New standards of degeneracy

AND now Russia is making great waves in nudity, we learn. One of its most successful news programmes is called "The Naked Truth", in which the anchor first strips titillatingly before the camera and then goes on to read and analyse the news. How much of the analysis sinks in the minds of the ogling viewers, thereafter, is anybody's guess. Especially since the weather forecast that follows is also anchored by a striptease artist. The programme has acquired a cult following. Given such no-holds-barred scramble to capture eyeballs, each generation of T.V. couch potatoes makes the previous one actually look good. Recently when our own Channel V was forced to take one of its, "I dare", programmes off the air (after some girls bared themselves on it when dared), one actually felt nostalgic for the TV viewers of the 1980's, whose predilection for the bizarre and the glamorous began with "Mahabharat" and "Ramayan" and ended with "Chitrahaar".

Alright, maybe mafia run Russia today is Sodom and Gomorrah in one and, in India, we shall never quite dare do that, but degeneracy has many faces. And so far as mindless and vulgar displays of affluence and greed are concerned, we are certainly setting new standards. No, it has nothing to do with those oft- pilloried song and dance sequences borrowed from Hindi films. It is the general attitude of TV soaps, game shows and ads featuring popular figures from those shows that reveal how times are changing. True, stars have long been featuring in ads for expensive liquor and monstrous watches studded with gems. They have also been driving BMWs and Ferraris, selling designer clothes, smoking expensive cigars. What is new is that, today, while they continue to deliver to "Dil Mange More", "greed is good", type lines in ads, they are also doubling up as promoters of socially relevant issues as though these really mattered to them. They are asking women, for example, to use certain oral contraceptives to acquire greater control over their own lives, and even when promoting expensive consumer items like shampoos and sanitary napkins, they whisper confidentially to viewers, that each item they buy will contribute one whole rupee to UNICEF, or Save India, or help run eye camps for the poor. Greed thus is not just in, it is positively essential to save the poor. Guided by these noble souls, today's yuppies will buy more, not to acquire free soap dishes or a few extra milligrammes of shampoo; but to wipe off their own guilt for having too much and wanting more. The greedier you are; the nobler you will feel if you are told that you are buying not for yourself, but to serve all those poor and deprived souls out there, who use neither shampoo nor sanitary napkins.

Once upon a time, an English magazine had, good-naturedly, described our socially ambitious and upwardly mobile Indian yuppies as Puppies. (The P was for the predominance of Punjabis in their ranks). They were the newly rich entrepreneurs who had shed the post-Partition blues that beset their austere, and pathologically insecure, parents, and were re-discovering the joys of good life. Puppies, for a decade, remained synonymous with high living and low thinking in India. But, today, money has changed that definition. Today, it is low living and high thinking that spell the new lifestyle. We have the cartoonish figure of Amitabh Bachchan (the angry young man of yore) striding into the promotionals for "Kaun Banega Crorepati", a mega TV serial, that is offering a whopping seven figure bonanza to some lucky TV viewers in India. All they have to do, the Big B says, is to watch out for the programme and then dial a certain phone number and wait for their own turn to try their luck. One lazily happy couch potato is being asked to jump up and join a money mad crowd.

Betting and gambling, that is where life is and in the harvest of big bucks. Millions believe this as they sweep through TV studios in search of the glittering jackpot and leave their address and contact numbers. Who knows? God and Bchchan willing, they too may turn into a crorepati in the blink of an eyelid. Look ma, no hands! no sweat on my brows either! The poor Puppy couch potatoes may have been crass and materialistic, but they did not fundamentally change the culture of earning big money. They slogged and saved and made their piles largely through hard work, shrewd manipulation of market-trends and then looked for more intelligent investments. But the TV viewers of the post-Puppy era are going to be different. They shall no longer ape their social superiors, but their social inferiors. They shall whoop, push, pummel and gatecrash their way to millionairehood, like bandits out to loot. And after that, life will be one big party.

Given the trend of the times, TV game shows that offer hard cash, will, doubtless, catch on fast and will then flaunt their TRP ratings as proof of their being what the Indian viewers really want. When they begin to do that in TV promos, trade journals and weekend pullouts, it will become even more painfully obvious how much money talks. And once money becomes speech, silence will no longer be deemed golden, ditto for the silent majority.

As for investment ideas, already there are reports about how money acquired by the notorious fodder scamsters of Bihar was ploughed into certain Bollywood masala films. The films went on to become hits and earned millions for the financers. It will not be too long before big money from other strange sources shall become available for programmes on the small screen. An unlimited spending on creating big budget TV programmes will result in more and more hype about the "social relevance" of TV game shows. We may even be told how gambling helps in securing income equity distribution among the "poorer and weaker sections of our society". It is quite easy really. Those who expect to rake in the mega-bucks through such programming have only to hitch their stars to some national and international charities and can then promote greed and sloth and feel good politics all at the same time. Who will have the heart to stop a programme that contributes to noble causes, such as save the children/tigers global environment? Who will have the gumption to ask why greed is being made to feed the TRP ratings, when the celebrity stars and show hosts of those shows urge the viewers continually and solemnly, to think of the poor, the homeless, the blind, the deaf mute?

Actually it is not so much the hapless Shekhar Sumans and Sajid No 1's, but the media planners handling channel brand equities, that need watching. They are rejecting both the ethical and professional norms for a smart packaging infotainment, and subtly have begun to project a certain political ideology over all others. It says consume and you will be saved. Save and you will be consumed. Interestingly, the new multi-media sellers of such programming are beating the puppies at their own game. They have discovered quicker, and more efficient, ways of making bigger piles of money, and simultaneously of projecting themselves not as the filthy, but a lovable bunch of caring, socially aware folk. And they are doing their nobility act with the full backing of the lobby of powerful corporations that are out to capture markets and the disenfranchised lot is required to remain on the margins forever.

But then again it is still early in this particular genre. Who knows what will happen when having sold out theri outfits at a premium to some international mega-corp, our post-puppy multi- media moghuls suddenly make strange discoveries during an idyllic holiday? Discoveries such as fishing or hiking in fast depleting forests and lakes, and meditation in airconditioned, but polluted, hills not enough. They may then once again feel the need for a more active centre to hold their young lives together. When that happens, they may decide to push aside those gently Chipko-type jholawallahs, in old handloom kurtas, and sit in their place with their smart laptops and cellphones, ready to save the cyberspace and the environment for themselves, and set up new sweatshops.

So watch out. Flaubert said what matters ultimately, is not history, but the philosophy of history.

MRINAL PANDE

The author writes in Hindi and English and is a freelance journalist.

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