Reality TV is increasingly about baring it all. And no one’s complaining.
When “Patiala ke Presleys”, the wacky onscreen duo in the film Dev D, crooned “Emotional atyachaar”, they ended up giving young people an anthem of sorts. The song, with its catchy lyrics, reflected the way youngsters viewed relationships.
So, when UTV Bindaas, the desi youth channel, decided to introduce a new show that looked at real-life relationships, Dev D’s catchphrase only made more sense. For the uninitiated, the show Emotional Atyachaar can best be described as India’s first real life detective show where the channel, with hidden cameras, brawny hunks, and gorgeous young women (posing as undercover agents), expert planners and detectives, keep tabs on real life couples to figure out whether they can pass certain “loyalty tests”.
The result, unfortunately, is predictable and in almost all the episodes that I have watched, there’s been no happy reunion of any of the couples who have been featured on the show. Many have parted ways after seeing the footage, and the parting has been acrimonious with tears, profanities, physical abuse and much melodrama. As audiences, we have lapped it all up and laughed at the protagonists. All this while remaining smug and secure in our living rooms. No wonder, Emotional Atyachaar is a voyeuristic success, raking in the moolah and riding high in the TRP game. Angad Bedi, the young anchor of the show, confirms that the programme is a rage in “rural India too”.
Reality TV has spawned a new culture of apparent openness, hitherto alien to India, and in that light the show’s success is understandable. There are also shows such as Splitsvilla (now into its third season), Roadies and Dare 2 Date that are aired on MTV and Channel V (increasingly pitching themselves as youth-centric channels), for instance. It would seem that young people are completely comfortable about divulging salacious details of their sex lives on TV. “There’s no taboo in seducing a guy at a farmhouse in a sexy saree,” laughs a participant who wants to be a Bollywood actress and recently appeared on Channel V’s Dare 2 Date, a show that sets up blind dates for interested participants. Sonal, a former participant on Roadies, however, did admit that some portions of the show, after she watched them later, made her squirm. MTV also has Splitsvilla 3 where some young, real life couples mix with singles, and perform ‘tasks’ (last season, one of the tasks included seducing Siddharth, one of the male participants who was eventually declared the “Splitsvilla King”). This time, one of the tasks necessitated young women posing in bikinis.
So what accounts for the continuing success of these shows? “There’s no shock value for our generation,” says Bedi. These shows are instant gratification, guarantee those 10 seconds of fame, and many of the youngsters on these programmes are, as Bedi rightly puts it, “impatient and completely career-oriented”. How far they are willing to go for this may be a debatable point. There may be many, like Bedi who say that they would never be a participant on such a show and their relationships would stay in the private domain. But for many youngsters, television seems to be the place where they are only too ready to kiss and tell.
