Two and a half Idiots....

Disclaimer: Sometimes you come across articles so amazingly true,you cant help but love them for the genius they are.The following blog is one I couldn't refrain from sharing although it isn't written by me.(Guest Blog Courtesy: Pramod Kantak).


I respectfully disagree with whoever christened the television “the idiot box”. To me it qualifies as a half idiot. It is a machine after all, with no intelligence of its own, and there’s nothing it can do to alter its natural state of idiocy. I reserve the term idiot for those who have the ability to help their idiocy, but do not exercise it. Which brings me to the other two protagonists of this feature, the two real idiots who sit on either side of the half idiot, namely the television media and the viewers.

Put a dog in a small colony, and he will blend right in and dedicate his loyalties to the place and the people therein. Now, bring in more dogs, give them a bone each, and you will see their priority shifting immediately to marking and protecting their own territory and their bone. If endowed with a brain like humans, each will likely even set out to prove he is the best dog of the lot. All while the bigger and the original cause of guarding the colony is forgotten. The media scenario today is not altogether different. Society’s proverbial watchdog has been reduced to watching out for its own tail and protecting its business profitability.

Marketing is possibly the worst curse to have befallen business acumen. It’s the real villain of modern times, a fatal poison to credibility and purpose. What makes it so dangerous is that unlike most forms of evil, which are in-your-face and characterized by a strong motivation or psyche, marketing doesn’t have a color of its own. Its manner of attacking is ingeniously simple – it will identify a weakness in you, a want or a desire for something, and dish out unending portions of the same in varied forms, spoiling you for choice. Unfortunately, humans do have a tendency to choose those very things that are worst for them.

I feel society today (and here, I am particularly referencing the population that makes for the TRPs) chooses style over substance, libido over love, attitude over empathy, money over matter, indifference over action, dreams over reality – traits that are only too clearly reflected in the progressively degenerate content being churned out on television, and which is lapped up by the audiences. A predictable fallout of marketing over-kill, electronic media, far from being informative, entertaining or even rousing has instead turned into a relentless assault on our senses, so much that it has numbed our intelligence into accepting almost anything.

How else do you explain the popularity of reality shows, which, apart from being obviously rigged are horrible concoctions of skin show, abrasive language, faked emotions and brand endorsements? Then you have endless meandering soap sagas shot in super slow motion, bringing out every conceivable human fallacy and gloating in the supposed inevitability of it all. I personally feel bad for the numerous participants in the dime-a-dozen talent shows being aired today – here are a bunch of really talented youngsters, reduced to puppets at the hands of the producers of the show, while a host of “expert” judges plumb new depths in buffoonery and who, if anything, inadvertently evoke our sympathy for the mockery on show. And here’s the crowning horror, an indelible blemish in the history of television – the sanctity of the delicate bond of marriage being desecrated in an ill-conceived ‘swayamvar’ on TV. And to think, there are actually takers for this insanity. Shame on you, India!!

Leave aside entertainment. News channels are supposed to be the ears, eyes and the voice of millions. It’s therefore despairingly sad to often see them fall over each other to break news of such insignificance as a celebrity break-up, or watch them pry into and publicize the personal details of certain individuals – deceased or alive. Nauseating as these instances are, they are also an amazing revelation of the levels to which both, our intelligence and our morality, have sunk. It’s hard to believe this is true-blood journalism. Indeed, it’s hard to believe in the sincerity of anything at all, when the media, which wields the torch of freedom in one hand, has the other hand buried in a snake-pit alive with the vested interests of political powers, business magnates, celebrity ranks and the media owners themselves. Media is war and media people mercenaries, simultaneously its victims and perpetrators.

Speaking of war, try and remember the last time some really grave news, or an issue of national consequence and social ramifications caught your attention. How long did you dwell on that news, and why? Was it because it concerned the well-being of someone personally connected to you, or was it purely a humane reaction? More importantly, what did you try and do about it? I suspect an overwhelming majority, including me, would answer the last question in the negative. We would have, as the smart-generation lingo goes, “moved on” with our lives within days of the occurrence fading from the media. Funnily, moving on, today is the equivalent of driving past an accident site with only half your attention on the road ahead because you are too busy checking out the rear-view mirror.

Our society is constituted by an increasing percentage of youth enamored by starry-eyed ambitions of fame, power, luxury and pleasure; the harsh realities afflicting millions other less fortunate mortals be damned. On the other hand, we have a population of elders, who justifiably feel disconnected with the lifestyle and mindset of their succeeding generations, and would do anything to escape into a world still rooted in traditions they can call their own. Combine the above two classes of people together and you pretty much have your television audience base covered. It’s only coincidental they are both, in their own way, running away from reality or have arrived at their own impressions of what is real.

When I was a kid, there used to be such a thing as a circus. It used to be full of entertainers – jokers, ringmasters, gymnasts – people who would do all sorts of things ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, all with the sole objective of drawing you away from your mundane real life and into a magic world where the unthinkable is possible; where everything is swell; where you want to suspend your disbelief for a moment, and believe with open-eyed wonderment that you are witnessing something special. The media and the television, today serve the exact same purpose. You get exactly what you want. You want to be fooled.

- Pramod Kantak