15 minutes of shame!

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything drunk so I’m really going to spit now. The case of some Suraj aka Nagesh dude is really hot on the internet right now. I’ve been always taking the moral low ground in almost all the cases, but the fact that someone making up a story about their dead mother and blaming his father for the same just to get on to a reality show was too much for me to handle.

I have seen people selling their dignity for less but this is a new low, I can’t understand why people agree to get grilled, ridiculed and embarrassed and try to prove themselves in front two bald twins who’s only accomplishment in life is that they are the executive producers of a now high rated TV show. The show itself is rip off of an American TV show Road Rules, the two idiots who try to portray the ‘Tough Guy’ on screen are DU dropouts and failed twice in some shit course. Many of the people who are interviewed can beat the shit out of them outside but they take all the abuses, name calling and being dragged out by their collar while saying ‘Sorry Sir, Sorry Sir’ because they get to decide who gets to be on the show. And for who, for what? Many of the contestants on these shows already seem to be well off judging from their clothing, the way they maintain themselves and family they come from, so money is not the real motivator for giving your Love for Cash in Truth Love Cash. Adventure or any kind of fun? Hardly any seem to be left when the whole premise is based on bitching, back biting and back stabbing people around you to advance to the next round. And more swear words you hurl and more you slutty the girls act higher are the viewers.

The only thing which is takeaway I think from these reality shows is fame, infamy included, fleeting of course, the winner’s fame last at most till the next season or ‘nonebrities’ as they are known . In shows like Axe your Ex, Emotional Attyachaar, Dare 2 Date it doesn’t even last that long, at most till the next more shocking episode. One girl said while trying to axe her ex that her boyfriend was a bad person and she knew 99% that he was married, why did it take her 2 years to figure out the remaining 1% beats me, only slightly less shocking is the fact that she wants to tell that in front of the camera where a million other people are watching.

But all said this is no dearth of jokers waiting to jump in the bandwagon every time I switch on the idiot box, some gym bred hunky guy from Delhi or Chandigarh is always on the screen mouthing “Yaar maine socha ye bandi apne aap ko samajhti kya hai, matlab, I mean ok she is good looking but hello… Matlab… And you know she looks like a *beep* in that dress, matlab koi *beep* can only do such a tamasha” and girl bitching about some other girl “Wo *beep* apne aap ko samajhti kya hai, matlab kya cheez wo, usko to na main *beep*”. And the more the beeps, more the TRPs. In fact my friends stopped watching Big Boss after Dolly Bindra started holding back the barrage of her curses, “what’s left so see now, everyone is getting along so peacefully”, their words.

Psychologists have termed this as Schadenfreude . the social commentators ‘Shame TV’ while the parents are worried about the ill effect on their children while watching it happily after they go to sleep. I thinks it’s all of that, and at the same time None. Sometimes I think it is just plain old voyeurism, people enjoy seeing someone taken this clothes off in public, only in this case it’s not literal, so when some girl shows on wantonness on the screen or when the guy who resembles our school bully acts like a buffoon we instantly fill better about ourselves. “Hey my life is shit but yours no better either”, the voice inside everyone starts saying this to the contestants. I guess ‘The Joker’ in ‘The Dark Knight’ isn’t the only one trying to prove in the end everybody deep down is as rotten as him. “You know, when are the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other up”, his words. People wanting to see society’s dirt is no new phenomenon, from gladiator fights and public hangings to gossip magazine and MMS we have come a long way. People are having sex ever since Adam and Eve wandered in the Garden of Eden, but a sex tape has made many a stars; ask Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian.

Yes more reason to watch these shows in the oomph, these people pick up the hottest girls and hunkiest guys and get them to wear swim suits, pour oil over themselves and then ask them to slide over each other. I don’t know about you, but it’ll catch my eye through any heap of garbage. Shows like Temptation Island or it’s toned down version Splitsvilla, thrive on these things. It’s a well researched fact that they TRPs fall down drastically in certain demographics whenever some hot guy or girl is given the boot in some show.

Of course I am not fundamentally against the concept of reality shows or rather loosely scripted dramas. I don’t mind seeing Master Chef, So you think you can dance, Fear Factor, Kaun banega Crorepati or Sa Re Ga Ma, the fights amongst the judges or the dramatics of the contestants is tolerable till they are showing real people trying to show off their true talent, I don’t mind the emotional fools sending tons of SMS at Rs. 6 per SMS to vote either. But stuff like Big Brother, Temptation Island, Roadies, Axe ur Ex, Dadagiri starts bordering on the absurd, and shows like Rakhi ka Swayammvar and The Bachelor is downright ridiculous.

The case of Rahul Mahajan’s TV bride is well known , one of the contestants of The Bachelorette (he didn’t win) murdered his wife, took out her teeth, disfigured her face and destroyed all other features to identify her corpse, she was later identified by the serial number of her breast implants. Anybody laughing now? Arguments on who was the better singer always goes on for Indian Idol but when it is found out that some girl tried to Axe some guy who was never her Ex and the Channel V people happily did it or when some guy fabricated story about his mother dying on get on to Roadies, I think some kind of shit somewhere must hit the fan. I don’t think it is difficult to see through the staged arguments and fights, the plastic beauties, the unusually high bitching, the slurry of swear words and situations forced on people to throw somebody under the bus. So why kid yourself that you are watching reality TV? While you are watching somebody selling their soul for 15 minutes of shame you are guilty too, of idiocy and flagrant voyeurism at least if nothing else. So next time when you feel like watching this pile of dog shit on TV go to the internet and download a clip of man in leather hitting a tied naked woman with a whip, that is certainly far more real and far less immoral than this stuff on the Telly.