31/03/2016
An advertisement which seeks to 'succinctly' capture a young Malayalee girl's rite of passage into marriage, and in the process made me sit up in consternation, can be taken as the starting point of this train of thought. The beautiful, young girl in the advertisement is of course an empowered woman of Kerala because she can exercise her choice. But the advertisement spells out clearly the areas wherein she can exert her choice. She is happy to leave the choice of who she marries to her educated and rich parents who are willing to pamper her. She cannot choose her space or her time when it comes to her own mobility, for she has to be coffered and chauffeured by a doting family where the father clearly rules the roost. But, nevertheless, the advertisement says she is empowered because she has the right to choose, not her life mate, not her dreams nor her path, but the choice of jewelers from whom she would purchase her wedding gold. The advertisement ends in words of profound wisdom which could also be an advice for thousands of Malayalee families with grown up daughters: 'Believe in God, Invest in Gold.'
Popular culture is not just culture, it is also commerce. How a culture and a society make images of itself and thus create values and meanings for itself is reflected in its popular culture. Best described as cultural forms as well as commercial objects that reflect the tastes of the general masses of people, popular culture also aims at creating such tastes. Why is popular culture a cause for worry in Kerala today? Because they contain messages that create a backlash against all the progressive, egalitarian, pro-woman if not feminist values that Kerala society apparently swears by on the surface.
Our advertisements are a simple case in point. In their overtly patriarchal and capitalist bias, they undermine the very foundations of the socialist, literate, democratic paradise that we imagine our state to be. For example, how does one react to that notorious advertisement which proclaims "Pennaayaal Ponnu Venam" meaning, if you are a woman, you need gold. The unproblematic manner in which Malayalee women have swallowed this message is reflected in the way our femininities can't free their quintessential bondage with the yellow metal. That a girl who can't afford to wear gold is not girl enough in the proper sense of the term is appalling to say the least. What is also interesting is the manner in which this advertisement legitimizes dowry and the shameful excesses we call 'weddings' these days.
Many of these advertisements operate by creating a false and exaggerated sense of power in the woman. The girl who walks into a jewelers and gifts herself diamonds because she thinks she is worth it fails to realize that she has been co-opted by the market and her value is only that which is ascribed by the market. A popular woman's magazine in Malayalam features an advertisement where the woman is shown taking up her numerous stereotypical roles. The ad begins from the time she demurely balances the tea cups for the 'bride inspection' ceremony (which sadly fails to evoke resonances of ancient slave trade in the modern educated Malayalee) to another milestone in her life where she is vested with the entire responsibility of running a home perfectly. But luckily she has the magazine as her friend which advices her how to conduct herself at each of the numerous 'inspections' she would be subjected to throughout her entire life. What else would she need in life other than the bliss of utter domesticity and a wonderful magazine which doles out tips on how to groom herself to suit the exigencies of her conjugal paradise and its rising demands on her?
That a hair oil advertisement which says it uses 'virgin' coconut to enhance the 'purity' of both body and soul of the beautiful young women of Kerala helped the product become a household name here thus offers no surprises. That moral policing, which helps keep such chastity intact, is on the rise in Kerala, comes as even less a surprise, though why this hair oil is not being offered to girls who take part in campus politics, kiss-of-love campaigns and flash mobs is indeed puzzling.
In a state where the rights for marginal communities, castes and classes as also women were won through trenchant political battles, a backlash against women empowerment through a celebration of neoconservative values touted as 'tradition' is indeed cause for worry. How a consumer, capitalist culture finds it extremely easy to package and commodify this tradition in ways that are extremely detrimental to gender struggles in the state will have deep impacts upon the public and private lives of Malayalee women. When the women of Kerala are still struggling to free themselves from the shackles of a patriarchal cultural mindset, such sexist, regressive and morally dubious advertisements that saturate their visual field can actually derail their hard (read hardly) won freedom by writing a new traditionalism back into their lives.