Animating Meaning: A Semiotic Study of Cultural Signifiers on Indian Children’s Television Animation Series

The animation industry in India is booming. It's creating an increasing number of animation programs to children. Although the majority of animations are originally made in Hindi, they are later translated into other Indian regional languages. Analyzing the cartoon series' content critically is crucial as ‘Children’ are watching these animation series. This study adopts Roland Barthes' semiotics to analyze the animated children's television series in India. Barthes suggests the death of the author/the creator of the text to witness the birth of the recipient allowing him to interpret, read, and produce a wide range of meanings which are a form of semiotic production that is oriented to observation an analysis of the media's messages and discussions to open the eyes of the semiotic researcher to the complexity of semiotic interpretation and new methods of using signs within the social and cultural context of the media. Applying Barthes' semiotics to television cartoons allows us to examine how meanings are formed, conveyed and understood within the cultural context of animated series. For this study, the researcher selected episodes from the three Indian animated television series Shiva, Rudra: Boom Chik Chik Boom and Selfie with Bajrangi. The Tamil dub versions of these animation series are analyzed here.