Tanni Chaudhuri

Defining Women in American and Indian Prime Time: a Cross Cultural Analysis Tanni Chaudhuri

Defining Women in American and Indian Prime Time is an in depth analysis of viewer's perceptions of the roles played by women on prime time, in two different cultural settings. The research is directed towards respondents with two different media and cultural experiences. The first are interviewees who are simply familiar with American prime time and the second are those who are acquainted with both the American and the Indian content. The research questions address specifics of representations associated with the American and the Indian media: the roles women play on prime time, whether the viewers can associate with the characters, possible difference between prime time representations and reality as well as possible overlaps between ways of reading media's constructions of femininity in these culturally different stage sets. Analysis of the findings in the study acknowledge more of analogous ways of deriving meaning out of gender reproductions on prime time in comparison to distinct perceptions of reading gender images in the American and Indian media.