Small vs silver

TV stars abroad may quality as A-listers; but in India they remain on the C-list


Over the last couple of years I’ve become a fan of Glee, the US television series set in all-American high school. And my favourite character is the cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. So, imagine my joy when Jane Lynch – who plays crazy, driven Sue with a delightfully demented gleam in her eye – was chosen to host this year’s Emmy awards. And whatever the fashion fascistas may have thought of Jane’s frocks – cue shock and horror – I thought she did a bang-up job. (And that’s the way Seema sees it!)

But what struck me much more forcibly at the Emmys was the wealth of A-grade stars lined up on the red carpet. In fact, such was the glut of celebrity in the presentation hall that you searched in vain to see an unfamiliar face. There was Gwyneth Paltrow, who won a special award for her guest star turn on Glee. There was Kate Winslet, looking absolutely ecstatic at winning for Mildred Pierce. There was Christina Hendricks of Mad Men fame, her legendary curves poured into a shimmering dress that could barely contain them. It was easy to see that this was an A-list gathering – because almost every lady in the room could pass the litmus test of celebrity, with her cellulite and cleavage under the daily scrutiny of the tabloid press.

That’s what set me thinking. If I tuned in to see an equivalent awards show for Indian entertainment television – and yes, you’re right, I wouldn’t really – I would be hard-pressed to recognise a single star. Yes, there would be some faces which would look vaguely familiar. Was that Anandi what’s-her-name from Balika Badhu? Is that the actress who plays the eternal Savitri Bhabhi (not to be confused with the other, much-maligned Savita Bhabhi?
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The only faces I could place with some degree of certainty would be the stars of reality television – Rakhi Sawant, Dolly Bindra – but only because the news channels play them up every day in their entertainment shows. And even then I would be hard pressed to tell Veena Malik from Payal Rohatgi or Ashmit Patel from Sameer Soni.

Not because I am some sort of sad snob, but because our entertainment channels don’t really produce A-list stars. Our TV actors may have their 15 minutes of fame while their shows are doing well. But they soon fade away never to be heard of again. Who remembers Gracy Singh, for instance? Or Jassi of Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin? Or even Dakshaben from Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi? In fact, the only cast member of that iconic show who survives in our consciousness is Smriti ‘Tulsi’ Irani – and then only because she has since recast herself as a BJP politician and turns up on news channels regularly to give us the benefit of her wisdom.

The truth is that no matter how much transient fame our TV stars achieve during their all-too-brief careers, they never really graduate to the A-list. They never rate a glossy magazine cover, for instance. Nor are they ever signed up to endorse top-end products like sports stars and film actors are.

Contrast this to the kind of stardom that TV actors achieve in the America and Britain. The stars of Friends are still considered to be A-listers. Celebrity magazines are still obsessed with the love lives of Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox. Matt LeBlac may have flopped spectacularly with Joey, but he still has enough star value for a new show – Episodes – to be created around his real-life persona. More recently, the actors of Desperate Housewives and Mad Men have become bona fide stars. In fact, Eva Longoria’s wedding and subsequent divorce was accorded the same treatment as Tom Cruise’s nuptials to Katie Holmes.

In the UK, the stars of Downton Abbey are forever being written up in the press. The British show, The Only Way is Essex – better known as TOWIE – has attained near cult-status. And it’s not for nothing that the legendary British actor, Alec Guinness, followed up his role in Star Wars with the TV mini-series, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Across the Atlantic, such is the power of television that even big Hollywood stars think nothing of working in TV shows. At the height of her fame, Meryl Streep starred in a TV series, Angels in America; Glen Close did a magnificent job in Damages and The Shield; Robert Downey Jr dazzled in Ally McBeal; and Alec Baldwin continues to sparkle in 30 Rock alongside Tina Fey.

One measure of the power of these TV shows is how many A listers they can pull in as guest stars. Gwyneth Paltrow in Glee is perhaps the most famous one. But the last season of 30 Rock had Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Bono, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Keaton and Alan Alda come on as guest stars.

Contrast this with India when Bollywood actors only condescend to work in TV serials if their careers have completely collapsed. Otherwise, the only way you can tempt them on to television is to give them several crores to host a quiz show or a reality TV programme. So while Amitabh Bachchan is happy to front Kaun Banega Crorepati and Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt will do the honours for Bigg Boss, and Akshay Kumar will do his usual dare-devilry for Khatron Ke Khiladi, no A-list film actor will ever deign to act in a TV series.

In India, at least, it seems that television is doomed to remain the ‘small’ screen forever, while the biggies strut their stuff on the ‘silver’ one. And more’s the pity.

It’s freaks we seek

In today’s world, celebrity-hood is all about vulgarity and sensationalism

I groan inwardly each time I hear somebody quoting Andy Warhol’s famous line about how in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes; not because Warhol was wrong, but because he was absolutely right.

There was a time when you admired the famous. You respected them for the qualities that had earned them their fame. Top sportspersons, international statesmen, big-time movie idols, great artists and creative geniuses. Even the famous people one did not admire – Adolf Hitler or Charles Sobhraj, for instance – served as an object lesson in the negative aspects of the world: the nature of evil, the misuse of power.

These days alas, fame means little. There is so little to admire in so many famous people. And even notoriety is cheaply purchased. About all you can say with a degree of certainty of most of today’s famous people is that within five years most of them will have been forgotten. New instant celebrities will have taken their place – to shine in the spotlight for their own 15 minutes or so.

You can blame society and the communications revolution for the fickleness of today’s fame. But I think that we in the media have to accept our share of the blame. Because we are so celebrity obsessed that we devour and spit out ‘celebrities’ by the week, we create new, undeserving famous people almost on an hourly basis.

To some extent that is inevitable given the demands of today’s media technology and it is not necessarily a bad thing. But what worries me the most is the banality of 21st century fame. We don’t just take minor celebrities and exaggerate their importance. We use entirely new criteria to judge celebrity-hood. We look for vulgarity, for a trashy loudness and for an overwhelming cheapness. All the things that we would consider appalling and revolting in a colleague or a neighbour are the very things that help people to become famous.

Would you want to work in the same office as Dolly Bindra? How would you feel if Rakhi Sawant was your next-door neighbour? Would you allow Maria Susairaj into your home?

No matter how revolting we would find these people if we came across them in our day-to-day lives, we are forced to regard them as celebrities by the media, to follow their antics on our TV screens and to read about their every move in our press.

As far as the media are concerned, the fame game has now become a freak show. The freakier the person, the better the story. The more shameless the person, the more sensational the quotes. And the more horrific the personality, the bigger the spin-off.

It is no longer: in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Now it’s simpler and more basic: it’s freaks we seek.

In which world could you have imagined that Dolly Bindra would become a celebrity? Even ten years ago, the media would have ignored her. Once upon a time, Rakhi Sawant would have been recognised for what she is: a two-bit item girl with an unfortunate lip job. Now, TV channels vie to build shows around her and she gives long interviews to famous hosts.

Or take Rahul Mahajan. When his father died and we saw pictures of him at the funeral, we thought of him as no more than a young man whose life had been vitiated by tragedy. Who would have imagined that he would become a bona fide celebrity on the basis of drug-related deaths and a sordid private life played out in public? More worrying is this: as long as he was a subdued tragic figure, the media had no interest in him. But the moment he turned himself into a vulgar, public spectacle, he became a star.

So it is with Maria Susairaj. I won’t get into whether her acquittal on a murder charge was justified. But what kind of society are we if we turn a woman who helped her fiancée chop up her lover’s body and then burn it (she has been convicted on that charge) into a celebrity? Now Ram Gopal Varma wants to cast her in a movie. Reality TV shows vie to win her participation. And her press conferences are turned into bizarre circuses by a rampaging media machine.

Once a society becomes obsessed by the vulgar, the cheaply notorious, the loudly sensationalistic and proudly trashy, it loses its bearings. It forgets all the things that fame should really be about: achievement and excellence. And it abandons the distinctions between right and wrong, between the real and the manufactured, between the substantive and the illusion.

So the next time you see Rakhi Sawant giving an interview or watch a press conference by Maria Susairaj, pause a little and ponder the banality of celebrity-hood today. And remember that when fame becomes a freak show, it is our society that eventually pays the price.