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COMMENT

What seemed to be at work was the pretence of a populist concession to public concerns…when the anchor countered MacKeown’s defences by asking details about her daughter’s sex life, she did it in our name.

Photo: AFP

Relentless barrage of questions: Fiona MacKeown at a press conference in Goa.

If we were therefore, only to deal with the anchor as a media product in herself, with her team of producers, and if we were, in hindsight, to stand in the shoes of a producer of this episode, what would be the tasks at hand? For one, the urgent need to assess the possibilities and problems of putting together a neat episode in a social terrain that is not very well known. Some things about Goa are known though — the sea, the beach, the round-the-year (cheaper in the monsoon) party. As an intelligent producer, why would you pass up this familiar hook on which to peg the story? As the episode began, with sea and surfers in the background, it was clear that this was going to be no ordinary grim talk show. Rape and murder notwithstanding, there was a visual frame to be filled, and this was Goa. In addition to the sea and sky there was a line up of suitable celebrities: A belligerent and hostile Minister, the bereaved mother, Fiona MacKeown, and celebrities of the likes of Bina Ramani.

As a producer committed to keeping audiences glued to their seats, and loyal to your channel across the commercial breaks, the sordid question of rape and police-cover ups is not the most enticing of discussions. In fact, it is something of an old story. Further, this was an audience already titillated for at least a week, sated with pictures of the bruised body of the victim. This is where the sheer skill of an experienced journalist became evident. The first eight minutes of this episode were devoted to airing opinions about how the crime had altered the image of Goa. This allowed for the expression of local resentment at corruption and over the image of Goa that had been narrowed in the first place to a hippie haunt, and now a sleazy one at that. This feeling, currently intertwined with the sense of onslaught in Goa from SEZs, and government schemes for land appropriation, has its causes and often legitimate points of origin, but could not have been aired at a worse moment, sometimes in the worst metaphors possible. The “rape” of Goa, used unproblematically in some of the agitational literature in the State, was evoked here as well, as a parallel to the rape and murder of the Scarlette Keeling. While the oppositional stance of those heading some of the mass movements in Goa is only to be applauded, the absence of sensitivity to questions of gender could not have been more visible with this comparison. Or for that matter, in the comparison of Goa to a beautiful young girl who had pimples on her face that had to be removed. For those who were also morally outraged by the sexual practices of the tourists, this crime, and the person of Fiona MacKeown, began to be symbolic of what was wrong with Goa.

Those who have survived the memory-erasing effect of news 24/7 will remember that the British media had met the story of the rape and murder with the most lurid tabloid coverage, and a vociferous attack on Fiona Mackeown, highlighting her tattoos and her alternative lifestyle as contributing reasons for her daughter’s murder. By the time of this episode, Indian newspapers had abandoned their own coverage, to reproduce the details of Fiona McKeown’s sexual past and very unmiddle-class present. Where the television episode scored on high drama and newsworthiness over the others was in actually having MacKeown there to face the anchor’s unrelenting charges in person.

One can only presume that this was the reasoning behind the fact that most of the questions posed by the anchor from the ninth minute of the episode were about the culpability of Fiona MacKeown. This was how the episode on the rape and murder of a tourist became a trial by television of Fiona the Bad Mother. The anchor apologised before informing MacKeown that she had to ask her questions about her sense of responsibility, about her multiple sexual partners, about her large family of children and the fact that she was a single mother. Why did she have to ask her those questions?

What we do know is that this public trial of motherhood opened doors for various declarations of moral superiority, including a celebration of the British press for drawing attention to bad parenting. Remarks such as “I definitely share in the grief of Fiona…but I would not have left my daughter with people whom I’ve known for two or three months”, was offered by the Minister, after he was explicitly invited by the anchor to express his judgement of Fiona’s parenting. What must have been particularly insightful to MacKeown was the anchor’s sensitive suggestion, “Fiona, when you look at the images of Scarlette smiling at you from the photographs, do you think to yourself, what a fool I was?” This must be a first in television history. When MacKeown began to reply, saying that perhaps she had been naïve, but she had felt assured that the family would take care of her daughter, the anchor interrupted to say “But you know, a fifteen-year-old in full blown relationships, a fifteen-year-old on drugs!...”

The term trial by media was never better applied, except that this time, it was not to those who actually perpetrated the crime — or rather, this channel’s notion of the criminal had shifted from the alleged rapist to a mother who had left her daughter with a friend and his two old aunts. Interestingly, it was members of the audience who mid-way through suggested to the anchor that the questions that should be asked were about the drug cartel and the cover-up of medical reports. The dominant approach to the crime, however, incriminated the mother and assumed that men will be men. It was up to women to stay out of trouble. No walks at night, no walks on the beach, no drinking in shacks. In contrast to this approach, the statements of a women’s organisation in Goa, Bailancho Saad, have countered the focus on parenting by emphasising the number of women who approach them, having been raped by brothers and fathers. None of this unfortunately has reached the mainstream press. Most critiques of the parenting obsession and of this television episode for that matter remain on personal blog sites, apart from the odd article such as Ajit Sahi’s in Tehelka.

The tensions among the audience at the shoot however, were signs of the kinds of conflicts that are likely to emerge in ex-colonies where the most vital economic activity is tourism. Even if one discounts the self-righteous sanctimonious responses, a situation where cases of sexual assault, including those of paedophilia, go unpunished, where a thriving arms trade is alleged, and a drug trade is public, is likely to generate some amount of anti-outsider feeling. Combine this with the fact that the recent months have seen an upsurge of small and large mobilisations against all kinds of projects in the State involving fundamental environmental and livelihood issues, and some of the converging ire against “outsiders”, whether tourists or migrants, seems to have explicable if not justifiable roots. Little of this seemed to percolate to the anchor, who said reproachfully, “There seems to be an outsider-insider divide here.” The episode ended with a rap rendition of one of Remo’s songs. The only thing missing was a cartoon by Mario Miranda.

We need not dwell too much on how Goa ought to be represented, for, there is no right answer to this. If everything that happens in the State is put through a uni-dimensional, pre-given filter of representative images, this is only in the nature of the game. We are, after all, by now, an audience bludgeoned by the codes of television news, far from the ominous innocence of monopoly Doordarshan coverage, where the poised Delhi newsreaders grimaced to distance themselves from the lies of the news on Kashmir. Having weathered the close, intimate close-ups of the bodies and faces of those on the wrong side of television cameras, one is left with a mild feeling of surprise. While there are critiques from viewers, there is no public sign of a discussion of the visual grammar of television among professional media people. This is no call for censorship or monitoring or the imposition of prescribed “guidelines”. Just an acknowledgement of being part of a media machine that responds only to the threat of a ban, or in fear of mob fury.

What seemed to be at work in the rapaciousness of visual images of Keeling’s body across channels and of the brutality, with which MacKeown was handled on the talk show, was the pretence of a populist concession to public concerns. This is what the anchor repeatedly said to exonerate herself as she aggressively counter-questioned MacKeown — “I’m sorry, this is difficult for you and difficult for us, but this is what is being said…” This is the strategy behind most opinion polls with structured questions. The option is to agree or not to agree. The option to say, “this is a loaded and rotten question” cannot exist. This performance of democracy and viewer participation gives faces and voices to the TRP rating. It is no longer just a number generated by marketing departments, but apparently an accumulation of the sms opinion polls and emails, running as a strip beneath the news. The fact is, when the anchor countered MacKeown’s defences by hissing details about her daughter’s sex life, she did it in our name. The TRP rating and the fixed opinion poll generate an unnamed average viewer, who is obeyed by the channel and who silences dissenting viewers. For, who are you to express your fringe extreme opinion? What’s more, this average viewer also has a strong streak of voyeurism, taking the bite out of pornography by bringing it into mainstream television.

Recently, a Minister had a run-in with a pilot after he (the minister) had held up a flight allegedly by arriving late. The channel, which claimed to have “broken” the news assailed the Minister repeatedly with long-winded criticism and hostile accusation, and spoke on behalf of “Those Whose Flights Are Delayed”. What makes flight delays shouting-friendly, while massacre and gang rape produce “neutrality”? Who needs government censorship anymore? In the space of a decade, the Average Viewer has emerged as the more effective censor. It is the AV who legitimises flight delay-activism and prudent silence over illegal imprisonment, as long as you occasionally throw her/ him repeated flashing images of suicide victims, wardrobe malfunctions and the public laceration of Fiona MacKeown.

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