Media Matters
Stories that sell
SEVANTI NINAN
|
With the focus shifting to small town India and its women, most channels seem to be betting on sagas of young women and mythologicals.
|
Tried and tested formula: A still from “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’.
Small town India, its women in particular, have to be entertained. Since there are at least three dozen others competing to do that, between Hindi and other regional entertainment channels, the search for fresh ideas can take some bizarre turns. So we’ve had serials on dusky brides (“Saat Phere”), brides who are actually goddesses (“Devi”) and now we’re into child brides. Colours, the new entertainment channel launched with much fanfare from the Viacom and Network 18 stable, is trying to do a winsome spin on a custom that the laws of land are trying to stamp out.
“Balika Vadhu” (Child Bride) is cleverly crafted. There is rural India dressed up to radiate earthy charm, there are good looking parents stomping around in their lehengas, ghunghats and turbans and speaking an extremely folksy Hindi, and there is a chubby child bride all set to be married off until a pesky school teacher intervenes. Since this is no me-too channel, there are no caricatures here. Each character is nicely etched and evolves with each episode. Though conflicting, the logic of opposing stands on the issue of child marriage is persuasively presented. And to counter the charge of glamorising regressive practices, it uses the teacher to present all the arguments against child marriage including the fact that it is illegal.
The complete spectrum
Since the programmes on this new general entertainment channel run such an amazing gamut from the usual got-to-get-daughter-married fare to the Bond-ish line up of daring beauties for “Khatron ka Khiladi”, the channel’s chief executive explains its scheduling logic: “Our prime time band will be 7-11 p.m. of which 7-9 p.m. will be for the small towns. The 10-11 p.m. time band will be for the metro viewers. For us, all viewers are important.”
Indeed. So the small towns get to see, in addition to “Ballika Vadhu”, something called “Bandhan Saath Janmon Ka” (The burden of seven births, presumably previous) which is essentially the saga of a fond mother, anxious father, scheming aunt, and a fluttering young thing who so badly wants to study, but... It is ostensibly set in Lucknow, with shots of Lucknow railway station to establish that. The young heroine of this saga too wants to study, while her father want to see her married. (Progressive fathers who have been saving up to send their daughters abroad to study, are strictly for the ads).
It’s got to a stage where a channel would be really brave if it decided to set a story around the ambitions of a young man for a change. On the two channels which launched earlier, NDTV Imagine and 9X, it is much the same mix: sagas of young women coupled with mythologicals. Mothers and aunts tend to have their heads covered, mother-in-law tyranny is sometimes masked, sometimes out in the open, and of course, no mother of a ready-to-be-married daughter looks more than 35 years old. Presumably they were all child brides.
You’ve got choice
Could this terribly varied and imaginative approach to designing entertainment have something to do with the fact all these channels have for their head honchos men who’ve come out of Star India’s stable? Colours included. One channel is running “Ramayan”, another “Mahabharat”, and the new one “Krishna”.
It’s interesting what a completely switchover takes place at 10 p.m. Akshay Kumar’s version of Fear Factor seems to have gone down well with India, metro or otherwise. He’s good, and the women are attractive and a game bunch, for the most part. Yana Gupta, Pooja Bedi and Aditri Gowarikar add the glamour. There are beauties, stunts and creepy crawlies. Since they’ve already been through some scary stunts and the creepy crawlies have run the gamut from cockroaches and earthworms to frogs and mice, the shock quotient should begin to pall sooner rather than later.
In the end, the question that remains is what constitutes entertainment. Empathy or escapism, vicarious horror or pleasure, or traditional story telling which the whole family can watch? The characters in Krishna are caricatures in some sense, but you can’t help watching them. In a country where there is little homogeneity, mythologicals have become unifiers with an irrefutable market logic. And across the Hindi belt, the aspirational young daughter, whether she just wants to go to college or buy her parents a bigger car, is a growing media cliché that evidently sells.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
