Racial Discrimination in Big Brother show - Page 13

haha, i think we should apologize to the channel and the British government 😛

and while we are getting all remorseful, we should also apologize to the folks who ransack our homes. after all, the cleaning lady doesn't show up everyday and who are we to sue when our own houses are in disorder?😛 also, until we have apprehended every last criminal, we should let them all go scot-free. cant raise a voice against discrimination till it's rooted out from our own country.

i think it would be best to ignore the power of the media in terms of legitimizing behavior, no?😛 no distinction should be made between the subtle discrimination that is commonplace everywhere in the world and having such behavior go unchallenged when it is in the public domain. forget about that  religious group here in the west which tries to use the New York Times and other outlets to shape public opinion to their cause. they know not what they do.

btw, i did not realize we were in the habit of throwing "racial" mud at foreigners in public, unlesss it's sucking up to and fawning over foreigners. ever seen how our most venerable politicians are tripping over themselves whenever foreigner bill clinton comes calling at Maurya for his bukhara food? 😉

yes, i think we owe those guys an apology, the Indian citizens who live in the west and who need to be treated better be damned.😛

Edited by chatbuster - 17 years ago

 Well said....Feel the same way myself...

 All this inward cleansing makes me 😡. Think locally and act globaly applies here because it is about time the world (and that includes us) started noticing the "brown" rather then just black or white.

Filmy-style happy ending for Shilpa
LONDON: Millions of Britons helped convert controversial reality TV programme Celebrity Big Brother into a Bollywood-style remake full of histrionics and a happy ending for Shilpa Shetty by voting to expel her chief tormentor from the show in a rebuke for alleged racism.

But the cathartic Friday night eviction of Jade Goody by four-fifths of the several million viewers who phoned or texted broadcaster Channel 4 has not calmed the row. On Saturday, new complaints were voiced that Shetty and her tormentors were put under extreme pressure by the broadcaster to publicly deny all allegations of racism.

In a sign of the seriousness with which Britain is viewing international calumny about its alleged racism, the public vote to evict Goody was described by its biggest-selling tabloid as "the most important in Britain since the last general election". An overwhelming majority of 82% of viewers voted against Goody, who went on TV in a post-eviction interview to admit she was "embarrassed and disgusted" by her own behaviour.

But on Friday night, in the most-watched keenly episode ever in the programme's seven-year history, Goody unintentionally let slip that she had been "told" about the race row that almost became a diplomatic bilateral crisis with India, featured in the British parliament's deliberations, drew a record 40,000 complaints to television regulator Ofcom and ricocheted right around the world. Shetty also indicated that she knew there was a crisis over her torment at the hands of three allegedly racist British women. In an extraordinary performance, with television critics crying "fie", "foul" and "fake", Shetty and Goody embraced each other on live TV and Shetty insisted she was "so happy to have met such wonderful people".

In a sign Shetty was aware of the row raging in the outside world, she told Goody she did not think her a racist, but added: "You said it, its going to be out and a lot of Indians heard it. Trust me, it's not going to go down well."

The allegedly phoney rapprochement and Shetty's firm denial she faced racism is thought to be the end result of a 90-minute "talk" C4 executives had with the actress.

The programme has always boasted that Big Brother housemates are completely cut off from the outside world and are never given any information about viewer reaction that could manipulate or alter their behaviour. But Shetty and Goody's unwitting admission they knew of the race furore underlined the programme's "fakery", observers said.

Media experts said a deeply worried Channel 4, which is running scared as other commercial sponsors pull out, had obviously manufactured the display of sisterly love between Shetty and Goody. Channel 4 has been under immense commercial and political pressure to end the alleged racist bullying in the Big Brother house, which peaked a fortnight after Shetty's entry.

The broadcaster has been lobbying to get a share of the television licence fee that currently funds only the BBC. C4's claim to public money comes on the grounds that it too, like the BBC, is a "public service" broadcaster and is committed to a public service remit. But the Shetty controversy has deeply damaged its reputation for presenting all facets of multi-cultural Britain with fairness and honesty.

Meanwhile, Shetty achie-ved the distinction (on Saturday) of becoming the first Hindi actress to have one of her films offered as a free giveaway by a British newspaper.

Advising its readers that Shetty had the "glory in Bollywood terms (of) bringing the AIDS issue to the forefont(like) Tom Hanks in Hollywood", The Times, London, began a three-day giveaway of Phir Milenge.

In a sign that an anxious Britain has began a national introspection on what message, if any, the TV show sends out about a deep vein of racism, a new newspaper poll said 55% of Britons believed the insults directed at Shetty were not typical of modern Britain. The Guardian/Marketing Sciences poll showed most people believe Channel 4 should have intervened to stop the abuse of Shetty. A quarter of respondents said the show did reflect society and more than half said Channel 4 had engineered the clashes to gain viewing figures.

After her eviction Goody confessed that when her comments against Shetty were read back to her, she thought "Oh my God, maybe I am racist". She added: "I look like a complete and utter nasty small person — the sort of person I don't like myself," but continued: "I am not a racist and I sincerely, with my hand on my heart, apologise to anyone I have offended out there."

The Sun newspaper editorialized that Goody was a "vile, pig-ignorant racist bully" consumed by envy of Shetty's "superior intelligence, beauty and class". It said the eviction vote, which pitted Shetty against Goody, had become "a referendum on whether our nation... was prepared to back a home-grown yob over a dignified Indian actress".

It added, in self-congratulatory terms, "We weren't and the result has restored faith in the British public". Other British tabloids criticised the programme-makers for a "shameful exercise in manipulation" and offered the view Goody's eviction was stage-managed. At least one newspaper said it was hypocritical for Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan to claim the alleged racism on the show "touched a nerve" and raised important issues for debate, just 18 months after he declared that Big Brother did not pretend to undertake "social or moral education".

The Times' columnist David Aaronovitch also criticized C4, saying, "If I burnt down Andy's house, could I persuade him that by doing so I had raised important issues of fire safety and the control of pyromaniacs?" And as ratings soared well above the previous night's 5.9 million, he said it was even worse that people were watching the programme, which "satisfies our taste for cruelty". He said the reality TV programme spoke volumes about modern British society. "If Channel 4 is bad, we may be worse. We tune in to watch a programme that has been deemed to have racist content, precisely because of the row."

But the Independent said the exchanges between Goody and Shetty may have had a "beneficial and perhaps cathartic" effect because "They triggered a spontaneous national discussion about race and racism that was in many ways long overdue".

The Guardian meanwhile argued that Goody's refusal to admit she was racist despite calling Shetty "Shilpa poppadom" showed racism was now socially unacceptable "but it is also testimony to profound weakness, a measure of how little distance we have travelled as a society when it comes to understanding racism.

Race, nationalism and big money

Vir Sanghvi

January 20, 2007

By one of those strange coincidences, I was in London during the first week of January. Almost on impulse, I switched on the TV set in my hotel room to discover that I was watching the very first episode of this series of Celebrity Big Brother.

I find the whole concept of Big Brother bizarre. Why, I keep asking myself, would otherwise sensible people agree to be locked up in a house with foul-mouthed maniacs, where their every move is recorded by hidden TV cameras and where the producers plot and scheme to manufacture conflict?

No idea. But yes, they do. The entire generation of Indian feminists who were turned on by the wit and wisdom of The Female Eunuch may understand why Germaine Greer agreed to live in the Big Brother house but I certainly don't.

This time too I watched in astonishment as Ken Russell, whose 1970s films (Women In Love, The Music Lovers, Tommy etc) I had so enjoyed, danced into the house, warbling Singing in the rain for the benefit of the live telecast. Singer Leo Sayer (remember When I need you or I can't stop loving you?), another 1970s favourite, also rushed in enthusiastically.

The rest of the housemates comprised what the Indian press has gleefully taken to describing as white trash: a gay singer from a teen band, a disgraced beauty queen (she slept with the judge and now sleeps with football players), a columnist for the popular press, a small-time American TV star of yesteryear etc etc.

Imagine my surprise then, when our very own Shilpa Shetty wandered in, full of giggly good humour. Why has this girl agreed to live in this madhouse, I wondered. She can't be that desperate: surely there are enough dance contests for her to judge back in India?

My guess then was that Shilpa had been tempted by the money (Rs 3.5 crore, according to one account) and by the chance to become a household name in England. Obviously, some agent had told her that this was her ticket to the big time.

As anybody who is familiar with the Big Brother format will tell you, the producers conspire to turn the house into a hellhole. The ratings come from nudity, drunkenness and sex ("As the show is live, we cannot predict what will happen," they announce hopefully), along with heavy doses of conflict. Each series includes at least a couple of dysfunctional maniacs who are placed there to splutter obscenities and to bully other housemates.

The participants know all this. They are made to sign contracts which explicitly state that these are the conditions of participation. And they are paid enough to make it all worthwhile. (One of Shilpa's housemates, Jade Goody, has made millions of pounds by appearing on reality shows — including the original Big Brother — where her sole function is to introduce conflict and the f-word into the proceedings. Not bad going for a talentless scrubber.)

Given this background, I was not surprised when Jade Goody and a few others turned on Shilpa. With her Bollywood star status, her natural air of celebrity and her goofy good-naturedness, she was the obvious target.

More to the point, I'm not sure that anybody else was surprised. Shilpa is the perfect victim for this kind of a show. And presumably, the same people who told her to sign on the dotted line and to accept the crores, had warned her about this.

So do I feel bad for her? Of course I do. It's never fun to see somebody you like being bullied by a pair of abusive scrubbers.

But my concern has its limits. She knew what she was getting into. And I'm sure she will cry all the way to the bank. (Do you think I'm being unkind? Well, consider this: Ken Russell walked out in the first week. So did Leo Sayer. So have many others. If Shilpa is still hanging in there, it's because she wants to.)

Nor am I terribly convinced by all the politically-correct protests. Of course, racism is bad. And of course the UK is a deeply racist society despite all the gaffe about a caring, sharing, multi-cultural nation. Anybody who has lived in Britain will tell you that when all else has failed, they will not hesitate to use your race as a weapon against you.

But are they targeting Shilpa only because she is brown? I'm not so sure. If they hate anybody who's not white, then why does Jermaine Jackson not have it so bad? (He's one of the four members of the Jackson Five whose names you've forgotten. And unlike his brother Michael, he's still black.) My guess is they hate her because they've been paid to create conflict. And race and ethnicity are their chosen weapons.

More interesting to me is the way in which we've reacted. The response of the political establishment, for instance, strikes me as being completely over the top. Should the Foreign Minister of India comment on a trashy British reality show? Should the Finance Minister bother? Do we need to take the Information and Broadcasting Minister's concerns seriously on the very day when he did his bit for freedom of expression by gratuitously banning a television channel? Should poor, awkward, charmless Gordon Brown, making his first trip to India, be judged by his attitude to Celebrity Big Brother?

Why have the politicians overdone it?

The short answer is: because they sense, with their acute feel for the public mood, that this is a big issue with the Indian middle class.

And why do we care so much? Let's not pretend it's because we are concerned with racism in England. They can burn down entire blocks of flats in the East End of London without a single educated Indian giving a damn about all the poor displaced Bengalis. They can beat up hapless Gujarati children in Leicester and it won't even make it to the Indian papers. Compared to the kind of racism that Asians in Britain sometimes have to face, the Big Brother abuse is kid stuff.

The real reason we are so shocked is because Shilpa Shetty is not a British Asian. She is one of us. And each time her housemates call her names, the slurs tap into the collective insecurities and resentments of English-speaking India.

Each abuse brings back memories of having to stand in immigration queues at Heathrow or JFK, never quite sure of how the official behind the desk will behave; of applying for visas and having to prove that we're not going to abandon our lives in India to become waiters in some Southall curry shop.

It reminds us of the awkwardness we feel each time we meet a Brit or an American and they tell us that they can't understand what we are saying because our accent is too strange; of the abuse the young people who work in our call centres have to face when Americans realise that they have been connected to Gurgaon or Bangalore.

And at some subliminal level, memories of the Raj have been burnt into our DNA. We remember the era of Whites-only clubs, of having to defer to some British half-wit even though we speak his language so much more fluently than he ever will, and of sadly recognising that no matter how well we do, the white man will always think that he is better simply because he is white and we are not.

Over the last decade, we have told ourselves that that era is now over. India is the flavour of the new century. The world is beating a path to our door. Bollywood is being hailed as a global cultural phenomenon. Our IT skills are the envy of every other country. Indian companies are taking over the great firms of Europe and America. No longer do we need to be embarrassed to be Indian.

And then suddenly, we see one of our better known actresses, a girl with no ill will towards anyone, being humiliated by white trash, being told that she should go back to the slums, being made fun of for eating with her hands and being called 'the Indian' by people who refuse to even learn her name.

Is it any wonder that our blood boils? Are you surprised that educated Indians are angry and outraged? When we take up for Shilpa, we are responding to centuries of humiliation and hurt. We are serving notice that the old days are gone and done with. This is the new India. And we don't take this kind of crap any longer.

So funnily enough, I'm on both sides of this debate. I don't think Celebrity Big Brother is a huge racist outrage. It's a cynical reality show where people are paid large sums of money to be abused. But equally, I think our reaction to the way in which Shilpa has been treated tells us something about the new India. The Indian reaction is not about race. It's about nationalism, about our coming of age as a country; about a new pride in ourselves.

Within a month, the Big Brother controversy will be forgotten. But I'm glad it happened. It told us something about ourselves. And more important, it told the world that the new India will not allow itself to be messed with.

oh thanks. i just think we need to stop getting all apologetic for standing up for the rights of our women folks. need some knights in shining armor coming to the rescue😉😆 J/K- i know naari shakti is strong enuff to handle it all on their own but still...😊

my armor is gone for buffing... if its ok....😉... i wont need it in this case anyways....😆

Edited by qwertyesque - 17 years ago

punjini, that's a great article. Thanks for sharing..

And more important, it told the world that the new India will not allow itself to be messed with.

Most people attitude of Indians in the UK is that of a weak person who would not retaliate or fight his corner but would walk away when insulted. Since 9/11 there has been an increase of racist attacks on Indians because of the colour of their skin.

White racists don't ask whether someone is Indian. Everyone with brown skin are lumped together with the weekly roundup of terrorists.

So it is nice that India as a nation has taken center stage in the British news!


  Edited by changabula - 17 years ago

Shilpa Shetty wins Big Brother reality show
[ 29 Jan, 2007 0304hrs ISTIANS ]


RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates

LONDON: Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty has won Channel 4's reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother and bagged an estimated 100,000 pounds in prize money. The results didn't come as a surprise because the leggy Indian star was tipped as the favourite to win.

Shilpa, 31, the first Indian to participate in the British TV show, was reportedly paid in excess of 40,000 pounds for her participation.

"She was leading all the betting sites," Shilpa's publicist Dale Bhagwagar had said.

Shilpa's being on the show, which started Jan 3, didn't make as much news as the racist slurs hurled against her by her housemates, namely British contestant Jade Goody who has since been voted out by the audience.

Housemates Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara seemed to have ganged up against Shilpa during her stay. She became the subject of their snide and biting comments because of her svelte figure, poise and charm, good dressing sense and background as a popular Bollywood actor.

The racist comments caused outrage in India and Britain, with the issue figuring in the House of Commons and feminist diva Germaine Greer, and even two Indian ministers, demanding corrective action.

Shilpa, who made her debut in Bollywood with the 1993 super hit Baazigar which also starred reigning superstar Shah Rukh Khan, never managed to touch the skies as a star. Her slinky dance numbers were more appreciated than her emoting.

But now her popularity ratings have soared suddenly - thanks to the controversial reality show.

"Hollywood film offers have started coming in. Apart form the US and Britain, offers are coming from Spain and Singapore too. Also, the Indian film industry suddenly seems to have woken up to the new Shilpa," said Bhagwagar.

Other contestants who participated in it were Michael Jackson's brother Jermaine, A-Team star Dirk Benedict, Donny Tourette of punk band The Towers of London, ex-Steps star Ian "H" Watkins and "Kenny Everett" Show actress Cleo Rocos.