“ Accha anita aap kitni satisfied hain ab “ , “ agar aapke paas kuch aise hee mazedaar pranks hoon toh hamein bhejein”, “ no rules, only masti”. I was told the advent of international players would raise the quality of content of television, instead I got a slew of operators fighting on the best A/V format, trying to explain the intricacies to people who consider VLC player to be a video format, or worse call an ‘engineer’ to install it. I was told our ‘culture’ would remain intact as the biggies would have to generate content tailored to our sensibilities, and then came the biggest bolt of them of all, as if the saas-bahu verbatim wasn’t enough for a generation that saw channel after channel disgorging extra-marital, super natural melodrama, here was the latest avatar, now a travesty could be made our of our lives and become a national spectacle. Nobody seems to mind, apparently schadenfreude is a money spinner, we now have a new genre of celebrities, their claim to fame is gloating about anything under the sun, their antics, their talent and their shelf life, well who cares.
The prime time ramblings of our “ news channels” was the limit of how abysmal the standards were, but this was a new low, the subterfuge was brilliant, expose the moral debauchery, purported at expunging any vices, they have only helped strengthen the misgivings in the already frayed relationships. And hence the question “what is wrong in showing, what is already commonplace?” Amen, so the next time a public figure is caught pants down, it wouldn’t hurt to inundate every inch of our imagination, the concomitant drama is then lambasted for being insensitive and invading, the average joe is not privileged, for he can be trampled over by this juggernaut, and complain is akin to being cloistered or worse being bulimic, I do not wish to harangue about the threat to Indian culture or anything. This is a question of simple question of value creation. The legacy waiting to be passed on, and which is sadly nothing more than mortification, senility, I remember how my grandparents would reminisce about their days, wonder what stories would I tell, ( I was ‘friend’with 200 people I never knew, I came on TV once my ex ensured our breakup was as loud as possible, I was the champion of the online game “ war of wizards” ) some legacy I guess, while the intellectual capital has ensured that we are counted, our social legacy is largely bankrupt, our scruples are fiddled with everyday, our principles are at best accommodating, our identity is defined by the tags on our appurtenances, our company by the places we frequent.
The larger question at hand is what are we making of ourselves. Are we mere puppets dancing to tunes played by agencies we so innocuously made a part of our lives, or worse, are we dim-wits who are plodding upon whatever is thrown at them? The domain of such agencies may not be limited just to the mass media, but mass media by default is the staple diet, so themes that explore how easy is to manipulate this media ( how so ever cliché they may sound) are still frightening, a nation that feeds on mindless crap, shall beget the same, the cornucopia of information, options is merely an eyewash, this may seem rhetoric, yet this remains the single biggest scourge of our times. While activists are dismissed as sore pessimists, it is largely true that our propensity to change is the reason why we have done well in the race to stay
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