More celebrity slumming

BY Hoot Desk with IANS| IN Media Practice | 18/04/2010

If you cannot fix the problems of rural India, turn them into entertainment and make money off them. Colors gave itself a flying start as a new channel by tapping into this concept. It brought creative talent to bear on age old problems and created entertainment history. NDTV Imagine and Zee TV quickly sought to follow, till prime time evenings were awash with caste and class clashes, rural oppression and social evils all packed in traditional finery, Hindu rites and rituals (reeti riwaaz) and located in improbably grand rural mansions.  Such ratings as are available tell us that TV watching India lapped it up.

Delighted at this new gold mine, entertainment industry imaginations are working overtime. If  rural theming works so well, why not extend it to non fiction?  They even say so upfront, in explaining why NDTV Imagine is launching a village-based reality show called Desi Girl. Bring on the career celebrities and give them some cowdung to slap around. Monica Bedi for one.

To quote IANS, "Milking cows and making cow dung cakes - reality content on Indian television gets a rural makeover with Imagine TV's new show "Desi Girl" where eight glamorous celebrities will be seen doing all this and more in a village…

‘This reality show is an extension of the wave of rural themes popular on fiction content these days. We thought why not bring it to the non-fiction space and show the real aspects of a village since we have been trying to strengthen our base of non-fiction offerings,’ Shailja Kejriwal, executive vice president (content), Imagine TV, told IANS over phone from Mumbai.’

So the show will be shot in Sialba Majri in Punjab, and the participating celebrities will stay with the families in the village. "Turn by turn, each celebrity will undertake everyday tasks of the villagers such as milking cows, making cow dung cakes, cleaning the house, cooking food for the family, etc in a bid to prove that they aren't just glamour and style icon but also have it in them to be a true Desi Girl." And, "… even to get their cup of coffee, they would first have to milk the cow every morning like villagers do for their everyday needs."

All of this of course is reported completely without irony. And why not? If you want to take your mind off Maoism and much else what better to focus on than a hatta-gatta-Punjabi-kudi version of rural India?  Until some  creative Bollywood genius comes up with a ‘join the Naxals for a week’ reality show.

This will not be the first reality show to cross a cultural and economic divide –the Big Switch on UTV Bindass last year did that. Rich kids went to live with poor kids in a carefully slummified sets called Switch House. The former category featured children of actors, politicians, builders. The latter were slum dwellers,  and you weren’t told what the parents did. They were all there to sample the lives of the Other Half and help them, while doing without air conditioning,   mobile phones, credit cards and cash.

Only temporarily of course. When the show runs its course, people  return to their side of the big divide. That’s entertainment. Nobody is kidding themselves that this is about anything else.