Metamorphosis of mere ‘idiot box’ to full blown ‘loony bin’
Television anchors are mushrooming. Hardly a day passes without another self-proclaimed and revoltingly self-promoting new entrant filling the ranks. And for good reason: television anchors are the exalted new oracles and soothsayers who analyse current events and predict what is to come, shining a searchlight into the dimness of the future all for the sake of the average dim-witted television viewer. They are the pride of the networks, the ‘royals’ carrying with them the divine right to either savagely demonise or unduly glorify their guests, according to their own whims and fancies, without fear of a backlash. So today we are confronted with a veritable epidemic of anchors of all stripes, hues and spots, all three of which can be changed at a moment’s notice, chameleon-like, to further the anchor’s career, ratings and earnings: Fashionable anchors, caste-conscious anchors, know- all anchors, the Wise Man of the East anchors, arrogant anchors, angry anchors, pop-eyed anchors, charming anchors, demented anchors, ideologue anchors, anchors without a cause, bought- and -sold anchors, earnest anchors, free-for-all anchors, liberal anchors, leftist anchors (of course with pro-American leanings), fiery rightist anchors (‘you know in your heart he’s right–far right’) boring anchors, helpless anchors, dilapidated made-up embalmed anchors, intense anchors, laid-back anchors, sarcastic anchors, nervous anchors, cunning anchors, passionate anchors, doctor anchors(without the healing touch) and of course the ‘Be-reham’ anchors. Anchors here, there and everywhere!
Anchors may wield, if not real power, at least an illusion of power which everybody realises and understands. The popular prime time talk shows, now a staple of all our television networks, which have replaced the popular ‘soaps’ of old, are their stamping ground. The comical absurdity, accompanying mayhem and the clear or subtle bias of the anchor in many of these talk shows (especially the ‘mixed’ ones) make an absolute mockery of any objective and meaningful debate. They are more in the nature of a sitcom or a (black) comedy hour. But they continue to flower and flourish with the anchors laughing all the way to the off-shore banks and the Dubai property market.
After power, money makes the anchors (not to talk of the mare) go. A few months ago, some of the country’s most senior and popular anchors started a lemming–like stampede towards a rain-maker company called Axact, attracted by the pot of gold which they were certain lay at the end of the rainbow. The company wanted to inflict a new channel on the unwary viewers, and it managed to lure the most sober and staid minds (if thus they can be termed) from among the journalist elite, proving yet again that the bourgeois value system treasures money above everything else, in any age. This illustrious band of gold seekers, which included some veteran ‘investigative’ journalists, was forced to drop Axact like a hot potato when the news of its fly-by-night activities dropped like a bombshell in the press. It was the old familiar instance of ‘So may be outward shows be least themselves, The world is still deceived with ornament’… and of course ‘All that glitters is not gold’. But the mouth-watering packages on offer were irresistible to the high-profile band, who instead of being crushed by the scandal, are now gainfully employed elsewhere complete with their pious platitudes.
Ted Turner, a clinically depressed media person with suicidal tendencies, but at the same time gifted with the abundant creativity usually associated with this condition, who probably also suffered from insomnia, came up with the brilliant (or loathsome) idea of a 24 hour news and entertainment channel and the rest is present global misery
The clichéd old term ‘idiot box’ nauseatingly applied to the common but highly addictive television set has become a misnomer or a euphemism in our own grim times. A round-the-clock accessibility, sensational ‘breaking’ news, hysterical female newscasters with an apparently XXXYYY chromosome problem shouting in an ever swelling crescendo, talk shows which are actually talkative shows, with everyone trying to outdo each other in the decibel department and pompous anchors and strident advertisements have all turned it into more of a loony bin, leaving the audiences dazed (and partly deaf) in the process. The typical ‘five yard stare’ among the regular captive viewers is the surest sign of ‘shell-shock’ after four or five hours of continuous exposure to this deadly electronic media barrage. A constant dose of mind-boggling mediocrity, the bizarre news items, the strangest ‘entertainment’ programmes such as those shown recently during the Holy Month and weird hosts and hostesses, many of whom should have taken pity on the viewers and never ventured on the television screens in the first place, have all generously contributed their share in this metamorphosis from a mere ‘idiot box’ to a full blown ‘madcap package’.
Ted Turner, a clinically depressed media person with suicidal tendencies, but at the same time gifted with the abundant creativity usually associated with this condition, who probably also suffered from insomnia, came up with the brilliant (or loathsome) idea of a 24 hour news and entertainment channel and the rest is present global misery.
Our brethren of The Book, who over the centuries shouted their lungs off to attract customers to their peddler carts of second hand goods in the Pale of Settlement, now rule over the world’s financial system with an iron fist beneath a diamond-encrusted velvet glove. Their rapacity for selling and profit is unquenchable. Karl Marx, himself a descendent of famous Rabbis on both parents’ side who were invariably qualified by the flattering word, ‘genius’, remarked that ‘money is the jealous god of Israel against which no other god may stand’. So the sophistication (and the stridency it would seem) of commercial advertising has now replaced the half-starved cries of the ragged ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ street sellers of used garments and other bric-a-brac in the capitals of Europe, and is the chief curse of modern day television. It may be soothing to the eyes of some, courtesy the curvaceous partly or partially dressed ‘broads’ with their ‘eyes like autumn smoke’ who are (quite happily) exploited to send a specific marketing message across, but it is definitely grating on the human ear and basic intelligence. The typical television commercial, at least in our milieu, can be accurately described only by employing all the relative adjectives in the dictionary: loud, vociferous, clamorous, shrill, raucous, discordant, harsh, braying, piercing and noisy! It is an all hell breaks loose affair.
As everyone knows this is the Age of Women and their slightest criticism, however true, can lead to the inevitable accusation of misogyny, a charge slightly lesser than blasphemy but about equalling anti-Semitism. But the unsavoury fact remains of the complete conquest and takeover of the electronic media by the over-dressed, overbearing, unpredictable and unstable female ‘experts’ in all spheres of television activity. Indeed it is for the latter qualities that hurricanes and other furious storms are all named after women by the wiser among the meteorologists. Instead of sticking to their fashion and design talkathons, their morning shows, and their aerobic and cooking classes and, in the Bollywood arena flaunting their ‘assets’ in various stages of undress from morning to midnight, a depressing strangeness and mediocrity has descended over most television shows thanks to their dominating presence.
Oscar Wilde’s wiles, wit, epigrams and banter will remain famous till eternity. An Oscar Wilde character somewhat condescendingly remarks, ‘My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals’! Or consider the following brief dialogue from ‘An Ideal Husband’ by the same Irish ‘lord of wit’:
Mrs Cheveley: Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, woman merely adored.
Sir Robert: You think science cannot grapple with the problem of women?
Mrs Cheveley: Science can never grapple with the irrational…
Sir Robert: And women represent the irrational?
Mrs Cheveley: Well-dressed woman do’!
Another of Wilde’s character remarks in ‘A Woman of no Importance’, ‘The history of women is the history of the worst tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts’.
But now the once weaker and fair sex has become a tigerish (‘O! Tigers heart in a woman’s hide’, says the Bard himself) and an unfair one. As elsewhere, it has muscled in on most talk shows as hosts or as voluble contenders and even invaded the noble game as commentators and experts (!!!), apart from their unending wriggling exploits in the modelling camp.
But now the once weaker and fair sex has become a tigerish (‘O! Tigers heart in a woman’s hide’, says the Bard himself) and an unfair one. As elsewhere, it has muscled in on most talk shows as hosts or as voluble contenders and even invaded the noble game as commentators and experts (!!!), apart from their unending wriggling exploits in the modelling camp
Nine hundred and ninety nine curses on the television producer who first came up with the idea or format of an old geezer, the expert, and his co-host, a comely young woman, who has diametrically opposite ideas as to how the talk show is to proceed. This is now the standard fare on most channels, though thankfully not all (so far). Some of the co-or coy-hosts gaze almost with a worshipping look at the experts’ face throughout his reply to an almost bashfully asked (and totally irrelevant) question, others make faces which suspiciously resemble the act or art of flirtation, but the most livid situation for a viewer arises when the expert is at the crux of his argument or about to make a sensational disclosure and the co-host, with a most ill-timed question, wades in and diverts an interesting moment into a totally new direction. ‘Expletive deleted’ of the crisp and crushing Punjabi sort ring out in many homes at this particular moment and mothers have to move with alacrity to cover the impressionable ears of any minors nearby.
As is well known, the feminine sex loves its own voice to a rather excessive degree, and (as is its habit on the domestic front and on social occasions also) it carries this personality flaw into the realm of the serious talk shows in which it participates as well. A confusing and entangled cross-talk (with shrill female voices dominating of course) is the irritating consequence, with the entire panel often ending up talking simultaneously and creating a Tower of Babel effect.
But their inclusion is no doubt inevitable, for it is now the politically correct and ‘done’ thing, good for the channel’s ratings too, especially if two fighting felines from hostile political parties are involved in a vicious catfight, but hardly enlightening or pleasant for the viewers. Feelings of triteness, mediocrity and revulsion and a bad taste in the mouth are its bitter harvest for the viewers.
So, time to go back to our basic Arthur Schopenhauer or it is the end of men!
Coming back to anchors, one is beginning to have the same obsessive fantasy about spruce, conceited and pedantic anchors as about most of our corrupt and incompetent politicians: lure them all on board an ocean liner (shades of the Titanic) on an all expenses paid trip, they’ll all surely jump for it, they’ll positively trip over each other to be the first on deck, and set them up on a direct course to the Bermuda Triangle with the joyous cry: Anchors Aweigh!
