The era in which television shows came into the limelight, was in the actual sense an era of savant and realistic people. Back then we knew that shows on T.V. are meant to be unreal. They are just characters who are playing there parts onscreen and it’s not necessary that they resemble their roles. If someone would have told the directors and producers back then that the audience shall be interested in watching black and white silhouettes of people sleeping after a long day of disputes and empty talks, they would easily have laughed the idea off.
But today we live in an epoch where people are stuck in front of their television sets waiting to watch other people live their lives. Reality T.V. shows are going on increasing in number. You call a group of famous people to live in a lugubrious house for two months, and it is a boffo on box office. You sit with a set of questions and hurl it on the player with the promise of money, and people shall skip dinner to watch you do that. You set a panel of blabbering judges before guys and girls who want to be singers, and the show becomes the most sensational thing of the age.
Are we seriously this naive? Do we really believe in what is shown to us? All we see is just what the editors of the show want us to see. The reality is long lost somewhere behind the curtains. Don’t we already have a lot of issues in life that we’ll waste time in watching people solve their conundrums on screen? Why should I be concerned if Bakhtiar is fighting with his wife in a madhouse? The stories shown to us are just stories within stories; not even an ounce of truth lies there. Don’t tell me you actually vouched for the marriage of Rakhi Sawant.
Now if for some time we leave the reality shows to their own fate and try flicking through the channels, what do we see? You stop at a news channel and you hear an ebullient reporter talking about the racial differentiation that Shilpa Shetty had to face in big brother. You go to the next channel and find them interviewing the winner of Indian Idol. Finally you are frustrated and switch the idiot box off. THAT’S INTELLIGENCE.
Every time it happens that after a certain period of time when the audience get bored watching the same people do the same things every day, the TRP of the show declines. As soon as you plan on quitting that show, a news channel informs you of the latest hot development in the show and you go back. The unreality of reality T.V. shows, is not only harmful for the people watching it, but also defamatory for people participating in it.
So come of that world that neither real nor fantasy. It is only a calamity. Watch shows that help you in some way. Stop cribbing about the love triangle of people who are paid to waste your time. Stop listening to news that’s talking about the sex scandal of a famous personality while terrorists are tearing your country apart. Get yourself a life.