision.com). The content (dramatic
female-driven narratives), structure (lack of narrative closure), and telecast schedule
29
(daily) all firmly locate the most popular genre of prime time programming as soaps. As
is characteristic of soap operas the world over, the recurrent theme amongst these top
dramas is the storytelling around women protagonists, their relationships, romances and
rivalries. Beyond this universal core, what sets the current crop of Indian soaps aside are
that their central story lines deal explicitly with the status of women within the family
and community and with ‘social issues’ faced by women in contemporary India.
The target audience is unequivocally women. The common industry
understanding, repeated by all respondents and publications, is that for a show to be
successful you need to win over the women viewers first (see also Centre for Advocacy
& Research, 2007; Coelho, 2010; Munshi, 2010). The central location of the woman
audience member in the imagination of the industry explicitly and implicitly guides the
industry structure and imperatives. Gendered nuances are thus baked into the very
evolution and growth of the cable and satellite industry.
The soaps are constructed to appeal to women audience members – extensive
amount of research goes into designing, packaging, and marketing it as just that. And the
fact that women are tuning into the soaps in large numbers (perhaps for lack of
alternatives) is proof for the industry that this is what appeals to women. It is a self-
perpetuating cycle that the industry insiders acknowledge being caught in. Soaps sell
therefore soaps are what are made, leaving little space for other genres of narrative
storytelling. Winning over the female audience member as a loyal follower of your
drama is seen as central to winning the ratings race (and advertising money), as the single
30
television in the household gets tuned to the lady of the houses' choice and brings along
with it all the other family members.
It is thus that the narrative about the industry is firmly entwined with a gendered
narrative about the women of the nation – on-screen, off-screen and behind the
scenes/screen. And while much critical attention is paid to what is on-screen and to an
extent to its reception off-screen, there remains a gap in the interrogation of the work that
goes on behind the screen which is one part of this dialectics. If we look back, promoting
social change, especially tied to women’s status in society, was obviously an explicit part
of the programming agenda from the inception of entertainment television in India. But
what is worth noting is that even in its newer avatars and changed broadcast paradigms,
the theme of women’s role and status in society continues to echo and resonate loudly in
popular texts. It is this strain within popular programming, and the people who continue
to tell these stories in a context that is morphing and evolving – even as I write – that is a
subject of this research.
Chapter Outlines
Brunsdon & Spigel (2008) in their introduction to the second edition of their
reader on Feminist Television Criticism observe that, “There is surprisingly little
scholarship on women as creator and producers of television” (p.8). This text attempts to
fill some of that gap in scholarship by giving primacy to the voices of the women in the
Indian television industry as encoders of text, gathered as part of the investigation in this
project. It examines the industry practices, the story tellers own self representation, and
self-reflexivity; reading these in conjunction with the stories produced by them (prime
31
time soaps) and the stories produced about their work in industry and popular texts. It
articulates the competing and complementary capitalist and gendered (patriarchal)
discourses that shape the everyday practices of these cultural workers and its translation
into particular representations of the Indian woman in contemporary Indian popular
culture.
Chapter two begins with an overview of the fieldwork process and describes the
recruitment procedures, the participants and the research protocol. As documented in the
chapter the fieldwork process and contacting and scheduling interviews with the
participants itself provides a rich understanding of the context of their work and keys one
in to the rhythms of the industry. Based in a qualitative research paradigm this study
draws on methodology and research of scholars who specialize in studying cultures of
production (see Caldwell, 2008; Caldwell, 2009; du Gay, 1997; Holt & Perren, 2009;
Mayer, Banks & Caldwell, 2009) and gathers primary data from the interview
participants in conjunction with supporting data from industry and media accounts and
field observations to provide materials and contexts to understand and explore the
discursive spaces occupied by women in the production of contemporary Indian popular
soap operas.
Chapter three, ‘Locating the Primetime Storytellers in the Industry’, takes a
detailed look into the daily activity of the storytellers on prime time Indian television.
Applying the theoretical framework of a “cultural economy”, this approach situates the
study of the production of soaps as a cultural form that needs to take into consideration
the work involved, the industry rationale that they are produced under, and further, the
32
historical/cultural moment that it is produced in. Through the prism of the vignettes of
daily activity presented in the chapter, the analysis highlights the manner in which the
production of the scripts is an activity marked by tangible labor, routine, and an everyday
encounter between the market and the creative personnel that disciplines both the process
and the output. It uncovers the intricate set of negotiated relationships that comprise the
making of mainstream mass culture based on one hand on television ratings and profit
margins and on the other revealing the complicated dynamics at play between economics,
creativity and hegemonic cultural norms.
The ‘Storyteller and the Indian Housewife’, chapter four, draws on the body of
global feminist research on soap operas to unpack the Indian media industry’s discourse
about prime time audiences, and more specifically the image of the “housewife” as an
audience member that emerges out of this discourse. The analysis sets forth the three
primary markers – femininity, mass consumption and “Indian-ness” – that define how
housewives are symbolically articulated and the tensions and contradictions embedded
within this discourse. The chapter argues that examining the thematic tropes that mark
the “housewife/audience” in the television industry's discourse, it is clear that their
understanding is framed in a highly self-reflexive and critical stance towards their own
work and their engagement with the gendered genre that provides their daily living.
Furthermore, the self-reflexive critique of the genre also plays into a paradigm where the
view of the housewives and the role that media (television) plays in their daily lives ends
up conforming to an elitist vision of the 'culture industry' with respect to what is valued
as a cultural product. In the final section of the chapter I argue that the discussion on the
33
audiences of prime time soaps also clearly illuminates the tension that lies at the heart of
performing "Indian-ness" and being Indian in contemporary times.
Chapter five, ‘Identity politics, Television Stories, & Self-reflexive Storytellers’,
looks at the culturally embedded, gendered contradictions writ large in the daily life of
the television storytellers I encountered. In the tradition of examining women viewers’
and feminist scholars’ negotiated relationships with soap opera, and soap opera characters
this project offers an additional dimension – the gendered writers. The first half of this
chapter inserts the voice of women writers into the conversation by specifically looking
at the characterizations of the on-screen heroines (protagonists) and vamps (antagonists)
as articulated by the writers themselves. The discussion clearly elaborates both a critical
stance of the writers’ towards their own work and in turn implicates their own identity
and ideological positioning vis-à-vis their work and role in the industry. The second half
of the chapter juxtaposes this description of the leading female characters with the
discussion regarding employment and predominance of women in the creative process in
Indian prime time television and draws attention to a tension that exists between the
representations of women on-screen vs. the representativeness of women in the industry
and its implications for understanding gendered identity politics in contemporary times.
The ‘Epilogue’ brings together the discussion in the previous chapters and
extends an argument on the imperative and possibilities for building networks and
communities of women professionals in the industry and the space for challenging the
dominant discourse and advocating for social change.
34
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY AND FIELDWORK
Following Caldwell (2008; 2009) and other scholars (Mayer, et al., 2009; Holt &
Perren, 2009) who specialize in studying cultures of production, this study, examines data
(materials) gathered through four different modes. The primary source of data is (a) in-
depth interviews conducted through the first half of 2010, with professionals (storytellers)
in television. These are individuals who had experience with the soap genre, especially
soaps that have enjoyed a certain level of popularity and recognition in the past five
years. This is supplemented by (b) archival data in the form of popular press articles –
newspapers/ news magazines – related to production work in the television soap industry;
and industry trade reports, analysis and insider accounts (including a how-to manual for
soap writers) (c) analysis of on-screen soaps (leading the charts in 2009-2010); and
finally (d) field observations of production spaces (set visit and visits to channel offices
and production houses). Taken together they provide the materials and contexts to
understand and explore the discursive spaces occupied by women in the production of
contemporary Indian popular culture.
As Caldwell points out, using this form of integrated cultural-industrial method of
analysis enables a researcher to place discourses and results from different modes in
critical tension or dialogue with others (Caldwell, 2009). The focus is on what he terms
the micro-social practices of workers. Examining these practices through the workers'
own self-representation, self-critiques and self-reflections and reading them in
conjunction with the stories produced by them (prime time soaps) and the stories
produced about them (in industry and popular texts) enables an examination of the
35
competing and complementary discourses that enshrine contemporary Indian popular
culture – discourses that are, furthermore, thoroughly gendered.
In-depth Interviews
In-depth interviews were chosen as they allowed me to draw on the participants'
experience and provide glimpses into the content and patterns of their daily experience
most effectively. As Seidman (2006) points out “at the root of in-depth interviewing is
an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they
make of that experience" (p.9). The goal of qualitative research is not to look for
principles that are true all the time and in all conditions, but rather to understand specific
circumstances, experiences and contexts (Dilley, 2004). In other words,
…interviewing provides access to the context of people’s behavior and thereby
provides a way for researchers to understand the meaning of that behavior. A
basic assumption in in-depth interviewing research is that the meaning people
make of their experience affects the way they carry out that experience. . . .
Interviewing (thus) allows us to put behavior in context and provides access to
understanding their action. (Seidman, 2006, p. 10)
Here, open-ended questions are used, building upon and exploring participants' responses
to those questions to gain knowledge of their social world. The method is advantageous
as it allows for the gathering of complex data focused on depth and subtleties.
Additionally it enabled me, the researcher, the flexibility to investigate particular
meanings, assumptions, and critically probe the concrete experiences and perceptions
voiced by the participants, as they arose through the process of the interview. Thus, use
36
of in-depth interviews as a methodology, coupled with the principle of anonymity,
enabled me to purposefully focus the conversations on the participants’ experiences as
workers in the industry and draw out their voice/agency as individuals.
Based on the research criteria, participants were purposively sampled. The
participants were drawn from the pool of cable and satellite television industry
professionals in Mumbai who were currently (at the time of the interview) engaged in the
production side of soaps or had been in the recent five years. The focus was to recruit
individuals who had worked on soaps with a general level of popularity and recognition –
i.e. soaps that had captured the popular imagination of the nation. The individuals
interviewed had all enjoyed a certain level of success and to that extent none were rank
outsiders or “struggling” (in terms of their career) to find their foothold in the industry. I
chose to begin the in-depth interviews with the foot soldiers of the industry – those who
had a say in the day-to-day storytelling and lifecycle of the written word. Once I felt that
a certain level of information had been reached and probed for amongst them, I went on
to speak to the senior creative ranks (writers and producers) and then to the top
executives in the industry (channel heads etc.). A total of seventeen face-to-face in-
depth, unstructured interviews were taped, supplemented with one informal (non-taped)
in-depth interview and several discussions with industry (channel) insiders, actors and
media/academic researchers. While the individuals in the latter three categories did not
fall within the participant criteria, and were thus not formally interviewed, they were
invaluable in providing insider accounts and access to their personal and professional
networks which enabled me to make contact and identify my research participants.
37
The fieldwork was conducted in Mumbai, India – the heart of the Indian cable and
television industry and also home to the Hindi movie industry – through two time
periods. The first period was between January and March 2011. The bulk of this time
was spent in establishing initial contact and exploring various networks to gain access to
relevant professionals. The second phase was between July and August 2011 and all of
the interviews with the senior industry professionals were conducted during this period,
in part as a result of the success to convert the potential contacts garnered during the first
phase into actual interviews.
Recruitment
Methodologically a snowball sample method was used for the recruitment
process. This method of sampling is most appropriate when research requires recruiting
members of a special population who are difficult to locate (Baxter & Babbie, 2004).
‘The procedure is implemented by collecting data on the few members of the target
population you can locate and then asking those individuals to provide the information
needed to locate others members of that population whom they happen to know (Baxter
& Babbie, 2004, p.135). Because this method is so well suited to cases where the desired
sample has highly specific knowledge, skills and characteristics (as in this project) this
method has been successfully used to study professionals in related media industries like
advertising professionals (see Dávila 2001; Sender, 2004). Achieving a random sample
is an ineffectual endeavor and rarely the aim of such type of studies since their sites of
research typically involve a small community of professionals, who work and compete
38
with one another, attend the same circuit of professional and social events and are well
acquainted with each other, professionally and personally.
Hence, all of the participants were initially contacted and then recruited through
the recommendation of either fellow participants or other industry "insiders" as
enumerated above. Alumni networks, high school and university, proved invaluable in
making inroads and initial contacts which eventually led to access to interview
participants. I started with my own high school, undergraduate and graduate networks,
looking for people based in the city (Mumbai) and their networks to make inroads into
the industry – mapping on to a profile of participants generated based on industry roles,
television ratings, and channel/genre relevance. In general, in the wider social network,
MBA school alumni networks (marketing/channel professionals) and Communication
School alumni network proved invaluable in identifying contacts which subsequently
resulted in at least one participant, who then provided contacts for more and so on. Not
having industry experience (an insider network) or being from the city (Mumbai), the
barriers to recruitment were high – especially since the attempt was to approach people
who were working on the top rated shows of the day
4
. While penetrating an elite circle of
professionals with no professional background in that field and limited resources (time
included) what proved most advantageous was talking about my research and the profile
of the people I was trying to recruit at every given opportunity; social or professional.
One breakthrough was thus thanks to a chance discussion with an academic
colleague at the International Communication Association conference who provided
access to her communication school alumni network in Mumbai. Similarly, another
39
major lead into a channel that I was desperate to make inroads into, happened at a social
gathering, where one of the attending guests happened to work at that channel and took it
upon himself to get me access to the people I wanted. Being open to the serendipity of
possible research encounters apart from continuously and consciously networking,
pushing my work – even in unrelated contexts – proved invaluable in getting the much
needed industry toehold.
The barriers have a lot to do with the working and structure of the writing
industry, i.e. the lack of active institutionalized spaces, like say the Writers Guild of
America or even online presence on sites like IMDB, where writers' networks can be
accessed. At most there are ad-hoc associations and affiliations, but these are also
affected by the high rate of turnover both on the channel side and the production-house/
freelance side that is characteristic of the industry at the moment. Technologically, the
bulk of the work in the industry is conducted via mobile phones and therefore the real
progress in recruiting participants happened only once I had access to their personal cell
phone numbers. The cell phone as a primary technological tool of recruitment has some
unique challenges as personal numbers are for obvious reasons harder to get ones’ hands
on in contrast to say listed email ids or official phone numbers (i.e. contact information
available in the public domain). For all of the participants it took repeated calling, after
the initial introductory contact from a third party, and in most cases several aborted
scheduled interviews, over weeks, before the actual interview took place.
Institutional and technological barriers aside, recruitment itself provided an
interesting perspective for the research – in the reactions it generated. When explaining
40
my research interest and wish to recruit people who write for soaps, whether to an
industry person in general, or while during my introductory contact with the participants
or even at the time of the meeting the participants themselves for the actual interview, I
found myself facing a lot of reservations about the nature of my interest and had to
repeatedly justify the project. Their reservation came not from a reluctance to talk about
their work but rather a questioning of their own work as "interesting" – worthy of an
academic project. It speaks to the paucity of interest, and the sheer neglect in the work of
the television industry as a whole, especially among academic circles, that it came as a
surprise to people whose bread and butter is vested in that work that there could be an
audience for "writings" (even if academic) about the television industry – and especially
soaps! A more common assumption and expectation was that I should be interested in
audience members (or at the very least the actors or artists) – researching audience
members or reception studies was clearly perceived as both a more legitimized and
institutionalized form of (media) scholarship.
One of the more interesting moments of post-interview debriefing was with a
channel executive (Deepak, D.) who, having come across only a couple of peer-reviewed
articles published on audience effects, had an involved discussion with me on existing
academic references on the television industry and had me make a list of relevant authors
and books that I had referenced in the course of my own work. Unfortunately this only
underscores the issue that while television in India continues to be an understudied arena
in academic circles, the texts that do exist – routinely included in course syllabi in
Western Universities and referenced in academic communication circles – have little or
41
no recognition and circulation in the home country (industry). Planning and recruiting
for all of the interviews called for a heavy investment of time (and money), patience and
flexibility in order to convert a potential contact into an interview participant. However,
during the face-to-face meetings, all of the respondents were incredibly generous with
their time and reflections with the interviews ranging from 45 minutes at minimum to up
to two hours. Furthermore it was the participants’ wholehearted support, personal
recommendations and solicitations, on my behalf to other colleagues and peers, post
interviews, which enabled me to access the people I did at every stage of the process.
Participants
My focus was specifically to access individuals who were involved in the creative
and iterative process that goes into the written script from the ideas stage to the time it is
delivered to the production floor. (See Appendix A for a partial list of soap affiliation
and the channel affiliations of all the individuals involved). The bulk of the interviewees
(16) were people whose work fit this category. The two exceptions were one, a
(production house) executive producer (in charge of production on-set) and the other, an
"informal" (not taped) in-depth interview with a channel marketing executive who was
involved in marketing of the soaps. Almost all the professionals were associated with
multiple soaps and this was the case with the writers – production house affiliates –
especially. In their case the association most often also spanned multiple channels. All
of the interviews were confidential and names and identification markers have been
masked. The participants were assigned random pseudonyms (in keeping with their
gender) to preserve their anonymity. The need to preserve anonymity was a
42
methodological necessity both in order to allow the participants to provide their
reflections and responses without reservations and make them feel comfortable with the
interview process (see Miller & Glassner, 1997). Equally importantly it enabled the
responses and the analysis to be focused on the participants as “workers” and their
everyday experience in the industry rather than speak as institutional and brand
representatives. To that extent the specifics of “identifying” the individual is not as
important for this research as paying attention to how they describe their everyday
experience and location in the industry and its reflection of the discourses they are
embedded in. By giving primacy to the everyday work, workers and their self
description, reflection and critiques, the goal is to situate ‘agency in the social
interactions, conceptual tactics, and cultural expressions of workers, not just the corporate
organization and economic strategies of the studios (read production houses) and
networks (read channels) (Caldwell, 2009, p.200).
Of the 18 participants (17 formal and 1 informal), 6 were speaking primarily from
their experience on working on soaps from the channel perspective. They ranged from
Executive Producers (junior ranks) to the Creative Heads of particular channels (most
senior creative input at the channel end). The remaining 12 were all primarily associated
with production houses – either as in-house writers; freelance writers; Creative Directors
and/or administrative heads (owners) of production house etc. The notable exception
were the two individual discussed above – one marketing personnel among the channel
workers and one production in-charge from among the production house affiliates.
Among the respondents 8 were men and the remaining 10 women. All of the interviews,
43
save one were conducted primarily in English with the one primarily in Hindi with some
English. Like me all of the participants were bilingual and therefore Hindi terms and
idioms were also used during the process of the interview, following the lead of the
participants. The interviews were conducted at a time and location chosen by the
participants, who most often chose their work site (production houses/channels) as a
preferred setting for the meetings. The few meetings that took place outside of work
setting were interesting in that these locations too indicated spaces (coffee shops,
restaurants) that industry professionals frequented in the course of the social aspects of
their work. All of the participants gave consent to being taped for the interview and were
assured of confidentiality (with the exception to the taped interviews noted above).
Table 2.1: Participants with Channel Affiliations
(All names have been changed and randomly assigned apart from matching the gender of
the participant)
Name Gender Level of Experience
1 Aditi Female Junior
2. Bhavana Female Middle
3. Chetan Male Junior
4. Deepak Male Senior
5. Ela Female Middle *
6. Farah Female Senior *
*Worked in significant roles in the soap industry across both channels and production houses
Note: Level of experience was determined by years of experience in the media industry, role and decision-
making power.
Junior level – a combination of years of experience in the media industry (6 or less approximately), role
(including number of people reporting to them – none) and decision-making power.
Middle level – a combination of years of experience in the media industry (6 to 10 years approximately),
role (including supervisory role) and decision-making power.
Senior level – a combination of years of experience in the media industry (10+ years of experience), role
(supervisory role to mid level executives) and decision-making power.
44
Table 2.2: Participants with Production House Affiliations
(All names have been changed and randomly assigned apart from matching the gender of
the participant)
Name Gender Level of Experience
1. Girish Male Middle *
2. Harish Male Junior
3. Indira Female Middle
4. Jaya Female Senior (experience)/Middle (influence)
5. Kunal Male Mid (experience) /Senior (influence)
6. Lata Female Middle
7. Meghna Female Junior
8. Nishant Male Senior
9. Omi Male Junior (experience) / Senior (influence)
10. Piya Female Senior
11. Rani Female Senior
12. Sachin Male Senior
*Worked in significant roles in the soap industry across both channels and production houses
Note: Level of experience was determined by years of experience in the media industry, role and decision-
making power.
Junior level – a combination of years of experience in the media industry (6 or less approximately), role
(including number of people reporting to them – none) and decision-making power.
Middle level – a combination of years of experience in the media industry (6 to 10 years approximately),
role (including supervisory role) and decision-making power.
Senior level – a combination of years of experience in the media industry (10+ years of experience), role
(supervisory role to mid level executives) and decision-making power.
Research Protocol
The interviews followed an open ended semi-structured format and while the
conversations varied by participant, all of them covered three thematic areas –
Background information (focused on professional trajectory and day-to-day work related
to soaps); the creative aspects of their work (probing for specific soaps, characters,
institutional structures and logic which play a role in their creative process); and finally
45
their take on the current broader media environment, the role of television and future
directions (see Appendix B). The progress through the three thematic areas was
governed by the participants' responses and followed the lead of their conversation.
Typically, once I had introduced myself and the research project, the first
thematic phase of the interview dealt with eliciting information on the professional
background of the participants – how they came to be in the television industry. These
questions were not meant to graph a historical/biographical record of the participant but
rather to understand and provide contextual details on institutional criteria for entry,
participation and success in this field; how the participants see their trajectory in the
industry. In other word it provides for an understanding of who the people are who work
in and have longevity and success in the writing domain of the industry. Also, it throws
light on the scope, mobility, work pressures, barriers and opportunities that inform the
day-to-day life of storytellers in the Indian television industry.
The second thematic phase built on the career trajectory and formed the core of
the interview itself, and looked specifically at the storyteller’s role as a “creative agent”.
The questions here were meant to examine the industry, organizational and individual
dynamics and discourses that came into play in the writing of soaps. Questions in this
section were designed to provide insight into the specific creative and strategic processes
that lead to what is written for on-screen depiction. That is, to look at a recounting of the
process and people involved in the development of the script; the history of the show and
the individuals' involvement with the soap – in other words, how the ideas come to be.
46
The questions here were meant to understand the discourses these professionals were
embedded in regarding the audience, industry, success, what/who makes a good writer,
and the stories that were being told on prime time. Thus, all of the participants were
asked to recount their role in the life cycle of the soap, reflect on the shows and
characters they counted as success (what they counted as success/gave them creative
satisfaction); the audience for their soaps – the relationship of the soaps and the audience;
and other aspects that impacted the storytelling of the soaps.
The third and final theme, typically used to wrap up the interview, asked the
participants to take a more macro level perspective on the current state and future
directions of television storytelling and media in general. So this section dealt with
(unless it had already been covered earlier) underlying assumptions in the industry about
soap storylines and writers/storytellers as well as reflections on the composition and
demographics of the production side of the industry (gender, cultural background,
professional/educational background). Overall the questions in this area were more
general in nature and asked the participants' impressions regarding industry trends, the
evolution of the industry and issues in the larger (social) environment that impact (could
impact) their work. And finally, if there were other observations and comments they
would like to share which had not been addressed during the interview and if they had
recommendations on others I could interview.
47
CHAPTER 3: LOCATING THE PRIME TIME STORYTELLERS IN THE INDUSTRY
TV also gives you the scope to write every day. In films you can take breaks, ‘I
am not in a mood to write today. I am waiting for inspiration to strike’.
Television is very demanding. You have to write every day. (Lata, writer,
female)
The writing of prime time soaps can be likened to an elaborate dance between the
channel and production house (writers). Who leads the performance is contingent on the
particular soap, the expertise of the professionals involved, individual personality and
power dynamics, and organizational culture. It is an intricate set of negotiated
relationships on a shifting terrain based on television ratings and profit margins which as
this chapter explores, reveals a complicated dynamics between economics, creativity and
cultural norms.
Applying the theoretical framework of a “cultural economy”, this approach
situates the study of the production of soaps as a cultural form that needs to take into
consideration the labor involved, the industry rationale that they are produced under, and
further the historical/cultural moment that it is produced in. In other words this approach
highlights that the “production of ‘cultural’ artifacts in their contemporary manifestations
cannot be divorced from economic processes and forms of organization. At the same
time …processes of production themselves are cultural phenomena in that they are
assemblages of meaningful practices that construct certain ways for people to conceive of
and conduct themselves in an organizational context” (du Gay, 1997, p.7). This chapter
48
focuses on the ways in which the writing of soap opera texts structures the everyday work
and the organization of the schedules of these producers of culture, providing a glimpse
into both the socio-economic environment that these writers function in and its
manifestation in their daily life, essential for understanding the inherent tensions and
industry constraints embedded in the production of these soaps. Television is a
“contradictory” institution, being both a site of creative & social expression as well as a
commercial industry based on market logic and driven by profits (Meehan, 1994 cited in
Havens, Lotz, & Tinic, 2009). This chapter in particular brings forth in detail how these
creative and market contradictions work within actual practices and the daily lives of
these contemporary Indian television storytellers, providing the foundation for
understanding what implications these practices and the related texts hold for
understanding discourses on gendered identities, popular representations and power,
analyzed in the subsequent chapters. Examining the lived reality of people involved in
the production of soaps allows us to theorize the contradictory impulses embedded in the
production of culture and its links to cultural and social change processes (Havens, et al,
2009; Mayer, et al., 2009). Across the vignettes of daily activity presented in this
chapter, the overarching theme to note is that the production of the scripts is an activity
marked by tangible labor, routine, and an everyday encounter between the market and the
creative personnel that disciplines the process and the output.
In contemporary Indian television industry, the individuals involved in script
formulation of soap operas typically provide input both at the collective ideation level,
49
and also have individual/discrete writing tasks which come into play at specific moments
in the creation of the script. Organizationally, it is the coming together of two distinct
business entities – the channel and the production house. Production houses are typically
smaller business units, which work on individual soaps, and have a flexible
organizational structure. Writers are hired and tend to affiliate with particular soaps,
rather than a particular production house – many often freelance to work across
production houses, on multiple soaps. Channels, which are larger corporate entities, have
a clearer organizational structure – which may be either flat or hierarchical. This
structure impacts how much of a say people in different roles have in providing direction
and input on the actual storylines and in being involved in the day-to-day writing of the
serials.
In the Indian television scenario writing takes place in three distinct stages – the
first is the broad story outline that is in most cases worked out with the main writer and
the channel executives and creative supervisors in a joint session. Post that the
screenplay writers take over to flesh out and give life to the vision. Note the difference in
terminology – in India a “screenplay” consists of detailed scene outlines with some
directions for dialogue. The third and final stage is the dialogue writing – a completely
different function where full dialogues for the scenes are actually written. Interestingly,
across the board, the written product in the first two stages is in English and it is only at
the dialogue stage that the writing is translated into Hindi (one of the reasons why
dialogue writing has evolved into a distinct job function in the writing process).
50
In theory, there is an organized and established rhythm between the production
house (writers, screenplay writers, and dialogue writers) and channel (executive and
creative/supervising producers and creative heads) [See Appendix C], in which a story
takes 3-4 days to develop from ideas to words on paper, onto the production floor and
then “finalized” i.e. ready for telecast, all within the same week. That’s the best case
scenario. In the worst case scenario, storytellers are often making changes to the script as
during production and filming and giving their inputs “live”, for a show going on air in
the next 24 hours.
Storytellers at Work
Lata’s Story
Writers are very important in television. Writers (and actors) are the most
important people in television. … Writers are actually what's driving television
… For writers, the more you get experience the more you are going to be paid, the
more you are going to be respected, and more exciting work will come your way.
(Lata, writer, female)
It was this discipline and push that first attracted Lata to move from primarily
working on scripts in the Hindi film industry to television – the ability to both indulge her
passion for writing and give structure and discipline to the process. However, it is a
writing job that is unrelenting in its demands and one of the key factors she had to adjust
to when making the switch.
51
You can't make excuses, you can't have off days, you can't say, ‘Can I please take
a week off because I am really tired and my brain needs a rest?’ You have to
write. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are …, you have to write. And it
needs to be delivered on an everyday basis. You can't take more time... you have
to write every day, you have to sit in front of the computer and write. (Lata,
writer, female)
A reality borne out by the fact that I ended up meeting Lata on a late Sunday afternoon
after she had wrapped up unexpected deadlines precipitated by a crisis on-set on the
Friday before.
For Lata, a freelance screenplay writer, the day starts early, as she likes to write
first thing in the morning and have the screenplay ready to be moved to the next person in
the chain before the channel “opens shop”. Each screenplay typically takes her
somewhere between 4-6 hours, to be then sent off to the creative head at the respective
production houses who looks it over and then forwards it on to the channel. The writing
and the feedback is a continuous process with feedback coming in as she is finishing up
the next screenplay and having to make the suggested changes. Once all the feedback has
been incorporated and finalized, the screenplay is sent off to the dialogue writer and to
the production floor within the next day. However this routine of everyday writing is not
without its own drama and highpoint.
So for instance on the Friday before we met, as Lata finished writing a screenplay
in the morning the feedback on the previous screenplays of both her shows arrived in her
52
inbox. She made the changes on one, sent it and started on the next one … “Then there
was this crisis. The lead in one of the shows fell ill and we had to shoot a few very
crucial scenes, (but) they couldn't”. So in combination with the story writer Lata had to
write “filler scenes” to make the existing episode scripts longer, - “space it out in five
telecast episodes instead of two”, slot the new scenes and make the required changes to
the existing script, format it and send it off. All of which added to her already packed
schedule.
While this scenario was an out of the ordinary situation for the team – usually
they are writing for episodes that are to be telecast a week from when the script is
finalized – given the year round work that these soaps require, it is not unheard of. So
“sometimes you are writing – it's very cut-to-cut – the telecast is probably the next day or
the same evening. As you are writing, the dialogue writer is finishing and sending it and
it's being shot, mastered and sent to the channel” (Lata, writer, female).
Apart from her daily work on the screenplay, Lata, along with the writer and
creative head of the production house, regularly meets with the channel representatives in
“broad story meetings” where they ideate the high points and the story/character arcs for
the next two weeks, air concerns and get feedback from the channel executives. The
medium and schedule makes it imperative that they don’t think “too far ahead”, two
weeks being the maximum.
…because you might start with a particular story or particular character and that
character/story might not be liked by the audience at all ... it all depends on the
53
feedback that you are getting. And you might bring a character for only a few
episodes because that's the demand of the story and the character becomes so
popular and so liked, that you will keep on giving that person more and more
subplots or shift the attention of the story to that character. (Lata, writer, female)
Once the broad story line has been worked out, the writing team within the
production house – primarily the writer and Lata – work on the story outline, beyond
which it becomes Lata’s job, as the screenplay writer, to flesh out the intricacies of the
plot lines, scenes and characters in keeping with the collective vision.
A relatively new entrant to the field who encountered success early on in the
process – both in landing the kind of shows that she did and the “phenomenal ratings”
that these shows began to garner in quick succession – Lata counts herself lucky in that
she has found herself working in a “respectful environment”, in partnership with the
channel. Lata’s experience of the industry has been of a primarily creative collaboration,
with the channel and production house working collectively to figure out what is working
or not. But not all relationships between the channel and the production houses are as
smooth sailing. As she herself points out, the industry is rife with stories of
uncooperative channel executives and/or power plays between channels and production
house personnel. For Lata, such creative tension is more about the demands inherent in
writing for television and a productive challenge rather than an obstacle.
Lucky for me – channel I am working for – they are as involved as the writers ...
(and) open to something being done differently if you can convince them and
54
make it work. They are not going to randomly assert that, ‘we are the channel we
know better’. I work in a very respectful environment. I have heard stories of
other writers who are far more senior working with EPs (Executive Producers) in
channels who have no clue about anything ... ‘but we are saying so, we are the
channel, so you have to listen to it’.... That would be a very difficult space for
me. Any constraints are minor and you learn to work around it. It makes you
work harder also, if you are not convinced, and still you have to make a scene
convincing, then you just have to work harder, so it's not a problem till now.
(Lata, writer, female)
Aditi’s Story
I usually get to work by around 11-11.30 (a.m.). And currently because I have no
shows on air I work from like 11-11.30 to 7.30-8 (p.m.) tops. But when I do have
shows on air, and if my production house is awful, then I've had days where I
have worked till 4 o'clock in the morning and stuff like that. A lot of days...
(Aditi, writer, female)
Aditi is a typical “executive producer” (EP) at a channel, in her mid 20’s. Her
day usually begins with reviewing the screenplay that has been sent in by the production
house and giving them feedback. Screenplay reviews done, it is usually time to go over
the rough cuts of the filmed episodes – provide suggestions and feedback and ensure that
those are incorporated. And in the realistic world of finite, tight, time lines (vs. an
idealized world with time built in for feedback and change) and “because ultimately you
55
can't have blank on air and a lot of the shows get shot overnight, especially if your
production house is fucked up – then you yourself will go to the edit, irrespective of what
hour it is”. Her schedule at the time of interviewing was far more “relaxed” as she was in
the pre-launch phase of two new prime time soaps that she would be supervising. This
was a rare period of respite for her as she worked with production houses to create a bank
of episodes in anticipation of launch of the serials. We met over a cup of coffee, at a
coffee shop near her office, at the end of her day – scheduled originally for 7.30 p.m., she
was finally able to get out of office at 8.30 p.m.
For someone at her level and experience, the work is extremely hands-on mainly
because of her role in coordinating the efforts of all the players in the production – both
internally within the channel and externally with the production house. For the
production house, she is the day-to-day face of the channel, providing their immediate
judgment and requirements. At the end of the day she is the one “finalizing the episode”,
“supervising the episode”, and “briefing the channel marketing and promo team”.
Having worked in both a hierarchical setup and her current, more flat organizational
setup , she finds she has far more say and direct input in her current role and organization
with typically just her and a superior (head of content and communication) sitting in on
brainstorming sessions with the writers, producers and the creative head from the
production house.
And among these various roles and individuals providing their inputs – in her
work culture – the writer plays a key role, because it ultimately the writers who actualize
56
the concept and are the backbone of the show. It is this respect for the craft and a tacit
acknowledgement of the vision, depth and nuances provided by the writers, articulated by
channel executives like Aditi and Ela or writers like Lata, Piya, and Sachin which marks
the esteemed place of the writers in the production process, even as they acknowledge
that it is heavily circumscribed by particular relationships between the channels and the
writer/production house and the exercise of power by the channel, by virtue of their
economic clout and the omnipresent quest for ratings.
For Aditi the ideal scenario is one where she has two weeks of episodes banked
before going on air. It allows her to work with the channel promotions and scheduling
team to strategize, make required changes, create special (hour long) episodes and/or
teaser campaigns. However, she admitted that in the real world of soap production the
more typical production schedule is far more down to the wire, especially when working
with more established, powerful stars of the industry.
…Say if you are working with a (established production house) … and say if you
are working with established TV stars – they come with their own set of tantrums
and problems and stuff like that. So, if an episode has to air at like 10.30 tonight,
in all probability it will come for telecast at 10 o'clock at night (Aditi, writer,
female)
While having episodes ready to air in advance is ideal, on the flip side, more than
two weeks of filmed material is problematic as well.
57
You would not want too much of a bank like you would not want say two months
of shot and ready episodes before you go on air because you never know how the
audience is going to react. …So if you have a lot of stuff shot, kept ready, then it
reduces the amount of time in which you could make changes necessary to get the
ratings up (Aditi, writer, female)
At the end of the day the ability to be responsive to the numbers, whether they be
going up or down, and laboring with the production house to make sure that the ratings
are moving in the right direction is a key aspect of her job.
Bhavana’s Story
Because I am in a channel I manage to get a Saturday, Sunday off – in fact abhi
(right now) … we've not had a single weekend free for the last, I think, two
months, but still I am a lucky one. But some people work 24-7, 24 hours – actors,
creative heads, associates on sets and all. …Because we run a show every day,
like an episode every day.
There is so much of competition – the money you are investing, how can you not
expect certain kind of result from it. And for that if you are responsible, then you
have to make sure that whatever you put on air, it’s according to your vision.
(Bhavana, channel executive, female)
Bhavana, in her late 20s, has worked her way up the ranks, across more than a
couple of channels, to her current role as a “creative supervisor” in the channel’s creative
team. She is involved right from the time a production house is commissioned for the
58
show until the nightly telecast – whether it is fleshing out the concept with the writers in
the production team, sitting over scripts, casting, or deciding locations. Her day, much
like Aditi’s, starts with going over screenplays and the episodes to be telecast that
evening or the next day. The immediate episodes dealt with, it is usually time to sit in on
a “broad story” meeting with her writers from the production house where they
brainstorm on upcoming story lines. “You are the one who says yes to everything that
goes on air. So … you have these sessions of stories, everything, episodic stories, and
screenplays and then sometimes dialogues and everything. It has to pass through us”.
Being in a supervisory role, she has 2-3 people (typically EPs like Aditi) reporting to her.
As she has moved up the ranks of the organization, she has experienced a real qualitative
difference in the level of involvement she now has on the ideation of storylines,
screenplays and concepts.
Bhavana’s day is set to “officially” end at 6.30 p.m. but as she pointed out, just in
the weeks before we met, she had been coming home every night at 9 p.m. and spent the
last couple of weekends reviewing scripts at home – something which wasn’t entirely out
of the ordinary. Her long days and working weekends at that moment was in part being
influenced by an “extreme case situation” – one in which for a long while the show was
not being able to find the correct working balance between the writers, the channel’s
vision, the technical crew (including the actors) and the ratings. For Bhavana, personally,
that meant,
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… For the longest time I've been sitting and cracking stories myself. … A line-
up would come, it would be rejected, we would write a fresh line-up, we would
send it to the screenplay writer, the screenplay writer would write it, then get back
and we would sit on it and give feedback on that. …On this project it was
becoming very important to go and brief the actors or the directors, everybody on
a one to one. So we did that. …In this case we decided to cross that line because it
wasn't working or we were unable to get the right kind of person and things like
that. So we took it in our own hands, and we also doubled as a writer and also as
a creative head on this show (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
Her personal experiences, and having to work as closely as she did on story lines
and scripts (again not an atypical expectation for those working on the channel side of
things) had positioned her very clearly in the writer’s camp as far as she was concerned.
Having spent her entire career working on soaps from the channel side, she saw the
storytelling on soaps as ultimately coming back to the channel and residing in the creative
decision-making within the channel. Whether it is due to a felt paucity of talent within
the industry – “very, very few producers have the kind of writers who inspire that kind of
confidence; you know I am going to write like this, it’s going to be right...” (Bhavana,
channel executive, female); Or due to the exacting demands of competition and being
sensitive to every shift on the ratings chart, where the writers (experienced or not) were
not able to deliver what the channels wanted, in the end from her perspective, she felt
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that, “as far as story goes, I think mostly channels control where the story will go and
how they see it happening”.
Bhavana pointed out that this high demand for quantity and quality of content is
also driving a push to attract “fresh” talent and retain the existing “good” writers in the
industry. Both on the production house part of the team and correspondingly a similar
focus in nurturing creative/writing talents on the channel team as well.
In my team there definitely is (a push to hire people with a creative background).
And even in my previous organization the focus was on getting people who had
some kind of writing skill. Because organizational etiquette was something you
could learn and something you could get adjusted to but writing was one of the
most important things. … Our bosses' focus was always to get the writer out of
us because he says once you understand the grammar, once you understand how it
works, it will be far easier for you to be able to control it and look at your own
shows individually and see where it is going. So yeah the focus is clearly on
having that bent of mind. (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
There are both payoffs and drawbacks in working under these daily high pressure
and demanding conditions. On the one hand it makes Indian television a “superbly
paying industry. Yeah, yeah. People are very happy... it's a well paying, very very
satisfying industry”. On the other hand, across the board people noted how it takes a
heavy toll and turnover because of “the way we function – very very ... under high
pressure and everyday work”. A successful soap, today, fundamentally requires an
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intense level of unrelenting involvement from the entire storytelling/creative team. The
competition is intense, the numbers hard to get and even harder to sustain, and thus to
succeed personally and professionally, in a “creative job” whatever needs to be done one
just has to do it. In other words, “if you want to get that extra number, extra week, you
have to go that extra mile. So it all depends on who wants to survive and how you want
to survive” (Bhavana, channel executive, female).
The Storytellers and the Industry
The Practicalities of Being in the “Business of Soaps”
There is a remarkable amount of hard work involved in this process, even before
the script reaches the production floor. And the daily grind of having a nightly telecast,
52 weeks in a year, structures the everyday routine and demands on the time and energy
of these creative personnel. As Girish, a writer, succinctly describes it, ‘It's very
demanding. It's very exhausting’. The punishing schedule and the strain of a daily high
stress culture of functioning is also the reason that the industry routinely faces a high
churn and turnover – especially at the lower rungs. Whether it is people crossing over
between roles in channel and production houses or taking on newer (alternate) roles
within the organization – moving from writing to being creative producers or executive
producers in the production house or taking on roles on the production floor – or quitting
the industry altogether.
The lower rung, yeah there is a lot of you know fresh people coming into it. The
reason also for that is because, very frankly, you know in this industry you burn
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out like this (snaps fingers) so you do require fresh people all the time to keep
coming and taking the load and the pressure and all of that. I mean if I am doing
one soap today, I am literally producing a half hour material everyday and putting
it on air. And the conditions that it is done under – budgets (pause) – it's
ridiculous. It's amazing how things go on air. That's the reason you know you
keep needing new people. (Kunal, producer, male)
Interestingly the roles of the varied “storytellers” involved in the production
process, and the power struggles hinted at between the production house and the
channels, underline the tension inherent in accepting writing (for television) as an
economic activity, evidencing the juxtaposition of an idealized notion of unfettered
creativity and the reality of having to take into consideration to economic demands.
Yes, we do have our fights, creative fights … When there will be two creative
people working there is going to be some differences. We have our grudges that
'ok, they didn't listen to us and that's why the story got spoilt'. They think that the
writers didn't do the proper work ... so those kinds of things always keep
happening but at the end of the day what matters is whether you are getting the
ratings or not. If ratings are good writers claim we wrote it, channel claims we
asked them to write it that way. If it doesn't come then both of them put it the
other way. (Girish, writer, male)
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The Pleasure and Pain of Ratings
It all comes down to who controls the medium today. It's not the creative; it is not
this ... it is the TRPs. I mean obviously it is the money finally that controls the
(medium). You know what sells you are going to sell. That's it. (Kunal,
producer, male)
Measuring viewership and audience response have been an integral part of the
Indian broadcasting industry right from its inception. While there were different studies
carried out in the period starting from 1983, it was only sometime in 1986 that continuous
ratings measurement systems were launched by three research agencies – Indian Market
Research Bureau ( now IMRB International), Monitoring and Research Systems (MaRS),
and Burke & Sameer – to measure the popularity of programs on DD (Kohli-Khandekar,
2010). Simultaneously, IMRB also launched the daily diary system, distributing diaries
to approximately 3,600 households in eight Indian cities, based on the demographics that
advertisers were interested in. Regular co-viewing with friends and neighbors was a
widespread practice; hence IMRB had two diaries – primary and secondary. The primary
diary was maintained by the television owner while the guest viewers filled out the
secondary diary (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). It was only in 1991 that this data (diary
recordings) started to be tracked for cable and satellite homes. By 1995 the rapid growth
and penetration of the satellite channels was cause enough for the push for these market
research agencies to invest in Peoplemeters(TM).
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However the establishment of a rating system was not without its own
competition and complications and for a period of almost seven years the industry had
two competing rating systems – INTAM and TAM – promoted by two rival companies.
Both of these systems finally consolidated into the standardized Television Audience
Measurement (TAM) system in 2002. Ratings systems are universally critiqued, and
India also sees its regular share of competitors, trying to push their methodologies, such
as aMap in 2004 (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010). TAM’s Peoplemeters (TM) are physical
meters attached to television sets in selected viewers’ homes to register the frequency of
any channel watched for more than a minute. This is mapped on to the frequencies for
each channel within the meter’s bank and the data is continuously downloaded by the
agency, collated and analyzed and published each week.
Success is measured every Wednesday, when you get your ratings. Till the time
your ratings are good for the shows it's really good, the ratings start dipping
down, the pressure increases. And finally they say, “Ok tata-bye-bye the show is
going off air. It's as simple as that”. So it's become very commercialized. If you
go to see your art and commerce balance … How much ever we say, “no, it's the
creativity”, but as a matter of fact when we are talking about an industry … bigger
than your movie industry in India, then you cannot ignore something called TRP
because that's where moneys come from. (Girish, writer, male)
Wednesdays are red-letter days for the Indian television industry because on
Wednesday mornings the weekly ratings are released. ‘Television Rating Points’ or
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TRPs – the more customarily used shorthand – measured through the TAM system are
the lifeblood of the television industry. TRPs decide what the 'ideal' consuming viewer
likes and thus, define success and failure and of course, where the story should go next.
As Ela explained, most ideation sessions are driven by TRPs!
So you might have certain ideas of how you see a certain character panning out
but all of those are subject to your weekly TRPs. If you come to know that, Oh!
Nobody is interested in my main lead, they are more interested in the main lead's
friend or the bhabi (sister-in-law), then … that obviously becomes your main
track. Or at least the important/active track. So you have to keep seeing that on a
week to week basis …. (Ela, channel executive, female)
The reality of checking and course-correcting the direction of your story line and
character arcs week-to-week means that having the screenplay written weeks in advance
or a bank of episodes shot and mastered a month or more in advance is impractical.
Deadlines and turn around are therefore always tight and often one holdup away from
becoming full blown crises.
Indeed, even before one gets to the commissioning of a story, ratings provide a
barometer for what kind of stories should be told. The foundation of the industry is based
upon the ratings (and associated market research) providing a ‘clear’ definition of who
the audiences are. And for the Indian General Entertainment Content (GEC) television
industry the writing on the wall has been quite clear for a while – it is women who
provide the ratings (Centre for Advocacy & Research, 2007)! (See chapter 4 for a
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discussion on audiences). With an audience defined as largely female the shorthand for
reigning story pitches have become about “who the girl is and what her problem is” and
storytelling is driven by female protagonists. Thus, given the market’s propensity to
clone its own successes, and the current crop of chart topping soaps – following in the
footsteps of the phenomenal success of socio-culturally themed original stories like
Balika Vadhu (Child Bride), Uttaran (Hand-me-down) or Saat Phere – Saloni ka Safar
(Seven Steps – Saloni’s Journey); the stories that are seen as requisite for getting the
much coveted weekly TRPs have to deal with women and their everyday and
extraordinary trials and tribulations. As Indira evocatively expressed:
Now it's very evident … that the audiences are women. … So you go to a
channel meeting, "They'll say whose the woman? ‘Ladki kaun hai’? Ladki ka kya
hai? (Who’s the girl? What’s her issue?)’ … The only interest is that who is the
character and what are the troubles that she is facing? Is the saas (mother-in-law)
troubling her? Is she a child widow? Has she got acid thrown on her face? Was
she raped? Is she a victim of marital rape? Pre-marital rape? I mean there's like
hazaar (thousand) issues, you have to pick up one issue – bride burning, dowry,
everything. I mean like everything. And then build an entire story line and then
create like subsidiary women villainous characters and just keep jabbing, jabbing,
jabbing, jabbing, jabbing (pause) that's it. Audiences are women you know.
(Indira, writer, female)
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As ephemeral and insubstantial as these weekly numbers are, they are the mold to
which stories and storytellers eventually conform to. The ‘certainty’ of these numbers
translates not just into who or what gets taken up for consideration in the storytelling, but
their influence is felt even in the minutia of specific settings and every plot twist and turn.
No self-respecting EP or group head would allow more than two scenes based in a
hospital or in a police station in their show. … You know, you try to avoid
unhappiness – like the one thing that is most taboo is – yaar kissi ko maaro mat
(hey, don’t kill anyone). Why? Kyunki yaar marne ke baad woh jo everybody has
to wear white na for those 6-7 episodes, woh you know, usme TRPs nahi aati hai
(Cause you know after they die, when everybody has to be in white for mourning
for those 6-7 episodes, that you know, that doesn’t get you TRPs). And we went
through a lot of that (for my show) also – even though it was just 7 episodes, still
TRPs just plummeted down; because it was that unhappy zone. (Ela, channel
executive, female)
So even as the writers and channel personnel on Ela’s chart topping show have
constantly tried to break the mold and go against the grain, ‘experimenting’ with multiple
episodes/story tracks set over the years in hospitals, police stations and even death of
major characters – at the end of the day there is an acknowledgment that these “creative
liberties” are at the expense of their position as TRP leaders.
It took me some time to appreciate that (TRPs) also because I thought that's so...
you know that's not something a writer should concern herself or himself with.
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But then I started enjoying it because the show – I was lucky the show that I
joined was already a reasonably popular show but it went on to see unprecedented
popularity soon after and there was this euphoria and everyone was sucked into it.
So I started enjoying TRPs, “Oh people like this. Maybe we should give them
this”. (Lata, writer, female)
Despite the tyranny and creative restrictions that are imposed by having to
conform to a commercial, market driven system there is a joy and pleasure that comes
with tasting the success of audience endorsement via numbers that is hard to negate.
Clearly it is a negotiated relationship which walks a tight rope between being appreciated
for writing something that has massive popular appeal and the necessity of compromising
your artistic vision to industry prescribed formulas for achieving that success. A tension
that was clearly evident when Bhavana tried to express what she counted as personal
success and what provided her with creative satisfaction. Although she explicitly
articulated buying into and giving primacy to the market based, ratings driven logic as the
definer of personal success, in the end, the show she chose to talk about as being
creatively satisfying for her was one, that in fact never achieved the kind of chart topping
numbers her other shows routinely do. In essence belying her own definition of what
should count as success in the industry.
There is a different high when you get numbers; there is no doubt about it. I
won't lie and say that it (doesn’t matter)... But my boss always used to say that
certain shows have soul and certain have numbers. …. I disagree with him
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because a lot of audiences (are) involved with high number shows, obviously
involved with the characters; that is why it's doing well. So I don't understand the
‘soul’ business.
But yes, if you ask me there was this particular show I worked on very, very, hard
and the characters were very difficult to understand and ‘bahut theraav tha uss
show mein’ (there was a lot of depth in that show). It wasn't a fast paced show
and it was on a very mature subject. It was handled very sensitively and all. It
never worked very well – did average. But … that is one of the most satisfying
shows I've ever done. (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
No one within the industry would dispute the satisfaction that having a commercially
successful show provides, yet even when they are fully vested in the institutional
language and logic of the ratings game, creative satisfaction (and discontent) goes beyond
the simple math of ratings.
The irony of the ratings chase of course is, as Hobson (2003) points out in her
study of soap operas in the British media landscape, that achieving high ratings is not a
onetime effort. The format and scheduling of soaps and the competition embedded in the
industry necessitates a repeat of the feat, night after night, week after week, month after
month. “Getting high ratings gives overnight, if not instant satisfaction. But then they
need to do it again and again, and to keep being able to get a high score…” (Hobson
(2003, p.39).
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The Contested Creative Terrain
While television in India has always been seen as catering to the popular
imagination, it is only since the advent of cable and satellite television and multiple
channels competing to provide original programming to a rapidly evolving consumer
society, that television has come close to realizing its “mass” entertainment potential.
Ironically, in contrast to contemporary market driven storytelling, production of
entertainment programs on state-run Doordarshan (DD) in the 80s gets tempered by
hindsight as having promoted unique artistic talents and freedom of unfettered creative
expression. The role of the state bureaucracy and the active shaping of the ideological
content on-screen (see Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal, 2001) gets obscured in this
mythologizing of the “good old days” of Doordarshan.
In the days of Doordarshan and before the explosion of private channels, the
creative person reigned supreme. Take a look at the directors who were working
on television ... the writers were novelists and poets. There was collaboration
between the director and the writer, both working hard to put a unique stamp upon
the final show. Everyone strived to do shows they were proud of. (Coelho, 2010,
p.114)
The phenomenal success of the soap driven prime time model pioneered by the
cable and satellite industry has meant rapid shifts in industry functioning and self
perception to accommodate the needs of large scale production. The language and logic
of the market driven content has had to be institutionalized and power equations
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reconfigured as part of these shifts. You no longer have a patron (DD) commissioning
you for works of art but are manufacturing products which will fetch you the highest
profits in the market. “Market Forces” and their accompanying tools (market research,
ratings) determine who holds power in the industry. As Coelho (2010), a writer and
longtime industry professional, points out in her handbook for aspiring writers, even the
language to describe creative output came to be industrialized as part of this shift with
terms such as “software” and “product” becoming common usage. And the role of the
creative personnel too depicts these shifts in the industry’s functioning and power
dynamics. In the heydays of Balaji Telefilms (the original production house to establish
the prime time soap formula on Indian television) in the first decade of this century,
production of soap operas were likened to the manufacturing processes in a factory
production line, with individual artistic talent sacrificed for the efficiency of
manufacturing large volumes of content. “Today all those who contribute to a television
show – creative people, production people, actors, anybody at all – are part of a
production line. And every single individual is replaceable” (Coelho, 2010, p.115).
There is no doubt that this scale and style of functioning and production continues to hold
sway in the industry, yet, as my interviews evidenced, there are also increasing instances
of writers beginning to carve out their niche spaces within this mode of functioning and
reclaiming their lost standing through powerful, script driven narratives, and negotiated
relationships with the channels and their executives.
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Now things are getting organized. People are slowly opening up and giving
respect to writers. And more importantly they are also giving money to writers.
There was a time … the moment you said writer, the only image that would come
in your head is like phate hue chappal (torn slippers) and he will have one bag by
his side and he is running around with sheets of paper. But now things have
actually changed. Now writers are well paid, they are very much in demand. And
people are accepting finally that, “Okay, script is the king”. Because you will not
shoot anything extraordinary if you don’t have a script in hand. So definitely there
is a complete change. (Girish, writer, male)
Contrast this with Coelho’s (2010) firsthand account of the power shift that
writers in the industry experienced in favor of the channels when soaps started becoming
a mainstay of the industry (and the embedded discomfort/discontent with this shift to the
bottom-line driven storytelling, apparent in her writing).
Channels took over the task of shaping the creative. Writers and directors were
relegated to the background. Story lines and characters were now hammered out
at channel meetings. … Armed with Television Rating Points for that week, they
adjusted and tweaked creative – killing a character here, resurrecting one there.
Channel Executive Producers (EP) took to dictating screenplay and scenes. Since
the channel was directly commissioning the serial from the producer, they
behaved like the all-powerful end-client… This has been the state of affairs in the
recent past, during which Saas-Bahu (Mother in Law – Daughter in Law) has
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come to rule supreme. And these years have leached the real talent out of the
industry. (Coelho, 2010, p.116)
Or Ela, a channel executive’s description of brainstorming sessions on the script,
where she points out that everyone sits on the story scripting process to give feedback,
but as people from the channel they are there primarily to approve the scripts. We look at
a script from the point (whether) or not it will garner the kind of TRPs we are looking at
... our set targets. … because at the end of the day you are working for TRPs right” (Ela,
channel executive, female).
While like Ela, all the participants described such meetings between the writers
and channel executives to discuss storylines and screenplays as an institutionalized
matter-of-fact process in the day-to-day scripting of soap operas, Coelho’s account brings
forth the unease that accompanied this mode of functioning being institutionalized. The
various accounts by my research participants hint at the creative tensions and the
manifest and intangible power struggles among the various institutional players, even as
ratings have come to be accepted as the gold standard by which to judge plot points and
creativity.
At another level there is a real felt contradiction between the social goals/social
responsibility mandate baked into the genome of the Indian television industry and the
commerce driven storytelling that they encounter in their daily functioning. Being the
vanguards and foot soldiers of the commercial television industry and being fully vested
and recognizing that they are in the “business” of entertaining the masses does not negate
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the social responsibility that they see inherent in the role that television does (should)
play in society. Thus, their reflection on their daily activity and the cultural product that
that activity and process produces brings forth embedded critiques of the ideological and
progressive/regressive goals that these cultural workers see being served by their texts
both in form and content. (See chapter five for a further discussion).
As Aditi explains about what she sees as the flaws in her profession,
I am being unfair to my profession – I have a very strong point of view on it ...
because I come from (names her college) and for better or for worse we used to
have this perspective of whatever we might do, we should make a difference in a
positive sort of way. But when it comes to TV shows – No! It's all business! So
even though, yes, we tackle (social issues) {pause}.
See when the whole trend of social reality started … if somebody spoke about
child marriage, somebody else spoke about domestic violence against women;
somebody spoke about women getting sold off because they were poor. But …
post that initial spike when you have launched it with that premise that this is
social reality – it gets into regular drama, honestly. … When it comes to the
drama, when it comes to the emotion, when it comes to the character it is pretty
stock – pretty much (Aditi, writer, female)
Similarly, Kunal, a longtime producer in the industry felt that the increasing
commercialization of the industry has led to a waning of social responsibility and a
proliferation of what he termed “regressive” stories,
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(The industry is) to a large extent extremely regressive and proudly so. As an
industry it is very proudly regressive. It's just about themes and the way to
exploit them … themes of strange kind of things. It's not that it (these issues)
doesn't exist. There are of course these things. They exist … I guess that's why
they are picking them up. But I don't know; it's without social responsibility that
it's being done. There are things probably which are being glorified by this
medium. (Kunal, producer, male)
Storytelling and Production
What the channel wants is one. Then they (the creative directions in the
production house) also have to see at their end, is it production friendly? Because
the production house is the one which will have to get into the nitty-gritty. As a
screenplay writer, as a story writer, I might write something which is fantastic and
the channel loves it but the production house might find it difficult to execute or
more expensive to execute, so they also like to keep an eye on that. How
production friendly is it? (Lata, writer, female)
The creative restrictions of ratings or needing to please channel bosses aside, the
practicalities of being involved in a genre which is telecast on a nightly basis round the
year on a tight schedule and budget means that these storytellers needs to keep in mind
practical considerations of how and where it is going to be shot and what kind of
investment and infrastructure would be needed to execute the scenes. For instance, even
as several production house and channel affiliates voiced their envy at the ability of other
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television industries/genres to locate storytelling in public domains, (literally) outdoor
locations, they acknowledged the limitations imposed by the very structure of their genre,
scheduling and economics. Shooting on average 5-6 days a week, all 12 months a year,
means that outdoor locations and stories set in “public spaces” are a luxury that few can
afford, and definitely not as an ongoing arc.
If it is a daily and you are looking at 205 episodes a year, it becomes difficult to
do an outdoor based show. So eventually you have to come back to the sets and
the same…
Because it's a daily it becomes very, very, hectic and there is so much of pressure
too. In terms of shoot also, you know, you cannot write very ambitious sequence
which may look great but you know you will never be able to do it on regular
basis. Like you can't have – some of the series in other countries because they
have set duration and they already shoot before they put it on air. You feel very
jealous, ki achcha location, kya shoot kiya hai! (What a great location, how well
the show has been shot) but you can't hope to do that thing. (Bhavana, channel
executive, female)
Television as a Paymaster
The tangible success that these ratings have come to represent for the industry
also translates into the industry being seen as an exceptional paymaster. All of the
participants felt that television was a well paying industry and that financially their
contribution as writers and creative personnel was recognized and adequately
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remunerated. Lata, a comparative recent entrant in the field expressed her amazement at
how well she was doing financially, something she had expected when making the shift
from working in the film industry, but which still far exceeded her expectations and
continued to awe her.
I don't need to take on so many shows because television pays a lot of money.
Much much more than films. So with each successful show and each time the
TRPs go up my negotiation powers will go up so the money will keep on
increasing automatically. (Financially) it's exceeded my expectations.
Earlier I used to find it a little incredible that for 4-5 hours of work you can get
that much of money. Because what also happens in television is I write one
screenplay but by the time it is shot and edited it is being telecast over three
episodes. Since I get paid for telecast shows, so actually I get three times more
than the amount of work I put in. So (in one instance) I got money for 29
episodes though I had done only 4 days of work. So that was exciting and scary
at the same time (laughs). (Lata, writer, female)
On the channel side too, participants expressed satisfaction with the kind of pay
and recognition they got for their work – acknowledging that in part this was offset by the
high stress environment they had to function under, daily. While television in India
definitely has yet to scale the heights of legitimacy and glamour that it’s older sibling,
films – and especially Bollywood films – have gained there is a growing recognition that
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television allows a space for creative expression accompanied by (financial) security that
has its own attraction and compulsion.
I think it's a superbly paying industry. Yeah, yeah. People are very happy – the
only thing that I think is taking a toll is the way we function – very, very, (pause)
under high pressure and everyday work and. … That's the only thing – otherwise
it's a well paying, very, very, satisfying industry. (I am) Completely satisfied
with my career and where I am – in the sense – earlier I always had this grudge
that ‘arre films nahi kiya, films nahi kiya’ (Oh! I didn’t do films, I didn’t do film)
– now I realize that everything has worked out beautifully. It's not like I am
compromising on any aspect of my creative (aspirations) just because I am
working in television. I don’t see myself like that. (Bhavana, channel executive,
female)
Conclusion
Putting the daily activities of people involved in the everyday life cycle of soap
opera under the scanner helps us unpack the ways in which the writing of the soap opera
texts is structured by institutional, ideological and pragmatic imperatives embedded
therein. It adds to an understanding of the production culture in the Indian TV industry,
by looking at,
How media producers make culture, and, in the process make themselves into
particular kinds of workers in modern mediated society. ... To understand how
people work through professional organizations and informal networks to form
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communities of shared practices, languages and shared understandings of the
world. (Mayer, et al., 2009, p.2)
Here, the accounting of the daily activity required in the creation of the prime
time soaps evidences contradictions embedded in the context and the struggle to give
meaning and structure to the process by those involved. One set of contradictions as
explicated above deals with the underlying tension between artistic and ideological
visions and commercial imperatives. While both the production house and the channel
have a say, whether the deciding power on the story line rests with the channel or the
production house is unique to particular historical moments in the industry and power
dynamics between the institutions involved. Viewed from the trenches, even as the
industry is becoming organized and (newer) ways of functioning are being
institutionalized – that are meant to increase efficiency, production values and returns on
investment – the move to a commercialized, market driven system of functioning is
acknowledged as imposing its own form of creative disciplining and challenges:
Something that does not entirely sit comfortably with these storytellers, whether they are
production house writers or channel executives, and of which in fact they are (at times)
vocally resistant to.
Given the market dominated conversation and rationale that the industry has in
creating its texts it is interesting to juxtapose this economic rationale with the socio-
cultural space that they see being occupied by these texts. As the next two chapters will
elaborate, the concerns about social responsibility and accountability that these writers
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have, both to their audiences and progressive social change goals in general, also
permeates the discourse and the self-reflexivity with which these cultural storytellers
represent their own subjectivity, their work community, their creations, and their
audiences.
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CHAPTER 4: THE STORYTELLER AND THE INDIAN HOUSEWIFE
Housewife! Very openly I am telling you housewives who have got no work, who
have all the time to gossip about characters, they are the ones who are targeted by
television. It’s not that people have not done something intelligent. They have
tried making intelligent shows also but they have always bombed – because your
audience percentage comes down drastically. (Girish, writer, male)
The flow and rhythm of programming on prime time Indian television is what
daytime television is (or used to be) to American television ... and then some! It has the
potential revenue, intense competition, burgeoning eyeballs, and ratings race that signify
prime time television everywhere but the genre, audience and “daily rhythms” (Modleski,
1983) that connotes conventional US daytime television. Combining the traditional logic
of both prime time and daytime simultaneously creates a unique hybrid industry
environment. Rao (2001) in her essay on key questions in the study of media and gender
in India pointed to one of the core dilemmas facing scholars studying social change in
modern India, in that, in India centuries co-exist. So there are, still today, cultural spaces
(both rural and urban) where women have no voice and are expected to be seen, not
heard. And simultaneously spaces where women are vocal, independent and hold
positions of authority (albeit tending towards urban, upper class and upper caste milieus).
Given this reality, questions of identity and gender representation become complex ones.
She thus poses the following questions for media and gender scholars to consider –
“What should be the criteria to evaluate the media projection of a homogeneous pan-
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Indian identity of woman? If the deconstruction of media texts is to enlighten the media
consumer, the question is who are these consumers” (Rao, 2001, p.47)?
While these dilemmas and robust theoretical considerations may prove to be
complex questions for academic researchers, as I will argue in this chapter the question of
‘who is the consumer’ and the ‘what are the politics of a pan-Indian identity of women’ is
something that is clearly articulated in the everyday work and the institutional discourse
of the Indian cable television industry. Specifically by looking at the figure of the
housewife and related discussion on primetime audience in the industry, through three
primary markers – femininity, mass consumption and “Indian-ness” – it unpacks how
viewers are symbolically articulated and the tensions and contradictions embedded in
these discourses. Ultimately it plays into a paradigm where both the view of the
housewives and the role that media (television) plays in their daily lives ends up
conforming to an elitist vision of the 'culture industry' with respect to what is valued as a
cultural product while at the same time the storytellers’ discussions on the audiences of
prime time soaps also clearly illuminates the tension that lies at the heart of performing
"Indian-ness" and being Indian in contemporary times.
The “Feminine Audience”: Creating Women’s Programs
A man's cell phone goes off while he is sitting at the kitchen table reading the
morning newspaper. He answers the phone and excitedly exclaims as it turns out
to be a long lost friend on the other end of the line. His conversation is
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interrupted by the loud whirring noise of his wife running the kitchen blender,
which dies down ... only to start every time he attempts to talk (Tata Sky, 2010c).
A man sitting in his office cubicle turns down his colleagues’ invitation to lunch
as his wife has specially packed lunch for him that day. With much anticipation
he opens his lunch bag ... only to find a single piece of charred and blackened
toast in the bag (Tata Sky, 2010a).
A man runs towards the elevator as his wife deliberately pushes the button to shut
the elevator doors before he can reach it. She gets off and sends it back up ... but
not before pressing the button for every floor on the high rise (Tata Sky, 2010b).
During the Indian Premier League in 2010 (four-hour, daily cricket tournaments
aired live during the spring season in the weekday prime time slot), a leading satellite
television service provider ran a successful ad campaign promoting the DVR capabilities
of their service. The campaign titled “Cold War” played on the theme of a wife’s
displeasure at the husband taking over the household television to watch his game during
prime time. These ads, described above, showed various instances of wives “disrupting”
their husband’s lives to express their displeasure. And the overarching tag line was “Kal
Cricket ke chakkar mein inhone apni biwi ka TV serial miss karwa diya. Aaj yeh iski
keemat chuka rahe hain. Le aayiya Tata Sky Plus – isme match dekhte huye aap serial
record kar sakte hain” (Tata Sky, 2010a; 2010b; 2010c) (Yesterday, because of Cricket,
he made his wife miss her TV serial. Today he is paying the price! Get Tata Sky Plus. It
can record her serials while you watch Cricket). The ad used humor and satire to
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underscore what, today, is a given in the Indian television industry, i.e. the household
television, especially during prime time hours, is the domain of the lady of the house. It
is worth noting here that the advertisement also plays into stereotypical gendered
conventions that equate soap watching with female audiences while audiences for
television sport are considered predominantly male. As O’Corner & Boyle, 1993 note in
their analysis, these differentiations have implications for the popular image of each of
these genres with – “Soap opera … (being) perceived as inferior; as mere fantasy and
escapism for women while television sports … (are) perceived as a legitimate, even
edifying experience for men” (O’Corner & Boyle, 1993, p.107).
The success of the programming strategy by Star Plus in early 2000s of
exponentially multiplying and holding on to a loyal audience base based on entertainment
content explicitly meant to attract women viewers (narrative dramas patterned on the
logic of television soap genre) has ten years down the road made it the industry gold
standard when it comes to scheduling and creating programming for prime time. As a
participant bluntly articulated, “In today's day and age you would not get into content
which was primarily male driven, because they do not form the target group when it
comes to watching Hindi entertainment” (Aditi, channel executive, female). Or in other
words, as more than one of my participants articulated, “the remote is in the hands of the
woman” (Girish, writer, male).
Across the participants’ in my study and in popular press and academic writings
alike, there is unequivocal agreement that the primary audiences for prime time television
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in India are women (Centre for Advocacy & Research, 2007; Munshi, 2010). This is the
audience who the writers expressly write for; this is who the channel marketers explicitly
market their programs to; and this is who provides the most valuable currency in the
industry – i.e. ratings. This overt positioning of the women of the household as the ones
with the remote and the power to choose what the entire household will consume every
night on television is what drives much of the prime time storytelling in India. In
essence, as far as the industry is concerned, the audience of note for prime time
programming has an explicit gendered status – she is a woman – the housewife! It is this
imagery and core narrative about television viewers that underpins the logic of the genre
(soaps), narratives (women driven) and settings (focused on domestic situations and
relationships). Adhering to these is seen as the winning formula needed to dominate
prime time.
In a discourse that underlines a neat separation of the home (woman’s domain)
and the world (man’s domain), watching television and television programming thus
becomes firmly situated in the domestic – woman’s sphere.
For men it is very clear, that outside you are the king and in the house the wife is
the king. And since we stay in a country where 85% of the houses have only one
TV, so only one thing can play at a time. And if you are talking about home, it is
women who have the remote control in their hands so men also invariably have to
also watch it. But they are not your loyal audiences … see everyone is happy till
the time women are liking it. Because as I told you they rule the household … it's
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very well defined. From Monday to Friday it's women programming …. (Girish,
writer, male)
The key point worth noting here is that beyond merely a gendered ‘woman’
category, the terminology and imagery associated with the audience members driving
prime time, consistently positions her as a “housewife”. Consequently, making choices
about watching television and what to watch on it becomes one of the many choices
being made by "housewives" in the running of their households.
“It was obvious to me … that women, and especially middle class women in
smaller towns, majority of which are home makers are going to be my audience”(Lata,
writer, female). Whether in reality she works outside the home or not, her subject
position as envisioned by the industry, marks her as a woman whose life is defined by
domestic drudgery and the nightly stories on television provide her an “escape” from this
drudgery.
She is someone not very educated, somebody who has a very monotonous and
boring life at home and even if somebody is working, their entire life is attuned
towards only providing for the family – so the work is only meant for that. So for
that kind of person (these serials are) just an escape – like really an escape to
another world. (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
“Broadcasting has to amass audiences. And not just any type of audience – the
success and conventional logic of the industry is predicated upon the ability to produce
inherently stable and predictable audience levels” (Paterson, 1980, p.79). Much as
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Paterson (1980) notes about the British broadcasting strategies of the 1970-80s, in the
GEC market in India as well, “the continuing demand for the maximum audience
determines scheduling strategy and the sorts of programmes commissioned” (p.80).
Thus unlike the scheduling logic in the United States and other Western contexts,
program scheduling in the prime time band in India is expected to maximize on a female
audience. It is wives and mothers who are expected to control television choices on
behalf of their families. Such thinking then situates notions of the family and domesticity
at the center of the strategic choices made by the creative professionals in the industry.
Whether this gets coded as “family values” or “Indian values” or telling the story that
resonates within the housewife’s domain – the femininity and the domestic location of its
audience members is central to the construction of these popular texts. “You would not
get into any kind of content which would be pretty much scandalous to Indian morals and
ethos, even though it might be a voice for social change” (Aditi, channel executive,
female).
At the same time we are all Indians. We want to see something which we think we
can belong to. … So you have to have a family set up wherein the connectivity is
there. Where every normal audience can connect to it. That ‘Okay, this can
happen to me, this can be my story’. Until and unless that connect is there you
will find your serial is not going to be seen. So the love story has to be there, the
family has to be there, the huge – so many characters, 20-25 characters in a
family, that's also there. (Girish, writer, male)
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All of these needs – to amass large audiences, to appeal to women, to fit into
nightly domestic routine of housewives, to tell stories focused on families, involving
multiple characters and generations – are best articulated within the soap opera genre on
Indian television. In other words, once you start with the question – “What genre of TV
programming is most likely to appeal to women?” – you are unwaveringly led to the
genre of soap operas. As feminists, cultural and mass media scholars have long explored,
interrogated and challenged, there is a longstanding albeit complicated history of “women
and soaps” across continents, cultures and countries, (Ang, 2007; Brunsdon, 1981;
Geraghty 2005; Hobson, 2003; Katzman, 1972; Modleski, 1979; Modleski, 1983;
O’Connor & Boyle, 1993; Seiter, Borchers, Kreutzner, & Warth, 1991).
As Brunsdon (1981) succinctly articulates, "the audience for soap opera is usually
assumed to be female" (p.32). And academic work on soaps has long recognized the
centrality of women and prominence and predominance of stories about families as its
cornerstone. Or as one of my participants equally effectively put it, “See your typical
viewer, basically your main category is housewives – 30+ (year old) housewives. … she
in any case is our main (audience) – we are catering to her … Ordinarily a soap is usually
watched by the ‘housewifey’ crowd” (sic) (Ela, channel executive, female). And hence,
in what comes to become a mutually reinforcing cycle, soap operas become the go-to
format that is the basis for structuring prime time programming in order to cater to the
gendered audience of Indian television, which in turns regards them as their only prime
time option.
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Geraghty (2005) enumerates several common elements as key to a cross-cultural
understanding of contemporary soaps,
Soap opera narrative work now places less emphasis upon the ending and instead
defines the form by its extended, complex, and interweaving stories; a wide range
of characters, allowing for different kinds of identification; the delineation of an
identifiable community, paying attention to domestic and familial relationships;
and an emphasis, often expressed melodramatically, on the working of good and
evil forces within a family or community. (p.313)
In her analysis of the programs on contemporary Indian television programming,
Munshi (2010) examined the on-screen texts to illustrate how the structure of these
Indian prime time television serials positions these narratives as quintessential soap
operas. Her analysis points to the lack of closure in the narrative, prominence of female
protagonists, multiple characters and subplots, emphasis on dialog, the use of narrative
devices of hooks, ‘recap’ and ‘precap’, and the family home as the main setting of the
show – true to the common elements enumerated by Geraghty – which situates these
Indian prime time narratives within the genre of soaps.
As some of the quotes above from the participants illustrate, there is an explicit
acknowledgment of the relationships that soaps are traditionally seen to have with the
lives of housewives. Much of early feminist literature looked at exploring these very
nuances as they manifested textually and in the lives of the audience members. Modleski
(1983), in one of her seminal pieces on soap operas as a feminine narrative genre, looked
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at the way that the rhythm of day time programming and soap structures in particular
were meant to connect to work of women in the home. In other words,
… television reinforces the very principle of interruptibility crucial to the proper
functioning of women in the home...The housewife, of course, is, in one sense,...
unemployed, but in another sense she is perpetually employed – her work, like a
soap opera, is never done. Moreover, as I have said, her duties are split among a
variety of domestic and familial tasks, and her television programs keep her from
desiring a focused existence by involving her in the pleasures of a fragmented life.
(Modleski, 1983, p. 71)
As Modleski argues, in part the narrative and the structuring of soaps were (are)
created expressively keeping in mind that the soaps are assumed to be “watched” amidst
a cycle of daily activities. The housewife’s daily housekeeping and domestic chores at
the same time interrupt and keep time with her daily soap operas. The rationale and basis
of this narrative structuring is perfectly captured (and more) by Girish, when he says,
A housewife she is taking care of the kid, at the same time she is cutting
vegetables, she is also running errands for her husband, serving tea and like that,
and at the same time you as a television creator, as a software maker, you have to
ensure that you are grabbing her attention. So that's why you must have seen that
one thing is shown three times and dhan dhan dhan (makes the sound effect) that
music. So basically every time you are just trying to get her attention back ... she
knows, “Okay there is big music, happening that means something is happening”.
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And that's why one-two-three times you see the same shot. ... If you understand
that well you can make it (in Indian television). (Girish, male, writer)
Girish’s observations on appreciating the multiple demands that are made on the time and
attention of this idealized housewife-viewer, in service of her husband and family, speaks
tellingly of how creativity and the mode of storytelling gets structured into a symbiotic
relationship with the image of the audience member in her home and the place of
television in the everyday ritual of domestic life. However, when unpacked, this
understanding of the housewife and her multiple activities at home has additional layers
to it. As the next section will illustrate, the housewife/consumer image gets complicated
with associated ideological assumptions and traditional understandings about domesticity
and what is privileged as work.
Observing the structure of the narrative in Crossroads, the British evening soap
popular in the 70s in UK, Paterson (1980) observed that the show’s narrative had
multiple short segments, with constant repetition of narrative information. “In part, this
structure reflects its place in the schedule: continual viewing has to be ensured even
though meal times and other domestic interruptions might make it impossible to follow a
coherent narrative” (emphasis mine) (Paterson, 1980, p.82).
Soaps, whatever their specific form and time of broadcast, (or particular time
periods and locations), are intrinsically characterized by continual viewing or
repetitiveness and daily-ness, which sets them apart from other genres of TV
programming (Geraghty, 2005; Mumford, 1995). And this recognition of the need to
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promote the daily-ness and ritualistic/habitual viewing of television in turn structures the
nature of the creative work in the Indian television industry. In noting the use of
narrative to organize a viewer's relationship with television, Raymond Williams (1989)
observed that entertainment programming “Is a … version of character training:
encouraging regular habits in the viewers; directing them into the right channels at certain
decisive moments in their evening lives” (p.81).
TV consumption as a "regular habit" is reality that soaps make possible. And the
rhythms of this daily habit don’t just shape the viewer’s relationship with television, but
are an important factor in the creative community's relationship with their work (see
following chapter). The rewards of getting your audience to tune in habitually are many
and have real, material, and creative consequences. As I will argue in the next section,
however, one of the consequences of this very habitual viewing is a form of unthinking
mindlessness that comes to be associated with the activity and hence by extension the
housewife/audience themselves.
The “Mass Audience”
And finally, television has itself become a culture industry. It is indisputable that
television is today at the centre of organized production of culture in this country
… It is fast becoming, indeed may already have become, the mainspring or
transmission belt of a new form of commercial culture … the principal site in the
country of the mass production of culture, a full-fledged factory that produces the
commodity in large quantities.… With the ascendancy of television, a new kind of
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culture has emerged, developed and got established – a commodified culture
which is based on a blurring, if not the obliteration, of the distinction between
"high culture" and "mass or bazaar culture", the profound and the profane, the
valuable and the vulgar, the epic and the ephemeral-superficial. (Bidwai, 1985,
Technical values section, para 2)
The excerpt above is from an editorial piece by Praful Bidwai, a leading Indian
journalist and political analyst, entitled “Culture of the Idiot Box” in a national Indian
daily in fall 1985 – a year after entertainment programming was first launched in India on
Doordarshan. Even though that era and context of a single state-owned broadcasting
entity is long gone, Bidwai’s polemic tirade against television and the culture it
perpetuates is significant in the way it situates and understands television’s role in
(contemporary) Indian culture. It echoes the classic perception of television being
associated with forms of low-brow, mass, consumer culture which is esthetically,
intellectually and morally flawed. Written as it was in an era when entertainment
television was barely out of the birthing room and audiences were confined to a miniscule
urban, upper and middle class milieu – as compared to the audience numbers and
penetration today to say nothing of the size and proliferation of the “industry” itself – it
nevertheless gives insight into the prevailing public discourse on the limitations of
“popular entertainment” as consumed via television.
This is a critique, indeed a stigma, which television has not quite shed in all these
intervening years. If anything, the popularity and the overwhelming integration of
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television into the fabric of daily life have further added to the negative perceptions of the
medium in public discourse. Added to this, the fact that soaps are the most visible
entertainment genre on this medium, only helped add substance to the argument that
television was/is promoting mass, commodified culture marked by production and
consumption. Despite regularly attracting more viewers than other genres in any part of
the world, serials or soaps have been regarded with contempt and disdain in popular press
and within academic world as well, for a long time (Allen, 1995; Geraghty 2005).
“Like the trash generated by consumer capitalism, the serial has been associated
with the masses and mass culture. For cultural-critics ... the spectator was being diverted
from ‘serious’ art by mass-produced, predigested works … anonymously manufactured
and distributed in bulk” (Allen, 1995, p.4). Geraghty (1995) observes that, “That the
term "soap opera" is often used as a metaphor for rather tacky activity in other spheres –
politics, sport, business – tells us something about how the pleasures and possibilities of
popular television are defined” (p.308). This attitude is, ironically, clearly embraced by
the creative producers about the very products they create and the audiences they play to.
This tacky and low-brow association with their work was voiced by many of the
participants in the language that they used to describe their work. The underlying
assumption that came through across interviews was that their work on soaps was
uninteresting and of little value to merit scholarly examination. As one participant Aditi
(television executive, female), self-depreciatingly interjected on my desire to interview
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her, as I was introducing myself and the project, “I am in the business of selling soaps
pure and simple” (pun intended).
Another participant, Ela, evocatively referred to her work as, “joota-chappal
dramas” which literally translates to “shoe-slipper dramas” connoting a pedestrian
quality to this genre despite having worked in it professionally for over six years, across
both production house and channel roles. Note too, the personal sense of frustration that
is laced in her statement below as she described her own work in the industry.
Actually there was time when I was really almost unhappy with the kind of soaps
that were being written. You know all saas-bahu, big bindis, heavy sarees and
stuff like that … The kind of joota-chappal drama that you see now-a-days,
which works, garners you the kind of TRPs you want... it was just like, let's not do
something intelligent because you know that's hardly going to give you numbers.
(Ela, channel executive, female)
A little later in the interview describing another soap (one which she was
currently working on and which has become an industry staple), and the emotional
response and creative satisfaction she felt when she saw the introductory rushes of the
soap, she remarked – “ we were not sure if the audience would grab it the way we had.
Because you always think na – they like joota-chappal, we like superior drama” (Ela,
channel executive, female).
The insidious association of soaps and a diminished capacity among the audience
members who enjoy them , expressly articulated as the housewife, works its way into the
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language of industry as they try and make sense of the medium, the genre they produce,
and its popularity. Note the paradoxical images of the “housewife” that is inherent in this
discourse – both envisioning her as enmeshed in complex, time consuming domestic
chores (as elaborated in the previous section) and an individual with surplus time and
leisure at hand due to the domestic nature of her commitments.
Housewife! Very openly I am telling you housewives who have got no work,
who have all the time to gossip about characters, they are the ones who are
targeted by television. It’s not that people have not done something intelligent.
They have tried making intelligent shows also but they have always bombed –
because your audience percentage comes down drastically. (Girish, writer, male)
The critique of mass produced cultural products being repetitive, hackneyed and
manufactured (as opposed to authentic cultural products), and therefore of lesser import,
is also evident across interviews. Even though their labor and professional lives deal
with soaps, they seem to be derisive of these cultural products and, as a corollary; of the
people who consume them. Thus, although there is experimentation and innovation with
the form there is a tacit acknowledgment that one can’t stray too far away from the
manufactured world of the conventional soap (because that is what sells and is the
housewife’s preferred product). So Ela’s narrative above, on the inception of the soap
which provided her creative satisfaction ends with, “Obviously when we started off also
we said, the moment we start getting too real and authentic – we will change it and make
it soapy. That was always at the back of your mind” (Ela, channel executive, female).
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A sentiment that was echoed by another channel executive who had a similar
experience working on another soap from the ground up –
We were told that we have to make our mark. So first look at the kind of shows
where the initial setting would be very different – never seen on television before.
And the initial characters will be quirky, interesting – never seen before.
Gradually and eventually we will do the regular drama because that is what
people will (watch) … you know that apprehension was there ki zyada different
kar lenge to kahin (if we make it too different) people will not tune in. (Bhavana,
channel executive, female)
Thus, the need to write something that fits the mold and yet differentiates itself
from the crowd becomes the creative constraint that these storytellers wrestle with on a
daily basis – a limitation that gets articulated, perhaps, in a general frustration with both
the medium and the audience which consumes it. As one writer explained, the challenge
then becomes to “enjoy” the creative hurdles imposed by the medium and the genre. The
audience likes predictability, the storyteller consequently needs to provide them with that
predictability, at the same time setting themselves apart from competitors who are doing
the same, all the while remaining invested and motivated by their craft – no small
challenge by any means.
Television you can only do limited stuff. Audience doesn't want to watch
something radically different, life altering stories. So it's limited, but to keep a
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story going the writers have to work doubly hard, to make it so that all soaps don't
seem the same. …
The story is very predictable. No one thinks that the heroine is going to say that
I've made enough sacrifices for the family and now I am going to walk out. It's
the same story, everyone knows the story. There is not anyone in the audience
who hasn't guessed the story. If there is a good looking person, “Oh this is a
heroine … the man who comes will fall in love (with her) … The hero-heroine
just have to fall in love, they have no choice but to fall in love. … But people
enjoy the predictable drama so much, to go on writing that – that's the challenge
and that's the challenge all writers need to enjoy if they are doing television,
otherwise your brain gets … I mean you will get fatigued very fast. (Lata, writer,
female)
Given such a scenario the move from the “mass consumer” to the “passive
consumer” is but a short one. Not only has mass consumption been routinely associated
with a lack of agency and passivity, the very gendered nature of the soap opera narrative
make this genre and its 'fans' a subject of further derision. In an unexpected finding about
how audiences, audience engagement and fandom were envisioned by these storytellers -
especially those on the channel side of storytelling, irrespective of the channels, the
creative decision makers think of their “core target group" literally as a voiceless viewer,
lacking agency. As one participant articulated, if someone is actually writing or emailing
you their feedback, they are not your core audience (Aditi, channel executive, female).
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In other words, the loyal viewer is not the one who is proving their loyalty and
engagement with the story by writing in, engaging with and participating in the world
created by your soap. The ideal fan is in fact bound by the circumstances of her
domesticity, femininity and class and is effective in adding her “voice” to the narrative
only in as much as she affects the ratings by getting her family to tune in to the particular
show.
If somebody writes to us – we generally don't take that kind of feedback seriously.
Because if somebody is having an access to a computer and is ... articulate enough
to be able to write and have the courage to send mails to us – it means it's not a
part of a C and D audience
5
– the audience we are really targeting. We would
traditionally have housewives who may not like certain things but they'll not voice
their opinion – they will not have access to send you a feedback or won't even
dream of something like this. Yes, they can voice their opinion and if they are
unhappy – they will stop watching. So when you know that somebody is writing
letters that means it doesn't constitute your target audience. We don't take that
kind of feedback seriously.
When we have independent research – when we go anonymously and when you
actually go into the houses of these women whose only source of entertainment is
watching television – that kind of feedback we take seriously. We sit over it and
we really mull about it but people who have access to mails and who are articulate
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enough to send us letters – I don't think we take them seriously. (Bhavana,
channel executive, female)
Apart from the gendered nature of the housewife’s agency, there is also a clear
class component to how much agency the audience is viewed to have. The commercial
market research paradigm of dividing socio-demographic and geographic locations into
discrete lifestyle “categories” ends up informing a monolith image of what it means to be
from that category. Typically, categories C and D correspond to the smaller towns, semi-
urban and rural areas (whereas categories A and B would be the metros and cities), and
these come to connote a specific class and the capabilities and limitations as a member of
that class. In the current moment, Indian soaps are consciously targeted to the smaller
towns and semi-urban and rural areas, and this inevitably generates a class bias regarding
the degree to which these audience members have the material and emotional capacity to
be vocal about their pleasures and displeasure.
Such privileging of an audience with "limited agency" connotes an underlying
thematic coherence and identification with the “ideology of mass culture”, specifically
with the negative connotations of mass media (television soap) audiences being passive
cultural dupes than with the more contemporary (especially feminist and media studies)
theorizing of television (soap) viewers as competent, sense-making, active audience (see
Livingstone, 1993).
It is a model which bears a resemblance to the Frankfurt School or the traditional
hypodermic-needle mass media effects argument. If we were to examine the Frankfurt
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School’s seminal essay by Horkheimer and Adorno’s, ‘The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ (1944/1969)’, much of their critique of modern mass
culture would be found echoed in the discourse of these television industry members.
Adorno and Horkheimer saw mass production of various types of media as a way in
which culture is increasingly homogenized in contemporary times. Culture for them was
synonymous with mass culture, serving only to legitimize those already in power.
Horkheimer and Adorno (1969) see mass culture as destroying all authenticity by
surrendering to the market. In other words, for them, the purpose of mass production is
not to create true art but to fuel the engine of capitalism. As a result, art that is produced
for mass consumption cannot be painstakingly crafted and intellectually robust. The
saturation of everyday lives by this uniformity of culture makes people believe that all is
well with the world. In fact, even when the masses recognize the cleverness of the
medium through which propaganda is being delivered, there is no viable, authentic
escape. The totality of the culture industry is that it collapses the difference between high
culture and low culture –submitting and producing only sameness and repetition in the
end.
In their paradigm, the individual’s capacity to actively experience culture and
make varied sense of it was seen to have been usurped by the producers of mass culture.
“There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. Producers have done it for him”
(Horkheimer & Adorno, 1969, p. 125). For these theorists mass culture robs us of our
agency to make meaning. In other words, by submitting art and artistic expression to a
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genre-based formulaic expression, the producers of culture take away the power of
resistance and insubordination inherent in art (especially high culture). Audiences are
conditioned on what to expect, eventually reacting automatically to the products of
culture such that slight departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations
which only end up (re)validating the system. “The culture industry as a whole has
molded men as a type unfailingly reproduced in every product” (Horkheimer & Adorno,
1944/1969, p. 127). The individual stands robbed of their agency, as passive consuming
audiences seeking to imitate and embrace “the culture industry” which serves as the
modern day opiate of the people.
Here I would like to argue that the lingering influence of the theoretical
frameworks which view audience members as "passive consumers" is not accidental.
This discourse arises through the unique confluence of both the historical legacy of
television in India and the unique aspects associated with soaps as a genre. That is,
television in India was born in an era where programmers and policy makers believed in
the power of TV programming as a force of social good. As outlined in chapter one, the
mandate for social change was expressly articulated in the vision statement for the
medium itself. Television storytellers and researchers looked to bring about changes in
the masses' knowledge, attitudes and behaviors through their stories and programming.
While the social good mandate of television is a powerful legacy, the premise of that
paradigm definitely drew upon the more traditional understanding of mass media effects
scholarship of the 70s and 80s – where the direction of effects was a one sided flow from
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the media to the receptive audience (Livingstone, 1993; Petty, Priester & Brinol, 2002;
Rogers, 2002; Seiter, et al., 1991).
This paradigm has been challenged and refuted by a robust body of feminist and
ethnographic research. The association of soaps with a form of passive consumption (by
women) is an understanding that feminists have long sought to challenge, and subvert.
Modleski in her work talks of the kind of feminine competencies required to "read" soap
opera texts (Modleski, 1979; Modleski, 1983). Her work was immensely influential in
theorizing how soap operas, one among several forms of popular culture, position their
female viewers differently than more traditional male-oriented texts, such as certain
genres of films, and therefore make possible quite different pleasures and meaning.
Likewise in her examination of the British series, Crossroads, Brunsdon (1981)
argues that the traditional feminine competencies associated with 'managing' the sphere
of personal life are actively required from the audience to make sense of the narrative
strategies and concerns of Crossroads. In fact “it is the culturally constructed skills of
femininity – sensitivity, perception, intuition and the necessary privileging of the
concerns of personal life – which are both called on and practiced in the genre”
(Brunsdon 1981, p.36). Correspondingly Hobson’s sustained ethnographic scholarship
over several decades on Crossroads and other soap opera (specifically female) audiences
in the UK showcases that the audiences have an active relationship with the form and
engage with the characters and their stories (Hobson 1982; 2003; 2006).
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In a study focused on college students' involvement with daytime television soap
opera content, Rubin and Perse (1987) examined the role of motives, attitudes, and
activities in affective, cognitive, and behavioral involvement with that content. Their
large scale survey of 328 daytime soap opera viewers provided support for the variable
and multidimensional nature of audience activity. Seiter et al.’s (1991) ethnographic
project in Germany similarly evidenced “ a vast gap between the model of the passive
feminine subject inscribed in the text and our women viewers who fail to assume the
position of the all-understanding (and therefore powerless) spectators of textual
construction” (p.241). Their study showed how gender and class among other factors
played a major role in how respondents made sense and critically engaged with the soaps
they watched regularly. Similarly, Abu-Lughod’s (2004) ethnographic study of rural
Egyptian women showed their critical understanding and rejection of the modernization
ethos embedded in the state television’s programming even as much as television
watching formed a cornerstone of their daily life. Closer home, Mankekar’s (1999)
defining work in the context of Indian state television (Doordarshan ’s) entertainment
programming in the late 1980s, explored how female viewers appropriated, rejected
and/or used the serials and related content on television in the context of their daily lives.
Yet as vociferous and mainstreamed as these audience centered arguments have
become (Livingstone, 1993), it is clear that the consumption of soaps, the study of soaps,
and (here) the creation of soaps is still marked by a form of ambivalence towards the
object and its stakeholders. And it is this ambivalence which is voiced in the discourse of
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this creative community on their audiences. There is a respect and awe of the power that
these audience members hold; in that their ultimate stamp of approval is necessary for the
shows to continue running. But there is a distance and separation with that very same
subject position of the audience that gets articulated through this discourse.
The Indian Housewife: Locating the “Real Audience”
These programs are for people in real India, not for people like you and me, you
know. (Bhavana, channel executive, female).
Women, domesticity and culture come together in a final marker in terms of the
audiences – the aura of the authentic Indian. Figure 2, ‘Perceptions of the Ideal Woman’
showcases two images – ‘The Ideal Viewer’ and ‘The Ideal Housewife’. These images
are sections from a poster made by a woman’s group in the 1990s,reprinted as part of a
collection on the ‘Visual History of the Women's Movement in India’, and critique the
representation of women in both the media and society in general (Zubaan, 2006, p. 120).
The second image (The Ideal Housewife) here specifically evokes the imagery of the
multi-limbed goddess Durga from Hindu mythology, and her multiple hands make a
point about domesticity and multiple household chores being carried out by the
housewife (here, deified).
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Figure 2: Perceptions of the Ideal Woman (Zubaan, 2006, p. 120)
The representation of the housewife as goddess Durga also connects with the
image of the nation as the motherland – among the visual images associated with the
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Indian nation, the symbolic representation of the nation as the “mother goddess” has a
distinctive place. Figure 3 here is a central image and cover art from Ramaswamy’s
(2010) collection and theorizing on the images of the goddess and the nation – which
depicts the goddess Durga as “Mother India” at the center surrounded by the leaders of
the national freedom movement – Gandhi, Bose, Nehru and Patel – against a backdrop of
the country’s map and the national flag.
Figure 3: The Goddess and the Nation (Print by Oriental Calendar, circa 1948 in
Ramaswamy, 2010, p.ii.)
.
As various historians and postcolonial scholars have demonstrated, the motif of
the “ideal” Indian woman was one of the key questions which manifested itself during the
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nationalist struggle against the colonial rulers (Ramaswamy 2010; Chatterjee 1993;
Sarkar, 2002). In India, as in many other nation-states, questions of nationalism and
national identity have been strongly tied to an understanding of women’s place within the
nation and the home (Banet-Weiser, 1999; Kumar, 1993; Sanghari & Vaid, 1990).
Juxtaposing these three images together illustrates how, given that the discourse of the
ideal television viewer gets bound with the image of the housewife and the notion of the
housewife’s role within the family, it is but inevitable that this discourse then links back
to a larger discussion of women, national identity and the authentic Indian. Further, the
targeting of audiences in smaller urban and rural centers has additional implications on
how questions of authenticity, tradition and national identity get layered together with the
gender of audiences.
Much has been written about the role of culture and tradition in the Indian
nationalism project. Chatterjee (1993), in his seminal work on colonial and postcolonial
history, articulated how the nationalist struggle against the British colonizers led to a
separation of the domain of culture into two spheres – the material and the spiritual.
While the West or colonial masters were undoubtedly superior in the domain of the
material (outside) sphere of science, technology, modern statecraft, economic etc., in the
spiritual (inner) domain, which bore the essential marks of cultural identity; the East or
India was superior. It is in the domain of the spiritual/inner that "nationalism launches its
most powerful, creative, and historically significant project: to fashion a ‘modern’
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national culture that is nevertheless not Western. If the nation is an imagined community,
then this is where it is brought into being" (Chatterjee, 1993, p.6).
Chatterjee goes on to argue that applying the inner/outer distinction to day-to-day
living consequently separates the social space into ghar and bahir, the home and the
world. While the world is the external, the domain of the material and identified with
men; the home comes to represent ones' inner spiritual self, one's true identity and
identified with women. The home, the true identity, i.e. the woman must remain
unaffected by the considerations of the material world. And so the separation of the
social spaces (public/private; outer/inner) not only correspond to a gendered separation of
spaces but become linked to distinct nationalist projects. One in which any movement
for the emancipation of women also gets linked to the cultural project of building a
national identity. And thus it comes to be that,
The new patriarchy advocated by nationalism conferred upon women the honor of
a new social responsibility and by associating the task of female emancipation
with the historical goal of sovereign nationhood, bound them to a new, and yet
entirely legitimate, subordination... It served to emphasize with all the force of
mythological inspiration what had in any case become a dominant characteristic
of femininity in the new construct of "woman" standing as a sign for "nation",
namely the spiritual qualities of self-sacrifice, benevolence, devotion, religiosity
and so on. (Chatterjee, 1993, p. 130-131)
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This symbolic location of women, as keepers of the nation’s identity and moral
and spiritual compass embodying the now naturalized and wholly “feminine” and
“Indian” qualities of self-sacrifice, religiosity and domesticity is a powerful historical
trope. And given television’s turn towards the realm of the feminine and the domestic,
the stories depicted on-screen become inextricably linked with holding on to tradition or
the real and authentic culture of the nation, especially as embodied by the “Indian
woman”.
So one finds Purnendu Shekhar, one of the contemporary leading writers in the
television industry with phenomenally successful and path breaking shows like Balika
Vadhu and Saat Phere, quite specifically invoking the inherent self-sacrificial nature of
“women in India” to explain the similar story arcs of women protagonists in these stories
Question: “All your scripts have been women-oriented. What is the reason
behind this?”
Answer: “Our target audience is women and hence we need to have shows
revolving around them”.
Question: “Why is the portraiture of a self-sacrificing woman important for a
serial to do well”?
Answer: “Most women in real-life too are self-sacrificing. Even today, when a
father returns home, it’s his daughter that will get him a glass of water. If there is
less food in the house, it is the daughter who will say that I can go without a meal.
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Making sacrifices and compromises is a way of life for most women in India”.
(Pereira, 2009, concluding questions)
Or similarly you have the writer, S Farhan, of the NDTV Imagine soap – Beend
Banunga Ghodi Chadhunga (I’m all set to be a Groom) making a statement in a
newspaper interview endorsing education for women. “Highly educated women in all
fields including medicine are national assets and have an invaluable role to play both for
the good of the economy as well as that of the family” (TV soaps can aid social reform',
2011, paragraph 11). While his statement isn’t that remarkable given that the central
premise at the start of the show is higher education for women, what is noteworthy is the
invoking the good, of both the nation and the family, as necessary corollary to women’s
right to education.
Fascinatingly, the show’s description on various online industry forums, fan sites
and official wiki page describes it as,
A family drama that revolves around the story of two people caught up in the web
of strong traditions and rituals … Sarika's ambition is to complete her studies and
become a doctor … From there on begins Sarika's struggle of managing the
household and pursuing her dreams. The show drives the thought that can a girl
realize her dreams/create her identity while donning the role of a dutiful
daughter-in-law in a traditional society. (Beend Banoongaa Ghodi Chadhunga,
n.d, first para)
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Thus, the rock-bed of these Indian prime time soaps – the family drama, the self
sacrificing daughter-in-law and her marital life, the demands of domesticity – is not
necessarily tampered with even as the show purports to paint itself on a larger canvas of
women’s right to education.
The propensity to depict the “family dramas” (read soaps) on television as
something essentially Indian is evident across media interviews with industry
professionals. So you have Zarina Mehta, the creative head of UTV, one of the leading
media houses in India, on record in an interview on contemporary television audience
saying that “today the prime time programming is housewife driven and the trend will
continue because in India family dramas are eternal” (Viewing the Viewers, 2001, p.
A8, para 4). Or similarly, another veteran television industry actor Soni Razdan saying in
a newspaper interview that the trend of family dramas is here to stay because viewers
identify with the stories as the joint family system is rooted in the culture, even as she
critiques their conservativeness and reinforcing of traditional gender roles of women
(Upadhyay, 2001). Interestingly, from the early half of the last decade, the newer crop of
soaps and industry representatives are setting themselves apart from the previous
generation of this genre with their middle class settings and mother-in-law daughter-in-
law sagas, and are quick to point out the more authentic, real life turn on their soaps,
emphasizing that the characters are layered and the issues real and relevant to
contemporary India, adding to the authenticity and popularity of these shows
(Mulchandani, 2010). "Television is a reflection of our society. Earlier, shows focused
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on larger-than-life households and actresses with gaudy make-up and flashy outfits.
Viewers couldn't relate to them and a kind of fatigue set in” (Bansal, 2011, New Trend
section, para 1) – Ashvini Yardi, head of creative programming on Colors quoted in a
newspaper interview.
Writing with a goal to primarily attract viewers residing in smaller towns, semi-
urban and rural centers, the storytellers interviewed as part of this project thus repeatedly
invoked “Indian-ness” and the idea of the authentic India to explain to me who their
followers were. Underlying the discourse about the viewers of these prime time soaps
thus is a tacit buy-in that the housewives who consume television are by their taste,
physical and symbolic location occupying the subject position of authentic Indians.
Identifying and telling the stories that appeal to these housewives/audiences therefore
requires an ability to be in touch with the "reality" of actual India and not the inauthentic
or manufactured brand of Indian-ness that is encountered in the daily urban life.
LATA: It was obvious to me even at that point of time that women and especially
middle class women in smaller towns, majority of whom are homemakers are
going to be my audience. To think like them, to have an understanding of how
they see the world, in terms of morality, in terms of relationships, what their
expectations and dreams are (I had to prepare a lot)… I mean I became more
realistic about how the actual India was thinking as opposed to what Delhi and
Bombay women think like, which helped me a lot.
ME: Do you not see yourself as part of this actual India?
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LATA: Now I do. And I always enjoyed watching television and I enjoyed
watching the Indian basic populist television and not the foreign soaps at all, you
know everyone in Bombay, Delhi or people like me, people in my circles are
more likely to watch. So since the beginning I enjoyed a Balaji show more than I
would have enjoyed Sex and the City because what Sex and the City would have
given me I could have watched in films also. So I didn't need to see that kind of
witty writing to enjoy – I find this more exciting and titillating! (Lata, writer,
female)
At the height of the nationalist struggle Mahatma Gandhi is said to have upheld
repeatedly that the real India lived in the villages. "For me, India begins and ends in the
villages (Gandhi quoted in Jodhka 2002). As Jodhka (2002) argues, for Gandhi, "village-
life represented the essence of India, (while) the development of modern cities in India
symbolized western domination and colonial rule. Village was the site of authenticity,
the 'real/pure India', a place that, at least in its design, had not yet been corrupted by the
western influence. The city was its opposite, totally western” (p.3346).
The symbolic and physical location of an authentic Indian-ness in the village (specifically
non-urban centers), served the nationalist movement well and captured both the political
and popular imagination of those struggling against the colonial oppressors. Long past
the departure of the colonizers, rural India is still situated in the collective imagination as
the place where the authentic India resides. In fact it has become an oft-repeated truism
that continues to circulate, resonate, and echo in the corridors of government and in the
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popular imagination, 64 years after Independence, and notwithstanding decades of
change, urbanization, migration and "development".
Conclusion
Examination of soap operas functioned as an entry point for feminist work on
television (Brunsdon, 1995; Geraghty, 2005). These early feminist projects sought to
examine and re-appropriate the pleasure and possibilities of soaps as a distinctly feminine
genre/ subject of feminist inquiry. This is not to say that the projects and the object under
discussion (soaps) were not marked by ambivalence and a negotiated relationship on the
part of those who studied it and those who were studied (Brunsdon, 2000). The
embracing of soap operas as particularly meaningful texts in the everyday life of women
was not without reservation or an uncritical celebration. That is, these theorists did not
"celebrate soap operas as feminist or progressive texts; indeed ... (they saw the) formal
structures and thematic concerns meshing all too neatly with the domestic demands
placed upon women within patriarchal capitalism” (Allen, 1995, p. 7).
Looking at the thematic tropes that mark the audience in the television industry's
discourse, it is clear that their understanding is framed in a highly self-reflexive and
critical stance towards their own work and their engagement with the genre that provides
their daily living. But while the critique of the genre, especially the location of the stories
and the privileging of the domestic sphere, is not lost on those in the industry and in a
sense gives voice to their frustration on the what they see as the limits for this kind of
storytelling in fulfilling progressive goals, the critique also serves as a double edged
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sword. What goes missing in this discourse on the limitations of the “domestic” is the
celebrating of this “women’s space” in the public imagination. In other words,
ideologically constructed as the feminine sphere, it is [precisely] within the realm of the
domestic, the personal and the private that feminine competence is [or can be] recognized
(Brunsdon, 1995, p.34). Here, in keeping with feminists before me, I am not arguing that
these competencies in the domestic sphere and cultural capital are innate attributes of
femininity. Rather, that given the “present cultural and political arrangements, it is more
likely that female (soap) viewers will possess this repertoire of … femininities which is
called on to fill out the range of narrative possibilities” (Brunsdon, 1995, p.36). My point
instead is that by constantly devaluing the domestic sphere and the "reality" of everyday
life, they are essentially devaluing the woman's work and expertise. And inherent in their
frustration and critique of the genre is an underlying hierarchy which positions the
public/work life over the private/domestic life.
Furthermore, the self-reflexive critique of the genre also plays into a paradigm
where the view of the audience and the role that media (television) plays in their daily
lives ends up conforming to an elitist vision of the 'culture industry' with respect to what
is valued as a cultural product. It would be interesting to know how many in the Indian
television industry had encountered the writings of Horkheimer and Adorno but, as I
discuss above, it is not hard to see that these industry insiders would not have difficulty in
following their argument. This can be illustrated if we juxtapose the recognition of the
powerful remote wielding woman, who can single-handedly decide the fortune of the
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Indian soap industry, with the image of the passive housewife who routinely consumes
what is dished out on television. Such juxtaposition makes apparent that while the choice
to consume is coded as active behavior, the act of consumption (watching television)
itself gets coded as passive behavior associated with mindless mass consumption.
Finally, my argument here is that the discourse on 'who watches these programs'
clearly illuminates the tension that lies at the heart of performing "Indian-ness"/being
Indian. These stories are meant to appeal to "real" Indians. So while on one hand these
stories are seen as echoing what is the dominant, traditional patriarchal ideology and at
the heart of being Indian, on the other this is a discourse shaped by the elites who actually
see the real India located outside of themselves. In other words while they recognize and
respect the audience precisely because they occupy this authentic place which most
within the industry have either lost (through mobility) or could never have achieved, they
also do not identify with and even actively repudiate this ‘authenticity’ seeing it as
tradition-bound and regressive.
It is perhaps fitting that discussion about housewives/audiences of prime time
television programming and who the writers write for, inevitably brought to fore the
dichotomy of two India(s) and equated the consumers of these programs as being 'real
Indians'. The insistence and existence of a real India implies that there is a false India i.e.
not all locations and representations have equal value. It elevates the rural locations and
representations of the tradition-bound housewives to a rarefied and romanticized position.
This is a powerful and insidious positioning which creates a barrier and undermines our
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ability to substantively interrogate, question and challenge the ideologies and
assumptions circulated through these stories or advocate for change. Once something has
been characterized as authentically and truly Indian, challenging and pushing for change
– even if those telling the story personally do not agree with it – means questioning the
very notion of what it means to be an Indian. As the next chapter discusses, this framing
is especially interesting to note when one sees that in modern day India; young, urban,
independent women working in the television industry are – almost on a daily basis –
creating content (and characters) in dissonance with their own morality, relationships,
expectations and dreams because it does not fit with/represent ‘actual India’.
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CHAPTER 5: IDENTITY POLITICS, TELEVISION STORIES, &
SELF-REFLEXIVE STORYTELLERS
I also remember my mother years later saying, “When I came to Bombay right
after I was married, I was so innocent I did not know how to even begin to argue
or protest when my mother-in-law harassed me,” with a pride and satisfaction that
were difficult for me to understand. That “innocence”, that silence, indicated that
she was a good wife, a good daughter-in-law, well-brought up, a good “Indian
woman”, a matter of pride. … My grandmother, whom I loved and who was
indulgent to me in her own way, tormented my mother, whom I also loved, in
several petty and some not so petty ways, using her inventiveness to add color and
detail to the stock repertoire of domestic tyrannies available to Indian mother-in-
laws” (Narayan, 1997, p.7).
To regular viewers of Hindi television soaps the above passage would strike a
familiar chord, depicting as it does a core theme in serial after successful serial of the last
decade, so much so that the genre itself has come to be noted by the nomenclature of
“Saas-Bahu” (mother-in-law – daughter-in-law). A genre and storytelling that is
repeatedly branded “regressive” by both insiders and outsiders in the industry. But far
from being the synopsis of some latest soap, this passage is taken from Uma Narayan’s
(1997) influential piece, “Contesting Cultures: Westernization, Respect for Cultures and
Third-World Feminists” where she undertakes an examination of the cultural roots of
Third World feminism and more specifically her own feminist and political roots. She
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goes on to theorize that for Third World feminists, like her, the foundation of a feminist
contestation of her culture were laid within the cultural dynamics of family life and an
early awareness of the “politics of home” – which in turn renders feminist politics as a
personal encounter with culture and injustice and not something acquired through books
and “Westernization”. Yet she also points to the inherent contradiction embedded in
these cultural encounters – “both our mothers and our mother-cultures give us all sorts of
contradictory messages, encouraging their daughters to be confident, impudent, and
self-assertive even as they attempt to instill conformity, decorum, and silence
seemingly oblivious to these contradictions”(Narayan, 1997, p.8).
These culturally embedded contradictions are writ large in the daily life of the
television storytellers I encountered. Far from being unaware of them, these
contradictions informed their personal critique and shaped their seminal encounter with
the soap characters they breathe life into everyday. Mainstream Indian television soap
operas seem to have found an ingenious formula to reconcile and balance these
contradictions through the characterization of their female characters as either “heroines”
(protagonists) or “vamps” (antagonists). The heroines are the epitome of the “Bhartiya
Nari” (Indian woman) stereotype – being decorous, self-sacrificing, and silent – and the
vamps are the antithesis – confident, self assertive, individualistic.
Mohanty (2003) in her analysis of Western Feminist writings, especially from the
1980s and prior decades, puts forth how collectively these writings colonize the material
and historical heterogenities of the lives of women in the Third World, thereby
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reproducing a composite, monolith “Third World woman” – an image that is discursively
constructed but nevertheless carries with it the authority of a Western discourse. It is
therefore worth noting as we go into this discussion of the heroine and the vamps that
both the industry discourse and the representation on-screen of the women characters
(and by extension also the women audiences) in part continue to discursively reproduce a
hegemonic, singular “Indian Woman” in the guise of the morally sanctified heroine.
Scholars have noted the complex relationship that exists between the soap
characters and the women audiences who watch them (Ang, 1985; Geraghty, 1991;
Hobson, 1980; Modleski, 1979; Seiter, 1981). As Brunsdon (1993) notes, several
decades of research on soaps around the world have established the gendered genre, the
gendered audience and, as her own research elaborates, the gendered researcher. “The
feminist, and more specifically, the feminist intellectual, produces herself in this
engagement with the popular television genre (soaps), just as she produces a text for
media studies” (Brunsdon, 2000, p.4).
Here I would like to offer an additional dimension – the gendered writer. The
first half of this chapter inserts the voice of women writers into the conversation by
specifically looking at the characterizations of the on-screen heroines (protagonists) and
vamps (antagonists) as articulated by the writers themselves. The discussion clearly
elaborates both a critical stance towards their own work and in turn implicates their own
identity and ideological positioning vis-à-vis their work and role in the industry.
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In addressing core themes that feminist scholarship seek to address, Mohanty
(2003) brings up the relationship between the category of Woman and women as one of
the central questions in feminist theorizing. Here “Woman” can be understood as a
“cultural and ideological composite other constructed through diverse representational
discourses – scientific, literary, juridical, linguistic, cinematic, etc.”, while “women”
signify “the real, material, subjects of their collective histories” (Mohanty, 2003, p.19).
As the following sections highlight, in this context, contrasting the Indian industry
professionals’ articulation of the Woman on-screen with the women-in-the-industry
provides a nuanced insight into the cultural ambivalences and tensions embedded in
enacting contemporary Indian womanhood.
In addition, this juxtaposing of the reflections on the depiction of leading female
characters, with the discussion regarding employment and predominance of women in the
creative process in Indian prime time television draws attention to a tension that exists
between the representations of women on-screen vs. the representativeness of women in
the industry. Study of trends in the American television industry have long elaborated
the structural disadvantages encountered by women television writers within the US
media industry (Bielby & Bielby, 1992; 1996); and further the link between the number
of women employed behind the scenes in both the television and film industries and the
stereotypical (or not) representation of women on-screen (Lauzen & Dozier, 2002;
Glascock, 2001). In the US context the trend has been noted such that, the more women
are found to be involved in off-screen and creative roles in the industry the more (gender)
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positive storytelling have emerged during that period. However, as the latter half of this
chapter elaborates, the Indian television industry is witness to a different and complicated
encounter between capitalism and patriarchy, where widespread employment of women
and a predominance of successful role models off-screen (representativeness) hasn’t
admittedly translated into progressive female role models on-screen (representation).
The Storyteller and the Heroine
The most important thing in television is the heroine – it always needs to be
heroine centric, the heroine has to be a pure heart– Mother India, (one who) never
ever will do wrong and will sacrifice her life (Lata, writer, female).
The all important central character who is at the core of the Indian soap opera
narrative is the heroine. She is the face and the soul – the one who determines the overall
arc and tone of the soap and stands to become the iconic character who defines the
success of the soap. Whether it be Tulsi from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi or
Aanandi from Balika Badhu or Ichcha from Uttaran or Pratigya from Mann Kee Awaaz
Pratigya – it is the central female protagonist or heroine who is the lynchpin of the
storytelling. Yet, in was intriguing to note that most writers admitted that it was not these
protagonists who inspired their storytelling. Taking a thematic look at their discussions
about these iconic protagonists, it is apparent why these heroines don’t provide creative
satisfaction. The very reasons for which critics and naysayers of this genre and these
serials dismiss these stories - i.e. of them perpetuating stereotypes, being regressive
and/or having a pedestrian quality, also contribute to the creative struggle that storytellers
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go through with their central character. As these writers articulate, the heroine is a
creative challenge for them not because she defies convention but precisely because she
must appear to never stray from societal and storytelling "conventions".
It is perhaps thus not surprising that when asked if there were any topics or story
ideas which were considered taboo or not even brought up for discussion as possible
story arcs, the depiction of the "single", "independent" woman came up as the most
specific and consistent response, especially from the young women participants.
So you wouldn't find – like you see so many single, independent, career oriented
women say at least in the metros today or even in the mini-metros (pause). It
might be a small percentage but women are aspiring to do XYZ things and
actually getting to do that. But it's not a story that you would like to tell on TV
because it doesn't fit. (Aditi, channel executive, female)
The one word that kept echoing across interviews with these women in association with
the heroine was – bechaari – a word that literally translates to “helpless” or “poor” but
also implies a pitiful and derisive assessment of the character. “Today, at least, our
prototype is the dukhiyaari-bechaari (unhappy-helpless) women who cannot take care of
themselves, are not proactive, cannot make any decisions for themselves as they are
shackled by family and society and what people expect of them” (Aditi, channel
executive, female).
Creatively, thus, it is felt that the characterization of the heroine is the one which
is the most one-dimensional and/or stereotypical in these soaps – by first stripping her of
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her individual agency, and then casting her in the mythic role of the self-sacrificing
Indian woman. In other words,
An independent heroine who doesn't need a hero is completely out. … Somebody
who makes a choice for herself and wants to live for herself won't work. You
have to have a sacrificing woman who will give up her own happiness for the
sake of others. (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
As these writers articulated, the heroine always has to be understood in the context of her
family and her identity, and any motivations and agency go toward the service of her
family.
A woman having, trying to have a life independent of family will not ever be
accepted, where she is not being the martyr – will not be accepted. So these are
actually the emotions (pause), not as such, as topics but those kinds of emotions
or personality traits will not be tolerated. They will be booed and hushed down
immediately and have been. (Lata, writer, female)
Interestingly, not only is the heroine cast as the hapless victim, her agency
circumscribed by the needs of her family and society but further she is fundamentally
denied the pursuit of happiness. “She can't be too happy because if she is happy the
TRPs (ratings) will drop ... she has to be as depressed and sad as possible” (Lata, writer,
female). This is reinforced by Bhavana's self-mocking observation, “a heroine needs to
look good while she is crying. Lot of times during casting we say, ‘isko ro ke dikhao
kaise dikhti hai’ (tell her to cry and show us how she looks)" [laughs followed by a
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reflective pause]. “A happy heroine for a long time doesn't work because if there is no
conflict, there is no story” (Bhavana, channel executive, female).
The logic of ratings, and what and whom female audiences are seen to
fundamentally identify with, marks the parameters of the storytelling and the creative
rules that come to be internalized and institutionalized, ultimately attributed as the diktats
of the TRPs or the demands of the channels. As Piya summarizes:
They (the channel) have a set rule. They have a set of rules for the heroine –
these are the things which the heroine can do and these are the things which she
cannot do. She cannot stand up for herself. She cannot go against her family in
any way, whether they are right or wrong. She has to accept, she has to sacrifice.
(Piya, writer, female)
It was eye opening to see the how self-reflexive and layered the critical
observations of these writers about the heroine were, and how deep their cynicism of
these narratives ran. The critiques were not limited to the lack of individual agency of
the characters they envisioned on a daily basis but pushed at the overarching patriarchal
and societal norms that cast women’s very existence and life choices in moral terms,
justifying those in terms of needing to be in the service of family and society.
The idea is that a woman can make a choice – a heroine who stands up can make
a choice but that standing up then needs to be part of your regular societal …. In
the sense that, ‘Okay, I am willing to go out and work and not look after my
younger brother, but it is only because my father doesn't have a job’. Toh woh
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morally kahin justify hona chahiye varna (so it needs to be morally justified
somewhere otherwise) it doesn't work. She can't say I want to work because I am
happy. I will marry this guy because I am happy – it never works. I will marry
this guy because it's going to give happiness to my family. So that kind of cliché,
we can't walk out of that really. (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
In other words, it is not that the heroines cannot take a stand, or be strong and
opinionated but this strength is always conditional and derived from the morality of her
serving the interests of the dominating ideology (realized through family and marriage),
They have a stand. So on the surface they have an opinion but the opinion is
always tilted in making sacrifices for the family and more often than not their
married family (rather) than their actual family. ... So they are strong in the sense
that they take their own decision but always for the larger good! (Lata, writer,
female)
They are primarily victims who are oppressed, subjugated and denied opportunities by
their families and the social system which perpetuates gender injustice, and their only
salvation and hope for happiness lies in ‘sacrifice’ and sublimating their individuality and
agency in the service of familial and societal norms.
Taken together, these observations highlight the central irony and contradictions
in the depictions of contemporary prime time heroines: strong, articulate, independent
and successful female storytellers are creating and telling stories about hapless,
victimized, passive heroines. These contradictions were implicit in our discussions of the
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soaps and characters that epitomized them; and were something that is grappled and
negotiated with daily. As Aditi articulated poignantly,
A lot of times, because it happens to me personally – you'll be reading a script and
you'll see your main protagonist and she is being accused of XYZ wrong doings
and blah blah blah. So my instantaneous reaction would be (pause), ‘Why can't
she just tell the truth and stand up for what she believes in and stuff because that's
something that I would do as a personality type. (Aditi, channel executive,
female)
Lata pointed out the creative challenge of writing for and believing in your heroine and
her causes, even when they go against type,
A condescending attitude (towards your heroine) will be detected – you will know
that you are writing a false scene. Even if you don't live your life like that, if you
don't believe in your heroine's causes however fuck all they are you can't write a
good scene. You have to believe in her and that's a challenge for me. I have
tended to ignore the heroine as much as I can because all she does is weep. Like I
am bored of her – can I please only work with the vamp? But I can't ... So I have
to constantly reorient myself into writing good scenes for her also. (Lata, writer,
female)
But as with any artistic endeavor, the structural impositions are not absolute and
in my interviews the writers evidenced two broad ways in which they actively and
continuously negotiate the constraints that bind the identity of the heroine, even as they
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repeatedly acknowledged the power of the institutions (market) and what they saw as
their own insignificance within the system. The first form took the artistic route of
treating these constraints as a creative challenge to work around. One that could be
negotiated through creating heroines that broke the stereotypical mold, or using the
likability of the character to push a more rebellious stance, or building in subtle critical
nuances etc.
Thus one writer talked about how one of her shows was consciously breaking the
mold of the victimized, unhappy heroine, “We try sometimes – like now a show of ours
which is on air ... it is absolutely different. For the first time we have a heroine who has a
voice, a heroine who is rebellious, who is not bechaari (helpless)” (Piya, writer, female).
Someone else highlighted the leeway that comes with having a well-established
character, being easier to “push the envelope” on rebellion or taking a stand if the
audience loves the character and is more accepting towards her and the skillfulness in
handling the storyline,
If possibly my own reaction would be to scream and shout and rave and rant
about what I stand for and what I believe is right. I could possibly get the
character to think on those lines … But that happens only once your character has
gotten your viewers … You can voice your point of view but you have to find the
right moment to be able to do that so that the viewer accepts it. (Aditi, channel
executive, female)
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Lata, a self-avowed feminist, talked about how she used her own insights and perceptions
in the layers that she created for her character, using it to elaborate and insert a critical
awareness even when the larger story arc went against her personal ideological stance,
I'm keenly interested and aware of what the ads and the media is doing to
women's perception of beauty and what a huge stress it is on women. So I am
able to add more. I haven't fought that. … I haven't taken an ideological stand
against like – So what if she is ugly, she has a right to a good life too – but in
those parameters where she will have to be suffering because she is a heroine and
we don't have a choice but to make her suffer – that I will try to give small-small
insight into her life even if I will not be able to empower her in any way. (Lata,
writer, female)
The second, more interesting form of negotiation that my interviews uncovered,
vis-à-vis the writers and their work, was in essence a form of “othering” that takes place.
In trying to rationalize the characterizations and story arcs of the women in these soaps
the storytellers invoked their audience (the small town housewife) as occupying the same
“reality” as their heroine. Thus, even though these protagonists’ identity is somewhat in
opposition to the ideological positions of these storytellers and their own identities, they
come to empathize with their heroines by positioning her as the dominant and thus
authentic voice of the “other” – the real Indian woman (see previous chapter for a
discussion on audience).
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When it comes to that character and who she is catering to, for me what might be
standing up for my individuality, in an Indian familial ethos would be constructed
as rebellion … Usually a viewers' response, would be that, “I felt really sorry for
her and I know she (the heroine) was right and whatever everybody was saying
was wrong … but I understand her because if I was in her place in this family, in
this society etc. I would have also done this so I would have felt myself to be
helpless that I cannot state what is in my heart and voice it but I understand why
she kept quiet”. That's where you come from. (Aditi, channel executive, female)
Similarly Lata too elaborated a deliberate attempt by her to reorient and reconcile
her beliefs to better understand her audience when she joined the television industry –
precisely because she felt this form of storytelling to be ‘regressive’.
I wasn't used to (pause) came back to something that was regressive (sic). That
went against my (feminist) ideological beliefs [at that point of time I thought they
were really important] and to understand the audience …. It was obvious to me
even at that point of time that women and especially middle class women in
smaller towns, majority of which are home makers are going to be my audience.
To think like them … to have an understanding of how they see the world, in
terms of morality, in terms of relationships, what their expectations and dreams
are. So I read a lot of magazines. I must have read some 200-300 magazines in
the first two months – and I broke my – I mean I became more realistic about
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how the actual India was thinking as opposed to what Delhi and Bombay women
think like, which helped me a lot. (Lata, writer, female)
Thus, it is clear that those who imagine and construct these characters on a daily
basis have a contested and negotiated relationship with their creation. Their own
terminology and self-reflexive assessment makes evident that even as these heroines are
upheld as epitomes of family values and symbolizing true Indian womanhood, their
characterizations are nevertheless fraught with contradictions, creative challenges and
specific gendered identity politics. A politics that becomes clearer when we examine
their discussion of the antagonists.
The Storyteller and the Vamp
The vamp – is the bitch, she always tries to create problems, she smokes, she
drinks, she wears low cut blouses, she is a seductress. … It's very, very, clearly
defined. They (the audience) want their black to be clearly black, their white to
be clearly white. (Farah, channel executive, female)
Whereas the heroines were seen to be overwhelmingly monotonic and a creative
challenge due to the need to stick to the narrowly defined strictures of society and
tradition, it is the vamp or villainess and the actors who play them who were seen to
infuse excitement in the writing for the storytellers. Unlike the heroine, it was clear that
the vamp has the space for exercising her agency and voice. What Modleski (1979)
noted more than thirty years ago in her examination of American soaps, continues to hold
true decades later in the milieu of prime time television in India. “There is one character
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whom we are allowed to hate unreservedly: the villainess ... The surplus suffering is often
the fault of the villainess who tries to ‘make things happen and control events better than
the subject/spectator can” (Modleski, 1979, p. 15).
It is understood that the vamps can never have ‘equal footing’ as the heroines, yet
a strong characterization (and performance to match) means that the vamp always leaves
her mark on the show and on the psyche of the writers and the audience alike. Thus
when asked to talk about one character that stood out for them in the soaps they had
worked on, it is perhaps unsurprising that a number of them chose to talk about the
vamps on their shows.
They (the vamps) are never in the same league as the leads. But there was this
particular show … The character was so powerful, the performance was so good
that people wanted to justify that character and they refused to see her as the
vamp. … She became an important part of the show we could not really do
without. So if say 40% or 50% scenes were for the heroine, we had to make sure
that in 50% (pause) she became a driving point. So that's one character I always
remember. Superb! (Bhavana, channel executive, female)
For the storytellers, this space for agency that the vamps are accorded provides
not just an antitheses to the heroine and her passiveness, but the creative thrill that sparks
their imagination. “Because villains still have a space to do exciting things, they're
plotting and planning. The heroines are only at the receiving end. They're only receiving
– they are somewhat passive (pause). You know life is giving them certain things – so
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it's boring” (Lata, writer, female). The action, sense of control and independence that is
implicit in the description of the writing for the villainess points to a different kind of
‘being’ or identity – one which perhaps comes closer to these writers’ own position as
successful, independent, career women in a fast-paced, high-pressure, and (as yet) non-
traditional industry.
“On soap operas, the villainess seizes those aspects of a woman’s life which
normally render her most helpless and tries to turn them into weapons …. The villainess
thus continually works to make the most out of events which render other characters
totally helpless” (Modleski, 1979, p.16). The vamp, therefore not only takes charge but
is the one whose life is driven by her personal goals and individual needs (even though
fulfilling those necessarily requires cunning and manipulation) – a sharp contrast to the
traditionally defined gender role accorded to the heroine, as upholder of societal morals,
needing to continuously sublimate her person-hood, wants and identity in service of her
family and culture. For it is only
the vamps (who) can be very bold, they can do anything, it's their choice. They
can have happier lives at the cost of others and they can choose for themselves.
The vamps, yeah, they have the choice to do a lot of things…. We usually always
have a vamp and she's the bolder one and she's the one who manipulates people
(Bhavana, channel executive, female)
Additionally the nuances that can be added to the vamp’s characterization create
an authenticity which has its own appeal. A character with shades of gray, who has the
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ability to showcase vulnerability (vs. helplessness) in the same way that she can be
shown to exercise power over those in her family.
I like (the antagonist) character because the kind of complexity and layering that
you see in her, like one minute she's being a tyrant and the next minute she is just
your own ... (relative), who you can relate to. In the initial episodes the character
was an all out dominating, tyrannical woman … I mean she was an all out black
character. But gradually … we made the character a little gray. We made her
loving; we showed her vulnerabilities as well as her powerful side. … I mean
you can see her at her most vulnerable and you also see her at her most tyrannical.
… And neither of those two things seem false or seem forced. That's the best
part. People find her real
6
. (Ela, channel executive, female)
Based on these discussions of the on-screen characters, it is easy to understand the
storytellers' affinity towards the characterization of the vamp, since it gives them the
creative liberty to create a female character with the ability to make life-choices and
exercise power. In the idealized world of the soaps, it is not the heroine who emerges as
the more authentic and identifiable characterization of female empowerment but the
unruly vamps who come to be memorable in these women storyteller’s minds with their
more nuanced character traits and portrayals. These interviews clearly show that it is not
audiences alone who have a complicated relationship with the heroines and vamps but
that the writers and their own identities are also implicated in the identities they forge on-
screen.
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The next section in this chapter will look at the articulation of these storytellers of
being women and the gendered nature of their interaction with the industry. Here I first
overview the research that has emerged out of the American television industry context
that has established a proven relationship between behind-the-screen and on-screen
gender roles and then point out the complex and contradictory processed evidenced in the
Indian television industry context which complicate our understanding of the ways that
identity politics appears to operate specifically in the context of this particular
industry/moment.
Women and the Industry
Relationship Between Behind-the-Screen and On-Screen Gender Roles: Evidence
from the US Context
In the past decade, one strand of content analytic work on the US television
industry has begun to take a systematic look at relationship between employment of
women behind the scenes in the television industry and its impact on on-screen gender
role portrayal. Lauzen and Dozier have been especially prolific in this area and have
tracked this relationship across several television seasons. Overall, across studies,
findings have shown that women continue to be underrepresented both on screen and
behind the scenes as compared to men (Glascock, 2001; Lauzen & Dozier; 1999a; 1999b;
2002; 2004; Lauzen, Dozier, & Cleveland, 2006; Lauzen, Dozier, & Horan, 2008).
However, there also appears to be a relationship between women being employed behind
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the scenes and changes in the depiction of both women, and to a lesser extent, men
(Lauzen & Dozier, 2002; Glascock, 2001).
Lauzen & Dozier's (1999a) study of prime time series from the 1995-96 season
looked at the use of powerful language by female characters and its relationship to
women working behind the scenes. Powerful language was operationalized as indicators
of conversational control – turns at talk, topic introduction, last words, interruptions, and
advice giving. Their findings showed that women remained under-represented both on-
screen and behind the scenes and that there were no gender differences among men and
women in the use of powerful language. However, given that men heavily outnumbered
women, in general, audiences were more likely to hear men use powerful language
patterns more often.
The relationship between women behind the scenes and use of on-screen powerful
language was somewhat inconsistent. The number of on-screen women characters
depicted showed a statistically significant increase when women served as producers and
executive producers. These characters are also more likely to use powerful language and
the difference persists when total percentages of female characters in the show are
controlled for. However, these findings were not consistent in shows with women writers
and directors (Lauzen & Dozier, 1999a). Their subsequent study covering two
consecutive television seasons 1995-98 further demonstrated similar language trends
(tracking percentage changes between the two seasons) and reported that women were
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also more likely to be employed behind the screen in television than in films (Lauzen &
Dozier, 1999b).
A content analysis of the verbal interactions between male and female characters,
specifically comments on appearance, found that the gender of the recipient had an
impact on the type of interaction. While men and women were equally likely to comment
on appearance, women were far more likely to be recipients of the comments and they
were likely to be compliments (rather than insults). Interestingly, the employment of
women writers was related to a significant increase in the total number of appearance
comments made in the show and a significant decrease in the number of insults (Lauzen
& Dozier, 2002).
Looking specifically at the channel of broadcast and genre of programming, with
relation to employment of women and patterns of on-screen representation of women,
yielded mixed results as well. Compared to the established big three networks (ABC,
CBS, NBC), programs airing on weblets (WB, UPN) were found to employ more women
both on and off screen. This also correlated with higher representation of female
characters on the latter two networks (Lauzen & Dozier, 2002). Interestingly, the
presence of women behind the scenes on reality programs were negatively correlated
with on-screen representation of women, while, important for our consideration here the
reverse was true for scripted programming (Lauzen, et al., 2006). Having women on the
production and creative staff (compared to all male staffs of writers, directors and
producers) was associated with reduced on-screen gender differences in leadership,
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occupational power, and goal seeking behavior (Lauzen & Dozier, 2004). Glascock’s
(2001) study of the 1996-97 season noted similar findings on overall underrepresentation
of women behind the scenes, and demographic trends on-screen (i.e. women under-
represented, having lower work status, younger, and with more parental responsibility).
However, it also found that the depiction of dominance was dependent upon genre.
Males were found to exhibit more dominant behavior on dramas, but in comedies,
females were depicted as more dominant through display of verbal aggression.
Relationship Between Behind-the-Screen and On-Screen Gender Roles: The
Challenge of the Indian Context
A lot of the writers in Indian television are also men … But yes, at the channels I
would say it's largely women oriented. Whether it is the EPs or whether it is the
programming heads or whether it is fiction drivers – it's largely women. I think
it's happened by default really, I don't think it was planned as such. It's just that
(pause)… And it's very strange that these are working women, they have actually
broken some of their own rules and traditions and they have ventured into an
industry which has always been regarded a little suspiciously. And you will find
the maximum number of women in this industry very comfortable, very
aggressive, very passionate and very opinionated. (Farah, channel executive,
female)
A final corollary to thinking about the identity politics of these (women)
storytellers and their characters is the dominance of women in the creative labor force in
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the Hindi television industry. While exact industry statistics are hard to come by, there
was a clear consensus that "women" are the face of the creative work in prime time
Indian soaps across channels, production houses and individuals in different roles.
However it is worth noting that there appears to be a division across lines in
acknowledging the significance of the gendered nature of prime time storytelling and its
correspondence with a perceived gender skew in the industry. While it was the women
story writers and screenplay writers who most readily perceived and articulated a
“gendered sensibility” required for the creative output on prime time, the channel related
women professionals, coming from the more corporate space, were more likely to prima
facie negate gender as playing a role in their professional lives. [Observations which on
further examination provide a more complicated picture as we will see shortly].
The story and screenplay writers associated with production houses, while all
pointing out that there were immensely successful men storytellers in the industry (some
of whom were in fact interviewed as part of this project), talked about the minutia of
women’s lives that is depicted on contemporary television. So according to some
interviewees it is an orientation that men innately lack. For instance as Indira said,
“Because somewhere they (the characters in these soaps) think about you know chai mein
shakkar nahi hai (the tea was served without sugar). Men won't be able to understand the
fundas (fundamentals). ‘Isne do chamachch cheeni daali. Maine kal usko bola tha ek.
Chamachch dalne ka’ (She put in two spoons of sugar, I had warned her yesterday to put
in only one). They don't understand all this” (Indira, writer, female). Or as Piya put it –
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“There are great writers, male writers who have understood women. But for daily soap,
yes, I will agree because doing kitchen politics… I think women have an advantage
there” (Piya, writer, female). This “kitchen politics” succinctly refers to the level of
attention to detail and depth of knowledge about women’s domestic pressures,
relationships and politics that is required for writing for this genre, which requires an
orientation that perhaps advantages women, socialized to be “naturally” familiar with that
space.
For all of these writers the common recognition was the fact that these narratives
revolved around the “drama” in the everyday domestic space. And the ability to
recognize, acknowledge and further identify with these everyday dramas or encounters
needs a gendered (women’s) thinking.
We are catering to women, so the kind of “small-small things” that we would
want to create dramas on, men might not be able to pick up as fast. Because for a
woman, the loss of a bangle or … the vamp ruined the makeup of the heroine on
the day of the shaadi (wedding) is something a man would need some time.
(Pause) There are a lot of successful men writers also. And they have been
responsible for these high points also. But they're thinking – in their head they
are thinking like women … The defining feature in the soaps in the past 10-15
years has been the mangalsutra (necklace worn as a sign of marriage) and the
sindoor (vermilion powder worn as a sign of marriage) and so men have to orient
themselves to think like that. (Lata, writer, female)
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On the flip side, the women working in the corporate echelons of the channels
were immediate in repudiating that gender played any role in their work environment.
The overwhelming number of women they encountered in their daily work lives in the
industry, especially in the creative side on channels, in turn produce a taken-for-
grantedness of women’s presence in that industry space that seldom undergoes
recognition or interrogation. These participants were most likely to attribute the
predominance of women in the industry as individual success and displayed a “gender
blind” perspective that denied the gendered aspects of their work – neither sharing
(denying) any personal or structural discrimination within their workspace nor
celebrating the achievements of women in the industry.
I actually never see it like that. Frankly, I'm just a professional who’s working in
this industry and I am here or wherever I have reached because I am good at what
I do. I don’t think it's got anything to do with a woman vs. a man thing, because
even in a channel where there are so many women working together it's … you
know we are never conscious of the fact that, ‘Oh, you are a woman so we are
making shows’. … We are doing this because we like being in this industry, we
like being part of entertainment, we've all done a course or we've all been
associated with having studied something and then entered the industry, and we
are all making TV today. (Farah, channel executive, female)
However, even if gender per se is not seen as the mark of being a successful storyteller in
the industry, at one level it is clear that being able to understand the mindset and
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aspirations of “women”, the primary audience members, is readily acknowledged to be an
important criterion that affects success in this industry. As Bhavana opined:
I don't think sex has such a major part to play … In channels perhaps because it
is a corporate structure and safer jobs, there have been a lot of women. But it
really makes no difference, if you are saying that as a woman you are bringing
something to the table which is different and it's your perspective and your
viewpoint which is working – it's not true. Because I have worked with three
creative bosses out of which two bosses have been men. They have understood
the mindset of women, they have understood actually more than the mindset, the
lower middle class aspiration, women's aspiration… Even now some of the
famous writers are men – it's got nothing to do with men-women … Of course
there are women also but it's not like I am a woman, and I'm getting something
extra than a man to the table. If you know how to tell a story, you can tell a story.
(Bhavana, channel executive, female)
It is illuminating to tease apart certain gendered contradictions embedded in the
workspace, which were inherent in what was articulated by even those who were the
most vociferous in denying gender politics being at stake within the industry (and not just
on-screen). For instance, the presence of independent and “single” women in the
industry were seen as a direct correlation to the pressures, the level of time, and
commitment required to succeed in the industry. There is thus a sense that these women
in the industry can’t “have it all”. Something borne out by several participants (male and
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female) who talked spontaneously about having to compromise on marriage and family
life specifically in connection to the success of women in the industry.
It's a strange thing but in this business there are very few women who are married.
Most of the women who are working in this industry are single because the kind
of time that you need to give to this job, as anything, … the kind of time that is
required of you doesn't allow you to (pause) either you need to be married to
somebody who is part of the industry and understands or otherwise you'll frankly
not really find time to find anybody to get married to. (Farah, female, channel
executive)
Similarly, Girish, a male writer reflecting on the trend of women writers in the
industry and the pressures faced by people in the industry, talked about women burning
out or those desirous of a more balanced life having to switch roles and careers in order
to accommodate those needs.
I think, women, they come knowing very well, they are mentally prepared that
they will have no time for their personal lives … And as far as women are
concerned there are women definitely who are handling home and work – both
with equal ease – but mostly I think they are left with no time for their personal
lives. … That's why their career span in television becomes very short. They
work for 3-4 years, they exhaust, burn out and then they switch on to something
else. Something more stable. (Girish, male, writer)
145
Further, in contrast to the number of women seen on the channel offices, several
of the participants talked about working on the production floor, being specific in
articulating the difficulty, as women, in working within the production house “space” due
to the aggressive round-the-clock schedule that is required to keep up with the demands
of the daily soap structure. “It is a little difficult if you are a woman in a production-
house from a day-to-day point of view … In terms of being there from 7 in the morning
till 12 midnight and then going back home and stuff” (Ela, channel executive, female –
moved to current role from a production house). Or in noting specific jobs within the
industry whose structure and demands makes it a male dominated role – “It's very rare to
see a woman editor in television because editing in our scenario, cut-to-cut scenario – is a
24 hour job, so the timings are very bad. I am yet to come across a single woman editor,
in television” (Bhavana, female, channel executive). The unstructured schedule, long
hours, physical demands and the profile (working class connotations) of people working
there tends to reserve the actual production floor as a more male dominated/masculinized
space within the industry.
A production house is a lot more unorganized compared to a channel where you
have educated people. You are usually speaking with hygienically-non-deficient
people, who don’t know how to conduct themselves. A production house is a
totally different ball game altogether. Your production manager is probably going
to be like spitting paan (betel leaf) and scratching his crotch while barking orders
to the unit. (Ela, channel executive, female)
146
But on the whole, across the board, whether working in the channels or coming
from the production house space, the participants overwhelmingly personally experienced
the industry as a “women-friendly” environment to work in.
I think in the television industry – for women it's great. We get respect; we do not
get discrimination… Especially since the advent of the daily soap, women, I
think, overpower the television industry. That's one great thing … I think
compared to the film line the television line is considered to be a safer medium
for women. (Piya, writer, female)
Given that I was speaking to people who have been successful and are continuing to
make their mark in the industry, there was a sense of economic satisfaction and mobility
related to their career which they not only personally experienced but saw similar
patterns of among their peers. Thus these women experience the industry as a place
where their talents and expertise have been recognized and rewarded (in material and
non-material terms), “Be it in terms of promotions, or in terms of due credit that you get
for an idea, that's irrespective (of gender)” (Ela, channel executive, female).
As Farah justly notes, one of the more interesting contradictions marking this
space and time in the larger Indian media landscape – progressive/ regressive;
success/misfortune; independence/dependence – is the personal narratives that emerges
for these successful industry role models in marked contrast to the stories of the women
they tell on-screen.
147
Actually, despite the fact that we make such regressive shows and that we think in
such stereotypes when we are making the shows the industry in itself or the
people who work here are actually very broadminded. … There is less of the
intrusions and less of that expectation of being part of that stereotype (in the
industry). … It’s really all about just being a good professional. Because you get
all the breaks here in this business, you get all the breaks, you get all the
opportunities; you get a chance to do what you want as long as you prove your
worth. This is really what's it all about. (Farah, female, channel executive)
And thus it is these contradictions that ultimately throw up questions and
challenges regarding more progressive on-screen representations and the space for
advocating social change. As discussed further in the concluding chapter there is much
fertile ground on which a larger sense of gender solidarity and feminist activism can be
sought to be envisioned for contemporary times – a vision that builds bridges across the
fractured identities/realities of the Indian “women” with empowered representation on-
screen and off.
See it will only matter if it translates in terms of content. You know I would say,
yeah, it's great that there are so many more women because now finally we are
breaking through – we are not encouraging the same kind of stereotypes about
women’. We are getting together to create roles and characters on television that
break through that and that actually empower women. Till I see that happening…
full-fledged; till I see that you know, a lot more women means a lot better content,
148
a better portrayal of women on television, more powerful role models, more
powerful characters. That's when I would probably say that it makes a difference
– otherwise it really doesn't matter. (Ela, channel executive, female).
149
CHAPTER 6: EPILOGUE
I believe that television today, especially with daily soaps, the kind of reach it has
and now since the audience is mostly women, it should shoulder a tremendous
responsibility – social responsibility – which it does not. It should have some
ideology which it does not. And I believe in the last seven-ten years the kind of
power and influence that daily soap has on our country, has been so misused that
the condition and position of women has regressed by about 50 years. It has
pulled the position of the women in our society back. Because of the power it
yields – and that is very sad (sic). (Piya, writer, female)
In an industry discourse dominated by market driven logic and competition,
storytelling riddled with gendered stereotypes and clichés and an acknowledged need to
cater to the “lowest common denominator” it is worth noting that the legacy of television
as a means for advancing “change” and “social good” has (as yet) not lost its place. The
historical roots of Indian television in entertainment programming overtly promoting pro-
social/ development agendas, and its explicit mandate as a medium of social good (see
introductory chapter) leads to a natural expectation of entertainment media’s need to
serve an aggressive role in advancing social change and empowering its audience. Given
this context, the men and women who participated in this project evidenced an acute
awareness of, and a shared dissatisfaction with the industry status quo and what they
overwhelmingly felt was “regressive” storytelling – especially where creating women
role models were concerned. There is a creative dissonance between their idealized,
150
historical understanding of Indian television and the present day realities of the
industry.
Permeating through the discourse within and about the industry is the struggle to
decide whether entertainment should be a vector for social change or not – throwing up
sharp critiques, contradictions and (potentially even) challenges to the status quo. This
struggle is clearly seen in one of the first and only industry insider’s handbook for
aspiring writers on writing for Indian television, where the author, Coelho, explicitly
articulates both a personal critique and a commitment to change as part of her
commentary on the process of writing in the industry.
The stories that are told to us help weave us together as a society. … My anger
comes from the fact that the role models that are being held up … are based on
outmoded stereotypes. Our television heroines display a pathetic servility to the
men in their lives. The ideal housewife is a superwoman who manages home
along with being a super mother, a super wife and a super daughter-in-law,
pausing only to spout saintly words about how sacrifice is the ultimate glory of
womanhood. A woman is either a saint or a sinner. The only other role that one
sees dominating screens is that of the vamp – a scheming, manipulative, home
breaker, who is invariably an ultra-modern working woman. Such a powerful
medium could make so many positive changes if it chose to do so”. (Coelho,
2010, p.118)
151
And far from being a mechanical expectation and paying lip service to the idea of
social change, it was fascinating and illuminating to note the very personal and
impassioned terms in which these ideological beliefs were shared and how naturally (and
in most instances unprompted) they came up in the course of the interviews. For
instance, towards the end of the interview with Ela, as I wrapped up with questions of
changing trends and what/how she saw the industry evolving in the coming years, she
responded with an extremely individual and personal response. A response which clearly
shows the tension between her deep investment in and at the same time necessary/forced
emotional distance with the stories she tells –
One really hopes that you know we can actually move out of this kind of very
regressive, stereotypical image of the woman and you know actually start
showing real women… Because sometimes it gets really suffocating when you
see okay, this is a good show. We showed happy people, we showed progressive
people but it's not working. What the fuck do they want to see?
And then you are told maybe we should you know do something – maybe strip
her or you know do some over the top dramatic thing – those are the times you
can't live with yourself and it becomes very difficult. Because you have to keep
telling yourself this is not me, this is just this person who is writing this scene for
numbers. It's not personal, it's professional. But I hope that in the coming years
I'll be able to generate the kind of work where I won’t have to tell myself that.
(Ela, channel executive, female)
152
Similarly Lata too articulated the conscious decision and acceptation on her part,
when she first decided to write for television, that she would be writing stories that was
clearly contrary to her feminist politics and a compromise that she chose to make in order
to fit in to the industry. A choice, as discussed in chapter four, which was/is also justified
in terms of the audience and their reality. “I … (had to) come back to something that was
regressive. That went against my (feminist) ideological beliefs … and to understand …
the audience that I am catering to is very rigid” (Lata, writer, female).
Among the many contradictions which mark this contemporary moment in the
Indian television industry, that this study illuminates, the most heartening one is the form
in which the oft-articulated creative dissatisfaction that these storytellers share, takes.
Their creative ferment and to an extent, cynicism and disenchantment points to a unique
aspect of the Indian television industry – even as it is moving to more and more
commercialized and professionalized ways of functioning, the idealized vision of
television as a medium of social good, having social responsibility has not eroded. More
often than not creative dissatisfaction was voiced in precisely these latter terms. In other
words the creative aspirations and challenges voiced were about larger social goals that
they see themselves and their industry contributing to (or not) and not; about commercial
markers like remuneration, recognition, and individual career goals being actualized. As
chapter three illustrated, the entertainment television industry while seen as a hard
taskmaster is also seen as a fair paymaster, and the deep seated perception is that success
and mobility in this space is only limited by an individual’s talents and ability to deliver.
153
Nevertheless, the unprecedented commercial success, exponential growth and growing
economic clout of the industry does not do away with a sincerely articulated social
obligation and need to educate and empower the audience tuning in daily.
Practice of Solidarity
Yes, it's a woman's industry. Television is for the women by the women (laughs).
That's what it is right now. …It was definitely not (the trend before). … It has
become like that because of a lot of reasons: Because of how the country has
grown, because of how entertainment has grown and all of that. (Kunal,
production house affiliate, male)
It is worth considering that the operation of the twin logic of capitalism and
patriarchy in the functioning of mainstream satellite and cable television industry in India
has led to the emergence of this moment where women have come to play an
exceptionally strong and dominant role in the storytelling process on television. In other
words the need to maximize profits and market share through attracting key consumer
demographic – women; and functioning of traditional gender ideologies advocating that
women are best suited to enjoy and understand the domestic realm leads down a path that
opens up spaces for women to embark upon fulfilling public careers.
While there is no doubt that in part this serves the dominant ideology and
ultimately ends up reinforcing tradition and repressive gender roles on-screen, what has
not been as widely recognized or acknowledged outside the industry, thus far, is the
enabling space it has opened up for young, educated, middle class, upwardly mobile
154
women to forge a career and be independent – a phenomenon that the current research
project highlights.
As chapters three and four minutely detail, there is a ready acknowledgement of
the dominant discourses of market, nation and tradition which bind the stories on-screen
and structure the everyday work of these creative professionals within the industry. And
further, there is a near ubiquitous buy-in that these discourses are specifically oppressive
for “women”, reinforcing regressive gender norms and failing in their social obligation to
promote women’s causes and empower their viewers. However, what remains
unacknowledged in this telling of the story about the industry is the quiet changes and
groundswell that has been building up behind the scenes which may in fact have the
potential to invert that very narrative about women in contemporary Indian society and
the role models produced by the media industry.
What this project also uncovers is that contemporary identity politics work in
complex and multi-pronged manner such that advocating and working for more nuanced
and gender-just representation on-screen requires more than just mere representativeness
within the industry. Without an accompanying sense of community and political (gender
justice/feminist) will representativeness alone cannot pose a viable challenge to the
dominant ideology. In other words having more numbers behind the scenes is not
enough to change depictions on-screen, even when the women off-screen display an
ideological commitment to progressive values and justice. For as long as these are only
individually/personally held resolutions and beliefs there is a barrier in translating this
155
commitment to action and real change. What is required is bridging these bonds between
the women at various levels in the industry and building a sense of community and
presence within the industry. It means acknowledging “our” voices and owning the space
that “we” have come to occupy as a platform to tell the stories we would like to tell.
At this point in the industry’s history, such a sense of community and solidarity is
nascent with many of the interviewees being ‘gender blind’ vis-à-vis their career path and
success. Networking and mentoring of young professionals and fresh talent is still an ad-
hoc and informal activity. All of the participants indicated that building a successful
network and/or mentoring relationship with others in the industry happened at a personal
level and was more likely to be a luck of the draw in who you got to work with as
opposed to an institutionalized activity. Although all of these writers are card carrying
members of the writers union, in their personal experience and the current industry setup,
they felt the union played a negligible role in their career path and navigation of the
industry. While there is a general recognition and some initial efforts by individual
writers to create a more vibrant role for such organizations within the industry, there is
undoubtedly a distinct lack of institutionalized networking platforms and forums for
those in the daily business of writing for the industry let alone for women writers in
particular.
Thus perhaps one step towards changing gendered representations on-screen and
challenging the dominant/oppressive discourse is to create enabling platforms for these
women in the industry to come together, network and create a collective vision of their
156
place in the media industry. Here I specifically draw upon Mohanty’s (2003) definition
of solidarity –
Solidarity in terms of mutuality, accountability, and the recognition of common
interests as the basis for relationships among diverse communities. Rather than
assuming an enforced commonality of oppression, the practice of solidarity
foregrounds communities of people who have chosen to work and fight together.
Diversity and difference are central values here – to be acknowledged and
respected, not erased in the building of alliances. (p.7)
The imperative to build a sense of community and solidarity, to move from narratives of
individual success and personal frustrations with the ideological limitations of their
storytelling, is twofold.
Firstly, it is only when we can build solidarity while acknowledging and
respecting our heterogeneity and differences, across class, religion, regional/cultural,
physical location, educational and marital status and such, that we can start to envision an
alternate to the dominant and strategize for change based on justice and equality. As Piya
rightly reflected:
It's a double edged sword frankly. What some of us call regressive actually has a
lot of influence in the small towns and cities where these protagonists empower
the women who are watching to at least some times either figure out ways to
defend their turf or to actually stand up against injustice. They draw their power
from these women, but the fact is also that these women are very, very,
157
stereotyped and … we don’t even realize sometimes how deep the influence is
and that's why I say regressive because a lot of women just think it's fine to – that
our life is just restricted to being a series of relationships and never anything
more. (Piya, channel executive, female)
Secondly, building a sense of community, power and presence of ‘women in the
television industry’ within and outside the industry is essential precisely so that they do
not become invisible and their contribution usurped and lost in the telling of the history
of the industry. There is historical precedence in the international context where the
composition of media industries undergo changes and structural barriers are put in place
which end up hurting women’s entry and progress within the industry. For instance, in
their research of the screenwriters in the American film industry, Bielby & Bielby (1996)
found that the gender composition went from women being 50-90% of the screenwriters
during the silent film era to being down to the 20% mark through the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
They note that as the industry went through the process of institutionalization,
professionalization and revaluation, the space became legitimated and in turn
masculinized. What was a profession with substantial opportunities for women became
appropriated and male dominated as the industry moved from being considered low
prestige to high prestige and its contribution was recognized as a valued cultural product
(Bielby & Bielby, 1996).
There is no escaping the equating of soaps as a women’s genre or that these
women in the Indian television industry contribute to the discourse that perpetuate the
158
same. However the mainstreaming and dominance of that genre within the Indian prime
time context has prevented a ‘ghetto’ perspective being developed with regard to
women’s work in the industry. In other words, both daily soaps as a genre and the
predominance of women working in the industry has been normalized within the industry
discourse.
My aim here is not to call attention to women working on soaps as some form of
essentialist unity between the genre and the sex. Rather it is to highlight the fact that
each creates an enabling factor in the success of the other. By not acknowledging the
“success” (on the industry’s own terms) that women as a group have achieved in the
industry it makes invisible (a) the unique trajectories of the Indian commercial television
industry and (b) the contradictions, changes and challenges that mark the representation
and reality of contemporary Indian womanhood.
For those invested in programmatic interventions for social change there is fertile
ground on which to work on. Whether we think of existing models of industry
collaboration in promoting communication for social change or rethink the space for
feminist politics within the media industry, there is an obvious need to engage with the
structures and institutional framework that exist and crucial to acknowledge and work
through the commercial reality and not simply cede ground or confine ourselves to earlier
models of state-television driven collaborations.
This study provides us a look into the micro-processes; the particular ways that
patriarchal and capitalist discourse function in the everyday life of the writers which lead
159
to stereotypical depictions of women on-screen. As Mohanty (2003) argues, realizing a
feminist vision based on justice and democratic principles requires working on many
fronts and many different collectives and it “also means being attentive to small as well
as large struggles and processes that lead to radical change – not just working (or
waiting) for a revolution” (p.4). What is thus perhaps needed as a way forward is to re-
conceptualize political activism and actively seek and engage with the everyday micro
strategies that can appropriate and counter the hegemonic discourse and channel these
individually held beliefs and creative commitment into the everyday discourse and
practice of the industry.
160
ENDNOTES
1
Unfortunately barring a few recent publications there is a paucity of texts which
engage and examine the television industry, its workers and their work. Notable
exceptions are two industry insider accounts (one a “How-to” manual for writers) and
Munshi’s (2010) scholarly work. See Munshi 2010; Kohli- Khandekar, 2010; Coelho,
2010 for more details.
2
Entertainment Education (EE) is defined as a communication strategy used to
disseminate ideas purposefully in order to contribute to the process of directed social
change, whether at the level of the individual, community or society. It is a process of
planned design and implementation of media messages to both entertain and educate, in
order to increase audience members’ knowledge about a particular educational issue,
create favorable attitudes, shift social norms, and change overt behavior (Singhal &
Rogers, 1999, 2002). This model of programming was foundational in the birth and
growth of the Indian television industry and much of the entertainment dramas produced
in the subsequent years had strong social messages embedded in them (whether as an
express programming directive or not).
3
Research indicates that most homes in India have one television set, and
watching TV tends to be a communal activity that brings together the entire family, and
often the neighbors, too (Bajaj, 2007).
4
Trying to initiate contact and schedule meetings also underscores the importance
of doing one's background research on what is happening with the show right now.
While this is an obvious imperative for the research/interview itself, it has tremendous
practical implications even when trying to initiate contact or schedule a meeting! One
has to keep an eye out for the ratings, major twists in the character arcs (attendant
marketing and promotions involvement), all of which will and did impact previously
scheduled meetings. As I learned the hard way, even though you may have scheduled the
meeting weeks in advance – based on their first available convenience – a "sudden" plot
twist like the possible fatal shooting and hospitalization of the main female protagonist
and its promotion means accepting that the meeting in the real world will not take place
till the crisis in the soap world is satisfactorily resolved. Similarly, post-rating euphoria
is a good time to catch individuals for some low priority meeting (research work) but the
converse is also true, i.e., if the ratings are not so favorable you are going to be out of
luck. Or for instance, that on Wednesday mornings it is impossible to get meetings or
even people to answer their phones – especially at channels – because that is the day the
weekly ratings come in. Calling people at the start of the week (ideally Monday
afternoon) to get a time commitment during the week is most practical, but it is also
161
essential to make a note to send repeated reminders on the day before, and the day of the
meeting, as people’s schedules and priorities change almost on an hourly basis.
While overall the biggest asset in accessing these professionals was the ability to
make myself flexible, there is always a need to walk a fine line between being
accommodating and having a hard deadline. That is, be available immediately if needed
("I have a window right now") but also be willing to accommodate long hours of waiting
once you do arrive for the meeting (the window disappeared). Thus, in the beginning of
my fieldwork period, especially, as I emphasized my extreme flexibility and the primacy
of their convenience – underlining that I was around for the next two months and would
like to meet as their schedule permitted – I got nowhere in the recruitment process.
When I was close to leaving town – an inflexible deadline – it proved easier to get people
to commit. On the flip side it also meant that several of the contacts could eventually not
get converted to interviews (despite repeated attempts over weeks) due to the same
deadline, as they failed to accommodate me in their schedule.
The assumption across the line appeared to be that there would always be this
mythical time in the near future when they would be less pressed for time and dealing
with fewer deadlines and fires than what was happening that day/that week. The reality,
which their own testimonies about the kind of work pressures and deadlines they face on
a routine basis, is that this is a high pressure, volatile work space, fueled by daily pressing
deadlines and it is understandably tough to prioritize, and justify as relevant, a research
interview. In such a scenario it is judicious to use every practical advantage possible, be
it your familiarity with external aspects which influence the schedules of your
participants (television rating schedules), your own deadlines, and even your position as a
researcher. As I quickly learned, despite their work pressures and commitments, those
contacted and eventually interviewed were truly vested in wanting to take the time out to
help a “student” in their university work and hence positioning myself as a PhD “student"
doing research proved the most advantageous in having these professionals make space
for me in their busy schedule.
5
Socio-demographic grouping used by market researchers to denote different
economic and geographical groups.
6
Note however the character described by Ela is an older female - the power and
vulnerability and gray shades and justification of use of power being easier to negotiate
with the added advantage of age and the respect and decision-making power accorded as
the matriarch of the family.
162
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172
APPENDIX A: LIST OF CHANNEL AND SHOW AFFILIATIONS OF PARTICIPANTS
List of Channels the professionals interviewed were currently involved or had in the
recent past been involved with:
Star Plus
Zee TV
Colors
Sony
NDTV Imagine
Partial list of Soaps the professionals interviewed were currently involved or had in the
recent past been involved with:
Astitva...Ek Prem Kahani (Existence… A Love Story)
Balika Vadhu (Child Bride)
Sapna Babul Ka...Bidaai (Father’s Dream …Giving his Daughters Away)
Jamunia (Jamunia)
Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi (There is No One Like Jassi)
Kaashi Ab Na Rahe Tera Kagaz Kora (Kaashi – Your Story is No Longer
Unwritten)
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because the Mother-in-law was Once a
Daughter-in-law)
Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii (The Tale of Every Household)
Laagi Tujjhse Lagan (Married to You)
173
Na Aana Is Des Laado (Don’t Come to This Land Daughter)
Mann Kee Awaaz Pratigya (The Voice of your Conscience – Pratigya)
Saat Phere – Saloni Ka Safar (The Seven Circles (marital vows) – Saloni’s
Journey)
Sasuraal Genda Phool (The Marital Home is like a Marigold Flower)
Uttaran (Hand-me-down)
Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai (What this Relationship Signifies)
174
APPENDIX B: DISCUSSION GUIDE
Background
Introduction
o Introduce self and research background
o Interview objective and time required
[Note for any spontaneous responses related to ‘project’]
Participant’s professional background
o What work do you do (description/locating industry)
o How did you get to your current position -
How did you get involved in television (some thoughts on the
medium vs. others)? Describe professional journey
Educational background
How long have you been in this line of work
o Describe current job –
Explore for details of duration, positions, entry procedure, type of
work, working hours, team or solo; expectations vs. reality;
income?
o Previous jobs you have done?
o Professional growth and networking?
Explore for resources (institutionalized or otherwise) that you draw
upon for professional growth
o Significant influences in your career and creative work?
o Future plans for your career?
Creative Aspects
Industry discourse – getting more specific on economics/politics
o What is the structure of the industry? How would you locate your role
within the industry?
o What is the typical ‘life cycle’ of a popular TV drama in India? What
factors affect it? &/OR [What is the typical ‘life cycle’ of a campaign
intervention? What factors affect it?]
o Within the industry which professional roles have a decisive say on what
goes on-screen?
175
o Content - are there any topics that you have to steer clear of and the
opposite (what are some ‘essential ingredients’)
o Aesthetic value of content of TV drama
o Where do you see the industry going in the next few years? What is on
the horizon?
Note and explore for mention of the government, market, funding agencies (other
institutional forces)
Describe the most recent production you are/were involved in – homing in on
the TV drama
o Background of the show – how did it come into being; team involved with
conception and execution; years and milestones;
o The production process – what goes into making the show; typical
day/week for you when working on this; how do you brainstorm; who all
are involved in scripting / story development / character development
[soap opera cycle?]
o What is your role/contribution to the creative process?
o Future thoughts – where do you see the show in the next few months; after
a year? Why?
Note for mentions of audience, target demo, and how they refer to them (language
used….); tensions and negotiations between creative vision and execution
Describe what you count as your most successful show that you were (are)
involved in –
o Why do you count it as a success? What counts as success within the
industry?
Audience and critic reception
What stands out about that show in comparison to others that
are/were on that time
o Background of the show – how did it come into being; team involved with
conception and execution; years and milestones;
Note & explore for mentions of audience, target demo, and how they refer to them
(language used….)
Focusing on the characters in your drama –
o Which character(s) stands out to them from the show you are involved in?
o Describe the characters and what makes them interesting?
176
o How did that character evolve?
Who all are involved in scripting / story development / character
development
o What were the audience reactions to the character? What feedback did the
viewers give? Can you give some examples?
o (In addition)
How are the women characters depicted on the show?
Walk me though how such a character comes to be conceived and
then translated on screen? Costume? Styling?
Explore for mentions of ‘Indian-ness’/ ‘modern vs. traditional’/ ‘gender’ / ‘class status’ /
‘ethnic or geographical identity’/people like us vs. them - Follow up on descriptors
Environmental Aspects
Note and explore for linkages to previous responses on show & characters; Tensions and
negotiations between creative vision, execution & political implications of text
Media in India
o What are the current challenges and opportunities you see in the media
sector?
o Forging partnerships – which other sectors/domains are relevant to the
industry’s work? Your work? Who will the media industry need to work
with closely?
o What’s on the horizon?
o What role has the television (media sector) to play in the current social
and political context in India?
Anything else they would like to share?
[Did I miss something? Who else should I be talking to?]
177
APPENDIX C: SCRIPT WRITING FLOW CHART
Figure 4: Script Writing Flow Chart for Daily Prime Time Soaps (Coelho, 2010, p. 170).
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Encoding women: popular culture and primetime Indian television
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