Truth is getting stranger than fiction
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iView Author: Neeraj Ghaywan (New Delhi, India)
Email: neeraj.ghaywan [at] gmail [dot] com
Truth is getting stranger than fiction
A mystic location in the woods, a group of anorexic sadhus invoking cult.. cut.. a young couple being educated about dyslexia while a kid is painting his mind… cut… a star couple and their hickeys with animated figments of conversation.. cut .. a Kafkaesque atmosphere with metaphorical depiction of cigarettes and freedom of expression.. cut.. a besotted jungle, a lion dates a lioness with poetic lines exchanged.. cut… man in alienation plots bombs across the city for survival.. cut.. Graphic depiction of a teenager being murdered by a domestic help in a rage of vendetta.. cut.. a political warfare of power and power plants.. cut.. a mother weeping with dead son in her arms and being asked “aapko kaisa lag raha abhi?”
Did you have the faintest idea that I juxtaposed news ticker scripts and movie plots from the new wave bollywood cinema? Understandably no I presume. This seemingly disconnected array is a depiction of how the news media is gesturing huge pay checks to wannabe film writers/directors and that bollywood cinema is getting real with themes of modern existence and characters are beginning to renounce their larger than life tags. In a way television news media has swapped its role with cinema.
I fail to comprehend the chain of events that triggered this mad frenzy: sensationalism taking precedence over news and information. I think the trend started with sting journalism tapes of some politicians caught on camera under the table. This garnered TRPs that could beat a hundred farmer suicides or our neighborhood in state of emergency. This was compounded by the psyche of people, of getting over awed by calamity and chaos, the urge to propagate fear and trepidation. Specifically the towns and hinterlands, they get traumatized with every false fear and believe in god reincarnating in a kid from Jharkhand or impostors who predict apocalypse from a news room. The media blatantly capitalizes on this unnerving gullibility. The reason for a teen murder case is parent’s infidelity or the teen’s character in question. It could be possible that the cops who make these inane allegations are victims of sensationalized news and at some point they try to internalize the “news” to reflect it in their judgment.
Entertainment from real people as opposed to stereotypical bollywood interpretations is becoming a strong factor for this change. Audiences find a person caught in a criminal case on news channels more interesting than a serial killer movie. 9/11, 7/11 and other such precarious situations have ushered in era of “glorified chaos” as the new mantra for TRPs. It’s a classic equation of self sustaining supply-demand. A news channel throws in some irrelevant but fear inducing footage, the audience with initial resistance, succumbs to it as entertainment. Meanwhile 20 other channels replicate this model. In order to differentiate, the news channel ups the level of its tamaasha factor and then the audience attunes to this new level of atrocity. All along this vicious cycle, the audience is oblivious to this change that is happening to the subconscious.
On the other side of this dichotomy is a new face of Indian cinema resurrecting from small budgets, rational thinking and of course love for quality cinema. With increased exposure to world cinema, multiplexes and multiplexing audience, filmmakers are now beginning to up the level. I can see an undercurrent of French New Wave of cinema which focused on realism. Films like, Johnny Gaddar, Aamir, TZP, No Smoking, Mithya, Vishal’s movies, Kukunoor’s and many others are now bringing the realism in Indian cinema. The masses are refusing melodramatic content and exaggerated emotions of the actors. Which now, the news media is lapping it up. Stereotypes like rich heroine-poor hero, hero wants to elope with already married/engaged heroine etc are dying at the resurgence of fresher characters like working moms, hero-heroine peacefully breaking up because of mutually understanding incompatibility, socially responsible cola-teens, zero-song- great-background-score movies. All of this is changing the society at large. Cinema has a lot of influence on our attitudes, lifestyles and our actions. I feel happy that this effect is slowly bringing progression and reason in the society. For instance TZP raised awareness about dyslexia in many schools for the handicapped. Parents of dyslexic kids are no longer embarrassed of the condition. A school in Hyderabad for the mentally handicapped has had record enrollments form the time the movie was released. Before this they had to go town to town to educate people about the importance of special education for these children.
Incongruous yet dissecting paths of cinema and mass media, and we are here at the joints of time. One is leading to newer cinema improving social beliefs and the other ceasing us, we, the people to a regressive society. There has to be some medium that controls media sensationalism but then that would control our freedom of expression, the objective of mass media. In pursuit of truth, let truth be our guiding force and fiction improve the way we perceive truth.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Neeraj, valid points you have raised there. But how do we control media sensationalism? The best way is to have an autonomous regulatory body, like they do in the West. But even they have proved to be ineffective. I guess when you ask for freedom of speech and expression, these are the side effects you also need to live with. But as shown in movies like The Quiz Show, The Insider, Network, this is a malaise affecting all democratic societies. The other alternative we have is for the Government to step in regulate but that would be a cure worse than the disease.
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@ Ratnakar – I dont think we need to do anything to control media sensationalism. It will loose its taste with time. Lets not forget, its the same audience which has moved from melodramatic cinema to news media, just for the different taste. Sooner or later, the same audience will move to some other medium for something else.
The point being – I can see media being divided into two groups – Mass and Niche. While Cinema was mass medium decades ago, with cable tv penetration, TV and News media became mass and Cinema trying to escape death, became niche. Dont know how the future will unfold, but going by the internet trends, Internet will be the mass and probably Cinema and TV will take the niche route in their approach towards audience
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All said and done but even the likes of Rajdeep Sardesai have shamelessly accepted that they serve what the viewers want and hence covering the “Unforgettables” is as relevant as the “Arushi murder case”. The problem my dear is that with the mass reach, TV/Cinema is fighting hard for TRPs from the janta. So where Saas-bahu sagas are winning top slots with the ‘aam janta’, the (sadly) spicy news channels are targetting the news hungry ‘i hate ekta community’.
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Neeraj, great article! As an ex-journo, the dumbing down of eyeballs staring at a screen or poring over a paper is a point of constant contention and discussion in media circles. Some give into in and have TRPs/readership soar thru the roof, others stoically stick to their mission of delivering ‘real news’ and end up being relegated as niche papers for aging intellectuals or die out for lack of advertising.
India (in case you haven’t heard) is massive, and like it’s economic disparity, so too exist huge disparities in taste/education/media preferences. in the 70s, 80s – Hindi cinema was for your average truck driver, the self confessed ‘quality filmophiles’ watched old Guru Dutt movies or Hollywood. Now, with Bollywood more corporatised with access to legit money, it can afford to cater to the folks who disdainfully avoided Hindi cinema.
And now that TV is in every household, the news caters to the lowest common denominator – it’s escapist news, for the masses who don’t need a ‘reality check’ 24/7, considering they ain’t exactly got the cushy life!
You’re right, with DTH/ rising literacy rates – the old media is going to get niche. And the internet already is, which as many news blogs as there are journalists..
I don’t believe in controlling the media – that’s for communists and fascists. If you don’t like what you see on tv – switch it off! The media only shows what audiences want to see – if enough people switch off their tvs in response to sensationalism, it’ll be more fruitful for tv/papers to air real news. Otherwise, heck, subscribe to a damn blog!
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Ahem! Agreed Vivie!! I foresee from a squint eye that even emedia will bring its share of dumbing down of eye balls… havent u seen those idiotic 3-d smiley ads, porno ads and other stuff?? Sooner or later, we will e-space with its huge potential to be tweaked, will become the mecca for these people who sensationalize… imagine reading your friends’ blog or booking an air ticket and bham!! you have a page tearing pop up that says ” Breaking news: ” Kareena gets her hair permed”. Guess we already have been invaded from all fronts
I had this strange dream once that all advertisers are sending signals through satellites in to or brains, something like a “stream of thought”… You will suddenly think of eating chicken and suddenly you’ll think KFC…
Imagine if this was true in some years..
PS: This is my first blog on PFC, thanks for all the comments.
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Great points dude!
But is the media only to blame? Aren’t we all party too… we lap it up… not just people in small non-descript towns but all of us… and since we have not rejected this “atrocity” outright, we will have to live with it.
I remember this started with a channel pushing that story that there was a car on the roads of delhi which had no driver.
It continued for over 3 days. There was no negative reaction.. we lapped it up…
and now it is a flood…
wonder who truely is to blame….
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Haha@ advertisers accessing our streams of thought! Very cool idea – and hey, i see it happening soon! Advertisers have been experimenting with this ’subliminal’ advertising for a while now – delivering messages through subtle imagery that get imprinted in our minds below our conscious level. And now, with increased understanding of how the collective conscience and social memes work – i’m sure they can send ‘buy signals’ directly to our minds….
And i have to disagree with you about the dumbing down of the net – i think the net mirrors the entirety of eyeballs on it. With technology such as ad blockers, adsense, permission marketing, and targetted/relevant advertising, a surfer isn’t likely to see an ad that isn’t useful/relevant or topical to them. If you’re searching for ‘cars’ in google, you won’t have ads about Kareena’s perm pop up – you’ll have ads for the latest car fair, car deals, auto parts etc. If you’re on a friend’s blog about art-house cinema, the page tear would be about latest art movies playing in your area. You’re more likely to click on ads that appeal to your tastes and needs.
The internet is the most niche there is, coz your experience is entirely customized – from your news feeds, to adsense to permission mailers to recommendations based on your past behaviour – it’s hard to encounter stuff that doesn’t fit into your world of preferences.
Which is why i see old media integrating into the net model eventually – you can’t beat such targetted markets – the individual!
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Nice point you have raised my friend.
But is it completely fair on our part to question what media shows ?
They are just part of the demand & supply chain.
If they wont receive high TRP’s for so called sensational news then only more importance would be given to the real news.
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As a business man I pursue it as a superb way of making money. The Hindu has its niche subscriber base but TOI sells more than ten folds, now the choice is whether to do business where there is huge money or cater to niche and be sophisticated. No body is here for charity… ultimately it is business, a game of Survival of the fittest, and every one needs to make money, For sensational news TV channels shell out a lot of money, rather it would be cheaper and simpler for them to deliver real news but is there anyone to appreciate it (From TV Channel shoes). Junta love to watch how Khali became KHALI…..but zero TRP if any channel shows how kalam became KALAM…… Audience the ultimate power and media channels are driven by their taste. (It is just another entity which makes money through society emotions and sentiments).Changing the psyche of the audience is a superstitious notion… it’ll happen when it should happen… I was thought by parents that lettering is a bad habit use dustbin, if you take the initiative first, people around would follow… it would form a chain reaction and clean up the city… its been 25 years now…we are insignificant in this world of trillion opinions… No point in blaming media, blame oneself and blame the society. What we all can do is just play a blog blog game…
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Forgot to mention… Neeraj.. i truely appreciate your blog.. this is one of the few i liked in this potal…welcome to PFC
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Nayak,
Valid argument.
From my post:
“It’s a classic equation of self sustaining supply-demand. A news channel throws in some irrelevant but fear inducing footage, the audience with initial resistance, succumbs to it as entertainment. Meanwhile 20 other channels replicate this model. In order to differentiate, the news channel ups the level of its tamaasha factor and then the audience attunes to this new level of atrocity”
The audience tries to imitate and internalize what the media projects… So at least the media should be like a beacon of good morals and values so that the society follows… If you show naked people throughout the day, you’ll have the TRPs flying off the roof but how ethical is that?
You are a businessman, would you do flesh trade because its the easiest and most ROI-worthy business plan? I hope you get my point.
Incidentally, I picked up the habit of picking up litter from streets and putting in the dust bin watching my school time friends…. so there.
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Neeraj,
Back in my old IIM Calcutta days there is a subject “Ethics in managerial effectiveness and human values”. It says ethics drawn by the society may not be the individual acceptance.
Coming to the point..
There is nothing unethical as long as the society is accepting it… if something goes beyond certain threshold the audience certainly stop accepting the same… for example seminude is the threshold point, if they go beyond that and show complete nudity, as an individual I may accept but not the society…remember the threshold bar is not a constant (it is the societal acceptance resistance at that point in time).
Now … As a business man I keep the content which sells comprehensively, and would cast the same until the commercials fade out….if I sit and start analyzing every time that how much value addition this program would bring into the Audience, gone, I should close my shop in no time.
Educate the Audience to encourage the real / good content. not media…Media is like a restaurant, variety of dishes are available on its menu card, the more the demand for certain dish the greater the quantity prepared. (Different angle, if Hyderabad likes Biryana, every restaurant serves it, likewise every channel shows the same content that in demand) Trust me it is a tough job, the dynamics keep changing and very complex, certainly no time to think on ethics and values. Throw the stuff in demand till the time everyone accepts if you sense some resilience stop and give something new.
It is a catch 22 situation here, to educate the Audience you need media….. To run the media channels they should have Audience… Ultimately audience is superior when they are not appreciating real news…. Media could only shift the paradigm but can’t change.
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