Today’s News and Electronic Media –
An Evaluation
I. Satyasree
My paper
highlights the role currently played by the print and electronic media in
presenting women as mere show pieces and glamorous dolls. Sparsely dressed women are used as models to
endorse various products. Right from
beauty products to washing machines, costly cars to luxurious Airline travels,
women are being exposed to the public glare.
The advertisements that are shown on TV are neither screened nor edited
by any authorised Body. Obviously there
is no such effective supervising machinery.
People are led to believe that they too would become as beautiful and as
charming as the models if they use a particular brand of Soap, Toothpaste,
Shampoo, Facial Cream etc. When a
person is constantly exposed to such propaganda, he/she naturally tends to be
influenced by it. Particularly
teenagers are harmfully affected by unethical Ads.
Of all the
senses, man has a highly developed visual sense. Visual medium is the most powerful one. We cannot deny the fact that things which are seen for a longer
time, specially colour pictures, get permanently etched on their minds. Hence, the colour pictures splashed in
Newspapers and flashed on TV Screen lure the students and the impressionable
youth. The Companies which sponsor such
advertisements are encashing on the vulnerabilities of the readers and the
viewers. Especially, this deleterious
influence is more on young minds. They
get carried away by these advertisements and their minds get distracted from
studies and spoiled. More and more
number of children are becoming delinquents and criminals because of the
violence, sex and crime they watch too frequently on TV. They view all sorts of unwanted things right
in their drawing-rooms.
The recent
trend is to show even older women on TV advertisements. Old women dressed up as nannies and grannies
appeal to the minds of small children who pester their parents to buy such and
such a product in which the elderly lady endorses a certain toothpaste, a
herbal cream, a masala powder, a pickle or a pain balm. Even physicians recommend such products
creating a false impression.
Talking about
the TV programmes, I feel that again the small children are the worst hit. They don’t have the discriminating power to
distinguish good from bad. Young children learn through imitation. We heard about the tragic incidents of little
children jumping to death from terraces as they tried to imitate the heroic
deeds of a popular TV character. This
should be an eye-opener to all the producers of such programmes in order to
avoid such accidents in future. We
wonder what the Censor Boards are doing!
Cinema is worse than TV. The
so-called hero defeats a dozen armed men and he performs somersaults to escape
their bullets.
Another
latest hit formula on the Tube is to portray the ‘Bahu’ as a vamp. All TV soaps and serials present the
daughter-in-law Vs. mother-in-law feud and this debate goes on a never-ending basis. Such stories are instantly liked by women
viewers as they are the target audience to these family dramas. Episode after episode, these ‘Bahus’ of
three to four generations wage a silent war for supremacy in the
‘Khandan’. Then come the love stories
of the boy eloping with his lady love or vice versa. It seems to the young boys and girls quite thrilling and romantic
to watch such programmes and they too would try the same formula, which results
in severe complications in real life.
A survey
conducted on TV viewing showed astounding results and revealed the harsh
reality that a young child by the time he finishes school sees thousands of
murders, rapes, robberies, kidnaps and suicides. Some channels which telecast
on a basis of 24 x 7 show scantily dressed women parading right in our drawing
rooms. The attraction and pull towards
these programmes is growing day by day among the younger generation. If this trend continues, our youngsters will
soon become demoniac and their minds will get rotten. Hence, there is an urgent need to curb this tendency. Matinee idols who are hero - worshipped by
the youth dress themselves in funny colours and do break dances and the
heroines are glued to their bodies.
They chase each other on the public roads and in parks.
We hear about
the children in the West resorting to dastardly and ruthless acts like shooting
and killing their friends and classmates on school campuses because of the
influence of the violence they see on TV.
There was a case of an eight year old boy in the U.S. shooting down his
mother, who refused to put on the channel that he wanted to watch. If we don’t learn lessons from such
incidents which serve as eye-openers, we too should pay a heavy price. Stories depicting passion, violence,
gangsterism, sex and hooliganism should not be screened on the small screen or
the big screen. Effective legislation
has to be brought about in this regard resisting the influence of powerful
lobbies.
Popular
heroines and Beauty Queens are also entering this band being Brand Ambassadors
to endorse different products. Using
them as mere glamour queens and showing them in obscene scenes is to be
stopped. Instead, their beauty and brains
can be used for a special cause.
‘Beauty with a Purpose’ should be their motto. To cite an example, Aishwarya Rai’s Campaign on Eye Donation has
evoked tremendous positive response from people all over the country. Similarly, awareness can be created on
problems like dowry deaths, bride burning, sexual harassment etc. People also can be educated on getting rid
of diseases like cancer, polio, AIDS and TB.
There should
be a beginning to all good things.
Instead of enlightening the children with the noblest human values and
ethics, we are injecting poison into their minds. Let us stop this pollution!
Vulgar and
obscene language is usually heard in the films as well as the T.V.
Serials. The dialogues are written in
ambiguous language which suggests undesirable meanings. In earlier days we used to hear decent
language because scripts and songs were written by reputed scholars. Even pronunciation of the artists now-a-days
is awful!
There is urgent need to
reverse these ugly and harmful trends in the cinema and on the T.V.
Paper presented on 4th
March, 2004 on the occasion of Triveni Platinum Jubilee Celebrations &
National Seminar on “The Role of Periodicals on Indian Renaissance and National
Integration – Pre and Post Independence Scenario”.