Magical Shadows : Women in the Bangladeshi Media

Contents: Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. 2. Stories TV dramas tell. 3. The Tele-Narrator: the telling techniques. 4. TV commercials: globalization and the march forward. 5. Ekannoborti: the text, method, and narrator. 6. The women of Ekannoborti: pretty, angry and looking for love. 7. Milla: The brilliant housewife or the rhetorically suppressed woman? 8. Conclusion. References. Index.

"Bangladesh is a gendered society like any other. In a gendered society women and men must conform to the dominant values. In enforcing this conformity the media plays an important role. One of the most important aspects of that role is projecting images that seem more real than reality itself. Drawing upon the large volume of literature on media images, the author analyses TV and print media images of Bangladeshi women. Using narratology as her main theoretical orientation, she finds that Bangladeshi TV programmes have developed sophisticated narratives as well as narration techniques which impose a strict image regime on Bangladeshi women, at the same time appearing to be accommodating the modern, independent, outgoing woman." (jacket)