Is the above sight offensive? Or horrifying to the human eye? Would anyone form a perfect ‘O’ between their lips before saying “Sheesh! Look at that!” and then, also shudder? I wouldn’t. But I had tried very hard to elicit that sort of reaction a couple of days back. And failed, if I may add. All I got was a polite near-yawn. Zzz.
I knew that this would happen. That is why I wanted to opt for Print in my ACJ application form. But no, previous experience of working towards producing visuals for an addictive-idiot-box-that-people-sat-watching-gaping-while-controlling-their-bladders-for-fear-of-missing-something dictated my choice. And to think that prim and proper, model television BBC would teach me to blow things out of proportion… this is where I shudder. Not during a close up of a poor innocent packet of Lays.
Newspapers do have to fill pages too, but somehow, apart from the likes of pseudo newspapers and sleaze tabloids like Deccan Chronicle and Chennai Times, I haven’t seen newspapers being desperate enough to cover banality like television does to fill air time. But as part of our ‘training’, the rubbish we cover as part of our biweekly bulletins makes my toes curl and the nails on them cringe. But despite having vowed to “revolutionize TV journalism single handedly”, as part of my ‘training’, I have to do these things. And a few days back, we did a story on how junk food may be banned in schools in the city.
After being kicked out of a school by someone quite foretellingly called Mother Superior, we had no choice but to make a story of it in our own college canteen. Under the amused noses of the privileged print lot, feeling rather embarrassed, we made a poor classmate buy a packet of Lays three times (retakes) and then forced him to eat nonchalantly while the camera zoomed indecent levels into his face. Then followed more indecent close ups of a pack of Lays. Had the pack of Lays been a woman’s (face) cheek even, we would have been guilty of ‘objectification of women’. Except that the subject is already an object. Which makes the entire effort worthless no?
Anyway, where is the need to kick so much fuss over the evils of junk food that we have speculated about even before junk food was conceived? As discerning people with brains, don’t we know already? Why do we need telling, “Oh junk food is bad, don’t eat it!”? And knowing its bad only for our own bodies, if we still do it, we don’t care right? So why show the bright orange semi solid stuff in a boy’s mouth being ground into a paste? And that Lays pack! I feel even sorrier for it. What did it do? It doesn’t have eyelashes to bat innocently to lure people into assaulting it. I know I know, the evils of consumerism, the brilliance of packaging and all that. But how can you accuse a nice happy blue packet bouncing off sunshine, of manipulation?
I am not saying junk food is healthy. Condemn me if I trivialize a grave issue like a famine. My point is, let us shift our focus to those things that require our attention. And in our country, there are such issues everywhere you look. Let us spare a poor blue air filled pack sitting in a corner. Let us learn to tell insipidity engagingly. Or atleast fill our bulletins with sense. Otherwise, let’s just sit around with friends and eat chips out a bright blue pack.
