Yaba daba Doo

RETROFIT

High decibel Talking Heads

Indian battleships advancing towards Australia. No, not for war games,but the real thing. Hey wait, what am I implying here? Is India goingto attack Australia and show off the prowess of its 'blue water' navy?Hardly. But not if you believe Times Now. Over time, we have seenTimes Now evolve into a high decibel jingoistic news channel which isnow synonymous with shrillness. There is no harm in beingnationalistic, I am one too. But to use a medium like television newsto drill out a high pitched rhetoric day in day out appears a bitincongruous. You can argue that this editorial policy is not beingdictated by the Jains, but editor in chief Arnab Goswami. Ratchetingup passions as if Balasaheb Thackeray was writing an editorialattacking someone in Samna, Times Now has been going ballistic forsometime. This intensity helped Times Now leapfrog over entrenchedplayers, but now this strong veneer of jingoism appears to be wearingthin as far as the viewers are concerned. Subjected as they are torhetoric day in day out. Pakistan, China and now Australia beingtargeted incessantly. First we had a situation in the first flush ofthe 26/11 terror attacks where Goswami was going ape on Pakistan, our favouritewhipping boy. I was reminded of the now mothballed Sunny Deol and hisfiery jingoistic screaming in Border and then Gaddar. Deol made acareer out of shouting in B Town, be it Ghayal or Ghatak or Damini orSalakhen or for that matter even the more recent Bole So Nihal.Unfortunately Goswami has also become a victim of the same hype.A sense of proportion, restraint and calm seems to have deserted Times Now.I know, I know...I have praised Goswami in the past, but this isbefore the aggromania took over. What happens is that when he is nottalking war and doing something like say the hockey players revolt, heseems distant and loses focus because the subject is far removed fromhis attention and interest levels.
So, one can understand targeting Pakistan and its deadly dangerousbrand of die by a thousand cuts strategy in India, using theinstrumentality of terror. But with 2009 completely peaceful and noterror attacks, the focus shifted to China and its bordertransgressions. But attacking China is not the same as attackingPaksitan. Unlike Pakistan's overt threat percept, China's moves arecovert and hence more difficult to fathom. Anyhow, all bordertransgressions were viewed as war by Times Now and its editorialsatraps. Correspondents were sent to remote areas to assess the extentof the Chinese threat percept. I saw one report from Srinjoy Chowdhurythe other day which showed how the Chinese are ever so slowlyswallowing land in the Ladakh region. By fortifying and building newconcrete bunkers, there is an inescapable overt move for the future bythe People's Liberation Army. There were other stories which threw theChina threat into stark relief. Some of the stories were good forthey brought to the surface Chinese subterfuge on our long border withthem. But this was backed by naked aggression in the studio led byArnab Goswami and Rahul Shivshankar. Yes, it is matter of concern toall Indians that the Chinese are carrying on with rabid anti-Indianismthrough their manoeuvres on the border.
So, while Pakistan has been replaced by China as public enemy numberone at Times Now, over the last few days, the jingosim has acquired aspanking new hue. The favourite whipping boy is now Australia. Yes, theAussies practice a strange sort of inverted snobbery. They have alwaysbeen racist, maybe not of the South African kind, but they will let youknow your place in their country. Now this is manifesting itself in apanoply of racial attacks against Indian students Down Under. Aussieshave this superior air about themselves. Even their commentatorspractice this inverse snobbery - Aussie players are supreme, best inthe world yaba daba do, while other countries are inferior, as aretheir players. This has always been the case, but in the ongoingseason, it seems less nuanced and more open. So, when a Chris Gaylegets stuck into them, they have no answer. Aussie attacks againsthapless Indians are highly condemnable, and cannot be forgiven. But itis the Government of India's job to take up the matter diplomatically.It needs to ask the Aussies to scale down their tone on the attacks.By comparing the attacks to security and safety in Delhi and Mumbai,they are missing the woods for the trees. That these attacks havetaken on a pattern, it is Indian students who are being systematicallyidentified and targeted. Anyway, back to news tellywallahs and their bizarre penchants. Times Now is the aggro arm ofBennett, just as the Illustrated Weekly used to be during PritishNandy's time. It thinks it can get away with blue murder. Even asTimes Now carries on with all this mayhem, there is an interestingaside.
It is called Aman Ki Asha, an Indo-Pak peace initiative where Times ofIndia has tied up the Jang group of newspapers across the border. Iguess when the ITBP jawans allegedly shot in cross border firing by the Chinesesurfaced on Page 1 of the ToI, the government was reportedly furious,even contemplating filing First Information Reports against theauthors of the story. Now this is merely a surmise. An educatedhypothesis. Facing the heat, ToI may have decided to architect a facesaver. I can only speculate that the trade off must be the Aman KiAsha initiative. A greatconcept of fostering neighbourly love and bringing the temperaturesdown. But what it also did was remove Pakistan from the Times Nowattack equation. To address this, Times Now has found a new enemy inAustralia. How do you deal with racist attacks? Many years ago, gangsof skinheads used to attack Indians and other Asians in England. Thederisive term given to Asians was Pakis and there were many incidentswhere students were attacked. But media and in the main electronicmedia was not the circus that it has become now.
Perhaps that is why Ram Gopal Varma has decided to throw the spotlighton the functioning of news telly. There is a Reuters story that I sawlast year on the film. I am reproducing parts of it because theyprovide a keen insight into the way our telly wallahs are going beserkin their self seeking justification for ratings and advertising. TheAmitabh Bachchan starrer Rann was to have released last year, buta combination of IPL and the face off between producers and exhibitorsdealt a bodyblow to the release schedule of several films. Rann wasone of them. Reuters wrote: "Rann", a new Bollywood film, delves intothe highly competitive world of television news reporting in India,putting the spotlight on the media industry's insatiable appetite foradvertisers and viewers.
The film, directed by top filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma, is touted as abehind-the-scenes look at how news channels greedy for ratings arebeing manipulated into sensationalizing stories to grab eyeballs."What will the media do if torn between commerce on one hand andconscience on the other -- that is the premise of this film," leadactor Amitabh Bachchan said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Bachchan, arguably India's biggest superstar, plays the head of aprominent news channel in "Rann". Other channel bigwigs, an honestreporter, an unscrupulous industrialist and a power-hungry politiciancomplete the cast. With more than 60 English and regional-languagenews channels in India beaming into TV-owning homes, the film comes ata time when broadcasters are scrambling to provide exclusive content.
Indian television channels were criticized by security agencies forshowing live pictures of November's Mumbai attacks and allegedlygiving away important information to attackers trapped inside hotelsand a Jewish centre. "In order to be able to hold a person'sattention, the only way they can do it is to create high drama," saiddirector Varma.
The 47-year-old filmmaker, an acknowledged Bollywood master at makinggangster movies, is no stranger to controversy. Varma raisedconservative eyebrows in 2007 with "Nishabd" -- a film about lovebetween a girl and a man old enough to be her grandfather. The sameyear, his remake of the landmark 1975 film "Sholay" had criticsdenouncing the attempt at tinkering with classics.
With "Rann", which opens in cinemas on January 29, the maverickdirector has delivered an idea he had been toying with for many years,based on an industry that has always fascinated him. "If the media isa truth-telling machinery in a democratic society, in the age ofcompetition and compulsions, can it really stick to that and be reallytruthful," Varma said.
Rann may well be a benchmark film for it will examine the veryunderlying credo with which our telly journos are going about theirbusiness. If it is accepted and then acclaimed for providing aninsight into the business of ratings and advertising, then RGV will doa great service. His sins as director of the dreadful Ramu Ki Aagcan then be overlooked. But if RGV is true to his style and delivers ahard hitting film on the lines of Satya, Company or even Sarkar, thenexpect a lot of seamy dirt on the news telly wallahs to be unveiled.
(exchange4media)