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| Sunday, March 21, 2004 |
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| Sunday, March 21, 2004 |
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Transnational Television, Cultural Identity and
Change: When STAR Came to India THE year 1991 marked a watershed in many ways in India’s history. The path of economic liberalisation that the Indian state decided to tread had serious and far-reaching socio-cultural implications. There were doubts, concerns, anxieties and criticisms, especially in relation to the concomitant changes in cultural realm. The entry of transnational television led by Rupert Murdoch’s Star channel sharpened these debates. The public opinion oscillated between the extremes of educative and emancipatory role of television to the threats of "cultural imperialism" and "foreign invasion". It is quite understandable given the almost unconscious construction of the word "western" as "the immoral other" for the collective Indian psyche in the post-Independence era owing to its colonial past. Under the impact of globalisation with its emphasis on "local flavour with global reach", television networks thorough its contents and strategies debunked some of the "taken for granted" premises of the understanding of Indian viewers and their values; its proverbial fixation to the past and obduracy to innovation and change. All this complicated dynamics and debates in the cultural arena, as fallouts of the entry of foreign channels, have been explored in this extremely engrossing book by Melissa Butcher. The book begins with a background of the history of the development of television in India and goes on to examine the mechanism of change measured out in the continuity and disjunction of cultural boundaries. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in various parts of India in both rural and urban settings, which includes interviewees from both the younger and the older generation. The author in her analysis essentially underlines two roles for these channels and therefore two processes at work simultaneously: first, in space-binding role, in its drawing more tightly the boundaries of familiarity, i.e., its role in creating reassertion of the local, Indianness and constructing a negative’ other, and second, a space-dislocating role in the formation through repetition of new, syncretic familiarities to which new identities can adhere. In response, the author observes three possibilities emerging: one, where a generation in India is adopting to these shifting cultural dimensions by learning the codes of new vocabularies and new familiarities or strengthening the extant in their search for relevant strategies of identity that reinforce place and continuity, or thirdly, they are simultaneously engaged in both. Chapter 8 of the book, titled India According to Miss World, offers an interesting reading, as it tries to understand the significance of organising Miss World pageant, 1996, in Banglore by Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd. As the author opines: "The pageant epitomized the unadulterated joy in popular culture and the anxiety that was 1990s post-liberalisation India. It was a seminal moment in which attempts to redefine India met publicly and vociferously with resistance from previously established boundaries of expected everyday practice and values." The show was also important in the way it tried to serve exotic India to a global audience through television networks, while keeping an eye on local demands as the first 45 minutes featured stylised regional dances (unity in diversity) for local consumption (in India only, broadcast nationally on DD1). As the author rightly puts it: "TV channels familiarised the exotic for global viewer and exoticised the familiar for the local consumer." In her final analysis, though Butcher does not have anything conclusive to offer on the impact of transnational television on Indian culture, she sees a strong trend where "the forces of restraint" (indicative of pre-liberalisation ethos of asceticism and inwardness) are on the wane and "forces of release" (meaning freedom of choice and possibilities of consumerism of the post-1991 phase) seem to be gaining ground. Focusing on young people—who are often considered to be the most vulnerable to change or cultural degeneration—the book demonstrates that the resilience of the youth is at times underestimated, as is the impact of other changes in India brought about by economic liberalisation. The book also takes note of the process of "glocalisation" or what Rushdie calls "chutneyfication", as there is increasing trend towards localisation rather than hegemonisation as the cultural-imperialism theorists had warned. The book is important for its references to a rich volume of literature on globalisation and its cultural implications, most importantly the issue of media-triggered reconstitution of cultural spaces and identity articulation. |
