Debating the logic of reality TV....article

A couple of weeks ago, this column argued that Sach Ka Samna stood in opposition not specifically to Indian culture, but in some ways, to the very idea of culture. Is it possible to read programmes like this in another way and to find another interpretation of what their prevalence and popularity might mean? Could it be that our fear of change is so great that we look at any unfamiliar development with an instinctive disquiet and then recruit rational sounding arguments to articulate our discomfort?

Surely, it is no accident that reality television has become as big as it has, not just in India but worldwide. The trend is not limited to controversial and confessional shows like Sach Ka Samna but includes relatively harmless talent-hunt shows, eg Indian Idol. Of course, in all of these we construct a theatre of live unpredictable human emotion, an unscripted peek into other people's lives that seeks to show us just who we really are.

In doing so, there is a collective effort to remove the veil of mystery from human behaviour. How do women choose men and vice-versa? How do ordinary people cope when faced with daunting physical and emotional challenges? How would celebrities who live in such unreal worlds act when trapped in a world crawling with unpredictable reality? How do our near and dear ones really feel about us deep down in their cavernous hearts? In addressing these issues, reality shows instinctively seem to focus on our darker sides by ensuring that the participants spill out their deeper untutored feelings. It is an act of turning our insides out so that the world can see our psychic entrails.

Are we engaging in our own, admittedly unfamiliar version of experimenting with the truth? While each individual piece in this complex jigsaw may not be appetizing, is the collective endeavour seeking to re-imagine society by challenging and exposing the many tacit hypocrisies it engages in? Are we mounting little resistances against the established social order by puncturing the assumptions it conspires to be founded upon? While Sach Ka Samna as an individual programme might make some of us uncomfortable, is it but one part of a grander design, even if it is an unconscious one?

As we move from a time when the collective unit, be it the family, the caste or the tribe was the defining one in society to one where it is structured around the individual, a lot of rebuilding needs to take place. Reality television works to make the implicit explicit and brings about self-awareness to what was once reflexive. We see ourselves in this petri dish, this mirror-laboratory where people like us play games mimicking life and death. Sach Ka Samna, for instance, loosens the individual from the folds of the collective by making us publicly acknowledge that however closely welded we might be to our near and dear ones, a little part of us is fiercely independent and thinks deep dark thoughts about everyone else.

The problem with this process of reconfiguring society is that it uses as its instruments forces it has little understanding or control over. Money is one such instrument that is used as an incentive to help loosen our tongues and lubricate our actions. It serves to flatten differences (you pay the same for a CD regardless of whether it contains a po*nographic film, a popular blockbuster or Charulata). Money helps reconfigure society around the individual by making every relationship a potential transaction. It is always possible, as the show in question demonstrates to value the cost of relationships in monetary terms.

The other force is technology. We need television for reality shows to succeed. Television by virtue of lacking depth and being located in real time allows for no introspection. Unlike newspapers and magazines where we do not pick up just any publication unless we like reading it, the structure of television imposes no such discrimination. We flick from channel to channel and rest our eyes on whatever stimulates us.

The combination of money and television creates a world that we had not imagined before. We are swept away by its combined force while retaining the illusion that we are in control. We keep talking about how we should change the channel if we don't like what we see without acknowledging how the channel is changing us. That we can defend a show that replicates a primitive form of bloodsport without any great reservations tells us just how powerful the influence of these forces can be. The question is whether we can at all control the change we are seeking. Because otherwise, in our search for greater room for the individual, we may end up creating a world of which no individual would want to be a citizen.