Monday, January 29, 2007

Who cares who wins?

Another of those frustrating thingies about celebs winning some shit in some part of the world. Why should "Shilpa Shetty wins Big Brother" be a "Breaking News" in most channels when there are some serious issues in our land. A day or so back was when a hostel collapsed in gujurat while no one seems to showcase it. No signs of any investigation being shown for this while this Big Brother crap seems to hit potentially all channels. What is happening to all those media reporters we had. What becomes more frustrating is when serious channels like NDTV too seem to hype this whole issue.

On an alternate note when racist comments were supossedly passed, the media created a huge hue and cry. Went to the extent of saying "This is a blow to India and Indians". Shilpa Shetty is not Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam or Dr. Manmohan Singh to represent India. She is a freaking film star and coincidentally happens to be born in India. Thats all she has as credits for herself. Lets step back and think about this so called racist comment? Are we indians non racists?
In our colleges, have we not made fun of mallus for their pronunciation? Have we not called andrites as gults? How many bollywood movies have made fun of south indians and sardars. How many santa/banta jokes have we nourished ? And what about our governments? Bombay => Mumbai, Madras => Chennai, Calcutta => kolkatta and the recent "bengaluru". Come on gimme a break. We live in a far more communally diversified environment than any other country. Racism is not just about belonging to different countries. It even stems from all the examples quoted above.

And what about "winning an international event"? Is it like she had to do something extraordinary to win this competition? Whats there to win in an event like this? What does it take? Just staying in a place for a few days? cooking ur own food and washing ur own clothes? My grandparents have done that for over a 50 years or so and no one seems to pay them like 100 thousand pounds for that?

If it was just an indian winnning an international event, every month one or the other Indian wins something for our country somewhere, maybe in sports, maybe in quizzes, maybe in software competitions and what not. But why don't we promote things which actually need promotion like this and promote an overly promoted thing like Big Brother in the first place? Just think about this, we have simply failed in promoting talent while nurtured mediocracy. Lets take sports. Once in a while we promote a Sachin Tendulkar or a Sania Mirza. But is that all we have in this 100 billion populated country?

My question is directed more towards the media? Have we failed in understanding journalism? Or is our news channels just another "sans bhi kabhi bahu thi" sort of an entertainer?

2 comments:

SamY said...

"PR Ratings" is the operative word

SamY said...

am not talking of Miss.shetty either ... am talking the media's PR Ratings ... imagine one of the news channels not having that issue on air ... how many viewers would have been watching it? ... most indian and sentimental idiots ... n this is the stuff ppl lurve watching ... debating over issues which are of least consequence :)

I very well remember that this event coincided with ISRO's recovery of the capsule ... it hardly got a 5 min slot in the news

no idea as to what is "pipsqweek"