Indian television

We took this opportunity of our move to switch to DirecTV. Not just because Comcast was stealing my pants and was asking for my shirt after I ran out of pants, but also because my wife wished to partake of Indian programming. So now we have two satellite dishes on our roof which allows the aliens to transmit their mind-controlling signals into our brains in 1080i high definition. Apart from alien mind-controlling signals, we now also receive Star Plus, Star One, Doordarshan, NDTV, Star Nyuz (which is how they write it in Hindi) and something called Cricket Plus which allows me the luxury of watching live cricket matches between the Dominican Republic and The British Virgin Islands, yes, I said live. I don't know about you but I don't think I could wait till tomorrow to find out the Dominican Republic - British Virgin Islands score, hell no.

It's been a while since I watched Indian television and everything feels very different. For one, I could not help but be surprised at how young everybody on Indian airwaves is. Here in the US, most television anchors, reporters, etc are on an average, about forty - fifty years old and the only people who are younger are on Comedy Central. On the other hand, the average age on Indian television has to be about eighteen. It's amazing. It's like someone threw all those broadcasting jobs up in the air and said okay, whoever catches 'em can keep 'em. And while the old veteran broadcasters were looking around searching for their canes and eyeglasses, the young people, being nimble of ankle, supple of thigh and perky of breast, and who could jump higher and faster than those older guys, were successful in capturing all those broadcasting positions.

It is very disconcerting to watch a news channel where everybody appears to be younger than you, especially when you're not that old. How can that little girl know more about weather than I, you think. After all, you've been surfing weather.com from before she was born. It feels like a media being run by children. Which is actually not a bad thing when you come to think of it. Hopefully these kids still have the baby fat of idealism under their lovely smooth skins. And although I am fairly positive that someday they will grow up and sell their souls to whatever evil force it is that controls Rupert Murdoch's cortex, today is hopefully not that day.

It is also strange the way India does reality TV. Now by definition, reality TV needs to be real and devoid of any kind of outside interference. But Indian producers do not appear to be aware of that fact. Let me give you an example. On Star Voice of India (the twentieth different Indian offshoot of American Idol), whenever a singer falters or loses his or her voice or forgets the lyrics, the producer behind the scene adds the sound of explosive thunder to the proceedings. It's as if we viewers cannot be adequately trusted to grasp the drama of the situation due to our feeble intellect and therefore, have to be made aware of it and guided to it through the use of external audio stimulii like explosive thunder.

I am also concerned by the widespread abuse of slow motion imagery in Indian television. It so happened that somebody in the industry came upon a button, a magical button that could play video back at a slower frame-rate. And then in no time, this button became the hot technology of our generation. It made a lot of sense to utilize this technology to the hilt in reality TV, even though reality does not actually move in slow motion. After carrying out a considerable amount of research on this topic, it was concluded that the image of a person clapping his hands in slow motion is infinitely more dramatic than that of the same person clapping his hands in real time. And the act of someone walking to the podium to accept an award needs to be savored more fully by reducing the speed of that person's gait through the use of this button. Even the simple nondescript act of someone blinking in order to hydrate their eyeball, it was discovered, could be made acutely electrifying by chronicling the travel of the eyelid in minute detail as it descended towards who knows what fate, perhaps a collision with the upper cheek?

I think that the problem here is that we Indians, through regular doses of Bollywood slapstick and over-acting administered to us throughout our lifetimes, have become so inured and desensitized to drama that we literally need someone to slap us with a stick before we can grasp any kind of subtlety in a situation. Or, at least, that is the opinion Indian television bigwigs have of us. And I guess it's probably accurate.