Ever since Satyamev Jayate (SMJ) aired on Star Plus and Doordarshan three Sundays ago, both, host Aamir Khan and the show have captured the public imagination. The inaugural episode received an all-India 4.1 television rating across the channels and cable networks on which the show is aired. It also appears as though somnolent state governments and an indifferent janta have suddenly woken up to female foeticide and child sex abuse - the first two issues that were covered. Three days after the first episode was aired, the Madhya Pradesh health department suspended the licenses of 65 Medical Termination of Pregnancy centres, while Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot announced a fast track court to expedite cases related to the issue. Newscasters are calling Khan a journalist, and perhaps, for the first time, a case can be made for a talk show that has become more popular than its celebrity host - a recent exercise in trend spotting by Google Insights for search, a data comparison tool, revealed that by the second week, netizens were searching more for the show than for Aamir Khan. To put that into perspective, consider this: 12 years after Kaun Banega Crorepati first aired, Amitabh Bachchan still remains more searched for than his show, online.
Will social talk shows replace reality TV as the new form of entertainment? If, as SMJ's tagline goes, dil pe lagegi, tabhi baat banegi, then let's put our mind to what's making it so popular.
Judicious use of tears
While experts and viewers agree on the good intentions behind Khan's television debut, it is interesting to note the pitch-perfect reactions of the studio audience and the host during the show. Depending on what is said, the audience looks teary-eyed, shocked, angered and sometimes, just plain disgusted. Other immensely popular talk shows - in Hindi and on regional television channels - also use background music to great effect. For instance, in a recent episode of Zindagi Live, the award-winning talk show on IBN Khabar, the topic of discussion was lesbianism. Every time the guest spoke of the prejudice she has faced, sad music would play in the backdrop.
In SMJ, music plays several roles - it is emotional, inspirational and often, cathartic. According to media critic Sevanti Ninan, "The live performance at the end of each episode is intended to create an emotional bond between audience and show."
Panning to an audience member looking shocked, and using sad music add to the dramatic effect of what is being said. What it also does is introduce fictional tropes in a non-fictional show. Heightened emotion makes for great television viewing (we don't need another Emotional Atyachar to prove it to us). But such power of suggestion almost always works in generating similar viewer response, says Ninan. Little wonder then that the tone of the comments left on the YouTube videos of SMJ and Zindagi Live either decry the social wrong, sympathise with the guest, or express anger towards an indifferent state.
Zindagi Live anchor Richa Anirudh agrees that the audience on SMJ looks a little too perfect, but insists that talk show hosts don't put studio audiences through mock sessions on how to react. In fact, she says, the hosts are often susceptible to bouts of emotional response. Kanchan Adhikari, who anchored 250 episodes of the Marathi show Dil Khulas on Mi Marathi, which ended two years ago, would agree. She began crying while interviewing a sex worker once. "I asked her how many customers she took in a night. 'Between six and eight men,' she replied. I multiplied that number for a week, a month, a year and her whole life, and I was reduced to tears."
Khan does that too, often wiping away a tear, covering his mouth, or shaking his head in disbelief, when guests like Cindrella Prakash, a survivor of child sex abuse, speak of what they have been through.
According to Shohini Ghosh, professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia University, the depiction of such emotion, by host and audience, serves an important purpose. In an article for Kafila.org, she refers to the "cathartic revelations, shocking testimonies, interviews with experts, cutaways of shocked or tearful studio audiences and a host who is both, emotive and inspirational" as "affective tropes". "Shows with such formats usually end on a feel-good note where a 'solution' to the problem is proffered," she writes.
Game changer for real?
In SMJ, Khan lays out a plan of action that concerned citizens can follow, besides asking them to text their political will in yes and no answers to a certain number. In the second episode, he even got actress Sridevi to sign a pledge to support the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill, 2011, recently passed by the Rajya Sabha.
Anirudh gives us an instance of how a 27-year-old BTech student from Hyderabad, Imran Khan, was publically exonerated after appearing on her show and sharing his story with her viewers. Khan was falsely implicated on charges of terrorism in 2007 and while he was exonerated by the courts, he was socially ostracised. After the show was aired, he landed a job and completed his engineering degree.
Dhanya Varma, a well-known face on Rosebowl Channel of Asianet, a cable network in Kerala, hosts a youthoriented show called Talking Point. The two-year-old show has tackled issues such as being single in the city, and even had trans-activist Anil Sadanandan, who was recently murdered, discuss moral policing. The show has received over 25 lakh hits on YouTube so far, informs Sumesh Lal, head - Content, Rosebowl.
Despite its popularity, Varma sounds a note of caution. "My show reaches out to a lot of young people, including teenagers. Many of them would come down from Dubai and the US for the holidays and go back and watch it online. Many wrote in with their problems. But television can't offer hard and fast solutions or an all-purpose medicine," she says.
The celeb factor
Is it necessary to have a celebrity host a show on serious social issues? Aamir Khan's impact is clear. While he charges an estimated 4 crore per episode, he also reportedly asked a watch and electronics brand he endorses, to refrain from advertising on SMJ - a move that would only enhance his credibility and trustworthiness. Yet, the fact that the show is aired across some 15-odd channels, including local cable networks, is indication that it's riding on more than goodwill generated for Khan. There are advertising coups being effected in the background. The channel charges anywhere between 4 to 5 lakh for a 10-second advertising slot. Companies like Bharti Airtel (the title advertiser) and Aquaguard spent 15 to 18 crore in the first week, according to press reports.
By contrast, Anirudh's show made a celebrity of her. Zindagi Live won the Ladli Media Award for gender sensitivity in 2009. Anirudh has 17,500 followers on Facebook and over 3,000 on Twitter.
The host's involvement is central
According to a spokesperson from Aamir Khan Productions, Khan worked on the concept of SMJ for two years before approaching Star CEO Uday Shankar.
Anirudh still keeps in touch with some of her guests. "A nine-year-old girl, Manisha, came on the show in 2007, after she lost her parents in the Sarojini Nagar (New Delhi) bomb blasts. She is 14-years-old now, and
I am like her guardian. She comes home. So, this is more than a show for me." Talk show hosts on regional television channels admit to doing the same. "It requires total commitment and involvement. I used to research for a week on some of the issues that we took up, such as the cause of eunuchs and devdasis," says Dil Khulas's Adhikari. "It has to be done 'dil se'." Actress Kirron Kher, who hosted a talk show on men, Purushkshetra, in the late '90s, believes it is more important to have a lively and interesting anchorperson. "I used to come on the show and chat with the audience to get them involved with the subject, so that their reactions flew pontaneously. The adrenaline was pumping. There would be fights between members of the audience too and that made it all very lively," she says.
Kher has some advice for Khan. "Aamir is extremely well-intentioned and bright, but he appears studied and pensive. The viewer connect suffers in this case. You can't talk at people; you have to talk with them."
Ghosh however has no complaints with Khan, and calls him a respectful host. But, she hopes the show would use other means to reach out to viewers that are not inspired by popular cinema.
"The first two episodes seemed inspired by Taare Zameen Par. Making people cry is not the only way to make people 'feel' for issues. Laughter can be as moving and effective. I hope some of the future episodes of Satyamev explore the subversive power of laughter," she says. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/tv/Why-does-Aamir-cry-every-sunday/articleshow/13550622.cms
Sorry Aamir Khan, kal baat nahin bani
We should have seen the depths of horror that the greed for dowry can plumb to.
What we saw, and heard, on Satyamev Jayate should have been seared in our eyes, and hearts, never to be forgotten.
That didn't happen, says Savera Someshwar.
The practice of taking, and giving, dowry is not a trivial crime.
It destroys a family emotionally, financially and, many times, physically.
Dowry attempts to satiate a greed so severe that it turns human beings into soulless caricatures who will not hesitate to maim, burn, hurt, torture and even kill another human being if their demand for wealth is not satisfied.
Until this scourge can be erased from the planet, anything and everything we do to raise awareness -- and hopefully, a conscience -- can only be welcomed with open arms.
Sooner or later, Satyamev Jayate, and Aamir Khan [ Images ], were bound to take up this burning issue.
They did, in the third episode aired on May 20.
And what a poorly crafted episode it turned out to be.
The horror of the dowry system needed to be brought into our living room in a manner that would have shaken us out of our apathy, led to intense discussions, a call to action and hopefully, the courage to stand up and protest, to be counted when someone we know is faced with this ugly demand.
We, in urban India [ Images ] -- the consumers of news and entertainment in the print, electronic and Net formats, and avid participants in social media -- have read and heard about so many cases of dowry that, unless the case is particularly horrific, it becomes a 'blind spot.'
We've heard about dowry related woes so often that a sigh of pity for the victim may escape us; we may wonder why parents of girls still give dowry and, rarely, why parents of boys demand dowry... And that's it. We flip the page or move on to the next post...
(I won't presume to talk about rural India here because I am not qualified to do so.)
And that, most probably, is what we will do to Aamir Khan's attempt to bring the sin of dowry into our living rooms.
The reason I say this is the stories he chose to highlight. I do not wish to take away from the suffering of the bride who was severely ill-treated by her spouse, the newly-wed who was abandoned by her husband and ill-treated by her in-laws, or the parents from Kerala [ Images ] who lost their daughter to this societal evil.
What happened to them is criminal and they deserve to see the perpetrators punished.
Unfortunately, I have seen images of tortured brides and wives that have forced me to turn away in shock.
Of burnt brides, struggling to put a claim on life again.
Of battered, tortured marital victims, wondering why they had to pay the price for something over which they had no control -- that of being born a girl.
In order to shake up a society that has become so apathetic, these were the stories that we needed to see on the show.
These were the kind of stories that Aamir picked for the first couple of shows -- from a doctor family torturing their daughter-in-law for giving birth to female twins to the dignified young lady and man who spoke quietly about how they were sexually abused as children.
Their lives are lodged in our hearts, and will not be easily forgotten.
This time, we should have seen the depths of horror that the greed for dowry can plumb to. What we saw, and heard, should have been seared in our eyes, and hearts, never to be forgotten.
That didn't happen. This episode did not possess the gravitas that underlined the earlier episodes of Satyamev Jayate.
There were highlights of course.
The young married woman who talked of her father committing suicide because he was unable to bear the burden of the loan he had taken for her wedding... Of how her eyes eloquently answered the question as to whether her marriage was a happy one.
But it also left me wondering: I hope she is okay, and not being mistreated, after the show went on air.
One can't help applaud the gutsy young lady who ran a sting operation on a dowry-infected family. And her gutsy brother, who announced that he would marry his sister on the day of her scheduled wedding, to a boy who was willing to marry her without dowry.
As a woman, however, I wonder: Why congratulate a man who respects his wife? By doing that, are we not undermining women? Should respecting a spouse not be a given? Why does it need to be highlighted or praised? Are women praised for respecting their husbands?
Maybe I am being a little prickly here -- after all, when a north-eastern man said he wouldn't really like to watch a match on a television set that came as dowry, what his wife insisted she had the right to watch her favourite serial instead because the television set was bought by her parents, I laughed.
The North-East may be a different story; I'm ashamed to admit I don't really know. But how many married women in the rest of India, or even in our own families, would actually say that to their husbands?
The problem here is the mindset.
That a male child is more valuable than a female child.
That a male child carries on the family name.
That a male child will look after you in your old age.
That a female child is a cause of financial drain.
If we want to get rid of the dowry system, it is these beliefs that need to be shattered. The resulting dust needs to be scattered into the winds, so that it can never come together as a whole again.
What we need, today, is a drastic change in the way we parent.
We need to parent boys and girls in the same way, with the same rules and the same grounding. We need to treat our male and female children equally, not coddle one at the cost of the other.
We, as parents, need to teach our children to be financially independent. We need to teach them the value of love, and the value of relationships. We need to teach them responsibility. We need to teach them that actions have consequences.
We need to stop seeing our children as commodities to be bought (giving dowry to buy a groom) or sold (selling your son for dowry).
If we succeed in doing this, and it is a daily challenge, we won't have to worry about dowry. About children abandoning their parents. Or about female foeticide.
For me, this did not come across in the third episode of Satyamev Jayate.
Sorry, Aamir, aap ka yeh episode dil pe nahin laga.
Baat nahin bani.
http://www.rediff.com/movies/column/sorry-aamir-khan-kal-baat-nahin-bani/20120521.htmWhat went wrong with Satyamev Jayate's third episode?
New Delhi: Ever since Satyamev Jayate premiered on national television on May 6, it has received tremendous appreciation from politicians, celebrities and society alike. But as the show is progressing, the interest in the social issues covered is slowly taking a downward spiral. The host Aamir Khan's dialogue too seem scripted.
Take, for instance, the first episode which covered the despicable reality of female foeticide in India, throwing light on how female foeticide prevails not just in rural areas, but in urban cities as well. While Aamir Khan pondered over this gender bias, the nation remained glued to their televisions in agreement, anger and silent knowledge of the depths at which this phenomenon has seeped into Indian culture.
It made people question themselves about the world they live in and whether education is the only key to deal with this issue. Aamir Khan's occasional breakdowns were a heart-rending prelude to the next episodes in store for the nation.
The second episode's emphasis on child sex abuse showcased some tear-jerking moments among the audience and the host. Cinderella Prakash's horrific nightmare of assault which haunted her for several years, and Harish Iyer's journey of repeated molestation for almost a decade, finally resulting in the power to say 'NO', once again alerted society on the harsh realities which children have faced and continue to face, serving as a reality-check for several others who were completely unaware of how prevalent this issue is.
The anguish of their parents who now wish they could turn back time and erase the painful memories was a warning signal to parents in the country, who now understand how important communication, education and awareness is for their children. Well received once again.
Episode 3 however failed to instill the same sense of anger and rage in the minds of the viewers, despite several hearts bleeding for the victims of dowry torture and suicide. Take Paramjeet Kaur's marriage which ended in betrayal, of a husband who amassed lakhs of rupees from her family to settle in Australia and abandoned her, who was left with no choice but to return to her family upon being tortured by her in-laws in Jalandhar. Delhi girl Komal Sethi's parents spent almost sixty lakhs on her wedding, only resulting in having to adjust to an abusive husband who forced her into starvation and despair, and Madurai-based lecturer Nishana's suicide, who crumbled under the pressure for dowry demands in the hands of her husband and in-laws.
Then the somewhat ridiculous case, received quite ludicrously by the audience, of Santosh Kumar's 'pakadwa byaah', where he was forced to get married in the quest of escaping the payment of dowry. Worth a mention is the Madhya Pradesh-based 'Tanzeem Khuddam E Millat' which abandons weddings in the community which do not adhere to the regulation of keeping weddings a low-cost affair to avoid burdening the girl's family. And finally, Rani Tripathi's brave sting operation which exposed the greedy demands of her fianc and his family, which resulted in several proposals and a happily ever after with someone else.
But what was so disappointing about the episode this time? Was it the attitude of the parents of these victims, and many others in the country, who have mentally conditioned themselves to save every rupee for the assumed gift-giving under the veil of dowry, or the sheer desire to spend beyond their means to make their daughter's wedding a festive occasion? In retrospect, these parents, no matter how well-educated, were the same people who urged their daughters to adjust to their news homes while their daughters continues to face atrocities and struggle each day. This brings to sight that even education has not been enough to prevent these atrocities.
Many questions arise here. Why does child sex abuse and female foeticide appall parents and the society so much when there are many other burning issues which deserve equal attention, like dowry demands? Why does the unceasing existence of dowry not evoke the same emotion? Did this subject truly bring forth the reality of this social issue? Aamir Khan breaking into tears as the women shared their grief, now seems to be following a definitive script, where his reactions are almost predictable. As the show is progressing, the interest it is evoking among the audience is slowly dipping.
Social issues witnessed not just in mere fragments of society, but society in general, is what everyone needs to be alerted about. A show which began with the promise of spreading awareness is slowly becoming just another show which came with a bang, with an impact which is slowly dying out.
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