From: ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Sornam Sankara)
Subject: Women in Popular Tamil Magazines
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 05:20:33 GMT



Following is the article appeared in EPW and I reproduce it `verbatim' in a
series of postings.

The emphasis with capital letters are partly mine and partly from the article.

Pardon me for the typos.


S. Sankarapandi
ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu



Popular Tamil magazines and construction of gender identity
===========================================================

{Gita Wolf, Economic and Political Weekly, Oct 26 (1991)
 Reproduced without permission}

     Our basic premise in undertaking this investigation of popular Tamil short
stories is that narrative is a socially constructed product.  Fiction, we
assume, neither merely `reflects' nor `arises from' society, as the purveyors
of the Tamil magazines we examine would have us believe.  The relationship is
in fact inverse.  Narratives are CONSTRUCTIONS of reality, using available
cultural and social material, but ordering and presenting versions of this
material in accordance with certain ideologies and constraints.  These
culturally sanctioned ways of ordering reality are not the result of aberrant
private fantasy.  NEITHER ARE POPULAR SHORT STORIES SIMPLY HARMLESS
ENTERTAINMENT, AS A WIDE SECTION OF THE POPULATION ASSUMES.


     Popular literature, like nursery rhymes, folk tales or religious
practices, constructs a certain picture of the world, while suggesting ideals
of behaviour.  Such literature is a powerful method of social control.  It can
also function as an important means of social change, or its prevention.


     Our readings of popular Tamil weeklies appear to confirm this thesis.  We
took up the following weeklies for scrutiny:


(1) ANANDA VIKATAN: Chiefly Brahmin in its appeal and choice of stories.  This
weekly is not explicitly abusive of women, but reinforces typical patriarchal
norms.  Its misogyny is more evident in its jokes, trivia, etc...  A weekly
story, catering to a supposedly teenage audience, is a new feature (in
1989-90), which will be analyzed later.


(2) KUMUDAM:  This weekly with a large circulation is unabashedly titillating
and renowned for its obscenity.


(3) KUMKUMAM: Widely known to be published by Parasakthi, a pseudonym form
Murasoli Maran, a senior leader of the DMK, this weekly is openly misogynist
and given to jokes and trivia whihc deliberately debase and humiliate women.


(4) ITHAYAM PESUGIRATHU: Strongly Brahmin and middle class in its appeal with a
fair share of obsceniety and misogyny.


(5) SAAVI:  Is another variant of the above four, which basically shares all
their assumptions.
     Other magazines, which we have not considered here exist.  However, they
follow in the trend set by the weeklies we have analyzed.


     The general layout of the magazines is almost identical.  The first page
is usually devoted to film news of some kind, accompanied by photographs of
semi-clad actresses and leering actors.  Around 50 % of the magazines is
devoted to fiction, 20 % to cinema and related subjects, 10-15 % to politics
(very peripheral news), 10 % to jokes and the remainder to trivia, quizzes,
tidbits, pseudo-sociology or psychology.


     Fiction which is the mainstay of these magazines is of two kinds: serial
stories and short stories.  There are also single page exercise in sheer
titillation, which we shall examine in detail later.  The material historical
world is largely ignored and merely forms a vague backdrop to the stories,
which are contained within the framework of gender relationship.  This
relationship is primarily defined as a sexual one, which conveniently undercuts
the material basis of male/female power relations.   The protagonists of the
stories are intended to be positive role models for countless readers.  The
heroes are generally wise, heroines self-sacrificing.  Men occupy a `public'
world, women an inner, private one.


    The narratives work at two levels: firstly they gratify, in a crude and
often perverse fashion, male fantasies and projections of female sexuality; and
secondly, they also project, on their large female readership, continually
limiting traditional versions of women's notions of themselves and their
possibilities.




                                .....To be continued