Rakhi Sawant's new reality show...

Rakhi Ka Swayamvara is soon going to be the next reality show everybody will watch religiously in the privacy of their homes and then feign ignorance of it the next day. A self-confessed pop culture omnivore (although not as much as I’d like to with some people I know always taking the remote control into their custody when I’m around), this is one show I’m not going to miss. Just the very premise augurs unlimited possibilities of displaying Rakhi Sawant at her most outrageous, hilariously uninhibited and bursting with that country bumpkin crassness of speech and demeanor that we’ve all come to know and tolerate to the point of passive acceptance, perhaps even a remote fondness. Because, just as easy it is to hate her, it’s easier to look through Rakhi Sawant and know that she’s almost uncontrollably herself to the point of embarrassment (not to her, but to others), a trait so rare in today’s world that it deserves it’s own peculiar admiration.

There have been several ‘personalities’ in the Indian two-bit celebrity scene who have stuck around long enough to amuse us but then gradually faded into anonymity, only to be replaced by the next preposterous sensation. Rakhi Sawant however, has become a cultural phenomenon in herself, refusing to be shut out or shut up. Although she officially exists on the sidelines of true stardom, a status that we so graciously bestow on film actors and sports personalities, she and others like her perfectly encapsulate the idea of the ‘celebritariat’, a term I came across in an article I was reading recently.

The celebritariat has been credited to the leveling of popular culture that has occurred globally in the past few decades. No longer do we draw a line between high and low culture and no longer is mass entertainment only for the masses. While social and economic inequality continues to rise unchecked, mass media such as advertising, film and television dangerously mislead people into believing that the lines that divide the rich and powerful from the rest are not that insurmountable. The celebritariat manifesto states that it’s not talent or earned merit, but your own unique individuality that can make you famous. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, all you need to do is believe in yourself, possess a certain amount of gumption and go for what you want, and success will be yours for the lapping up. The rags-to-riches story often resorted to by unimaginative storytellers in our movie-obsessed society are popular for this very reason. If he/she can make it, why can’t I?

Reality shows are the perfect example of this growing trend, where it’s not talent but the contestant’s likeability factor or just plain eccentricity that gets them to the top. A celebritariat in the making can be anybody from your next-door neighbour to your local dhobi or even your pet dog. Luck too is an overriding factor – 95% of leading ladies on saas-bahu TV shows have been ‘discovered’ on Mumbai streets (often by Ekta Kapoor), thus reinforcing the ‘the right place at the right time’ belief, an everyday miracle that can happen to anybody, even you.

Rakhi Sawant, who never shies away from recounting her rather modest beginnings and her subsequent rise to infamy, reinforces this very seductive ideology. So what’s the big deal anyway? Well, social theorists claim that the celebritariat class blinds the masses into believing that the world is a level playing field, a society where equality of opportunity prevails, leading them to endorse a system that is actually rife with inequality and prejudice and where success and power is only the privilege of a few.

On a slightly different note, it also makes me wonder about TV news channels these days, with their audience talk shows and citizen journalists, where common people are given a chance to wield a microphone and ‘participate’ in public discussion. How empowered does voicing their opinions really make them? Unfortunately, people today have begun to take their fifteen minutes of fame as a sign of a more democratic change in society, when the reality perhaps, is far different.