(wl-1021)-‘The horror, the horror’: The Mediatised Narrativisation of Gendered Violence

The mediatisation of gendered violence, especially in postcolonial South Asian contexts, reveals a troubling pattern of spectacle-making that reinforces patriarchal and caste-based power structures. Through repetitive broadcasts of CCTV footage and sensationalist headlines, media outlets transform acts of violence into consumable content, reducing complex socio-political issues into a flattened narrative of "horror." This article critically examines how such coverage perpetuates Spivakian epistemic violence by silencing the voices of marginalised women, particularly those affected by caste-based oppression. Additionally, the use of stereotypical imagery depicting women as inherently weak and men as either predatory or aggressively protective upholds the binary gender norms. Drawing on Fanon’s critique of postcolonialism and Foucault’s insights on surveillance, the article argues that this visual and linguistic framing serves to maintain the colonial legacies of power and control, while simultaneously sidestepping meaningful engagement with systemic causes of violence. The portrayal of gendered violence is thus not merely sensationalist but an active reinforcement of ethnonationalist and patriarchal ideologies in contemporary South Asia.