Exploring gender bias in the Bangladeshi media
Shahid Alam is intrigued by a new work on women
"one is really surprised by the presence of atypical and non-traditional women in dramas and ads and the print media. I will argue towards the end of the book that it can be said about the print and electronic media that when the image of the woman is concerned they are integral and flowing together and colluding in constructing the modern, free, outgoing, and working woman of Bangladesh." So Anwara Begum claims at the outset of Magical Shadows: Women in the Bangladeshi Media. However, when one painstakingly, and mercifully, reaches the end of the book, having gone through everything in between the beginning and the finale, one might be excused in thinking whether s/he has actually detected the author's contention. S/he would, towards the end of the book, come across these lines: "…Bangladesh society is going through a transition…. Women are not what they were. Here lies the play of appearance and reality…the structure of the (TV) narrative shows that the narrative itself is the narrative of edification, correction and reeducation of the new or unruly women…. Bangladeshi TV dramas…usually use male interest focus narration which identify the audience with the male point of view and subject the women to judgment." Or, a bit earlier, while discussing the treatment of women in the print media: "(Shafik) Rehman's textual maneuvers…deny the Bangladeshi women their own identity, their difference….the Bangladeshi woman is…cast as deceptive…. Women's images function as a mirror in which men see themselves enlarged and magnified…. She is the other, the less capable other." And, in the process of discussing Ekannoborti, her selected TV serial tour de force: "It's serious ideological slant…presents the main narrative…from a very patriarchal point of view normalizing a male-identified value system and a male-centered way of life…. Women are shown to have only one aim in life and that is to love men and be in a position of subordination in such love relations. A strict dichotomy is maintained between the public and private spheres. Other ideological dichotomies are maintained as well, for instance the most important ones here are reason/emotion, and guidance/obedience." At the very least, the reader would be bemused at the ambiguity of the author's statement and her arguments, as well as more than a little bewildered about what to make of this: "Ekannoborti uses television's different conventions --- such as dialogues, shot mixing, absence of make-up, music --- to support its claims to truthfulness. But in addition the very masculine presence of the print media is there to safeguard the televisual projections." Even if one accepts on face value Marshal McLuhan, and John Fiske and John Hartley's contention that TV is a feminine medium as distinct from books and the print media, one would find it very difficult to agree with the view that absence of makeup is a TV convention. There are a number of other baffling statements and analyses, at least partly due to the author's overuse of citations from a variety of writers, which either stretches contextual relevance or pays scant attention to it. At times, she appears to have used some well-known authors simply to give her work a veneer of authority. Magical Shadows, in the author's words, "has dealt with the politics of constructing women at a particular juncture of the history of the Bangladeshi media, 2003-04." And, regarding her subject matter and objective: "This book will study representation of women in the Bangladeshi media going deep into the narrative and mode of presentation to see what kinds of images are projected of women in the media of a relatively poor, Muslim-majority country with a free media. I do it with the hope to find out in which way the media functions to bolster or undermine a restrictive patriarchal order, a society that is in transition both socially and economically." Anwara Begum proceeds towards her stated objective by primarily analyzing the content of TV commercials, the drama serial Ekannoborti, and Shafik Rehman's "innovative column" with Mila and Moin as the protagonists in the weekly Jai Jai Din. Her rationale for selecting Ekannoborti, which, as one can make out from her discussion, is another soap opera, is in conformity to her central theme: "I have selected it because of its appeal to viewers across class, region, age, and sex…. It attracts gender researchers because of use of new techniques that are usually not used in the series programming either in Bangladesh or India." One is not sure if she has been able to convince the discerning reader of the veracity of that last part. And, then, after having selected that particular TV program for analysis, she concludes that it "may have an ingrained gender bias to begin with." As for selecting Shafik Rehman's column as representative of the print media, here is Anwara Begum's rationalization: "I deliberately selected an innovative column written by a noted Westernized liberal who is famous as a very modern and open-minded person with a mission to modernize the cultural orientation of the society through his media intervention." She relies almost exclusively on the content analysis of fifty two segments of the Diner Por Din column to conclude that, "The print media which is more masculine is ultimately more subtle in enforcing woman's subordinate position." This might well be the case, as, indeed, the author's inference on the gender bias against women in TV drama. By all means the general imbalance needs to be redressed, but some of the issues raised to show disparity might have other explanations. For example, when the author talks about the paucity of female political commentators in the print media as the outcome of a deliberate male ploy, could the reason not be that there are not many woman who are interested in writing political commentary? Then there are some puzzling statements that, from one standpoint, are misleading from several angles, and from another, confusing about the author's actual perspective. What is one to make of this assertion: "Fortunately, Api Karim, a darker, more Bangladeshi looking young woman has become very popular and is seen often on the TV screen. Without Api Karim, the TV star system would look very Western and Indicized indeed"? And, "Bangladeshi models who are surviving in this beauty competition are the ones who come very close to looking like…Indian or Thai models. Four such Bangladeshi models come to mind: Monalisa, Tisha, Ria and Api Karim." Well, well! Setting aside the factor of natural hair pigmentation, one would be very hard pressed to mistake a Bangladeshi woman for the generic Western white woman. And, emphatically, the light skin pigmentation of the Bangladeshi would not only not make her look like a Western woman, but the skin tone would not be a cause for mistaken identity, either! The author seems determined to show that the bulk of the female models and principal TV actresses are Western looking. And, surely, this statement is rather extraordinary: "These days…it is getting difficult to marry off a darker, healthier young woman who looks very Bengali." If this were true, then the vast majority of Bangladeshi women would find it very difficult to get married, or would remain spinsters! The author, as noted, seems to have referred to Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, John Fiske and some other noted writers for giving extra weightage to her work, something which she could have safely done away with. This device, at least in part, has resulted in much extraneous and long-winded discussion. Then there is the over-generous use of the hyperbole. Almost everyone seems to be "famous", "most famous", and such several times over. Magical Shadows has several shortcomings, but it seems to speak out against the generally belittling portrayal of women in the Bangladeshi media. Anwara Begum provides glimpses of the mindset, deliberate or accidental, working behind such representation. Other scholars might build on her work, and provide workable direction towards rectifying an unsatisfactory situation.
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