Televisual Mythmaking and
Subverting Hierarchy: A Study of Jai Malhar
Dr. Shubhangi Nitin Jarandikar
ABSTRACT
This paper tries to evaluate the Marathi
television serial Jai Malhar as a cultural text that reinterprets
the myth of Khandoba (Malhar) produced for the telecasting. The
telecasting has a main purpose to make it spectacular and
entertaining show and at the same time the producer tries to make it
contemporary to relate it with the taste of audience. In doing these
attempts what gets manifested arises several questions of caste
hierarchy, tribal identity, gender politics, and symbolic power.
Through the characters of Banai and Mhalasa, the serial dramatizes
the dichotomy between tribal/common masses and upper-class social
structures The study reads the telecast of myth as a modern visual
discourse that reworks tradition to address contemporary anxieties
about class, caste, and gender in Maharashtra and makes us enquire
the questions of spectators’ taste for the T.V. serial. But at the
same time being a part of media form it reshapes the mythical space
matching the demand of popular mass culture, that dramatizes and
domesticates the myth in an emotional, interpersonal melodrama.
Keywords: Myth, Television, Social Hierarchy, Tribal Identity,
Jejuri, Cultural Representation.
