Examining The Race Stereotype Of Heroines In Tamil Cinema - Content Analysis

Abstract

Cinema acts as a significant communication and entertainment tool for all age groups. In general, the cinema has got a lot of culture and tradition involved in it. These educated the people around them. A message isconstructed and conveyed to the audience. Tamil cinema industry, well known as Kollywood has many sectors, and their slots are being rooted in the Tamil culture. Earlier, most of the films have got male dominance, recently the trend has changed, and female lead roles are given importance to their characters, and many are justifying the character too. However, the media has constructed a stereotype in the minds of people, that females should be fair and beautiful. White colour race acts as beauty in the media industry. May it be a film, series, advertisements, etc. The female lead has to be fair and brown colour denotes ugly. From the beginning of the media era, there is a wrong social construction stating female roles are pleasure objects in the eyes of people. People look for colour, instead of the quality of acting. Because of the media constructions insociety, audiences are being forced to view women from a heterosexual male view. Examples of the male gaze include medium close-up shots of women and scenes that frequently occur, which show a man actively observing a passive woman and so on. The ideology of both male and female audiences has changed because of this mass media, and people only like fair-skinned women, their skills in the current field might be less, but they win the market only with their colour.