| Published on 30-01-2007 In Entertainment |
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Written by
S. Murari |
After 25 days of high drama, Britain's Channel 4 has declared Shilpa Shetty (who else?) the winner of the Big Brother Celebrity show. Call it a drama or a dumb charade. It had all the trappings of a soap opera with Shilpa let loose in the doghouse like a pigeon among cats.
After what cynics have called manufactured dissent and worse, Jade not-so-good Goody and other so-called racists have been booted out by a largely Asian audience. The rest of the finalists, including Micheal Jackson's brother, have got their desserts and Shilpa is walking away with the booty—Rs 3 crore for participation plus the prize money of Rs 1 crore.
Is being called an Indian poppadom or Paki, who hails from a slum and eats with her dirty hands, too big a price to pay for the reward a fading star of Bollywood has so badly needed at this stage in her career? I would think the humiliation, if it really was so, was worth the price. For overnight, she has become a household name in Britain. What better way to gain entry into Hollywood, if she makes the right moves?
Poor Goody, Shilpa's tormentor-in-chief, has for consolation an invitation to visit India. It's not as though she has not been here before. In fact the perfume Shh, which was taken off the shelf after her racist barbs at Shilpa, is being bottled in Bharuch in Gujarat and she had come calling to promote it some time ago.
The real question is how real such reality shows are. As a corollorary, should we take racist barbs seriously when the participants are expected to be nasty and bitchy so that controversy boosts TRP ratings? A look at the sequence of events will show how carefully calibrated every move has been.
First Shilpa is made mincemeat of. She is reduced to tears. She cries foul, worse racism. The next day, she retracts with a bland face, saying her housemates are all nice and she has misunderstood them. Maybe it's just frayed temper. Jade Goody is unrepentant until she is voted out by the audience. Then she becomes penitent. And how? Yes, the comments are racist, but I did not mean them to be. How do you like that? As a mark of repentance, she agrees to donate 50,000 pound sterling fee from the programme to charity.
With Ofcom, the official watchdog, flooded with 40,000 complaints, and the sponsor of the show, a British car mobile phone company, threatening to pull out, the channel goes into damage control mode. It issues an apology and orders an enquiry. To placate the Asian audience, it enlists an Asian human rights lawyer into the committee to go into the show's format.
Is it any surprise that in the final round Shilpa beats Jermaine Jackson to the winning post?
It is not the channel alone, but even the media representing the stiff upper lip upper crust which seeks to distance itself from the racist slur which damages Britain's image as a multi-cultural society. And so, what has happened is seen as a clash of culture and not racism as 20-something Jade is a foul-mouthed ignoramus who thinks Rio de Janeiro is a footballer whereas Shilpa is pretty and classy who is haughty enough to claim tongue-in-cheek she is India's Angelina Jolie. Never mind Jade's father is a Jamaican and mother white. She represents Britain's underbelly which should be hidden from world view.
Questions are being raised as to whether India should have taken it up with Britain at the official level as Shilpa was not representing the country. And she always had a choice. As Salman Rushdie aptly put it, she could have quit the kitchen if she found it too hot. That she did not do so shows she is ready to swallow her pride provided the price is right.
Why did the British Asians root for Shilpa then? For Shilpa, it was a world of make believe where she had a taste of racism that is very much a fact of everyday life in Britain. The Asians who have made Britain their home have to learn to live with it. So, by plumping for her, they have given vent to their pent-up anger.
No doubt, Britain has come a long way from the 1970s when an Indian woman was subjected to virginity test aimed at preventing marriages of conveniences that were resorted to for gaining entry into the country. Now, it has a sizable Asian population and even has representation in the House of Commons in Keith Vaaz.
But then, the undercurrent of uneasiness is always there, more so after the London train blasts triggered by Islamic fundamentalists? Remember the Muslim teacher who had to go to court to get her job back after she was sacked from a school for refusing to remove her burqa? Remember Jack Straw's comment that he would feel uncomfortable talking to a voter from his Asian constituency if she covers her face with a veil? These are straws in the wind.
The programme, they say, has reopened the debate on racism. It's not so. For quite some time, there is insistence that the immigrants should pass the test of Britishness. Pray what is Britishness—fish and chips or chicken tikka curry? |
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