How Real ?

Television today is witnessing a surge in shows based on the unscripted format. As everyday reality grips the average Indian, he loves to take flight into an assumingly real world with contrived situations and cameras following every move of the participant. The viewer in fact lives his dream through the participant. TWF correspondent Sonali Jha Chatterjee tries to take a closer look at this phenomenon amid the raging controversy of the impact of such shows on the young participants after a teenage girl in West Bengal suffered serious neurological disorder and lost speech following her elimination from a show in a Bengali channel.



Reality bites. And no one knows better than the parents of 16-year-old Shinjini Sengupta, a class-XI student of Kolkata, who lost her ability to speak and move after she was shown the door in the elimination round of a show on a Bengali TV channel. Whether she was turned into a vegetable state owing to the alleged uncharitable comments or it was owing to her inherent medical problem, only time can tell. But as she battles for life in Bangalore's Nimhans Hospital, the reality shows are put to question. So are the moral decadence of the Indian parents who push hard their children to perform for fame and money. The blank stare of the girl being wheeled into an ambulance refuses to fade away. The media spotlight on Shinjini speaks volumes about the popularity of such shows and the ethical dilemma.
The word reality used for reality shows could be quite a misnomer considering the fact that most of the shows are simulated, stage managed and are not set in natural settings. Almost every TV channel has one such show. It is then a natural step forward to make the show interesting enough for the viewer to forget his remote for a while. This is where the unreal part of the reality shows sets in. The judges of the shows have different takes on each participant. This results in spats between the judges spicing up the programme. The participants are asked to build up drama by casting aspersions or false allegations against their co-competitors. Personal lives are touched upon to get the viewer involved. Reality therefore is now rather staged, with people moving into simulated situations and the camera catching their reactions. The viewer here is the third person that enjoys the goings on in this unreal real world.