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Ideas are often universal, be they
related to celebration, individu-
ality, togetherness, fear or joy; but their portrayal derives flavor
from the immediate context that defines the language, association,
metaphors and narrative used in communicating the thought. The
creative content in advertising is certainly no different.
While everyone knows and appreciates that with the advent of
modernism (though some would argue it as pseudo-modernism), the way
the world sees its women has changed, it remains a fact that the decoding
of simple ideas like freedom or individuality with respect to women
happens differently in various cultures. At one level, advertising draws
its context from the existing reality, and at the same time, it also provides
a view into the world that consumers would like to be part of. Rather
than just portraying the plain realities of consumers and their world,
advertising provides hope, as well as momentary escape from the present
in the form of aspirations that not only make them dreamers, but
also pushes them to be achievers in their own right.
In a caste-conscious, tradition-bound, superstitious, feudal and intensely
patriarchal Indian society, portrayal of women has always varied from
one stereotype to another - such as a girl child being a prospective mother;
a woman as a sex object or an eye catcher; a woman as a
homemaker whose only aim in life is to serve her husband with mouthwatering
dishes or making him proud by providing him with the whitest shirt. But
times have changed, and so has the woman in advertising. |
