Look Ma, no pants! ------------------------------- Nudity is the newest nadir in the reality television world, with participants happily willing to drop it all
The stage is set, the rock band is ready, a bespectacled middle-aged man wielding a paintbrush is waiting at an easel and the audience of roughly 3,000 Brazilian men and women is clamouring with impatience. Finally, Mohit Saggar, a 20-year-old MTV Roadies contestant from Ludhiana, emerges from the wings. He seems different today, no smug stares or cocky one-liners. He looks around vacantly, closes his eyes and pulls the string of his white bathrobe. The audience erupts with hoots, laughter and applause as cameras frantically zoom in and out. And for ten long minutes, the artist renders a sketchy version of Saggar’s vital statistics. Nudity is the newest nadir in the reality television world. Your manhood is now the measure of how far you are willing to go on a reality show. Beeped out words and lip locks are passé. The new TRP-ensuring mantra is to go below the belt, literally. Pixelated vital organs, Brazilian waxing, spanking and licking chilli sauce off skimpily-clad women — all are part of the territory. “Izzat koi certificate nahi, jo mathe pe laga do,” says Saggar on the show. “My mind was going blank that time. But I said, ‘to hell with it, let’s go through with this’.” And he did. Like several other reality show contestants who will do whatever it takes to shock and stay in the game. If Saggar and his co-contestant Suchit Vikram Singh from Haryana went through with the full monty for national television, Rishi Oberoi from Chandigarh stripped and pole danced to impress his blind date’s mother on Channel V’s Date My Folks. Oberoi, the self-proclaimed “playboy of Chandigarh”, invited a shaken Aunty Kaur to his bedroom, complete with dim lighting and rose petals strewn on the bed. He gifted her an ‘innocent’ hamper with handcuffs, an animal print thong, a leash, chocolate body paint and other aphrodisiacal trivia. “Yeh sab theek nahi laga, beta” mumbled poor Aunty Kaur, as Oberoi whipped out his shirt, hung a feathery pink boa around his neck, splattered chocolate sauce and started moving to ‘Zara Zara Touch Me’. Other reality shows that indeed got touchy include one in which male contestants were caught with their pants down and getting a “Brazlian wax” for every answer their partner got wrong and a twisted word builder episode on Roadies. On the last show, semi-naked women, wearing only bikini tops, are smothered in chillies. Female contestants are expected to lick the chilli paste off and find alphabets while a male contestant has to perform the same task on a man whose body hides vowels under chilli paste. “Reality TV is not only getting bolder but it is also getting more real,” says VJ Andy, who hosts Channel V’s Dare to Date and Date My Folks. “The immunity that the audience has for all the craziness that goes on is great. The bolder you get, the more the audience wants.” Though, on the one hand, the boldness is helping shatter stereotypes of India being a nation of cowherds and farmers, Andy says the Indian in him feels a bit disillusioned with situations like the bedroom pole dancing episode. “In fact, I asked the contestant if he was sure he wanted to go ahead,” recalls Andy, likening the content of reality shows today to that of the terror attacks. “Some images were just shocking.” According to Keith Alphonso, business head of UTV Bindass that airs Emotional Atyaachar, the channel would prefer that the show be either loved or hated strongly rather than be ignored. “The language you hear in a coffee shop nowadays is more shocking than what you hear on a reality shows. However, had we done this ten years ago, we don't know if we would've been received well,” he says. We’re still not sure how well it’s being received. “It was embarrassing to be caught watching this,” says Nitya Chaudhary, a twenty-something college student. “I still can’t believe these men went naked on TV. I had to change the channel because my grandparents were in the same room,” she adds. Prem Kamath, executive vice president of Channel V, says the idea is not to consciously create shock value but to merely create variations in show formats. “Even on shows like Axe aur Ex (where pranks are conducted on ex boyfriends/girlfriends), the channel needs a signed affidavit from both parties. The tone of the shows is in jest and roughly 25% of what we shoot isn’t aired because permission from the person who the prank has been played doesn’t come through,” he says . Channel V, adds Kamath, strictly follows guidelines laid out by the Information and Broadcasting ministry on offensive or objectionable content and has an internal standards and practice department which filters every show before it goes on air. “We have a responsibility towards our viewer and while being wacky is okay, there are some things we will never do as a channel.” Former contestant of reality show MTV Splitsvilla Siddharth Bhardwaj is tired of “the holier than thou attitude everywhere”. He says he would have happily gone through with a full monty, too, if he were asked to. “It’s about being comfortable with your sexuality. And honestly, the things that celebrities do are way worse than getting naked,” he says, adding that reality show contracts state that tasks are a choice. “If it’s not being forced on someone, it’s perfectly cool.” he says. Adman Prahlad Kakkar believes that as long as it’s funny, it’s okay. “All the women who want to bump off the girl child will realise how stupid men are,” he guffaws. But sociologist Shiv Visvanathan says that reality shows are based on a kind of primitive idea of what a market is — extremely ruthless, competitive and anchored on obscenity. “Nudity has its contexts. But here, this is a voyeuristic idea of reality and there is nothing real about it,” he says. Keith Alphonso assures otherwise. “Reality television is a focused genre that thrives on putting ordinary people in extraordinary situations. The audiences have a need to vicariously be entertained by these real people so the genre is proliferating at an unheard of pace.” Nudity is perhaps the last desperate measure to resurrect a genre that seems practically on the verge of death. There’s no double entendre there. -- --- Reuse Paper by Both Sided Printing ----
