SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE IN EVERYDAY NARRATIONS: GENDER CONSTRUCTION IN INDONESIAN TELEVISION

The construction of violence against women is delivered through everyday narrations. Some of the everyday narrations produced and consumed by the society are transmitted through the media. The narration of violence is not necessarily physical but also symbolic. Related to gender relation, women are mostly target of symbolic violence. Symbolic violence here is defined as the ideas and values of a ruling cultural class (e,g., men) who purposefully imposed them (often through subconscious means) onto a dominated social group such as women. Male dominated culture plays a role in maintenance of the power relations in symbolic violence. This paper explores symbolic violence produced and reproduced in Indonesian television media through language and image. Since the Reformasi era in 1998, the role of media, especially television, has been crucial in shaping the ideology and common sense of Indonesian people. Many scholars argued that media to some extent replaces the role of the State in shaping the public idea. In particular, symbolic violence is largely constructed by television but the audiences are not aware of this construction. The dynamic relation between the social and cultural regimes and the construction of symbolic violence in everyday narrations through television in the electronic cinema (sinetron) programs will be the focus of the discussion.