Can gendered robots change children's gender stereotyping or reinforce them?: A reconsideration of Indian television series and cartoons like Karishma Kaa Karishma and ViR: The Robot Boy
Keywords:
Robot; gender; animation; gender-stereotypical; technology;Abstract
Originally an American invention in the second half of the twentieth century, the inclusion of robots as characters in animation and television series was a direct product of the intersection of digital technologies, creative industries, and global capitalism. Even though the general Indian audience of the time, aloof from computers and robots, relied on vicarious methods like film, literature, television, and the press to shape their mental representations of robots and make up for the lack of a direct, experiential base with digital technologies, today, among the fifty centrally registered channels in the country, broadcasting both Indian and foreign cartoons and over five-hundred entertainment channels broadcasting sitcoms and reality shows, which were for the most part white-washed, gender-stereotypical and majoritarian, robots have fortuitously featured as characters. Airing its first episode in 2003, the Indian remake of the 1980s American TV series Small Wonder, Karishma Kaa Karishma brought the first Indian robot character “Karishma” on the national screen, followed by “ViR” ten years later, from the animated series named ViR: The Robot Boy, however bound by their share of problems and prejudices. In this paper, I attempt to analyse the role of the gendered robot characters “Karishma” and “ViR” on children, linking popular aesthetics to social structures, to study if attribution of gender in robots change or reinforce the way children view cultural stereotypes of gender in society, through select episodes from both the shows.
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