Post-Method Media Criticism Contextualising Vernacular OTT Narratives through Chiraiya

This article examines how vernacular OTT narratives in India invite a reconsideration of established analytical approaches, taking Chiraiya as a focal case. Rather than approaching the series through pre-existing theoretical models alone, the discussion develops what is described here as Post-Method Media Criticism (PMMC)—a flexible interpretive orientation that privileges context, textual detail, and emergent meaning. Drawing, in part, on the conceptual vocabulary of post-method pedagogy, the study attends to how the series constructs gendered and classed subjectivities through a restrained aesthetic marked by silence, duration, and minimal action. The analysis proceeds through close engagement with selected scenes, considering not only visual composition and performance but also the role of sound, pacing, and episodic structure. What becomes apparent is a narrative mode that resists the urgency often associated with streaming content. Instead, Chiraiya situates meaning within the ordinary—gestures, pauses, and everyday negotiations—while remaining shaped, albeit unevenly, by platform conditions such as format and visibility. The article suggests that such texts are not easily accommodated within conventional frameworks of realism or genre. PMMC is proposed, therefore, not as a fixed method but as a way of reading that remains responsive to local specificity and formal variation. In doing so, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions around digital media, vernacular storytelling, and the methodological demands posed by increasingly heterogeneous narrative forms.
Keywords: Vernacular OTT Narratives; Post-Method Media Criticism (PMMC); Digital Media Studies; Indian Streaming Culture; Everyday Realism; Contemporary Indian Web Series.