92 – Gender Question: Ideology and Politics of Representation in South Asian Audiovisual Cultures
The aim of this panel is to evaluate the impact of socio-political and cultural transformations on gender representations in diverse media forms in South Asia - from celluloid to digital cinema and from television to streaming platforms. Since the 20th century, the audiovisual cultures in South Asia have undergone massive changes in response to political, religious and cultural shifts as well as technological transformations. For instance, cross-currents of increasingly dominant right-wing ideologies and radical protests are reflected in the prevailing audiovisual culture in India (Gehlawat 2024; Paunksnis 2023). Similarly, the onset of a neoliberal postfeminist culture, which has altered the rhetoric of women’s empowerment (Gill 2007), has pervaded the Indian media ecosystem (Chakraborty Paunksnis 2023). This demands painstaking appraisals of mediated representations employing a critical cultural studies framework. Such local examples must be analyzed vis-à-vis technological changes as the pervasive nature of mediatization has strong impact on society (Hepp 2020). Besides interrogating the myriad representations of gender in various South Asian media forms, the papers in this panel will also consider the following questions: How are media’s representations of gender influenced by the ideologies of the political establishments? Does globalization and neoliberal postfeminist culture contribute to the discourse of women’s empowerment? What impact of shifting patriarchal power dynamics is visible on the representation of masculinity? How do the mediated representations respond to the questions of intersectionality and Queer subjectivity? In which way can the gender question be positioned vis-à-vis the interplay between modernity and indigenous knowledge systems? How is gender’s negotiation with technology represented in media? Is the language of gender-based movements re-formulated in continually transforming media ecosystems? The panel seeks to create a discursive space for facilitating contesting arguments on the proposed theme. It welcomes contributions interrogating the varied representations of gender dynamics in South Asian media.
Convenors
Dr. Runa Chakraborty Paunksnis - Dr. Šarūnas Paunksnis - -
