The gismo called ‘Remote’

Except for snooker or the odd cricket match featuring Sri Lanka, I do not watch much television these days. The BBC, having been banned from our screens, I no longer have the luxury of listening to news read in an intelligent and unself-conscious manner. Whatever viewing I do is during the search for the channel showing a match between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Stephen Hendry.

The cable operators have begun to play childish tricks with me. Until three months ago, ESPN used to be channel number 72 on my television screen. It then became channel 11 and then channel 81. Last week it was shifted to channel 22 but this channel now only shows snowy balls and flickering asteroids.

Television in the subcontinent is a victim of its own clichés. The various Indian channels which keep dishing out endless fare of the so-called ‘family entertainment’ have come to an amicable agreement with each other: their soaps and serials may have different titles  but the same simpering, bejewelled, over made up, bovine ladies appear in each one of them. Also they make sure that the ten-year old girls in their sit-coms are played by pigtailed, revoltingly precocious children that you ache to push out of a high window.

We, in our part of the world, have aped most of their soaps. A well- established writer of serials for television told me not so long ago that the producers (and financiers) of a high profile channel gave him a copy of an episode  of the long running Indian soap, Kabhi Sas Bhee Bahu thee and told him to fashion his creative effort exactly along the lines of the given script.

For the viewing public the main attraction of a talk show, which has almost disappeared from our screens, is the slow eradication of the aura of a famous personality. The public is ever greedy to become privy to the private lives of the rich and famous. Our celebrities do not like the viewing public to become privy to their private thoughts. This is the main reason why they spout so many clichés “Maan ke paon tale Jannat hai” (paradise lies beneath the feet of one’s mother) etc etc. I realised this when I hosted my show forty years ago. I let them ride their hobby horses. The high moral tone that they adopted soon betrayed their timorous vulnerability.

A famous actress — shan’t  name her — whom I had invited to my show asserted that she strongly disapproved of dressing immodestly, that she never went anywhere  without being chaperoned by her mother and that she only wanted to work in ‘good films’. (Her concept of a ‘bad’ film was the one which flopped at the box office) but “kabhi kabhi dunyadari bhee karni parti hai”. (Sometimes one has to be worldly-wise). I hesitated to ask if she had ever wanted to ask for a script before accepting a role. In those days actors never ever read the script before the start of a movie simply because there never was a script as we understand it. So I just let her ramble on about her piety. “There are heroines” she said primly, “who sign a film on a single phone call from directors. I never do.” How many phone calls did she receive before she agreed to sign a film? I ventured to ask. Innocently, she answered, “Oh jee hamaray to rate fix ho jatay hain”. This produced a big laugh. The poor girl was blissfully unaware of the fact that she had revealed the seamy background from which she had emerged.

When I look back at the inner working and the ritual of my ‘talk show’, I remember that it was the only format in which my favourite as well as my embarrassing moments occurred within the span of the single programme. The ‘talk-show’ is a form in which an unknown personality sparring with a celebrity (or the host) can gain enough notoriety to become a highly sought-after guest or even the host himself. The trend-setter, Quentin Crisp, was right when he said, “No matter how ignominious a person’s public image is, as soon as he gets on television he becomes a virgin in the eyes of the viewer”.

The gismo known as the remote control is a lethal weapon. Once you hold it in your hand you are goaded by unknown forces to press your thumb on the button marked ‘channel’. With so many channels to choose from and nearly all of them interrupted every few minutes with endless insipid advertisements (some of them repeated as many as six or seven times within the same break) it becomes obvious that the real purpose of ‘entertainment’ programmes is to allow advertisers to have the maximum amount of time. I don’t know about others but I — thanks to the surfeit of commercials — only end up by seeing what else is on, rather than the programme I set out to see.

What bewilders me — if and when I want to see something on the box — is that the same programmes are shown over and over again at the same time each night. Whichever ‘family orientated’ drama serial I chance upon, the same hapless girl seems to be torn between filial loyalty and the dictates of her heart.

If you happen to watch TV during the day you will find your screens hogged by some of the has-been politicians who offer a panacea for all our ills. In the name of Current Affairs, most of our television networks hold slinging-matches between high profile politicians of the main political parties. There is one rule they have to follow strictly: they must all speak at the same time in such a manner that the viewer should not be able to understand a single word. All of this happens in between advertisements for various mobile telephone companies.

We assert, at every opportunity, that, we have a free media, which is commendable. I wish we also had the wherewithal to match our assertion.  The host’s chair in the morning chat shows — a mid-morning phone-in programme about unruly adolescents, an afternoon health programme, or a late afternoon discussion about  discrimination against women — is occupied by model girls, ingénues, school teachers, and unsuccessful movie starlets, possessing no other assets but the patronage of channel owners and influential producers. There are exceptions, of course, but, in the hands of these ‘anchors’ as they are called nowadays, serious issues are dwindled because of the ineptitude of the presenters who are so taken in by the notion of their own popularity that they refuse to do their homework and rely, instead, on the theme of survival that binds them to their patrons.

Zia Mohyeddin