Understanding Myth and the Popular Meaning of Communication and Mediation

Noted French theorist Rolland Barthes defined myth as a statement what is encoded by its supporter or according to John Fiske its believer. The modern commercial outlook often disseminates some laboratory-made myths to the consumers or subscribers. A ‘T-shirt’ is marked with an interesting note “I was born intelligent but the EDUCATION system ruined me”. This is just a myth used commercially. Barthes defined myth as a story by which a culture explains or some aspects of reality or nature [Fiske, 2003]. So a myth is a cultural fall-out of something to be conceptualized or understood. In this discourse there is unlimited flow of myths reigning in every society, like,

“women are more matured than men”;

“all that glitters is not gold”;

“peace lives somewhere else”;

“the government is of, for and by the people”;

“long live revolution”;

“women are more caring than men”;

“if you teach a woman you teach the whole generation” etc.

Thus if connotation is the second order signification producing the meaning of the ‘signifier’, myth is the second order signification of the signified.

The structure and organization of myth:

Famous Communication analyst John Fiske analyzed extensively how myths work in broadcasting news.

“the jubillant supporters are shown...” or

“public representatives should be an example...”

or the roaring river...” etc.

Enormous myths are being used in news, advertisements nowadays which discursively work as stimulant to lead the readership to the rest of the stories or the event. So considering the role of myths it is necessary to know in detail about the structure of myth which can reveal the inside stories of structural uses of myths in extensive variety of social dimensions, specially how mass media work ! We have already iterated Barthesian definition of ‘myth’. Another noted Social Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss defined myth as a ‘story that is a specific and local transformation of a deep structure of binarily opposed concepts that are important to the culture within which the myth circulates’[Fiske, 2003].

So myth resides in both ‘pro’ and ‘anti-establishment’ concepts rather cultural contexts that lead to opposite outcomes or fall outs of social activities. Myths often help living in an imaginative manner that provides enough comfort to its creator to combat the reality. If an Indian comments, “I am an apolitical person”, that gives him a little comfort to be away from either the ‘pain of political struggle’ or ‘from illicit political activities’. Fiske in this context argues interestingly that Levi Strauss’s concept is greatly influenced by Freudean theorization. In his language, “... from Freud he develops the idea that the analysis of myth is the cultural equivalent of the analysis of the dreams of an individual. A dreamer will know that he or she is dreaming, but will know only the dream’s (often absurd) surface meaning: its deeper, real meaning is available only to the analyst...” So from the above two analyses there is no doubt about the encoder of a myth knows only the superficial or external meaning. Fiske continues arguing, “myths arise from the repressed anxieties and unresolved contradictions hidden in the tribal or cultural subconscious.

Myth and class inequality:

On the other hand Rolland Barthes has emphasized on the dominating character of myth that is used by the dominant class to dominate oppressed class. However he goes on arguing that myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion (Barthes, 1972, Julian). “Myth is a system of communication... it is a message... myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form... Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way it utters this message... there are formal limits to myth but no substantial ones... Everything then, can be a myth? Yes... every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, whichforbids talking about things... mythical speech is made of a material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication” (Rolland Barthes, 1972). So myth is not at all dependent on its narrative or syntagmatic arrangement but on paradigmatic juxtaposition of metaphorical order, thus dominates the text and its decoder. Finally myth is a powerful instrument of the privileged class to dominate others and a fancid way-out to the common people. But in religious activities myths are often found moving beyond class identities of people and homogenizing cultural outlooks and differences.

Structure of Myth:

According to Levi Strauss, all myths have similar structure and similar socio-cultural function in a determinate social format. Myth is commonly used ‘to make the world explicable’ through a story-telling manner to resolve various problems and contradictions [Storey, 2001]. Myth itself appears to be the logic-model and deals with the conflicting issues. If we agree with the myth that “Sachin Tendulkar is the best Batsman, India have ever produced” no contradiction would then come into the scene at least in a determinate social format, but society must stand for a consensus in that period of time. But at the same time it is also true that myth then would become an undeniable part of the dominant social institutions and appear as ‘culture’ banishing all possible deviant voices and contradictions. Owing mostly to Freud, Levi Strauss’ notion of myth stresses upon the ‘dream’ structure of an individual that passes through very close to the ‘reality’ or the ‘analysis’. The myths like ‘Mega Star’ or ‘Big B’ thus structurally belongs to Amitabh Bachchan and for Shahrukh Khan ‘King Khan’ or ‘Bolywood Badshah’ rules the market and society. But both these myths mostly appear to be quite binarily opposed in nature thus leaving off the conflict of interest or releasing the anxiety toward making a King of the kings.

Rolland Barthes, on the other hand, as it has been already argued in the first chapter, defines myth as a story by which a culture gets the magical touch of reality or what Fiske argues, some aspects of reality or nature. As he categorises myth as a fall out of the second order signification, so culture basically shapes the myth as a chain of related concepts. Barthes categorises second order conceptualization into two segments: ‘connotation’ and ‘myth’. Connotation when it becomes the second order meaning or conceptualization of the ‘signifier’ and ‘myth’ is constituted as a second order conceptualization of the ‘signified’. But unlike Levi Strauss, Barthes has observed the commissioned existence of dominant myths in every social format and in this way dominant myths represent dominant social class and so the dominant history. Fiske argues that myths, as Barthes accords, basically naturalize the dominant history because every myth carries a history with them but present it as natural not historical or social. Because of dominant myth, we know about masculinity, femininity and other subsequent categories, like, women are more caring than of course male beings; women are lovemaker looking after their husbands and children, males are breadwinner etc. Fiske also argues that myths usually disguise their historical origin but present meaning for contemporary use.

But such mythic structuration also has its end with the natural evolution of mankind and social formats, newer myths are coming into the scene day by day. Myths, once very dominant and looking quite natural, are facing severe challenge from the newer age, newer reasons, newer aspirations, newer hopes and of course from newer myths. Also counter myths, once defeated, may earn new space to live in. As Barthes accords, change of myths is ‘evolutionary but not revolutionary’, where newer myths do not reject older myths entirely but outcast some of their traditional aspects. Therefore, Fiske argues, ‘no myths are universal in a culture, nor eternally dominant, there are counter myths, newer myths to banish them and set new time for future, as in science, counter myths always appear to be very strong, often deny dominant myths’. In everyday soap operas, news bulletins, political speeches, lots of dominant myths are being telecast, rendered but counter myths also exist in common psyche which often have the power to outcast those so called dominant myths. Gerbner in his Cultivation research has shown massive portrayal of violence in American television specially supernatural [mythic] violence, psycho-fanatic violence, cruelty, murder, social outlaws etc. which outrage the image of civil law and social relationships.

However Barthes’ claim was that myths are being produced at the second order signification or connotation for consumption and in practice myths often become ideology to solve out socio-cultural jolts. Myths in a social format, according to Barthes, promote values and interests of the dominant groups or institutions and defend them. As myths elevate dominant interests of the society, polysemic approaches of signs would then achieve hardly any space in that limited format. Barthes accords that, ‘myth has...a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes on us’[Mythologies: Barthes]. However Fiske argues that the ‘final meaning of the myth, lies not in its narrative or its syntagmatic structure, for the events of the expedition and actual hunt are comparatively superficial decorations and do not need retelling. The final meaning is to be found in the paradigmatic relationship of the [binary] opposed concepts which is a conceptual way of structuring and thus of making sense of the real problem’.

Finally Levi Strauss’ notion of myth comes out completely antipodal to what Barthes talks of it about. For Levi Strauss, myth is a narrative which is constantly being used by the people even beyond its actual negotiable meaning. But for Barthes on the other hand, myth is a chain of concepts [Fiske, 2001, 03], people though aware of its meaning but may be unaware about its mythic character. So Barthes’ myth is totally class oriented or class specific where dominant class use myths while dominating weaker class. But Levi Strauss has distinguished myth and its operation fully open ended. Levi Strauss used myths of tribal societies, whereas Barthes was more concerned with contemporary global societies. However Fiske argues that apart from culture specificity and class orientation, society is also heavily distinguished by the gender bias that creates power blocs in the society. As Barthes points out that dominant class and their institutions, owning sources of production alongwith, also control and regulate myths to ensure subordination of people, but Fiske points out that capitalist societies are very much patriarchally programmed where class bias and gender bias both sculpt power blocs in society.

Structural repitition or parallel structures:

Fiske argues that as because structures are fundamental in making sense of the whole world, structuralism often demonstrates or is evident in some parallel structures that defines the difference of cultural praxis in a synonymous way. Fiske exemplifies beautifully that a space is being treated as house, farm, wilderness etc. Animals can be treated into parallel categories, such as, domestic animals, wild animals, pets etc. Human being also are being categorized into different parallel structures, like, family, neighbours, businessman, tribal, criminal etc. These parallel structures or structural repititions denote cultural differences and at the same time organize those anomalies in a synonymous structure. Such repititive structures are widely seen in both Bengali and Indian societal boundaries. Often these repetitive structures form convention and are being forcibly tried out as analogous or anomalous structures by the limited social authorities. Thus Fiske argues that, ‘structuralism teaches us to look for the deep structures that underlie all cultural and communication systems. It also enables us to demonstrate that the various social and cultural systems that we use to organize and make sense of our lives are not random or disconnected, but are analogous to each other’. Therefore myths are closely associated with the existing deep structures or langue in which both class, cultural and gender bias control the society and various paroles.

Meaning and Culture:

As Claude Levi Strauss has distinguished language into paroles within its deep structure i.e. langue. Thus meaning lies in the paroles and langue acts as a base [deep] structure of it. In mass mediated society a deep structure or langue can generate infinite number of paroles as episodes that would definitely influence or affect the concept of binary structuration of meaning. Therefore front page of a particular newspaper generates number of headlines [Fiske, 2001, 03], even a particular story-structure also can generate number of headlines and pictures. Ultimately this deep structure [langue] sets about the culture with structured oppositions.

Nature and culture:

As it has been argued in detail that the structuralist approach enquires an open-ended analysis where sense making is the crucial factor, generated from nature or the reality and the culture or the structured sense. Claude Levi Strauss has analyzed this derivation between nature and culture in his book “The Raw and the Cooked” (1969) which justifies fooding and cooking as cultural procedures are both generated from the nature. According to Levi Strauss, food is a very powerful anomalous category and acts between nature and culture. This food and cooking culture can be extended to a wider range of cultural transformations [Fiske, 2001, 03] that even affect the age-old determinacy of a traditional culture. Raw food, according to Levi Strauss, is well extended to ceremonial cooking, occasional cooking, commercial cooking, official cooking and other various cultural praxis. Fiske argues that ‘...this process starts conceptually before any instrumental transformation, for all cultures divide nature into the edible and non-edible, though all...place different natural objects in each category...’. Though human body can accept or digest almost the whole nature, such delicate division between edible and non-edible brings out the cultural specification of human beings. In addition to that such distinction becomes a discriminating process where what a society considers edible may be inedible in other society. Chinese people are very much traditionally knwon as cockroach eaters, some of eastern Indian aboriginals eat dogs.

At the same time in terms of edibility or non-edibility, wide cooking range also is an identity of a society and is an instrumental to the social transformations. Specially in Bengali linguistic society such categorization still acts as a social identity. Even in West Bengal long after the partition [1947], Hilsa and Prawn are still known as iconic-symbols of the two prime Indian Football Clubs, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. This transformation of nature into culture is also identical with ‘Ghati’ [West Bengalees] who are fondly symbolized with Prawn and ‘Bangals’ [migrated from today’s Bangladesh as refugee] are fondly known as ‘Hilsa’ eaters. Moreover these categorizations become more anomalous or analogous when by different preparations of ‘Daal’ we can identify the cook as, may be, traditionally ‘Bangal’ or ‘Gahti’ or ‘Oriya’. Nonetheless there are even various cooking methodologies that signify the person, which region he/she is coming from. Refugees from Barishal are traditionally known for excellent cooking, whereas for some special preparations or the cooking systems of various vegetables Ghati people are well acclaimed. Bangals [traditional East Bengalees] cook all lunch dishes specially ‘Daal’[pulse], vegetables, using sweetner [chiefly sugar] along with other salty ingredients more than what ‘Ghati’s do. More so, Kolkata is still known by its Rasogolla, as Delhi by Laddu [the famous categorization: Jo Khaya O Pachhtaya, Jo Nahin Khaya O Bhi Pachhtaya] etc.

Not only cooking and food systems, such distinction between nature and culture and cultural tranformation is widely seen in rural Bengal areas in worshiping gods. People of Purulia and Bankura worship ‘Tusu’ [goddess Lakshmi, the god of wealth] to observe harvesting and collecting of crops [chiefly Paddy] from fields. These are all quite substantial examples of structural methodologies as Levi Strauss thought of it extensively. We all know that Chinese food is such a cooking system that opens an image of the Chinese cultural discourse, but in India, what is available in the name of Chinese recipe in common restaurants and road-side kiosks is far from what a Chinese person desires to have. But common Indian food scenario is binarilly distinguished between Chinese cuisine and Indian cuisine. This is also a structural transformation that comes from the nature reaches to a binary opposed culture.

All the examples given above are of structural prototypes that appear in mutually binary oppositional categories:

Chinsese food : Non-Chinese food [because in such Indian cuisines, some are inevitably having Pakistan and middle eastern roots];

Bangal [taken refuge in India after partition] : Ghati [traditionally West Bengal dwellers];

Hilsa : Prawn;

North Indian : South Indian;

But the degree of transformation has gradually become wider with more and more consumerization of such traditional categories [broad and binarily opposed], while paradigmatic options needed to be expanded more to cater the growing consumerization. But still empowerment of structures is very much evident in different categories of lives and mediation, as for example, still majority of Mumbai films can well be categorized into binary structures, like: Good : Evil; Hero : Villain; Law & Order : Anarchy; Old : New; Religious : Secular; Conventional : Revolutionary; Society : Underworld; Elite : Antisocial etc. Let us interpret some films:

Connotation # 1: Amar Akbar Anthony:

This particular blockbuster of 1970s, portrayed two special religious binary identities under one mainstream religious plane [here Hinduism on which the whole society was portrayed]: The whole text possessed three identities: two religious categories, Christianity and Islam and a Police Officer [predominantly Hindu or mainstream on which most of the Mumbai films are made]. However all categories were sufficiently projected in different societal forms. Anthony in Christian [Church oriented] society and Akbar in Muslim [Bazar oriented] society. Rest of the film followed the same narrative fictional line-up: Initial narrative - Mounting - Climax [chiefly happy marriage]. The meanings of categories are:

Mainstream Religion [as perspective] [Educated Police Officer] : Others;

Chritianity [Bohemianism (individuality), pub-culture] : Muslim [workers, rituals]

Law & Order [Civil responsibility] : Villains [Smugglers]

Masculinity : Femininity

Connotation # 2: Vaastav:

This is another Mumbai blockbuster initially started with a binary composition of elite and non-elite societal category. Then it moves to another binary composition: society and the underworld [where the hero (starring Sanjay Dutt) once ousted from the society gets refuge to ‘Vitthal bhai’] refuting elite-non elite boundaries. It also projects another binary character, hero’s brother (Manish Behl), who happens to be a graduate, management staff, looking for a well-bred life, keeps himself away from his ‘Don’ brother. In between these three prime binary-opposed categories lots of murders, encounters, underworld planning have been propelled in this film. The binary opposed categories are:

Elite : Non-elite;

Social Praxis : Anti-social Activities;

Decent Life [education] : Underworld lifestyle;

Law & Order : Anarchy;

Hero [not villains, because hero himself is a traditional villain] : Villain [the Society];

Humanity [Hero] : Cruelty [Education, social institutions];

Masculinity : Femininity

Anomalous or continuing or mediating category: Hero / Anti-Hero.

Connotation # 3: Political Bandhs:

Often Bandhs or Strikes have been called by different political parties, non-political institutions, social [civil] groups and various other categories of a region. Today a bandh is not only a widely-dealt issue but a quite popular category for mass-mediation. Media institutions often have become politically polarized while giving coverages. In case of opposition-called bandhs, media houses, supporting ruling sects, frantically look for even small groupings in roads. They cover number of government buses and other vehicles running on the road. But in opposite cases, they cover stranded people in different places, like, Railway stations, Airports and other places. Uncrowded road is here the strongest metonym of a strike. Clash between police administration and strike supporters is a common metonym of state domination, even if the supporters launch violent attack on public property or administrative personnels. Political oppositions always have the same allegation that the bandh is ‘politically motivated’ [instead of adding ‘ill’ as prefix], thus ultimately appears to be almost anti-social, anti-progress, anti-development, anti-industrialization, anti-people and even anti-political iconic-symbol. This is a massive transformation because Bandh once was treated as the last weapon of movement against the establishment]. Finally whatever be the outcome strike-callers greet people for making it a success and the opposition also greet people for making it failure or unsuccessful. The binary categories are:

Support : Dissupport or opposition;

Rulling political groups : Political oppositions;

Issue : Politics;

Individuality : Organizations;

Success : Failure;

Anomalous or Continuing or mediating category: Bandh.

Fiske at this juncture points out that all such structural categorizations depend on various myth categories [second order signified], and upon our knowledge about other available myths in a particular genre. He further divides the structure into three ‘groups of values’:

Actual elements- the narrative;

Values [determinate] specific to the genre, say, [Mumbai films or Indian films] : Other films; or our culture : their culture;

Universal value system - Good : Evil; Hero : Anti Hero;

Structuralism innately prescribes these three central value systems starting from the reality element-system to the universal value system i.e. universally accepted axiomatic value statements by which all binary opposed categories are being made. He accords that the third group i.e. universal value system are finally culture specific but always have been given the ‘natural’ status, thus ‘appear to be a part of nature rather than culture. So the myths always have been very powerful and act as natural.

Political text and mass culture:

Both in traditional and contemporary social boundaries, political texts are often found highly structured [regimented], continuous and communicated to the targeted mass to achieve immediate [short-term] stimulated results. In this course, political vanguardism always becomes an invariable factor to motivate or modulate required expectation of results or outcome of communication. This is very much plausible when political texts are made of various stimulant elements to re-legitimizing political goals. Such elementary stimulant factors are often being misconceptualized with ‘ideology’ and ‘ideological struggle’, as ideology is frequently been made up by the vanguards of different vertically framed strata within the political party. Such formulation of ideology practicing materials result in a utopianism or utopian shell wherein people organize their livelihood and revolutionary praxis as well. Even in the contemporary world different political or semi-political platforms, despite not having regimented structures, often try to regimental-ize their message-texts to their audience. But in such cases, in most of the developing countries, audience do not always come out with complementary vanguard-ist approach, because of being deprieved to get food, clothing and other elementary factors to organize their livelihood. Here educated middle class people, for many reasons, are the best receiver of such regimented message to become vanguards and lead the struggle against such deprivation.

But as the political texts often appear to be quite binarily opposed to each other [situational in terms of political continuity], create mass culture in different pockets of interest. Unlike autocratic dictation, political vanguardism may also produce mass culture specially for middle class people because they are the best receiver [opinion leaders also] of political texts as well as most vulnerable section of a community. In other words, may be, the political mass culture is necessary for them because of their vacilant attitude that they should remain vanguard but not freelance opinion leaders. This is a utopia but the most perpetrated social communication process.

However each political text has its own identity and requires a time-certainty to be an issue of vanguardism but basically such text is timeless and remains beyond any semiotic explanation. Let us take an example, ‘US-imperialism and industrialization in developing nations’-- ideally may come out as two binarily opposed text-codes but the reality is something else. Nowadays US-imperialism and corporate conglomeration or transnationalization of industrial coporations are synonymous or identical, to be very precise, unlike some earlier generic genres [cases] of direct militarization to some oil-producing countries. Borrowing Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, it can be easily determined that US imperialist terror has three genres: Constructive - when US launch direct military attack to any nation; Benign - when US promote its imperialist motif indirectly; and Nefarious - which goes against the interest of US strategies. For many developing countries, like India, such imperialist motif is benign in character which brings home massive corporate-concentration and neo-imperialism where corporate militarization is being ruthlessly imposed on such countries.

But on the contrary, developing nations also aggressively looking for sharp industrial growth so as to retain balanced economic growth. This is again a generic problem of all developing countries. On the one hand to get hold of indusrialization political parties need to be quite liberal in nature, be more cultural-oriented than traditional class-responsive, because with the natural developmental growth all-round trans-classification of older class identities occurs inevitably. With the growing disguised unemployment in agricultural sector land proportion per unit [a person, or a family unit] has become sharply negative compared to the earlier situation. Furthermore education development quotient along with other cultural factors [outlook, aspiration, and other modes of individuality] have also been quite edged down over [beyond] the developmental discourse. So a natural de-class-ment is inevitably an outcome where new industrialization may supplement the requirement. But this is the juncture we have been talking about nowadays. In this era of corporate conglomeration US neo-imperialist force have progressed so far that almost all the corporations of Asia and Europe remain under their domination. Both in media and industrial conglomeration US remains the only state power [except China] that every corporation depends upon. Therefore all anti-imperialist forces of developing countries have to face a double-edged text, a side of which is, either to accept industrialization with transnational corporate investment to generate internal industrial set up for the growth of employment, or to remain clerical toward older monolithic concept of imperialism otherwise.

Thus political vanguardism gradually losing its earlier control over such conceptual monoliths freeing out such texts to develop naturally and independently. So the question of mass culture itself is feebled out to liberal pluralist in nature which accepts multiple textual interpretation and multicultural identities. It is really difficult to, however, enrich or feed vanguardism with regular political agenda and a hardcore sense of struggle. But still political opinion leaders and leadership put forward such sense-making statements to keep the audience charged and committed. It is, therefore, a two-fold struggle for the political vanguards to make all incoming texts revolutionary, on the one hand, and retain audience under the banner, on the other. But movement specially the political movements would continue, even if not structured, to find out the best alternative to however neo-imperialism hits the common lives.

Media power and women: In quest of identities from social to postsocial conditions

Abir Chattopadhyay

abmo2020@yahoo.co.in

abir.communication@gmail.com

Introduction:

Media and Women: A missed articulation altogether in Indian modernity

As in India the notions of both ‘media’ and ‘feminist’ stance (that often further be reduced to somewhere women, female etc.) after having been spelt in millions of moments are still being articulated as one of the most churned out issues that transform the existing social surface a lot. Both categories evoked much debate since their birth as a ‘category’ in the Indian subcontinent. As other two supra-social categories like ‘power’ and ‘subordination’ being often binarily installed respectively over media and feminism always remained under the supreme hold of colonization, such articulations, at most, missed the widest exposure in Indian perspective compared to other European modernities. Colonization in its fullest categorical extent, here, had therefore formulated the media operation in native categories and also established control over the dimensions of socio-cultural movements that included women movements on various subcultural issues of that time. As said earlier, the two above supra-social categories ‘power and subordination’, were often signified in a quite reductionist terms and exposure so far available to the native population because the urban privileged natives largely declined to recognize any revolutionary Indian mass uprising, women education, free media etc except some iconic figures of nineteenth century. It had culminated in the first war of Indian independence where urban Bengal intelligentsia quite deliberately missed the articulation of various truly revolutionary struggles of the common Indian mass ever since Sanyashi movement. Bengal intelligentsia in those days behaved always quite reactionary until the sudden rise of middle class as an inventory leadership of social struggle in the post ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ era and that pronounced an indubitable rise of Indian bourgeoisie in all movements later. But as commonly perceived, the growth of media and women movement got a new momentum where many important events occurred that certainly ensured the growth of these two categories etc., Indian subcontinent nevertheless saw some stray events, though very important, mostly in media and literary works in all subsequent episodes of freedom struggle.

The prime symbolic events of British Indian modernity like media, women movements including women education movement, literacy movement, anti-superstition movement, western education movement were developed quite logocentrically on the debris of long-ignored class and ethnic movements like Sanyashi movement, Wahabi movement, Chuad movement, Santhal movement etc. The logocentric approaches of Indian history however have drawn out an anomalous continuity of such stray movements creating high elite social format that successfully christened and led a general stream of liberal constellation of movements that included movements on the basis of era i.e. Sepoy Mutiny era, Bengal Partition movement era, non-cooperation movement era, civil disobedience era etc. The last three decades of freedom struggle were thus by and large signified by three unfinished movements of Gandhi. Indian mainstream history thus in the pre-independence period hardly recognized class uprisings such as workers’ strike, violent uproars, peasant uprising, consolidation of women on ‘class’ identity basis beyond mere symbolic structural iconicity of a period, an era, an individual, idealistic nomenclature of a time-frame etc. So the dominant structural identity of a pervasive ‘identity politics’ always ruled the colonial era where public spheres also were brutally reduced by its own history.

Media and women issues therefore have had hardly any option but to be developed by some iconic efforts often collaborated jointly by foreign initiatives. Here also some noble icons like James Silk Buckingham, Norman Bethune, Charles Metcalfe, and David Hare who really gave required patronage to Indian media precisely newspapers and women issues in particular. The above statement for any reason does not undermine the historic efforts of Raja Rammohan Roy, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Iswar Chandra Gupta, Harish Mukherjee, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Rev. Krishnamohan Banerjee, Kristo Das Pal, Dwarakanath Vidyabhusan, Gnanadanandini Debi, Akshay Kumar Dutta and many others who worked as individual categories beyond their contemporarities. But we are talking about the dialectical gap between these two categories being ruthlessly abridged by the dominant colonial structure which had thrown out the third revolutionary category: the ‘class uprising’ which the Indian history witnessed in Indigo revolutionary struggle. So quite resultantly in post indigo movement the dialectical gap was neither mitigated nor widened because the dominant abridging factor was surprisingly shared by both imperialist colony and Indian bourgeoisie alongside. British Indian League, British Indian Association, Indian Association and finally Indian National Congress were primarily established to spread a general liberal view toward both colonial settlements and the common mass.

Readers may be suspicious about my root-point of contention as because this type of articulation often appears to have an elite middle-class orientation, I am also imbibed by or with, that often symbolizes and exerts power in making of every such category in their literary and journalistic works. But I don’t have also any elitist hiccup with some extremely (elitist) critical notions; where ‘Rammohan, often fatuously argued, could have tried to organize rural forces’ like statements work in the name of obsessed class-ruled analysis. This extremely critical notion, I strongly believe would merge into liberal functionalist approaches further that denounce any form of individuality both in ‘social’ and ‘cultural’. I don’t however need to rewrite or reprove the history of colonial India. My stance would first critically deal with only the mainstream historiography created for the two above categories within a strict and dominant nationalist frame, which treated ‘women’ as a ‘stagnant’ category that covers an easily ‘determinable’ social space by virtue of its mere physical existence and media as only an organ of Indian bourgeoisie in the colonial period and secondly the gradual mutation/dissolution of these two sign-categories with the time. Redears however may find Urvashi Butalia’s argument interesting here in this context that will also help them understanding the basic theoretical jolt: During the 18 years that India had a woman as Prime Minister the country also saw increasing incidents of violence and discrimination against women. This is no different from any other time: a casual visitor to any Indian city – for example Mumbai – will see hundreds of women, young and old, working in all kinds of professions: doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, scientists... and yet newspapers in India are full of stories of violent incidents against women, of rape, sexual harassment, sometimes even murder. But to have a woman in the highest office of the State and to simultaneously have extreme violence against women are merely the two ends of the scale. As always, a more complex reality lies in between (1).

Howsoever from colonial era there were myriad of efforts from the native end overruling the colonial and imperialist repressions, many of that could have been transformed into a revolutionary struggle. But the so called dominant liberal view of organizing a symbolic movement got always a major recognition in the history of urban symbolic reform movements compared to the ‘swadeshi’ violent incidents and organized class struggle. For mainstream media also, it was a concomitant pathway throughout the colonial period to go along with the growth of elite Indian bourgeoisie and all symbolic movements led by them.

So to say something about the tradition of colonial history of this subcontinent, major recognition was quite naturally attributed to the symbolic and unequal development of Indian bourgeoisie mostly ‘banias’, second generation landlords migrated from earlier rural settlements, and their peti-bourgeois accompanists, educated elite social-class along with the foreigners’ settlements. Therefore confronting a severe oppositional binarity notions of class and other socio-cultural identities like peasantry, women, media, and other working class nowhere achieved even a subsistent recognition as an independent category both in the history, so far written by non-Marxist historians, and in reality too. Both media and women remained predominantly the same isomorphic category until the age of the unforgettable novel ‘Gora’ (where Rabindranath rediscovered the dialectics of subcultural identities of Indian social modernity like, history of peasantry, subaltern religious groups, elite religious identities, natural fragmentations in human identities, and finally caveat of the supreme category; mother or woman or country far beyond even dominant ‘Bharatmata’ or Mother India’) that not only to be developed but also to be equally subordinated as well. From ‘widow’ rituals to matrimonial advertisements of today’s newspapers the tradition is however still persistent in the Indian nationalist frame beyond any age boundary.

As I am concerned with only the social development of these two categories it is needless to say that Indian leadership from its colonial identities to the contemporary age is still finding out the developmental quotients partly through the colonial spill or foreign conceptual assistance and partly through some occasional way-outs whichever is available at any point of time. Theory of both categories is still being instilled after that given path. From socio-religious orthodoxy to the contemporary liberal postmodern feminism both development and fragmentation were largely carried out either by the dominant pockets or groups of an operating society or by the governance itself. This is a typical Indian ‘leadership’ outfit that once being associated with any dominant structure always merges into its dominant identity. Left politics however right from its foundation in Indian socio-political scenario recognized women and media as independent organizational categories having its own archaeology to organize their selves.

A. From perspective to post-perspective: Beyond ‘history as framed’ modernity

As our journey begins with the genealogy of these two categories, the perspectives as media and as women or ‘feminist’ are still ruthlessly categorized by the dominant systems of every society but as a post-perspective condition it is also equally dominated by the western cosmetic liberal feminist and mediation formulations. As a result especially both Indian women and feminist movements have largely been driven either by nationalist forces or conservative forces or by liberal-pluralist (chiefly Americanized) forces down toward particularly the contemporary postglobalization age. Indian history was predominantly written from early twentieth century in a reproachably compartmentalized into some iconic era, popularly known Gandhian era, post-Gandhian era, freedom (despite transfer of power at midnight), Nehruvian era, Indira Gandhi, Naxal movement and internal emergency era, satellite communication era, Indira Gandhi’s brutal assassination, Rajiv Gandhi era, commercial development of Indian nationalist media, Manmohan Singh’s liberalization policy era etc. Post perspective mount of both categories started from and after the liberalization or globalization efforts were initiated. This is typically a global postmodern formulation (deviation in particular) of churning out the notion of fragmentation from traditional dominant structures into a new world order where along with the liberal-pluralist (functionalist) view of life everything was defined according to the growing means of communication media technologies and subsequent new orders of conceptions largely derived from American lifestyle categories. A list of new structures of governance (that includes governments also) and counter-governance has been set-up by liberal feminists to justify the binarily alternative fragmented ‘conditions’ beyond the political consent of the mass [This can also be derogatorily symbolized as ‘NGO Syndrome’: a typical functionalist approach that fragments/extends ‘objectives’ into further conditions in the name of research, as follows J. F. Lyotard’s postmodern philosophy “I shop therefore I am” (2)]. So amidst all such new postmodern conditions the instrumental elements are largely that of old socials like, matrimonial columns of different newspapers, websites; family dramas as being shown in almost all mega soap operas, religious festivals as being mediated or projected in news programmes; advertisements of perfumes, watches, shaving blades or razors, bags etc. that not only detach or alienate common mass-identities from the system but also enslave them under newer elite conditions. Moreover these socials are working as conditions for mediation beyond any possibility of social revolution or any revolutionary ideology confirming as if revolution is to only technology and condition is to others/lives. Is it a fragmentation of structure or a postcommercial way-out of traditional domination of perspectives?

Many Indian liberal progressive thoughts more or less in an average line up have drawn out both categories from emergence as a metanarrative in the colonial period and successively as product (which is doubtlessly negative) in the post colonial period up to the contemporary era of globalization. This is an extremely powerful thought not only of making such a category but also of signifying the role of icons or iconoclasts, who sometimes led social reform movement, initiated other progressive developmental measures, organized mass for freedom movement etc. In this manner they also make a history of colonial India, or women or media whatever when requires. This line-up popularly termed ‘history’ always remains a key factor in India and its historiography. This is how Vernacular Press Act has eternally regarded as an era, far beyond the Act itself, as when compared to the first ever newspaper (weekly) “anathini” (orphan in feminist sense) edited by a widow Thakomoni Dasi from Dhulian Murshidabad. This is not a history but a mere issue amidst huge compilations of events that also includes contributions of Sister Nivedita, Swarnakumari Debi, Sarala Roy, Sabitri Roy, Sulekha Sanyal, Basanti Debi, Begum Rokeya and many others.

Basically Indian perspective from its colonial and early post colonial phases saw media and women counterparts of society as predominantly structurated by some metanarratives: British colonial settlements, British Indian government, lives of many unforgettable iconoclasts, era of tyrant policies, classification of movements, failure of movements, independence, colossal emergence of a new ‘independent’ but anew era of empowered bourgeois governance etc. Amidst such empowered emergence of the above metanarratives, the growth of press though to some extent proceeded with the development of the metanarratives ‘nationality’ and ‘independence’; historiographic growth of women were scarcely concentrated in some stray developments of women in otherwise the deserted history of the category, like from first woman graduate, first woman to cross English channel to the first woman pilot, first woman to climb Mt. Everest, first woman IPS, to the first woman Lok Sabha Speaker or first woman President of India etc. This scarcity not only reduces/weakens the historiography of women but has achieved with the time very scattered and aberrant growth of narratives; sometimes developed in terms of class identities, somewhere fiercely westernized liberal feminist outlooks, and somewhere takes a meta-independent look but all heavily dependent upon postcommercial fragmentation, all, in contrast to the growth and programming of patriarchy. One must not equalize or homogenize with it the uproar of even the patriarchy for making above such incidents as a metanarrative of development.

Meanwhile in the whole of the first half of the twentieth century some events had shaken Indian history that moved beyond both colonial and patriarchal Indian modernity. Anti-Fascist movement during Second World War, Bengal Famine of 1943 and finally partition in 1947 not only fragmented Indian modernity as a whole but forced Indian habitation reveal their ‘political’ pluralities surrounding these events beyond capabilities of elite historians.

So, quite naturally from colonial to the early post-independence period both women and media were bitterly being separated into elitist custody where no such mainstream history is still available or successfully written in India that included people’s participation in above movements and also mass destruction of human lives and identities in Bengal famine.

(B) Importation of technology, rise of liberal and cosmetic feminism in India

But suddenly with the commercial growth of media technology and upgradation of mediation process in post 1960s ‘women’ the category became gradually very popular primarily as two consequently new categories of ‘produced’ and ‘resonated’ viewers of media had been evolved. A new cultivated identity politics had begun operating in India right from this very development of mediation. The traditional structuration of both women and of course media had virtually ended with the development of mediation and mediated contents. People started believing and getting new placements of ‘women’ binarily opposite to ‘men’ and ‘male’. Heroines were being made in popular cinemas as inevitable partner of the male counterpart to complete the romantic ‘cycle’ and were also being inevitably projected as more ‘open’ vamps or prostitutes. But very soon this trend was also severely criticized with an allegation that whatever the trend of projection is, women are constantly being made a ‘commodity’ to be used only to mitigate the heterosexual romantic ‘gap’ or ‘need’, instead of making the category socially ‘independent’. This connotation gave a substantial iconic rise of liberal feminist ideology out of the ‘cinema world’ largely being imported from western nations. But the above dialectics did nowhere affect the stream of commercial modern cinema on the one hand and had ultimately supplemented the development of television and televisual contents to safeguard the elite stance of at least the conceptualization on the other. Indian television otherwise followed the same commerciality of the above mainstream cinematic trend. So liberal functionalist feminist movement could not materialize that extent out to combat the leading commercial trend except some superficial transformation of characters in terms of costumes, dialogic development, placement in location etc.

Therefore a cosmetic development of feminist outlook had been developed in India since last four decades which neither looked after (though often defined as metanarrative) the basic livelihood or struggle of women nor any sort of individual political development that could challenge the patriarchy largely. One must remember here that the emergence of ‘Indira Gandhi’ was not at all an exception that could challenge the patriarchal programming anyway. She was popularly signified more of an icon of the nation and descendant of a colossus like ‘Nehru’, than an individual representative of the category ‘women’. Same was signified for Sarojini Naidu (though she was crusader woman to participate in Salt movement against Gandhi’s earlier decision of not to engage women folks in that movement), Lok Sabha Speaker Mira Kumar or President of India Pratibha Devi Singh Patil also. So the political leadership of women had never imbibed any representational value that could have given Indian women the ‘never achieved’ independence or changed the patriarchal programming. One may easily identify in this context the fate of this particular category even with the rising debate on Women Reservation Bill. This too has become a prey of patriarchal programming where the issue has been reduced to be signified by a political majority jinx in the Parliament. Reader, think about the situation outside the Parliament in geo-social peripheries of the country where millions of the categories live their individual lives!!

(C) Growth of media fragments feminist ideology: confusion results in between conditions and liberalization of women

With the time the above analyses were subsequently termed as ‘totalitarian’ and the cosmetic development of women was being rejustified and rediscovered through further development of mediation rather popular mediation techniques that includes media technology also. This is to be defined as global postmodern turn as was resurfaced in USA in post situationist period (post Barkley movement era). So along with such compromise with upgraded mediational techniques and consequent fragmentations Indian educated middle class including liberal (postsocial) feminists also had compromised with the growth of such mediational developments often beyond professional limits. They might also have been hopeful about the imminent change of outlook along with such growth of mediated contents compared to the traditional structurated mediation processes. But they were largely proven wrong as such postcommercial developments never ushered in at least last two decades or more any substantial development in any revolutionary outlook that could have transformed the situation. The urban Indian population including women have largely compromised with the popular mediated often ‘inferior’ contents as ‘resonated’ viewers that have already pronounced Indian media houses a huge amount of profit with their produced mega soap operas. So a tsunamic wave of mega soap operas has been a major occurrence in Indian media since last two decades of official liberalization and globalization of media initiatives taken by the government.

Most interestingly the contents of soap operas in this period along have supplemented the Bombay-centric mainstream cinematic trend by siphoning out the family melodrama, modernist hero-heroine binarity, romantic sequences along with songs, villain-ish conspiracy in a much larger hyperreal (postperspectival) space that not only throws that mainstream cinematic trend out of fashion but fictionalize also its audience lot more than any other medium. As said earlier that liberal feminist trend could only achieve some elementary changes in it instead of the trend itself. Thus a mother while crying for her deceased baby does not forget traditional or modern wearing and make-up or a young lady is often seen very conscious about the commerciality of tradition equally along with revealing low neckline cleavage as justified by liberal functionalist feminism or cosmetic feminism beyond the same traditional limits.

Therefore in between these two categories of consciousness common middle and lower middle class/identities lives find themselves severely alienated from the category but fictionalized too at the same time. This is a real mutation of multiple categories/identities being operational in contemporary popular mediation where the opposite is not ‘quite obsolescent’ traditional conservatism or any ‘looking back’ initiative. One can’t (even if he or she is a liberal functionalist feminist) draw structural binarity between them because these are all multifactorial ‘conditions’ that remain juxtaposed as fragmented on any operational plane without producing any totalitarian meaning. Noted French researcher Jean Baudrillard termed such functionalist fragmentation as mutation of sign dimensions which devouring all contemporary spaces and identities produces a fake sensibility of consumption that becomes human identity and of course the social order. Thus a mobile phone even appears as an ‘identity of life’, may be, of a model…of a consumer…or of an individual audience quite dominantly programmed by the contemporary media as an independence quotient.

(D) Theory of Consumption: The Cultural Logic of Hyperreal Mediation

Looking, however, at the situationist (radical) movement in France in late sixties, which declared that modern societies ceased to produce any meaning and became passive reducing structural social [conventional, ritual, ethnographic, other socio-cultural matrices] language into consumption of sign or sign of consumerism, Jean Baudrillard proposed something unique in his theory of consumption. He distinguished the era of media commerciality as the inevitable phase of outright consumption beyond Marxist notion of capitalist commodification and even postmodernist consumerist fetishism, would now be the basis of social order in the coming time syntax. Though later felt the situationalist movement wrong, with a counter belief that capitalism, despite massive exploitation, does not still intercept participation but encourages it for further exploitation devaluating the dignity of labour at the same time. He analyzed it carefully with the notion that, ‘the capitalist law is to be abolished in the name of a de-alienated hyperproductivity, a productive hyperspace. Capital develops the productive forces but also retrains them: they must be liberated. The exchange of signifieds has always hidden the labour of the signifier: let us liberate the signifier and the textual production of meaning!...’. The problem, he located that people nowadays participate with [marketed] signs and sign networks and not with each other. Our interactions with one another are suppressed and displaced by external dominance of media commercialism. Here he transcended the traditional Marxist proposition of collective consumption approach [which was earlier derived solely in terms of production] and situationalists as well, saying that "Consumption [in a social periphery] even in the contemporary globe is sufficiently an active form of relationship, a mode of systematic activity and global response which founds our entire cultural system".

‘Buying into a category of the market increase consumption, yet also begin to define the nature of the individual choice’. But the problem mounts in the contemporary globalist market expansion when choice, behind every consumption process, becomes the ideology of consumption which is often imposed on us, as given, like all other belief systems or ideologies and often appears very much dominant beyond all earlier fetishes of consumption. ‘Fetish’ in his opinion is to belong to the postmodern consumer society. People however nowadays follow the choice given to them. In all facets of neo-capitalist development, i.e. growth in service sector, insurance boom, growing volatility in the stock market, substantial reduction in planned investment and saving, boom in jingoistic cinemas, dangling of all-round spectacle, mass people face unprecedented quantum of choice beyond all individuated spaces and senses of emancipation.

In this course media would doubtlessly be the social formulator. While mirroring the McLuhan’s proposition of Global Village, where explosion of technology is related to the implosion of understanding, into his theory of consumption Baudrillard has proposed that consumption [implosion] mirrors the explosion of information. In his words, it is true that we consume more products because of information, but it is more important to realize that we consume information. Consuming mere information creates an even greater illusion of technological explosion. However, when we consume information alone, we are consuming less and less meaning.

The above connotation grossly signifies the transformation of socio-political, socio-cultural orders into a hyperreal space [domain] where information rules over the basic information category of the product, ‘market’ and ‘self’, along with solitary but supreme identity, as ‘consumer’, that leads to generate a cognizant space for implosion [more about the information than buying product outright]. ‘Shopping malls’, ‘departmental stores’, amusement parks, water resorts, FM radios, ‘Best-Seller’ books and other new media mirror the explosion of technology and information and create a huge but hyperreal space for the self to implode something larger than the reality. In his words discussing Europe’s largest shopping mall PARLY-2, Jean Baudrillard expressed, "…here we are at the heart of consumption as the total organization of everyday life, as a complete homogenization". In this process people become gradually engrossed into the information-mediation process where explosion of information neutralizes information and implosion of meaning starts immediately, therefore reveals 3rd - 4th…the infinite order of signification beyond classical social orders and all earlier state-oriented statistical denotivity of consumption and utility patterns.

The prime instrumental or driving langue pattern, here, what Baudrillard prefers, is ‘packaging’ because more information of the dominated information-order destroys ‘communication’ and ‘social’ as a ‘system’ and ceases producing meaning i.e. in Baudrillard’s version ‘staging of communication’. Thus packaging has become importantly the only morphology of the ‘produced’. Packaging naturally corrupts all earlier meaning making processes [communication] of information and meaningful mediation of sign dimension, thus leads to a complete destruction of meaning i.e. sign dimension, as he defines it, ‘catastrophe of meaning’. Such destruction leaves over only individual ‘fascination of choice’ [resulted from the neutralization of meaning] that reduces everything into some statements towards titillation, obscenity and pornography.

Thus as packaging of information explodes along with the explosion of media, it devours the traditional space of systemic derivation of meaning, and resultantly destroys public sphere and finally social structures. Media explode thus only packaging of the ‘produced’ that has a powerful branded [image making] effect on the individual consumer. Baudrillard while entitling it as ‘media invasion’ affirms that such media invasion would completely decompose both public and private spheres of life and produce something more real than the existing real e.g. fictions like, soap operas, reality shows, gambling programmes, even some of interviews etc. that let every individual simulate infinitely. Artlessness, worthlessness of such media contents hardly matter to any individual as he/she shows least interest to derive a systemic meaning while they watch them. Hyperreality dissolves the older oppositional [dialectical] systems of meaning. Fictions become more real to the individual privatized consumer and ‘real’ becomes fictitious. In this way the ‘mass’ in terms of mediation, as Baudrillard considers, makes no sense of culture; they get it from media to only become stimulated by it.

The most dangerous outcome of such hyperreal mediation, what Baudrillard considers, is that these consumers are not to be considered anyway the ‘victim’ of [classical Marxist notion of] commodification. Masses get a hyperreal meaningless image from media and it works immediately on the behavioural development but ultimately it again [further] frees the mass from being systemic in behaviour i.e. right-wrong-obscene, good-bad-evil-notorious etc. Therefore hyperreal mediation devours the classical distinction between every two class identities and a sense of class struggle.

So we live in a world, in which, prime relational aspect stands between mediated contents [advertisements, propagations] and individual self. We consume ad-meanings to ‘philosophize’ life; make social order, try to achieve optimum freedom of self beyond traditional social-democratic pattern or order and finally reject that mediated information for further information. Only job remains, is to get more and more information and less and less meaning. No freedom lies therefore beyond this act. We have become proletariatized regardless of our class existence and identity.

Conclusion: In search of power within postcommercial conditions of power in India

Structure creates power; structure concentrates power; structure exerts power; so in India from colonial to the contemporary postcommercial mediation age different phasic structures have ruled Indian habitation time and again. Structures, be it a colonial, family independence or anything, have created media as a revolutionary tool of control and domination. Having recognized all such efforts and movements to liberalize women and media and all such counter progressive structures that protested against women oppression in different time phases in India, both women and media, in particular, have bitterly been fragmented and mutated where a general identity, as compared to male or masculinity, that may suit all class and cultural identities, is a practical impossibility. Both media and women have become a mediational symbol of progress and consumption leaving millions of real-life identities starving, being oppressed, and away from the spectacles of spotlight. It is in no time and nowhere a given course of development that shows what it is like. It is not be an empirical practice of collecting mere information that may indicate natural development of women. For media also, TRP does not establish media’s development and independence. The situation is more complicated when these two categories dissolve into each other. Lots of empirical research (surveys) works have already been accomplished on the use of women in media. But it is almost an impossibility to rediscover the iconic use of women in mediated fictions; in advertisements, soap operas, and various reality shows because the sign-category dimensions of women projection have been dissolved into the fiction thus moving beyond traditional oppositional binarity like good or bad, scene or obscene, social or unsocial both in terms of its viewership and functionalist approaches. It even transcends the conceptual barrier of ‘what women should do in contrast to its male counterpart’; ‘how would they manage their households, kitchen, children, sexual practice, up to how to motivate her partner or partners for better sex-performance. Almost all women and entertainment magazines frequently cover such issues. Empirical research can hardly move into such extremely anomalous subcultural bonds or groupings because such categories are often being dissolved into popular mediation by a supra-social ‘political-economy’ of media governance. Such governance is nowadays coming from media conglomerates largely being empowered by US combined powers. So media not only project issues but also define what is ‘important’ in a package[d] manner that basically devours the truth or meaning as Baudrillard calls it as catastrophe of meaning.

But life is still there beyond such dissolution or catastrophe of mediational ‘meaning’ in different ‘socials’ and subcultural identities so far uncovered and rejected by media. This is highly evident when Airhostesses organized an open rally on the busy road of Mumbai on being retrenched by two private Airline companies this year or when a regional company organizes ‘dharna’ before a government office for not being selected for a particular tender. A mother still protects her adult child from being harassed or threatened by a fellow passenger on a local train far from media spectacle. Myriads of subcultural identities are there brutally suppressed by all pervasive media in terms of its agenda of postcommerciality of being newsworthy or makeworthy. But the same identities appear to be very vital when being treated as audience specially mass audience of the media spectacle.