Divine Violence: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the Goddess-woman in the Abused Goddess Ad Campaign

In the fall of 2013, an ad campaign from the Mumbai-based agency Taproot exploded in popularity on social media and was featured on a variety of news sites, particularly in and the United States. The campaign, known as the Abused Goddess ads, depicted an iteration of the Goddess most accurately char...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Edoho-Eket, Nkoyo (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2019
In: Journal of religion, media and digital culture
Year: 2019, Volume: 8, Issue: 3, Pages: 340-360
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Hinduism / Goddess / Darshan / Woman / Domestic violence / Gaze / Advertising / Campaign / Ethics / Aesthetics
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AG Religious life; material religion
BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism
ZB Sociology
ZG Media studies; Digital media; Communication studies
Further subjects:B Mahādevī
B Śakti
B Visual Culture
B Shame
B Hindu goddess
B Hinduism
B Affect Theory
B Darshan
B gaze theory
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:In the fall of 2013, an ad campaign from the Mumbai-based agency Taproot exploded in popularity on social media and was featured on a variety of news sites, particularly in and the United States. The campaign, known as the Abused Goddess ads, depicted an iteration of the Goddess most accurately characterized as a Goddess-woman, a divine-human hybrid figure possessing both the divine power of shakti and the vulnerability of human women. Stylized in the “canonical” images of the Goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Durga, the Goddess-women were shown as bruised victims of domestic violence. The Abused Goddess ads precipitated and codified the contemporary depictions of the Goddess-woman whose later iterations appear in the work of numerous digital artists. In particular, the ads exemplify an aesthetic that harnesses the power of shame and the mingling of gazes to further a secular-humanist ethic at the expense of devotional experience.
ISSN:2165-9214
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religion, media and digital culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/21659214-00803003