Representing Indian-American Female Teenage Identity: Devi Vishwakumar in The Netflix Series Never Have I Ever

Abstract

The media plays a large role in influencing the masses in the understanding of culture, gender, ethnicity, and social experiences. Contemporary television programs are more likely to exhibit multicultural identities, including the ethnic minority woman. The studies done so far on Never Have I Ever concentrated primarily on cultural identity, biculturalism, stereotypes, or intergenerational conflict, but it has rarely been done in terms of their relationship in building the identity of the protagonist. The suggested study will delve into the identity of Devi Vishwakumar in Never Have I Ever Season 1, manifested in the hybrid cultural, social, family, and academic expectations. This paper has utilized a qualitative research design based on qualitative media analysis and this was analyzed with the theory of representation as proposed by Stuart Hall with the support of the theory of characterization as well as the theory of intersectionality proposed by Murphy and Crenshaw, respectively. The information was based on the chosen dialogues and visual sequences of the first season of the show. This indicates that the perfection of Devi's identity is a multidimensional and dynamic process that is culturally negotiated, based on social experiences, gender, ethnicity, family, and academic expectations. The article can be valuable to the study of media representations since it demonstrates that the identity of an Indian-American teenage girl is constructed on the layers of multiple different social and cultural dimensions, and is not defined by a single dimension of identity.