India shines on Shilpa’s tear drops
By Sudeshna Sen, TNN |
Highlights
LONDON: The things one has to do in the course of duty. But to investigate a popular cultural phenomenon and an international row, I decide to grit my teeth and just do it; that is, watch Shilpa Shetty in Celebrity Big Brother. Again.
First the quick update: at the time of writing, Shilpa and her chief opponent Jade Goody are both up for eviction Friday night by public poll. Ms Goody is odds-on-favourite to go, and that will probably have Shilpa and the rest heaving a sigh of relief, but even if Shilpa goes, we think she���ll just be glad to get out of that house. Meanwhile, a slew of sponsors have pulled out of the race issue, and the bully gang���s celebrity careers are taking a big hit - Ms Goody���s perfume line has been recalled from stores, Danielle has been dropped from a six-figure modelling contest.
Now. For all those of you back home who don���t get to see the show but only hear the noise about it, we���re doing our own reality take on CBB. My Indigo-brunching friends will cringe in horror, just like poor Gordon Brown and P Chidambaram, that Shilpa Shetty has today become the face of India for vast swathes of middle and working class England. In the mad, weird world of reality TV, she���s as much an ambassador for our country as any India Shining campaign. This show has done for India���s image what a thousand reforms could not. It���s showing up a clash of civilisations - and yes, we���re walking away with all the awards.
So what���s really going on? Before I collapse into hysterical giggles, or get either intellectual or snooty, here goes. The fun is that nobody here has the foggiest idea of what Shilpa���s up to. She���s doing a phenomenal job of decimating the competition. Till last week, Shilpa wasn���t grabbing any media space locally. Clearly, in this one, Shilpa���s interpreted her role as the second brother���s rich wife. Not the eldest bahu who���s doing all the self-sacrificing - after all, this show is supposed to promote the nasty ones, and she doesn���t know she���s getting all the sympathy - but the rich majhli bahu who���s doing her best to adjust to the provincial and conservative household she finds herself in. Our Shilpa of the item numbers, in a houseful of white and mixed-race celebrities is the sophisticated, polite, aloof and yes, upper class little princess. As far as one can make out, she���s leaving her options open to turn into a sophisticated Balaji bad bahu if that���s the way the game goes.
The point of this reality show is that it mimics, well, a joint family drama a la Bollywood, a rather juvenile delinquent version that is. Endemol should just call in Ekta Kapoor or Karan Johar, they���ll seriously improve the drama quotient without resorting to the lowest common denominator. Everyone will start playing antakshari in a day, and re-enacting Hum Apke Hain Kaun, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, and any number of acronymical wedding video movies. We���re all supposed to sit around and watch people doing craft work like kids and talk about flatulence? C���mon. The idea of conflicts and tensions created by eight or 10 people trying to live together in one house without getting on each other���s nerves may seem like intense drama in a western context, but we���re a nation where lots of people actually do live together in large households. The fact that, even without make-up, she���s probably the best looking of the lot is for later - while she spends her time cooking and letting nobody forget that she���s the rich kid from the haveli slumming it. Somebody seriously give this babe an award or make her a scriptwriter/director - we���ve all underestimated her.
First the quick update: at the time of writing, Shilpa and her chief opponent Jade Goody are both up for eviction Friday night by public poll. Ms Goody is odds-on-favourite to go, and that will probably have Shilpa and the rest heaving a sigh of relief, but even if Shilpa goes, we think she���ll just be glad to get out of that house. Meanwhile, a slew of sponsors have pulled out of the race issue, and the bully gang���s celebrity careers are taking a big hit - Ms Goody���s perfume line has been recalled from stores, Danielle has been dropped from a six-figure modelling contest.
Now. For all those of you back home who don���t get to see the show but only hear the noise about it, we���re doing our own reality take on CBB. My Indigo-brunching friends will cringe in horror, just like poor Gordon Brown and P Chidambaram, that Shilpa Shetty has today become the face of India for vast swathes of middle and working class England. In the mad, weird world of reality TV, she���s as much an ambassador for our country as any India Shining campaign. This show has done for India���s image what a thousand reforms could not. It���s showing up a clash of civilisations - and yes, we���re walking away with all the awards.
So what���s really going on? Before I collapse into hysterical giggles, or get either intellectual or snooty, here goes. The fun is that nobody here has the foggiest idea of what Shilpa���s up to. She���s doing a phenomenal job of decimating the competition. Till last week, Shilpa wasn���t grabbing any media space locally. Clearly, in this one, Shilpa���s interpreted her role as the second brother���s rich wife. Not the eldest bahu who���s doing all the self-sacrificing - after all, this show is supposed to promote the nasty ones, and she doesn���t know she���s getting all the sympathy - but the rich majhli bahu who���s doing her best to adjust to the provincial and conservative household she finds herself in. Our Shilpa of the item numbers, in a houseful of white and mixed-race celebrities is the sophisticated, polite, aloof and yes, upper class little princess. As far as one can make out, she���s leaving her options open to turn into a sophisticated Balaji bad bahu if that���s the way the game goes.
The point of this reality show is that it mimics, well, a joint family drama a la Bollywood, a rather juvenile delinquent version that is. Endemol should just call in Ekta Kapoor or Karan Johar, they���ll seriously improve the drama quotient without resorting to the lowest common denominator. Everyone will start playing antakshari in a day, and re-enacting Hum Apke Hain Kaun, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, and any number of acronymical wedding video movies. We���re all supposed to sit around and watch people doing craft work like kids and talk about flatulence? C���mon. The idea of conflicts and tensions created by eight or 10 people trying to live together in one house without getting on each other���s nerves may seem like intense drama in a western context, but we���re a nation where lots of people actually do live together in large households. The fact that, even without make-up, she���s probably the best looking of the lot is for later - while she spends her time cooking and letting nobody forget that she���s the rich kid from the haveli slumming it. Somebody seriously give this babe an award or make her a scriptwriter/director - we���ve all underestimated her.
What���s being lost in the racism and bullying din is that Shilpa is changing the rules of this game - from what I can make out, these shows are supposed to celebrate stupidity and crassness and traditionally the nasties win. But a hysterically politically correct British society is extremely embarrassed about the racist undertones and the bullying that���s coming through. And what���s more important, it���s also being forced to take a second look at the popular yob culture that rules today.
In this country, it���s cool to be common. Cucumber sandwiches and croquet may be as dead as the dodo, but working class does not necessarily have to be plain uncouth. The working class in this country is outraged that the Goody Gang is claiming to represent it - but this is the same Jade Goody that popular culture in the UK has lionised for being precisely what she is - crass, crude and dumb. Just when she���s juxtaposed with Shilpa���s successful, educated and somewhat arrogant new Indian - well the league tables become different. As one British blogger commented, ���It���s a shame that a foreigner should have to show us the values of politeness, good manners and concern for others.��� Even The Sun has sided with Shilpa, in screaming headlines and editorials. In a way, Channel 4 has a point - let���s not sweep the dark underbelly of modern Britain under the carpet, put it up to vote.
Today, Shilpa���s odds-on-favourite to win the show has generated the largest amounts of complaints ever to the media regulator, motions in Parliament, an international diplomatic incident, and great ratings for a show that was almost dying after three of its better celebs walked out - one actually broke down a door to escape after complaining about his supply of underpants, and about the sanitation and cleanliness in the house. We get snore-by-snore reports on wires, and only the financial press has managed to sidestep it so far.
One can even feel a modicum of pity for the Goody gang girls, best known for being stupid - what kind of a claim to fame is that? - trying to provoke Shilpa into revealing the claws they can sense under her sweetness, but they just can���t. After all, they���ve never heard of Ekta Kapoor or a saas-bahu serial. For every situation over chicken or soup cubes that they���re trying to react to ���spontaneously���, Shilpa has thousands of Bollywood and Balaji scripts to draw on for inspiration in her head. Ha. It���s a totally unequal battle.
All the characters are there - I can���t remember who they are, but nobody else knows them either - so we���ll just call them pained elder Uncleji, Jermaine, who gives everyone lectures about togetherness and love, vacillating dewarji (Ian), dignified bua-ji (Cleo) who���s trying to keep herself aloof, and the bully girls led by Jade Goody - the main bad bahu and her groupies. I had to eschew reading a World Bank report to do this, and believe me, the World Bank Report would have been more fun.
ADVERTISEMENT
The one who got kicked out in the first week was a localised British version of a nasty saas, almost immediately after a name-calling session with Shilpa. The saas lady is part of a family of mother-daughter and daughter���s boyfriend troika who are not even vaguely celebrity, but career reality TV veterans, who are mixed in with the household for God knows what reason.Apparently, they���re supposed to be obnoxious and mess things up. Scene: Saas lady yells at Shilpa (and everyone else, that���s why the others left) Almost immediately after calling Shilpa a ���nightmare���, nasty saas lady is called in by Big B and kicked out. (No thunder, lightning, or songs in temples in front of scintillating idols, but still). Big Brother is an electronic voice, let���s call him/her Dadaji or Dadiji. There���s a big throne in BB���s diary room, all very symbolic, but no patriarchal/matriarchal figure with white wig/white sari and fiery eyes and rhetoric. And lemme assure you, this Big B doesn���t pack an iota of the punch the real one does as the strict disciplinarian patriarch.
It���s after this that daughter goes on warpath with Shilpa.
Scene: Somebody���s used up Shilpa���s soup cubes. Bad bahu Jade Goody, when asked, has a hysterical yelling session with Shilpa. Shilpa tells her to shut up, looks dignified and pained and walks off. Buaji does a counselling session looking traumatised. Uncleji and Dewarji don���t know what to do. The next day the whole household has one of those funereal after the bad bahu scene feel to it, with Shilpa putting on her best martyr act with all the perfect angles for the camera.
She keeps doing tender little scenes in private with dewarji, uncleji, and buaji, when she���s not weeping her eyes out or putting on those dark glasses to hide her red eyes.
Our lady of ice, Shilpa keeps weeping on cue, and yes, she���s quite obviously waiting to be kicked out. She���s hating every minute, because after all, who wants to be yelled at or share a dormitory and a bathroom straight out of YMCA? The only time she gives in to histrionics is when she���s called in by Big B, where she does her piece straight to camera.
ADVERTISEMENT
There���s one camp (of 36,000 and counting) saying racism - quite a lot of bad language has been thrown up but there���s another view (including that of Channel 4), which is desperately arguing that it���s not about the colour of her skin, it���s upper class versus lower class, cultural differences, social tensions. The fact that the only supposed heartthrob alpha male type in the house, the 61-year-old Dirk Bendict and a frontrunner favourite, is flirting with Shilpa continuously as a form of entertainment, obviously has something to do with it. In fact, Shilpa has all the men in the house - except boyfriend of bad bahu - happily eating out of her hands. We���ve got class conflict, sexual tension, female jealousy, and sheer crudity.So where do we go from here? Till last week, the general verdict was that Shilpa will be kept in long enough to draw in the Asian viewership but finally evicted in a grand triumph of working class vs white supremacy.
Friday���s audience vote will decide whether Britain is ready to say enough is enough.
sudeshna.sen@timesgroup.com
Download
The Economic Times Business News App for the Latest News in Business, Sensex, Stock Market Updates & More.
The Economic Times Business News App for the Latest News in Business, Sensex, Stock Market Updates & More.
Download
The Economic Times News App for Quarterly Results, Latest News in ITR, Business, Share Market, Live Sensex News & More.
The Economic Times News App for Quarterly Results, Latest News in ITR, Business, Share Market, Live Sensex News & More.
ADVERTISEMENT
