M E D I A M A T T E R S
In the name of entertainment
SEVANTI NINAN
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Costume dramas, reality shows, serialised soaps... This is on offer.
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PHOTO: ANU PUSHKARNA
AIMING TO TITILLATE: "Sach ka Samna"
The Delhi High Court has declined
to admit a petition which wanted
the reality show "Sach ka Saamna"
taken off the air. Indian culture,
said their lordships, was not so
fragile as to be affected by one TV
show. They said, wisely, "nobody in
his individual capacity can be allowed
to take up on the social order and ask
for directions."
Members of Parliament, meanwhile,
are exercised not just over
middle class housewives going on television
to admit to extra marital affairs
(in the presence of their
children, in-laws and husbands) but
also over commercially successful sagas
woven around child marriage.
What is the country coming to?
Digest or reject
Television agitates people and is
regular fodder for politicians who
think it is more deleterious to the
nation's health than substantial numbers
of people doing without clean
drinking water or going to bed hungry.
That is not surprising, because
television and its excesses are more
visible. The deprived do not live in
our drawing rooms. But seeing that
the nation is turning 62 and all that, I
would argue that satellite television
excesses are something we are now
grown up enough to digest. Or reject.
As the good judges on the High Court
division bench said, "In this land of
Gandhi, it appears that nobody follows
Gandhi. Follow the Gandhian
principle of see no evil. Why don't you
simply switch off the TV?"
In fact, on the medium today compared
to any period over the past 15
years, we actually have choice. All
those reality shows run a gamut that
they did not before. They don't stop at
quiz shows, bad singing and mimicry,
they go on to husband-selecting from
a band of hopefuls, lizard eating in the
jungle, fractious housekeeping on an
island, Bond-style sequences of
pretty girls dangling from helicopters,
and then, breaking up families
on the one hand, ("Sach.") and
bringing them together on the other
("Aap ki Kacheri"). All in the course
of an evening's entertainment.
Avoidable, you say? Maybe, but you
can't complain about sameness.
Then there are the serialised
sagas. True, "Hum Aapke Hain
Kaun"-style weddings are still so
much in vogue that daily life in the
average TV household seems to be a
perennial costume drama. It took
some three episodes to get Jyoti
married, only to have "Yeh Rishta
Kya Kehlata Hai", "Ballika Vadhu"
and "Laado" take over with tortuous
wedding-centred sequences. But for
a change there are actually some
other stories around.
On offer are the daily adventures
of a meddling good Samaritan of a
taxi driver (Real), the tale of a young
woman bureaucrat whose private
sector husband lectures her on not
taking principles too far (Real),
another of a girl who wants to
become an Olympic runner (Sony)
and then there are a handful of rural
sagas set, of course, in lavish modern
mansions.
There are also what you would
have called "socials" in the days of
Doordarshan's primacy, a trend being
shrewdly experimented with
now by Colors and Zee. On air
currently are serials purportedly
about autism, trafficking, foeticide,
child marriage, the class divide, and
so on. Of course, to make them
palatable at prime time they go
through so many hoops that you
would be hard put to recognize the
original intent. A prime example of
this is the serial "Laado" on Sony
which has left foeticide far behind
as it goes into improbable sequences
of revenge in which a matriarch
tortures a daughter in law while the
men in the household twirl their
moustaches and watch from the
sidelines.
Unlikely as it may seem from all
this, when they give interviews entertainment
industry executives
stress that Indian audiences are
actually more discriminating than
before, and are demanding more
from content creators and platforms.
With Rs. 8000 plus crores of
advertising riding on it, TV is a
lucrative industry, and Hindi general
entertainment its single most
paying segment. Marketers of these
channels report hefty annual jumps
in spending on research and marketing
for these shows, as much as
50 per cent over last year, according
to Mint.
That's the irony: a lot of highly
paid minds are working to think up
or import concepts that have the
potential of make our lawmakers go
ballistic. Hardly any minds, highly
paid or otherwise are working to
figure out whether TV entertainment
is simply expensively produced
time pass which people watch
and forget (while remembering to
buy the product advertised) or indeed
an insidious shaper of values.
Would Minister Ambika Soni like to
think about remedying this?
Truly edgy
Meanwhile, a small suggestion for
Star Plus, which airs "Sach ka
Saamna". If they think asking Bobby
Darling on television whether or not
he uses the women's washroom is
edgy, they are not exploring a lot of
other truly edgy possibilities. Put a
Congressman in that chair and ask
him what he really thinks about
certain members of his party leadership.
Or a CPM worker, and ask him
what he really thinks about certain
members of his party leadership.
Ask an income tax officer whether
he and his bosses have taken bribes
or a doctor whether she has performed
medical termination of female
foetuses. If such confessions
could be aired, they would transform
a rather pathetic aiming-totitillate
show into public service
television.
Correction: My last column, "Local
takes in Kashmir" contained erroneous
references to the family of Mr
Devinder Rana including his late
father, for which I sincerely apologise.
Mr Rana says his family is not
involved in his business.
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