Hegemonic Popular: A Critique of Popular Culture in Kerala

Dr Ajay S Sekher, Assistant Professor of English, Govt College Thrissur.

The democratic and inclusive potentials of popular culture are highly commendable. Popular culture is often seen as the life culture of common people everywhere. It is the culture of the society at large as it encompasses the various sections and dimensions of the society including class, gender and caste. In conventional politics of culture it is often posed as the opposite of elite culture. Cultural studies address it on an equal stature with that of elite culture or high culture. Some cultural theorists and analysts have upheld popular culture as emancipating and counter hegemonic as it subverts and questions elite and centralized forms of culture that are often hegemonic and repressive. It is often seen as plural, polyphonic, dialogic and democratic by some critical thinkers in the field (Bakhtin). Despite its plural, de-centered, liberating, inclusive and democratic values my concern here is to see how it is being appropriated by the hegemonic culture in multiple ways. How popular culture is being hijacked by the elite and hegemonic cultural discourses is the thrust of this enquiry. Pioneering cultural critics like Adorno, Horkheimer and the Frankfurt school

critics have pointed out the issues of reproduction and reiteration in the culture industry (Adorno). An earnest critique of popular culture is also inevitable for the sustenance and enhancement of its virtues. This is the context in which the popular culture of Kerala is critiqued here. How far our popular culture in Kerala is democratic? How does it repeat, reproduce and reiterate the old and elitist values and messages? What are the ways in which hegemony appropriates and controls popular culture, what are the cultural contexts of hidden censuring and check? How far it is able to maintain dialogic and counter hegemonic spirit? Is popular really liberating and counter hegemonic, or is it hegemonic itself? If so what are the contours and contexts of the hegemonic popular in Kerala? These are some of the concerns that I am exploring here. In Kerala there are plenty of sites and streams of popular culture. The vibrant folk and ritualistic performance traditions like the Theyyam are still live. There is a contemporary live legacy of popular professional theatre. Kerala is also gifted with various manifestations of popular film, popular music that rely upon the popular film and theatre industry. Kerala also has a contemporary culture of pop concerts called the Ganamela. Music videos are also part of Keralas popular entertainment industry. Kerala has its own popular media culture and visual culture. Television soaps or serials and reality shows constitute the main chunk of Keralas visual pop culture today. Kerala has a long history of popular literature and popular magazines.

Popular fiction emerged in Kerala through the spread of printing and popular weeklies. Mimicry is a popular fine art in Kerala. Parody, mockery and subversion are part and parcel of popular culture here. The diversity and dynamism of popular cultural forms in Kerala signify its cultural vibrancy and complexity as a linguistic location of culture in the turbulent neo liberal world of global capital. Popular Rituals: Appropriation of Theyyam Theyyam is the most popular ritual and folk art practice in north Kerala. It has a continuous cultural legacy of more than two thousand years in the Kolathunadu and Thulunadu regions of Malabar. It represented the cultural struggles, creative rebellions and emancipating resistance of the people especially the subaltern against hegemonic cultural invasions. It ensured the token participation and representation of the basic working communities in the village festivals and temple rituals. But unfortunately in the past few decades, especially in the post colonial era it is being highly appropriated by elite culture and hegemony. The rituals and sacred practices of numerous shrines and temples in Malabar that originally belonged to the subaltern classes are now getting increasingly Hinduized, Sanskritized and Brahmanized in terms of worship and priesthood (Menon). There is also a parallel appropriation taking place in the realm of mythology and folklore associated with the Theyyam performance (Dasan). Even Pottan Theyyam, an iconic expression of the subversive energy of the subaltern is

linked to the Hindu pantheon and Lord Shiva himself. Folk and tribal practices and rituals are giving way to highly Sanskritized and Brahmanical rituals and symbolism. Researchers like Dilip Menon and M Dasan have pointed out the fascist agenda behind this appropriation of Theyyam into a specifically Hindu ritual now being appropriated and controlled by the Brahmanical Savarna culture which is elitist, exclusionary and hegemonic.

Indegenous and Popular Health culture: Absorption of Native Medical practices Ashtanga Hridaya that forms a foundational text of Ayurveda and many other rural medical practices in Kerala has its origin in the Sramana tradition, especially in the Buddhist tradition in South India. Vagbhata the author of this scholarly treaties dealing with medical practice was a 7th century Buddhist scholar. Kerala still has a live legacy of Avarna or untouchable Vaidyars or traditional medical practitioners. These Bahujan medics had been imparting healthcare to the people trespassing the boundaries of caste, gender, class and region even during the torturous regime of the Manusmruti. But in course of time, especially after the erasure of the Sramana culture in the middle ages, Ayurveda became a Brahmanical practice as it was gradually assimilated into the Hindu order of things. Now it is corporatized and branded by some big names that hold the monopoly of medical knowledge and the capital it generates.

Through the knowledge/power monopoly practices and Sanskritic textualization the medical knowledge became a prerogative of the elite and the popular and democratic practices ceased to develop and degenerated into occult practices. The same degeneration of practices and traditions under cultural suppression could be seen in subaltern spirituality, worship and cultural expressions. The popular awareness and involvement in the native medical practices also vanished as part of this specialization and monopolization. Popular Cinema: Primal Site of Reiteration Malayalam cinema industry is mainly running on the popular mode of viewership and reception. Popular cinema has played important roles in the creation and propagation of a common cultural space of entertainment and visual culture. It has also democratically included the common people and the marginal sections of the society in its representation. But when we analyze them in detail they are reiterating and reinstating the established and hegemonic values and norms. They establish patriarchal and priestly values through their characters and their destinies. They create larger-thanlife male heroes and docile and puppet like heroines. They reinstate the feudal nostalgia and anxieties of the Savarna upper castes. They universalize the values and fears of the middle classes. They other and exclude the marginal realities and human beings. Rarely do they portray peripheral and contested realities. The popular cinematic representation

often renders the minorities and dalits as demons and monsters. They romanticize and mythisize the social imaginary of the dominant and ruling sections in the society. In comparison to their liberating potentials the hegemonic and reiterating influence is predominant. Popular cinema in these contexts considerably reproduce and reinstate hegemony in various ways. Television Serials and Reproduction of Stereotypes TV soaps are attracting a wider and diverse audience than the films in Kerala. It is an addiction among the women, children, and the aged who are spending most of their time at home. The most popular serials are melodramas dealing with the ups and falls of a favorite hero or heroine. The soap representations of women are stereotypes and they reiterate the typecasting of women as domestic subjects of patriarchy. They lavishly propagate the images and icons of dominant religions and their semiotic field. The cultural markers of Savarna life and its aesthetic values and standards are widely diffused and established through the serial narratives. In the guise of mythology they spread obscurantism. In the cover of mystery they show witchcraft and black magic that demonizes the subaltern. The TV serials have become a crucial and harmful influence on children of all ages. Young housewives and the old have become addicts to these illusionary visual narratives that play upon their desires, affects and visual pleasures. Popular Music and Reiteration

Popular music in the forms of popular film and drama music and music videos form the major chunk of music consumption in Kerala. Film music and music videos have become the reflection of the popular unconscious of Kerala. They enact the whole theatre of suppressed visual desires and erotic fantasies in a covert and allegorical fashion on the big and small screens. The old radio listening culture was well balanced on news and musical entertainment. The growing trend of FM radio stations in private sector and their film music based phone in programs are also boosting the popular craving for new and trendy songs. An analysis of the lyrics of film songs would reveal their ancient and archaic messages. The vocabulary, diction and even the composition of the popular film song is based on the Savarna cultural elitism and its aesthetic standards. It celebrates the Savarna pasts and its high culture. Feudal nostalgias and romanticizing an imagined glorious past of high culture are inseparable from the song lyrics here. There is also a hegemony of Carnatic classical music in the field that detests and attacks difference and diversity in culture as illustrated by the controversy and moral panic generated by the songs of Jazzy Gift and the like a few years ago. It is interesting to note that even the lyrics of the compositions by Jazzy or Rahman reiterate the old and decayed world view of Hindu Brahmanism which is written by some monopoly veterans. However radical the music composition is, the lyrics defy and cancel their liberating effect with their hegemonic overtones and elite cultural affiliations. Advertisements and Hegemonic Consensus

Advertisement in the media could also be seen as a site of popular culture as it engages popular attention and exercise mass appeal through various direct and indirect influences on social behavior and norms. Today in Kerala the advertisements set the standards of the middle classes. They reach direct to the homes through print and visual media. They play upon the dreams and desires of various social segments like the housewives, children, youngsters etc. and condition their reality. Even fashions and trends are determined by the discourses of advertisements (Cook). Advertisements in the visual media propagate elite and upper middle class values, tastes and standards of life. It trades in elite cultural capitals (Bourdieu). It also multiplies the hegemony of the economic capital of the market.

The Need for Critical Understanding of Popular Culture The case is the same if we analyze any other modes or expressions of popular culture whether it is mimicry or popular cinematic dance or performances of the like. The dominant values of life and aesthetic standards of the ruling classes and hegemonic social groups have crucially influenced, determined and hijacked its forms and contents. Its messages are often reactionary rather than radical. Because of elite assimilation and appropriation popular forms have lost their political punch and content. They have become mere instruments of hegemony in a society marked by

elite cultural ethos. So it is the task of the student of contemporary culture and the cultural critic to develop critical perspectives and analytical reading strategies of popular culture to formulate a better comprehension of the whole way of life in the popular mode. References Adorno and Horkheimer. Culture Industry. The Dialectics of Enlightenment. London: Standford UP, 2003. Bakhtin, Michael. The Dialogic Imagination. London: Univ. of Texas, 1981 (1930). Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge, 1984. Cook, Gay. The Discourse of Advertisement. Dasan, M. Appropriation in Theyyam. Unpublished PD Thesis. Kannur University. Menon, Dilip. Conjectural Communities: Communism in Malabar. Economic and Political Weekly 27 (1992): 1934-48. Witkin, R W. Adorno on Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 2003.

Dr Ajay S Sekher, Assistant Professor of English, Govt. College Thrissur. /Akhila, Gandhinagar p o, Kottayam 8 +91 9895797798 ajaysekher@gmail.com www.ajaysekher.net