Decoding Patriarchal Ideological Biases at Work in the Popular Vernacular Comics of Nonte Fonte and Handa Bhonda: A Study of the Codification of Femininity through the Image-Text Combine

Abstract

Any image accompanies with it two concepts viz. communication and representation. Both these concepts are potent tools to be analysed from the perspective of study of signs or semiotics. But the monolithic study of signs or codes embedded in representation or communication curbs the scholarly or multidimensional spaces in which a representation/image representation can be analysed, examined, or investigated. If we consider a pictorial representation only as an image chosen/preferred randomly, we will miss the ideological bias in which it is produced. Therefore, the image representation of women/female in any text provides the ground for analyzing the term ‘politics of representation,’ since no production is devoid of a power structure that always invariably empowers a dominant one, dictating/controlling the production, reception, and dissemination of ‘texts’ (the term text to be comprehended in a post-modern sense), thus creating possibilities of stereotyping, distortion, hegemonisation, homogenization, et al. of women characters. Even under the tactful gloss of figuring ideal female characters of mythology or sculptures in temples, etc., in different ancient Indian art forms, the patriarchal ideology of depicting women with perfect female bodies according to Indian aesthetics operates. The paper focuses on the production, reception, non-reception as a result of dominant market forces of comics on women or female representation in the comics genre. It adopts the research methodology of content (image–text representation of women) analysis as a case study; paradigmatic analysis with panels from _Nonte Fonte _and _Handa Bhonda_, two popular vernacular Bengali comics, to investigate how a change in an image can affect the reception; as well as excerpts from interviews with target readers/viewers of comics/audio-visual projections of comics to examine the decodification of female presence by a child as a receiver of such texts; and inputs from interviews with the writer–illustrators of Nonte Fonte and Handa Bhonda, have been included to examine the codification and decodification process of the image-text combination of comics.