The Portrayal of Domestic Violence against Women in Contemporary TV Serials: A Study on Two Popular Serials of the Star Plus

Abstract

As we know, drama is the powerful tool in shaping people attitudes and opinion, it is highly necessary to study how women are portrayed in it. For this purpose, this research is carried out on the Indian contemporary TV serials, which can help us to examine how TV dramas are showing women. In this paper, researcher explicates gender-based violence and examines how it is typically depicted in contemporary television serials. I have used content analysis as methodology to understand the portrayal of domestic violence against women in contemporary TV serials. On the basis of TRP, I have choses two popular soap opera from star plus namely- Anupamaa and Shaadi Mubarak which was aired in 2020. I have taken first 100 episodes from   both the selected serials for doing content analysis. After viewing and closely observing the above-mentioned series, I constructed three major content categories as my objectives for the qualitative and quantitative content analysis.

   The findings of this paper indicated that contemporary TV serials promote domestic violence against women as day-to-day content in the form of verbal or physical abusing and also promote the patriarchal stereotyped content by showing men as powerful, adventurers, aggressive who control major aspects of life that are social, economic and political while women characters are portrayed mostly in subordinate, submissive and subservient roles. However, the findings of the study reveal that contemporary TV serials defaming the image of working women by showing them always in the negative roles.

Keywords:- Domestic Violence, Portrayal, Women, Content analysis and TV Serials.