Spoofing takes off

One outcome of the rise in internet penetration is cause for celebration – the spoof websites proliferating on the media landscape. Not only are full time newsy outlets such as Faking News and Unreal Times devoted to spoofing, even comedy groups like All India Bakchod (AIB) and The Viral Fever have jumped onto the bandwagon.

A recent video made by the comedians at East India Comedy  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiIxkOah09E) spoofed Health Minister Harsh Vardhan's remarks on sex education by having a sex education instructor do everything in a class except say the 's' word.

The video, while focusing on the teacher’s chariness, also dwells on social ills like dowry in a thoroughly goofy context. Now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, has referred to other, similar ills that continue to plague our society, the video can be seen as an essential, not to mention timely, accompaniment to his concerns.

The Viral Fever has captured one space that was crying out to be spoofed – anchor Arnab Goswami's Newshour on the Times Now channel. One of their most popular parodies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enyCO7HPv18 ) has a bunch of people debating scripts for Bollywood films which are really shoo-ins for political parties' positions on the Jan Lokpal Bill.

There is an Arjun Kejriwal of the Bollywood Aam Aadmi Party (BAAP) who is fighting for common scripts to find their space under the sun against the entrenched interests of the United Producers' Alliance (UPA). If this was not enough, there is an over-the-top "never-ever-ever" sequence between the host and "film critic Meenakshi Lekhika".

 AIB, another excellent group of comics, tapped into the zeitgeist by concocting a raag from Salman Khan’s tweets (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nddf8SS0Wsc ). This is serious work, mind. The setting is traditional, the accompanying musicians thoroughly professional. To then have them lend music to Khan's brainless tweets makes for hilarious viewing.

These examples capture only the latest from a string of web-based news/satire portals. Part of the increasing popularity of spoof websites can be attributed to the mindboggling expansion of traditional media and their willingness to go the distance in search of eyeballs. With 24x7 news channels pulling out all the stops to hold the viewer's attention, it is little wonder that they often succumb to the kind of theatre that provides spoofs with perfect lampooning material.

Spoof outlets in the west, such as the famed Onion, tend not merely to induce laughter but also bring out, under the guise of humour, things which the mainstream media, for reasons of propriety, political correctness or journalistic objectivity, cannot say.

One such story is "Tips for being an Unarmed Black Teen" about the shooting of Michael Brown, a teenage black resident of Ferguson, Missouri, by a police officer. Tension still prevails in Ferguson, not least because Brown was unarmed at the time of the incident. "Be sure not to pick up any object that could be perceived by a police officer as a firearm, such as a cell phone, a food item, or nothing,” says the website.
This trend, of saying what many think but few dare speak, seems to have caught on in the Indian spoof scene as well. A recent story on Faking News (http://www.fakingnews.firstpost.com/2014/08/kerala-school-expels-hindu-students-as-calling-their-names-offends-religious-sentiments/ ) spoofed the real story of a Kerala school not allowing Vande Mataram to be sung during its Independence Day celebrations (http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/68thindependenceday/i-day-shocker-kerala-school-drops-vande-mataram-from-dance-programme/article1-1252438.aspx) .

The Faking News story reads: "When asked about a few names that allegedly offended their religious beliefs, he [a protestor] first sought permission from his God and then laid out a long list, which had a few names like Abhishek, Abhinav, Balram, Bharath, Deepak, Jagannath, Ram, Krishna, Aarti, Suchitra, etc....There are millions of names they could have chosen from. Why are they picking up these names only? It is like forcing kids from other religions to recite religious names. Hindus should learn tolerance and inclusiveness,” a secular person told Faking News.

Look at the sly usage of "secular" in the last line. True, such stories do not undertake the complex discussion that identity politics calls for, but then that is not their aim. Faking News, for instance, often runs stories that mock real world stories while staying true to their spirit.
The thrust, in such stories, is on the battle between different groups and on questions of identity and inclusion. The real shock, though, is the verisimilitude of the made-up stories. While being hyberbole, they capture a slice of the ground reality that most of us have come to expect, for good or bad.

Vikram Johri is a Bangalore-based writer. He tweets at @VohariJikram.