Drama And Mascara

As reality shows overdose on hissy fits and bilious babble, the ratings finally start to challenge the soaps

Everything is in excess. When Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007’s blushing host Aditya Narayan is kissed by a girl in the audience, guru Ismail Darbar asks her to do it again. When Indian Idol 3’s celebrity judge Alisha Chinai finds a singer’s performance good, Anu Malik rounds on her with a “What are you talking? Arre yaar, she was completely off key.” When Darbar says that singers should not be judges, Abhijeet, an excitable judge on the show Voice of India, says Bappi Lahiri, another guru on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, sings like a girl, upon which Lahiri calls him a third class person. Shock. Horror. Aww. Welcome to the drama-mascara world of reality shows, where minor disagreements are embellished with enough background music to make them sound like national affronts and all exits are squeezed dry for gallons of lachrymose tears. Having lived through seven long soapy years of ear-splitting dialogues and cliff-hanging emotions, the country’s talent hunts have become, laughs Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007 celebrity guru Vishal Dadlani, “saas, bahu and singers’’.

PICTURE SPEAK
CHEESY CHALLENGE: A blushing Aditya Narayan being kissed by a girl from the audience (left); Aadesh Shrivastav, Jatin and Alka Yagnik on Voice of India

The more bizarre the better. Coming up soon is a talent show on the spiritual channel Aastha to find the best religious singer in the country (with a pilgrimage as the top prize) and another on Sahara Filmy called Bathroom Singer, where the sets will be modelled on a, yes you guessed it, bathroom. What next? Finest Bedroom Warbler? Or Best Ramdev Disciple?

REAL DRAMA

Viewer time spent on reality shows 2005: 2,98,369 min 2006: 3,93,702 min 2007: 1,84,366 min and counting

Between 2005 and 2006, viewers spent almost one lakh more minutes on reality shows, a trend not likely to be reversed this year. The ratings of reality shows have started challenging the seemingly invincible soaps—if the average June trp of Zee TV’s Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007 is 4.14, that of the highest rated soap, Star Plus’ Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, is 6.66. If the share of the genre itself has not grown (in April-June this year it was 6.67 per cent for reality television and 70.93 per cent for serials), it is only because reality shows are expensive to produce and unpredictable (yes, casting old flames Farah Khan and Akashdeep Saigal may have created a flutter in Jhalak Dikhlaja last year, but suppose it hadn’t?). According to tam data, those who watch reality shows are younger, better off and usually male. It is, as Sony Executive Vice-President Albert Almeida points out, the audience that doesn’t watch weekday soaps.

So as the red carpet fever sweeps the nation, everyone is learning to let fly. Darbar can declare regional contest winners a waste of time, Javed Akhtar can take it upon himself to dance on stage, Malik can start singing like a rocker on speed and Abhijeet, who rarely has a kind word to say to anyone, can call Alka Yagnik an airhead. Contestants are made to swish their made-over hair (Smita Adhikari in Sony’s Indian Idol 3), declare their love for guest judges (Aneek Dhar to Dia Mirza in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007) and when all else fails, oblige by behaving like overworked soap stars and fainting on the sets (like Sarika Singh who did so out of disappointment and fatigue, again on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, where two episodes are usually compressed into a day’s shoot, which starts at 7 a.m. and can go on till 4 a.m. the next day). All these incidents, complete with photographs and numbers of all participants (who invariably offer comments even more incendiary than on the show), are duly circulated by efficient publicists. The blogs are instant and insightful in their analyses while YouTube is flooded with cheesy clips. Everything needs to be underlined, admits Gajendrra Siingh, who did it in bold highlighter for 14 years on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and is now purveying his art of manufacture on Star Plus’s Voice of India.

PICTURE SPEAK
SHOW OF FANS: Kissen, Shibani Kashyap and Gaurav Gera (left); Shetty hosting The Biggest Loser...

In this atmosphere of full-on public performances, no one is safe. Not even the venerable Asha Bhosle, or the revered Khayyam. Whether it is the dramatic Himesh Reshammiya or the scarily hairy Darbar, no one wants to be upstaged. The bigger the object of your attrition, the noisier the headlines—Reshammiya takes on Ashatai after she disses him by rolling her eyes whenever he sings, while Darbar takes panga with Khayyam over contestant Jyoti Mishra singing out of tune. Each dispute is then billed as the ultimate mahayuddh/ agnipariksha/sankat and is accompanied by black and white freeze frames. Where conflict doesn’t work, gimmicks are enough—Yagnik turns up at an audition in a burka, while Chang and Deepali are shown as falling in love on Indian Idol 3. And superlatives are flaunted mindlessly: Jyoti is Sholay’s Basanti for Darbar, while Sumedha Karmahe is India’s Britney Spears for Lahiri. For one startled contestant in Voice of India, Abhijeet is motivated to flail his arms and feet about and say he sang better than the original.

Average Trps for June 2007

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007: 4.14 Star Voice of India: 3.64 Indian Idol 3: 3.18 Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi: 6.66 Kahani Ghar Ghar Kii: 6.05 Kasautii Zindagii Kay: 3.92

In a culture of babble, bad manners have become the byword for reality TV bluebloods—not surprising that professional rude head Ravi Kissen has been made judge on Bathroom Singer. As Dadlani puts it, rather strongly, “It’s all crap, over-dramatised, manipulated, and designed to sensationalise.” It’s also the first and the last time he says he and his musical partner Shekhar Ravijiani will appear on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. Everything is for effect, he points out. “Every time we say something like the singers are the real stars, we are edited out.” Instead, what is highlighted is their unhappiness when they are made to wait for two hours, while Reshammiya turns up late for the shoot. His explanation: “Star ke liye toh wait karna hi padta hai…” is duly mailed to all media houses (Reshammiya’s conceited act, says the tabloid-ready headline).

So how much of the drama is real? Or scored precisely for drums and cymbals? Says Nikhil Alva of Miditech (the people behind Indian Idol): “Do you think we can tell judges of such calibre what to say on TV?” Maybe not, but judges are being paid upwards of Rs 1 crore to make an impact, especially in the early rounds, when the audience is not too familiar with the participants. As Indian Idol 3 judge Chinai puts it: “We are paid for our discomfort.” In her case, it’s all about preventing herself from bursting into tears when contestants exit and coming to terms with sitting on a panel with Malik, whom she had once accused of sexual harassment. She believes Sony has chosen the judges well: “I am the candy, Javed Akhtar is the master of the game, Anu Malik is cruel to be kind and Udit Narayan is the softie.”

As judges go about praising, damning and listening, what of the contestants, who invariably fall to their knees every time they are praised? Their humiliation is complete, a necessary rite of passage in a culture which exalts the desperation to succeed. So whether it is losing weight, acquiring blonde highlights or wearing bling, it’s all a quest for the perfect “package”. All sorts of insults must be tolerated in the process, whether it is Sa Re Ga Ma Pa’s Mouli Dave being told she can sing only item songs well, or Indian Idol’s Suhit Gosain being told that nail paint and heavy metal T-shirts are not enough to become an Idol, or the unfortunately overweight individuals on The Biggest Loser Jeetega, who not only have to dance like Mr Blubber but also decipher host Suniel Shetty’s accented English—each sentence serenaded with suspense film sound effects.

Clearly, gaana alone is not enough, ada is as important. And it’s the ada that matters. As Khayyam says, it’s loud mannerisms and even louder music that seem to be popular with audiences. It’s injurious to the ears and the psyche of youngsters, he says, but this is what music has become: a performance art rather than an art form. “Talent sunana hi kaafi nahin, dikhana bhi padta hai ab (talent has to be heard and seen now),” he says. But he too is happily complicit in the new hype-reality of TV.

If the participants perform, so do the judges. Whether it is Malik chasing a contestant at an audition down the hall when he snatches the invite to Mumbai from him, or Darbar staging a walkout after disagreeing with Khayyam, it’s all a bit of nautanki. For channels it’s the tentpole on which programming gains can be built (evident in the shameless plugging for Comedy Circus on Indian Idol 3); for news channels, it is potential news stories (“Khayyam sahib, aapko kaisa lag raha hai?”); and for viewers it is a weekend retreat from the soaps. Spectacular drama, without the tedium of a convoluted plot. Something no one takes seriously, except the contestants, to whom it matters most.

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