August 4, 2009

Arts & Culture

Reality TV

By DU Beat August 4, 2009

REAL FUN!

By Tanya Agarwal

A seventy year old man forced to admit to having slept with a prostitute as his tense wife and daughter look on, Rakhi Sawant fluttering her eyes at the camera and accusing participants in her Swyamvar of playing with her delicate heart, Gauhar Khan bursting into tears and piling all the blame for her bad dancing on her hapless choreographer… if you condemn such harmless, albeit theatrical entertainment and say it debases popular taste, then you’re just a puffed up snob who hasn’t yet tried watching the said shows, conveniently assuming that it’s for those with low intellect and no one but the likes of Udita Goswami to look to for amusement.

The supposedly blatant unreality of reality television creates the most unlikely situations and the reaction of the various pseudo celebrities featured in these shows is pure entertainment. It is precisely this that keeps even the cerebral people glued to shows like ‘Big Boss’ and ‘Sach Ka Saamna’. High brow attitudes are out of vogue and society sees no harm in being entertained by any kind of entertainment at all nowadays. Reality shows are the symbols of the age of mass culture that we live in today.

We are so accustomed to the petty dramas of everyday life that they’re no longer of much interest to us anymore. The lives of people like Manmohan Tiwari and Abhijeet Sawant played out on national television therefore, comes as a refreshing change, presenting us with a peek into a world exotically different from our monotonous, scheduled existence. It is amazing fun to watch celebrities on TV and find out how they actually are in real life and whether they truly live up to their typecast roles. It also funny to hear Anu Malik, the architect of songs like “do me a favour, let’s play holi” and “oonchi hai building”, pretend to be a connoisseur of music and dole out advice to participants. Once in a while, it’s good to just go with the deception and sit back and enjoy.

Reality shows not only keep us entertained but they are also a great platform for those with aptitude and willingness to work hard. These shows can be credited with churning out some pretty great talent, examples being Sunidhi Chauhan and Sonu Nigam – both hugely successful singers.

In the end, we are after all, a democracy. Neither is anyone compelled to participate in these shows, nor is anyone obliged to watch them. So cheers to those who can afford to step down from their high ground and appreciate some mindless fun, and to the rest, live and let live, people!

ISS REALITY TV SE MUJHE BACHAO

By Aina Mathew

If on one channel you have old men jumping up and cracking coconuts with their heads in the name of entertainment, on another rival one you get chubby little toothless girls prancing around dressed as bais, all to instigate laughter. While Shah Rukh tackles fifth graders, Salman has roti-making competitions with Mallika Sherawat. At absolutely no time of the day can you channel-surf without coming across at least ten reality shows featuring complete madcap behaviour. The idiot box is truly living up to its name these days.

With the overwhelming number of reality shows flooding our TV screens, you’d think we’d get to see fascinating, inventive programmes with something new being offered each day. On the contrary, almost all these shows are rip-offs of popular western shows. ‘Indian Idol’ is an exact copy of ‘American Idol’; ‘Is Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao!’ follows in the footsteps of ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’; ‘Sach Ka Saamna’ is modeled exactly along the lines of ‘The Moment of Truth’ and so on and so forth, until originality, much less sense is the last thing you’d associate with Indian television. The format is the same, the rules are the same, and everything is the same except the quality, which falls dreadfully below tolerance levels. Our answer to Simon Cowell’s sharp, witty remarks is the sad shayari of Anu Malik who, by the way, takes up more footage than the participants themselves with his histrionics. While western audiences are left shaken by the candid confessions of participants on The Moment of Truth, we have to contend with the ramblings of retired cricketers. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to such torture?

I fail to understand why the producers of all these nutty programmes classify them under reality TV. Whether it’s a stand up comedy competition or a game show or a singing contest, it all eventually turns into a K-serial anyway. Drama, suspense, romance – name it and you have it. All the elements of an Ekta Kapoor hit are intrinsic to every “reality” show that have graced Indian television sets. More than their singing abilities, endurance levels or dancing skill, the talent that always comes out best among participants is their acting. With every elimination, rivals who couldn’t stand being in the same room without a torrent of beeps renting the air turn into friends for life who drown themselves in tears of remorse. Thanks to “reality” TV, our desi Pamela Anderson has turned into a blushing, demure sati savitri who gets a heart attack every time a potential husband so much as brushes against her little finger. If this is all the reality that TV can offer, I’d rather just revert to the saas bahu serials, thank you very much.

In conclusion, reality TV is a complete waste of time and energy. If anyone gains from these shows, it’s the medicine industry that now has a bigger market for headache pills and those resuscitated stars of yesteryears who can finally stop selling water purifiers and scream at wannabe dancers instead.

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Top 5 Ways to Cope with DU Loos

By DUBeat August 4, 2009

1. Use the loos at Barista/CCD/Whatever Random Coffeehouse Bagged That Prime Real Estate Near Your College. In the event that you start feeling guilty about the fact that you’re using their facilities without buying anything, remember this: they’re charging you 50 bucks for a cup of coffee with cream.

2. In the likely event that the urinals in your college don’t have partitions (or had partitions that were stolen and sold off in the lucrative granite chor bazaar) remember to follow the ancient Code of the Samurai with the Small Bladder: Rule 1: Look straight ahead. Rule 2: Look STRAIGHT ahead. Rule 3: This never happened.

3. Hold it in and distract yourself by fantasizing about Jessica Alba/George Clooney/ Both if you’re into that kind of stuff. Alternatively you can perform certain exercises involving stamping feet and pumping hands if you don’t mind the entire class thinking you have an epileptic fit.

4. You can train yourself using a combination of Zen meditation and Israeli military training to only have to go once between solar eclipses. This may or may not involve a 3 year coma, but it’ll be hard to distinguish from actually sitting through a history class.

5. You can use a number of drugs to trick your body into believing that it has no larger intestine. This may result in a few unpleasant side-effects such as your lungs turning into jelly but that’s just one of the hundreds of the trade offs you have to make in life.

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The DU Freshers’

By DUBeat August 4, 2009

According to a Supreme Court judgment the College Freshers’ party has to take place by the first week of August. Preparations have started all over. All colleges are hustling with activity and this week is all about fun and celebration.

It’s considered to be the first opportunity to socialize and take a peek at college life. It’s also supposed to be the first party of sorts that they have in college and they can be seen preparing for it. In fact this is the time they get to interact with their seniors for a prolonged period of time.

This event sees a lot of participation from the juniors who are usually highly enthused about it. It includes a hunt for the Mr. and Ms. Fresher, including impromptu performances and games. Every college’s Student Union is usually digging into its contacts list to come up with the best Freshers’ party. Some even have media coverage to popularize the event. Most colleges have both the college freshers’ and the department freshers’. So for the juniors, it’s double the fun.

Last year, SRCC had a rain dance party with the theme ‘Western’. It was quite a hit, more so as SRCC is generally lenient with the timings. Speaking of rain dance, at KMC the rain was ‘created’ with the help of pipes and buckets. At JMC, food from Mc. Donald’s is the big catch!

At Hans Raj there is a College Freshers’, department formal Freshers’ (where the staff is also present in the beginning) and the various informal Freshers’ that are organised by the seniors. The Hans Raj College Freshers’ party takes place in the LP (Lovers’ Point) and badminton court. Its organized by the student union that arranges for a DJ and live music. The college canteen or nearby eating joints are approached to organize food stalls as well.

You can actually witness some union brawls in the middle of this whole function so police security is actually a must even in an event like the Freshers’. This caught quite a few eyeballs last year.

At Hans Raj, if you want to keep the fun going beyond 5 p.m., college is not the place for it. Stephen’s has both a college and department Freshers’. It’s based on themes yet again. There is a brief introduction after which the lecturers of the respective departments leave and that’s when the actual party starts…For example, a few years back it was on “School Uniforms” and last year it was “The Great Indian Epic” ,where everyone had to dress up according to the characters in the Mahabharata or the Ramayana and introduce themselves as those characters and do silly things. The prospective themes for this year are ‘Pirates’, ‘Las Vegas’ or ‘Cartoon Characters and Super Heroes’ .The music society organizes a gig for the Freshers’. Later, there is a concert by the freshers who join the society.

As for the department freshers’ , they are a proof of the hard work put in by different societies. The department freshers’ helps you to know seniors from your department better. The announcement of the theme is followed by a lot of looking around or borrowing which actually becomes a must when you have themes like LSR’s ‘aliens’, Hans Raj’s ‘Cartoon Network’ and IP’s ‘Fairy Tale’. Most freshers take the theme of the party very seriously and dress for their part perfectly. Sometimes wrong or over interpretations of themes can lead to awkward scenes such as going out of their way to look like a beggar at the Hindu Freshers’ where the theme was ‘Beggars’.

At many other colleges the societies contribute a lot to the freshers’. Music, choreography and western dance societies welcome the juniors through their performances.

This year too, fachchas are geared up and waiting in anticipation for this year’s Freshers’ and are hoping for some positive changes and longer hours.

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RTI Applicants brood over faulty implementation

By DU Beat August 4, 2009

A young mind is full of questions, driven with a passion to change the world, and the Right to information Act or RTI is the perfect tool for them.

Right to Information Act, from its very inception, aimed at initiating change. You ask for ‘it’ and you get ‘it’. This is the basic premise of RTI. It ensures a smooth and immediate, ‘hassle free’ flow of information.

However in Delhi University atleast, the procedure for filing an RTI is far from hassle free. As veteran RTI activist and co-ordinator of the Youth Task Force RTI- Josh4India, Aditya Prasad comments, “At times, I feel RTI is losing its charm because the authorities are not serious in implementing it and the public is not too eager to use it. The way the Commission functions and Appellate Authorities act the fight seems endless. They are making it difficult for the common man to use his right.”

In 2007, Aditya Prasad, a student of Delhi University, challenged the transparency of the newly formed internal assessment system at DU. He filed RTI applications to get details about the internal assessment procedures followed by various colleges and universities. Universities like Indraprastha and Jamia Milia provided him with satisfactory response.

However DU and its colleges refused to cooperate. “Some colleges had the audacity to say that they were not under the RTI act. DU’s approach is vague and they have not uploaded any manual as well. They call themselves a university but every college has its own rules and regulations for giving out information.” says Aditya.

All this added up to DU’s violation of section 4 under the RTI act.

Aditya says “Under one of the provisions of Section 4 all public authorities are supposed to maintain all their records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner that facilitates the Right to Information.”

After a year full of complications, in 2008, Central Information Commission (CIC) hauled up DU and its affiliated colleges for not implementing section 4 of the Right to Information Act (RTI).

A deadline of 14^th November 2008 was assigned to DU to update all of its online manuals, publish copies for public reference and make sure that all the colleges do the same by November 14.

“Since then, till now, we have had no concrete change. In January2007, I wrote several applications for non compliance of the CIC orders but to no avail” says Aditya.

In his crusade for the RTI he has been threatened to the extent of failing him in his University examinations. But, that till now, hasn’t deterred him from taking these steps.

On June 7^th of this year CIC along with Delhi University conducted a seminar for the Principals of various Delhi University colleges regarding the necessary implementation of the RTI act.

As we keep our fingers crossed, Aditya says, “Hope it works this time!”

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