by Javed Jamil
media is least concerned with the welfare of the people, or their education and morals. Whatever information the media disseminates is almost always invested with some commercial linkage. The prints as well as the electronic media are playing this role to perfection. The overall strategy is to materialise human lives, as conscientious men and women are of no use to the market. It is in fact here that the intrigues of the economic fundamentalists have reached the most sordid level. For them human beings are no humans; they are either animals or machines. It is their animal instincts that fetch them wealth and they use the media to arouse these baser instincts. What a travesty of knowledge that the people these days know enormously more about film actors and actresses, models, fashion designers, musicians and dancers, than scientists, poets, thinkers and reformers.
Is it not sheer nonsense that a number of beauty pageant films and music awards programmes and fashion shows are telecast live all over the world but the recording of the presentation ceremony of the biggest academic awards, the Nobel Prize, is not telecast even at a later stage. There are no exclusive interviews of the Noble Laureates and hardly any prominence is given to their achievements. The snaps of a Miss World or Miss Universe continue to adore the newspapers and magazines for months but they have little space for the Nobel Prize, Magsaysay Award, Faisal Award or Nehru Award winners. The satellite TV has worsened the matter to unbearable limits. Throughout the day and night, the overwhelming majority of the channels present gorgeously or scantily clad film actors and actresses; the academicians, the moralists and reformists are consciously and conveniently neglected. In doing so, they succeed in amassing wealth not only themselves but also help the other industries to satiate their thirst. The advertisements go straight to strike the inner senses of the watchers who go to buy their 'dream items' at first opportunity.
Advertising propagates two fold messages. First, it convinces the target watchers that the possession of a certain product at the earliest shall enhance their social status, shall improve their quality of life and shall defend them against imminent dangers. Second, it blindly promotes such social values and aggravates such physical desires as will ensure benefits for the market. These two objectives are sometimes difficult to be simultaneously achieved in a single advertisement. Yet the advertisers are not ready to ignore either of the two, and it results in incongruity between the original message (about the product) and the scenes giving the underlined social message. Whatever the nature of the item, whatever its application and whoever its users, semi-naked, gorgeous women invariably appear on the screen. Not only the natural attraction between men and women is utilised to the hilt the human covetousness is also stimulated. If you wish or plan to win over a person or persons of the opposite sex or more appropriately speaking the sex of your choice, you must brush your teeth with specific brands of tooth brush and tooth paste, must shave yourself with the shaving machine, blade and shaving cream of a certain company, your hair must be washed with a particular shampoo, your bath must be with a specific kind of soap, you must put on trousers or shirts of a specific name, even your lingerie must belong to a certain company, you must wear a particular tie, you must have a shoe bearing a special name, must ride a specific bicycle, motorbike, scooter, motorcycle or a car, must smoke a particular brand of cigarette and must take beverages and wines produced by a certain company. Enjoying sex, you are made to believe, is the most essential part of life which should be topmost on your agenda from the time you step out of your bed till the time you retire; and for a wholesome and perfect sexual life, you must not forget to use all the 'essentials', mentioned about and many more. It does not stop here. The advertisements advise you which brand of condoms you must use and which tablet you must swallow and lotion you must spray on your genitalia to increase your sexual urge and power. After all, the ecstasy of sexual union must be shared by both the partners.
The advertisements are not alone in encouraging criminal liaisons. Even the programmes on TV and films, encourage premarital and extramarital relationships. The films show the lovers in extremely provocative dresses and in highly compromising positions. The message to the young lover is unambiguous. The lovers in the past would continue to have mental proximity for a number of years without compromising their physical aloofness; the modern lovers seek the earliest opportunity, which usually comes within a few days of their introduction, to engage in kissing and hugging culminating in the bed. For increasingly larger number of boys and girls, premarital sexual links are no more taboo. The television and films in West are miles ahead. Sex before marriage is a rule rather than exception there. The press there drives immense pleasure and of course money from publishing the photographs of eminent personalities in compromising positions or in the nude. To peep into the private lives of the rich and famous is a favourite pastime for the amateur cameramen and a lucrative job for the professionals. The tabloids are always willing to assist them in their naked pursuits.
The media in the West, for many years, have been in virtual control of private owners. In countries like, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and China, however, the appearance of private satellite channels is of relatively recent origin. But their entry has been with a bang. Their impact on public perceptions has already started puzzling the social scientists and unnerving the moralists. These satellite channels air a large number of film-based programmes. The restrictions on the official media do not generally apply on them. The dresses of the presenters on the private channels are becoming provocatively naughty. Now, the ladies, compeering or anchoring various programmes, who have relatively soberer looks on the government-owned channels, can be found more often than not dressed (or undressed) in shorts and shirts that do not make difficult for the watchers to see and imagines their anatomical detail. With the advent of new non-film musical videos, the media are better placed to be able to exploit the wild fantasies of young men and women. In order to compete with private channels, the official TV, too, has started presenting similar programmes.
As has been mentioned earlier, the economic fundamentalists owning the media have two-fold objectives. Not only do they multiply commercial gains by telecasting programmes showing women’s anatomy at its best, they also seek to develop a culture that would open new venues for business. Due to certain restrictions, however imposed by the law of land and also due to their own fears of provoking public protests, the media cannot show all that it wants to. But the media strategists are no idiots. They have thousands of ways to recondition human psychology. What they fail to carry through serials and other programmes, they achieve with the help of discourses and discussions organised on TV. The topics of discussions are mostly related to the changing social values. There are discussions, for example, on : Should there be any bar on women’s dresses, is there anything bad in posing nude before camera or giving “bold” scenes in the films and serials? What is wrong with premarital or extramarital liaisons? Is pornography bad? Should there be any legal measures against smoking and drinking? Should the unwed mothers be ostracised by society? Should the young girls opt for modelling as career? Is marriage necessary for society?, and so on. The presentation of such discussions is usually slick. The moderators engage the participants, who are chosen with the objective of conveying a specific message to the listeners or watchers, in a manner that the ultimate result would be in accordance with the specified objective. Though the protagonists and antagonists of a particular issue are given a fair chance to vent their feelings, the producers invariably succeed in extracting from the participants observations that fit in their own scheme of things. The substitution of such programmes appears in the magazines in the form of surveys based on a questionnaire that is circulated among a few thousand persons in a way as would give the desired impression. Recently, for example, some well-known magazines in India carried out surveys for determining the sexual attitude of people living in the country. The surveys indicated that the attitudes of Indian men and women too, like their counterparts in t
he West, were undergoing steady transformation and people in increasingly greater numbers were indulging in premarital and extramarital sex, and, even, incest and homosexuality were on the rise. The obvious purpose of these exercises is to suggest that the social and legal response towards these practices must change. The law must recognise them as “natural” aberrations or preferences that need neither condemnation nor punishment; society must stop stigmatizing the people behaving differently in their sexual choice, and others have no business to poke their noses.
It is not only the private media where economic fundamentalism manifests itself in its ugliest form, the corporations like BBC and Voice of America too are extremely partisan in their presentations. They project themselves as the most unbiased news organisations, but there is always a carefully hidden conspiracy lurking in the shadows of their programmes. Their objectives include presenting the people of the West as developed and civilised and the people of the East as
