MUSICSCAN
Cultural colonisation
M.V. RAMAKRISHNAN
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The Boyle saga underlines the uneven nature of such competitions, aired by American and British TVs and aped by channels all over the world, where most of the acts are mediocre.
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The Susan Boyle saga has continued to unfold like a rapid game of snakes and ladders over the past several weeks. Throughout the ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ programme’s hectic live tour of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Irel
and in June and early July, the singer’s spirits seemed to be alternately soaring high and diving low. One day she’d seem to be on the verge of emotional collapse, but the next day she’d be bouncing back like a rubber ball!
The tour has meant a very tight travelling schedule covering London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham, Hammersmith, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Cardiff, Dublin and Belfast – all spread over less than four weeks. Susan Boyle has performed in many of these places, but had to skip some of the shows.
It’s difficult to see how far her mental equilibrium has been further disturbed by such hectic travelling and such relentless direct public exposure, so swiftly following all the tensions and travails of achieving sudden international fame through the electronic media – which had resulted in a nervous breakdown and several days’ stay in a mental health institution in London not so long ago. (For a quick look at our earlier discussions, please see Musicscan, www.thehindu.com, May 22/29, June 5/19).
Of course, one of the main reasons for Susan’s emotional crisis was the fact that in spite of having touched millions of hearts all over the world with her initial audition, which was projected on the Internet, she was still forced to compete with an assorted group of entertainers for the votes of a massive TV audience and millions of viewers, and actually lost to a set of young dancers in the final round. The whole question of extraordinary artistic achievements – especially of a musical kind – getting seriously devalued by such a strangely unbalanced competition deserves much greater attention than it seems to be getting even in the serious British Press.
Global phenomenon
The ‘…Got Talent’ extravaganza is a modern-day TV phenomenon, which has spread from Britain and the U.S. to 25 other countries within the past few years – including not only other English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, but also Russia, Ukraine, China, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, and all parts of Europe (France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia). And this year, a corresponding programme has emerged in Indian television also.
I’ve seen online videos of these programmes, organised in several countries, and find that the prevailing standard of talent everywhere is, by and large, mediocre and quite trivial in many cases. Most of the competing acts don’t seem to be worth all the wide public attention they seem to be getting at the national and international levels thanks to TV and the Internet. And mind you, only the so-called ‘best’ performances are hooked on to the Internet – so one can well imagine how low the average standard must be! Of course, there are some spectacular exceptions which deserve wide acclaim (Susan Boyle’s case being the most sensational one) – and those are the cases which may provide the ultimate justification for such programmes.
Adopting the formula
It is clear that the original formula incorporating such extremely uneven competition – as evolved in the parent programmes in Britain and the U.S. – is being adopted as a universal standard wherever the franchise is getting extended across the world. The overall impression I get, as a result of some systematic surfing in these trans-global waters, is that this seems to be a powerful manifestation of cultural colonisation. And India’s case is no exception! Right now an ‘India’s Got Talent’ programme is in the process of being televised by the TV channel, Colors. Of course, this isn’t a new phenomenon: more or less the same thing has been happening in the case of other similar ventures such as the ‘Millionaire’ and ‘Idol’ programmes.
Any critical scrutiny of this intriguing scenario is bound to concern the cultural and social environment as a whole and not merely music. But so far as this column is concerned, let us hope that our classical music will not get trivialised in such programmes!
In her article ‘Reality Bytes,’ in the Sunday Magazine’s Media Matters column (July 5, 2009) in this newspaper, Sevanti Ninan has this very interesting comment: “Indians are exuberantly happy with the notion of television exposure. If we were ever a diffident people, it must have been before satellite television. After it, the floodgates to maximum exposure have been pushed wide open...”
Not only as a journalist, but as the Member-Secretary of the P.N. Haksar Committe (1988-90) which had investigated the core cultural issues concerning the National Akademis, I feel compelled to worry a lot about this whole trend. By the way, Mr. K.V. Ramanathan, former Editor-in-Chief of Sruti Magazine, was also a Member of that panel; and it would be interesting to know what he thinks about all this!
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