The Perception of Muslim Audience on the Portrayal of Islam in Tamil Cinema

Abstract

Media representation of minorities and minority group issues – or indeed the lack of representation – is a key factor in determining how majority audiences think about minorities in their societies. These ideas can be directly applied to media coverage of Muslim minorities. Cinema is the primary source of image construction among the community members than the other entire medium. In the post-Babri Masjid demolition chaos, India has tried to relive its traditional image of a secular nation with the media playing a sensitive role to disseminate various views both political and religious with a vehemence to create a new face of Islam in India. Stereotypes are "cognitive structures that contain the perceiver's knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about human groups" (Hurwitz et al., 1997, p31). This study examines the stereotyped representation of Muslims in Tamil Films in Last Five years (2008-2013). The current study is aimed to analyze Muslim youth audience perception on the portrayal of Islam in Tamil cinema. For this study, the researcher used to apply the cultivation research. Cultivation research is cultivation analysis: "a comparison between light television viewers and heavy television viewers. If heavy television viewers tended to provide answers that were more in line with the television response, researchers would have support for the cultivation hypothesis" (Miller, 2005, p. 283). In this scenario, the present study is aimed to find out how the Muslims were portrayed and to examine how they are stereotyped in Tamil films. And the study will analyze perception of Muslim audiences on the portrayal of Islam in Tamil films. Methodology planned to adopt is Quantitative survey.100 Muslims samples were chosen from 2 districts (Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli), using purposive sampling technique and analyzed by using a structured questionnaire. The study will reveal the portrayal Muslim community in Tamil Movie and the perception of Muslims on the portrayal as a terrorist will be analyzed.