ISSN 2582-1466
Kamaraj Journal Of Academic Research
Abstract
The paper attempts to explore the impact of Cultural Hegemony on modern Humanity through the survival of women characters and their false ideology of marriage in the play The Mating Game Show by Manjula Padmanabhan. The play flashes the light on the witless modern Humanity of real life. The Mating Game Show is an outstanding play by Manjula Padmanabhan. The play focuses on a TV Game show which kills the life of contestants who are mindlessly falling into the whirring machinery of the marriage industry. The paper focuses on the existence of Cultural Hegemony in the play which results in gender discrimination, inhumanity and the crimes against crazed humans. The play brings out the horrific crimes against young women in the name of Game Show. The female characters of The Mating Game Show are portrayed as both rebellious and conventional. To bring awareness, the paper tries to highlight the unfortunate contestants of the play who reflects the real life sufferings. The women characters of the play become the captives of Cultural Hegemony in the crimes against them. The paper attempts to prove that the universal ideology seems to benefit everyone in the society but it never benefits the society rather the ruling class. The unconcerned actions of those ruling class in the play implanted the fear of living among the pathetic female characters. Through this, the existence of inhumanity and the subjugation of women in the play are highlighted. According to the playwright, Manjula Padmanabhan, the impacts of Cultural Hegemony in the life of common man is an unforgiving and thorny experience.
Key Words: Cultural Hegemony, survival, inhumanity, gender discrimination, subjugation, ideology, ruling class
The paper attempts to trace the impact of Cultural Hegemony on modern Humanity through the survival of women characters and their false ideology of marriage in the play, The Mating Game Show by Manjula Padmanabhan. The Mating Game Show has never been performed despite it had the several excellent public readings. She won the inaugural Onassis Prize for her play Harvest. She has written powerful plays, comic strips, short stories, novel for children, travelogue, picture books, autobiographical novel and Illustrator. Her well known plays are Lights Out, The Artist Model, Sextet and Harvest. The play focuses on a TV Game show which kills the life of contestants who are mindlessly falling into the whirring machinery of the marriage industry and throws light on the witless modern Humanity of real life. The play brings out the horrific crimes against young women in the name of Game Show. The paper strives to prove that the universal ideology seems to benefit everyone in the society but it never benefits the society rather the ruling class and also highlights the existence of inhumanity.
Antonio Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony is used to address the relation between culture and power under capitalism. Gramsci is an Italian Marxist, who insists the role of ideology by which the dominant class continues to implant their rules and preserves their domination over the subordinates. The play, The Mating Game Show brings out the horrific crimes against young women in the name of Game Show. In the introduction of The Mating Game Show, Manjula Padmanabhan says that, “The trigger for writing The Mating Game Show is the serious crime that goes by the name of “Dowry Death”…I had seen a couple of staged productions of “dowry plays” but I felt they missed the mark.” (63) According to Padmanabhan, it is cruel that money minded bridegrooms and miserable brides are just a minute part of the story. The larger part of the Show is occupied by a grand breakdown of society. She also says, “Sons and daughters were being valued only as livestock in a vast breeding programme.”(63) In the Show, one of the contestants met a cruel death in front of the cameras. The contestants of the Show are supposed to answer the multiple choice questions offered by the Show host who is manoeuvring the game into dilemmas of real life and the unfortunate contestants are the replication of real life human dramas. The contestants of the play are using the assumed names to secure their real identities and the audience are unaware of their true names, religious and communal background. The set of the Mating Game Show looks like a wedding stage in which three pairs of thrones are placed. The host of the Show named, Zareer Master who is called as Zed by other characters of the play is a forty year old handsome man. The female characters like Honey, Dolly, Sweetie and Pooja of The Mating Game Show are portrayed as both rebellious and conventional. Rocky, Sonny and Juju are the male characters of the play, who are depicted as a reflection of real life greedy grooms of Indian marriages.
In the play, Zed wittily plays a game with the three innocent female contestants who are in the hope of obtaining a man from the show as husband. Honey, Dolly and Sweetie are the three female contestants and Pooja is a journalist who at first comes to cover the show as her first assignment but later becomes a co-host of the show. All the three female contestants had their own problems in marriage and they believed the show as an origin of their marriage life. Honey is a twenty eight year old middle class woman who holds a commerce degree by working hard after the death of her father for the wellness of family. Dolly is a twenty four year old woman in wheel chair, who became paralysed at the age of nineteen. Sweetie is a nineteen year old rape victim, who was raped by the ruthless criminal tested with AIDS. These three contestants get into the show to seek a man for the institution of marriage which is imposed by their parents and society.
HONEY: Some choice! Either it’s this, or no marriage. And no
marriage means living like a stray dog in the streets –
chased away from respectable homes – licking up the
garbage from other women’s marriages – (73)
The female contestants of the show are insisted by the society that only marriage can give them an identity in the society. In that case, the women should sacrifice her happiness and demands but not men. “ZED: …There are no laws to guarantee post-marital happiness."(72) Not only the society but also the parents who want their daughters to be paraded in the market of marriage where they will be sold for the dowry as a chicken on its way to the butcher. As the social structure holding the cultural symbols, the dominants find ways to support the consent of captives to their ideas. According to Gramsci, rules are not imposed by means of force and coercion but the dominants seek to authorize the consent of subordinates to their rule. The character, Dolly expresses her urge of marriage as, “DOLLY: … Now I’m happy to be alive – but I want so much to be married. To be considered a part of normal human society.”(76)
Another character, Sweetie is a victim of social injustice seeking to reconcile the discrepancy between the dominants and victimized subordinates. “SWEETIE: …What life is there for girls like us?”(75) Sweetie was sent to the Show by her own family members even before testing her for AIDS. She was considered as a shame for the family. “SWEETIE: … It’s a curse to be a daughter, to bring dishonour to my family.”(77) The ideology which has been reinforced in the minds of captives in the form of social structures ruining their life unknowingly. The women who became the victims of the false ideology are unaware of the horrific risks in marriage. The male contestant, Rocky has already married two women and he is in the Show to marry another woman to take care of his sick mother. “ROCKY: Tch, a wife’s better than a servant. She provides her own salary, for one thing!” (81)
On interpreting the political functions of cultural symbols, the idea of Cultural Hegemony helps the intellectual trying to understand how ideas reinforce or undermine existing social structures and social historians seeking to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the power wielded by dominant groups and the relative cultural autonomy of subordinate groups whom they victimize. The dreadful crimes against married women are depicted through the character, Rocky in the play. “ROCKY: (rolling his eyes) Kitchen accidents, yaar! Don’t you read the newspapers? The usual kind – sari catches fire, bride dies. (grimaces) They make it sound so easy …” (81) Subjugation of women in the institution of marriage is an idea which exists in the social structure prevails over disagreements. When the social and cultural ideologies and structures failed to honour the newly acquired concepts of fundamental rights and democracy, the victimization prolongs. One can view the objectification of women in the constructed social structure, “ROCKY: But when a man kills his own wife … that’s not murder! That’s …(shrugs) That’s his right. A man’s wife is his property. He can do with her what he wants.”(82)
Although consent and force predominates one or other, both always coexist. Gramsci had in mind the values, norms, perceptions, beliefs, sentiments, and prejudices that assist and define the existing distribution of goods, only the institutions that decide how the distribution occurs, and the acceptable range of disagreement about those processes. The idea of Cultural Hegemony imposed inhumanity in the modern society. The unconcerned actions of the ruling class that is the Host of the Show in the play implanted the fear of living among the pathetic female contestants. When Zed, the Host cheats Honey by telling her that he is revealing the answers only to her, she believed him completely. But she got shocked when he revealed the same thing to other participants also though he spent a night with her as a bribe for giving answers. “ZED: I lied, cupcake. I always lie – that’s why I’m the host of this show and you’re just a contestant!” (71) The journalist, Pooja comes to do her first assignment in the set of Mating Game Show hoping that the female contestants will expose their own perspective regarding the Show to develop curiosity among the audience.
POOJA: It’s NOT pity. Readers are very interested to know
what goes on behind the scenes…
HONEY: Of course not. They thought the ratings would drop
if people know the truth!...(74)
SWEETIE: … They just show the brides being rounded up
like animals in a circus! They don’t tell you
what happens before and after the lights come on –
the things people say - and do – …
HONEY: Not at all! Many people think it’s horrible but they
still scrape their eyes raw watching it! (75)
On witnessing the above conversation of the female characters, one can understand that the modern humanity has become inhumane. The influence of television shows on modern humanity results a greedy society in which there is no more existence of concern for other human being. In the introduction of the play, Manjula Padmanabhan says, “The behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving the debonair show host and the show’s unfortunate contestants is a nod towards the human dramas that play out in real life…” (64) As she said, the Show reflects the real life incidents where women are living an unfortunate life by sacrificing their dreams and suffering of being married. “HONEY: What for? The cruelty inside the Show is only a reflection of the cruelty outside. Saving her only prolongs the suffering.”(78) The Show telecasting the real life suffering, so that only the audience can connect themselves with the show. When the audience are continue watching the show with curiosity for each episode, the ratings will be grading high. The ruling class, which means the host of the show benefitted because of the ratings but not the audiences and the contestants. The audience are unaware of the strategies behind the show. “ZED: … The Show’s been on air for three years- wildly popular from the very first night. POOJA: But no one talks about the Deaths!” (88) The audience of the show become heartless because of the suicides by the female contestants. Those suicides are only an extension of real life where girl only choose to die every time not the male.
According to Gramsci, only the institutions that decide how the distribution occurs, and the acceptable range of disagreement about those processes. Here, in the play, the Host decides the actions of the contestants and play accordingly. The sugary words of the Host, the background music and the setting of the show allure the audience towards the game. Though the show presenting the real life incident of typical Indian families, the audience enjoying the show with cheers and tears. The range of disagreement depends on the mindset of each individual, “ZED: Once more, Sweetie has proven her determination, her strength of will. They remain together for the next and final set – some would call it a shame – some would say it’s her fate.” (103) During an end of the play, the character Rocky put forths a question to the audience when Sweetie tries to kill herself. “ROCKY: (stands up. Speaks to the audience) Ask yourself – is it my fault or hers that she’s going to die? (holds up his hands) But wait, the man is always the villain, right?”(112) From this question, the play wright wants her audience to think about the insanity of women who are going after the social structures as cultural symbols without minding about their dreams and demands. The paper tries to prove the existence of Cultural Hegemony in the play, The Mating Game Show which results in gender discrimination, inhumanity and the crimes against crazed humans. According to the playwright, Manjula Padmanabhan, the impacts of Cultural Hegemony in the life of common man is an unforgiving and thorny experience.
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