I was typing a comment on Uma's post A Bad Habit Called A Reality Soap and realised I had written a comment long enough to be a post :)
Most of the reality shows that I used to watch - I realised I was watching them because I liked seeing who would get eliminated next.
I was lucky, because most of the reality shows I watch are the American ones which come to India a couple of months after they are released in the US. So after losing a couple of hours spent unproductively watching reality shows, I realised that just checking the Wikipedia entry for that season cured me of it.
Wikipedia lets me know who got eliminated and why and who won & thats it, no longer any compulsion to watch the show. Thats because my trigger to watch most of them was the suspense and surprise.
With my location change and different seasons playing in different countries on different channels, I was getting confused with sequence of events on serials like Lost, Prison Break, Desperate Housewives. Wikipedia also helped me catch up on all the seasons of Lost with 3 hours of reading. Same for the other serials too.
Of course there are the shows like "So you think you can dance?" which I watch for the performances but I'm not too interested in the results show the next day because I know I will figure out next week who has been dropped anyway.
I used to be a huge fan of American Idol till Constantine, Latoya, Jennifer Hudson, Melinda, Daughtry consecutively kept getting out, way before their time while lesser performers were still kept on. I just stopped watching each season when my favorites got out because I no longer felt it was worth watching. Proof of the flawed voting system is that only 2 of the winners of this show in its 6 seasons - Kelly Clarkson (Season 1)and Carrie Underwood (Season 4) - have received commercial success while many of the finalists who were dropped on the side have had a better success rate. Season 7 which is currently on does not have a single finalist who seemed interesting enough for me to follow the series and Simon is now more obtuse than brilliant, so I just watch it intermittently.
With Rockstar INXS and Supernova seasons, I had slightly better luck. My favorites made it to the final 3 each season although they lost out to the person I least liked from the entire bunch both times. While I have reconsidered my opinion on J D Fortune, I still think Dilana was the best of the second bunch.
I used to love The Amazing Race till it started blurring the lines with Fear Factor. When competitors on The Amazing Race had to start eating weird stuff it grossed me out too much to follow it.
Each of my favorite reality shows/contests gave me its own reason to stop me from being addicted and obsessing about watching it on time every week. The downside is that I seem to have replaced it with an addiction to Wikipedia.
Published on desicritics.org
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Child Artists - Prodigies or fodder for Pedophiles ?
Also posted at desicritics.org
There are a surfeit of reality programs/contests geared for kids on TV these days. There are also a number of kids who act/dance in TV serials and movies.
I have a few basic issues with child performers and their overall development as human beings, after being thrust into the limelight at a young age. But at the end of the day, their parents are their custodians and should be taking care of the mental development of their children.
Coming to the singing and dancing contests, most of the judges do try to be gentle with the children, but some of them are quite rude and fancy themselves as the Indian answer to Simon Cowell. This is terrible for the self esteem of young children who have not yet developed the coping mechanisms of dealing with negative comments directed at them (especially on National TV)
A friend of mine in the advertising industry, told me of an audition they had called for, a week ago in Bombay. It was on a week day during school timings. More than 5000 parents turned up with their children. Obviously the company could not see them all on the same day. The parents whose children did not get a chance on Day 1 were prepared to come back every day of the next week and longer if it meant getting their child a chance to audition. Not a chance to act, not a chance to be in a movie, but the chance to audition. They were willing to have their child miss school for over a week for a chance to audition for a silent role in an advertisement.
My mom would have turned down Karan Johar or Yash Chopra themselves, even if they had guaranteed me or my siblings a leading role in their upcoming movie, if it meant missing even half an hour of school.
Parents these days are trying to push their children into the limelight too soon. We do not have much data on grown up child stars in India. But look at Hollywood. With the exception of the Olsen twins (who also had their weight problems) which of the child stars has emerged as a balanced human being ?
Inspite of all this background, my main issue is with the kind of performances that some of these children are being coerced into displaying here in India.
They are dancing to item number songs. 6-12 year olds dancing to the steps of Helen or even worse - Rakhi Sawant and her ilk. Rakhi is old enough and smart enough to know what kind of effect her jhatak mataks & clothes can have on the adult male population. What do these little ones know and why should they know it so early in their life?
Look at the kid in the "cutting-shutting" paint ad. She was memorable for being what a normal 7 year old child would be. So why is the media trying to con us into believing that 6 year olds are old enough to be dancing as vamps and item girls? Why are they sexualizing young children?
The US has a long history of child beauty pageants and an equally long history of pedophiles who follow the child beauty pageant circuits. Mental health experts almost all agree, that exposing young children to the sordid world behind the glamor is completely unhealthy for their well being. And the end result of making children dress, dance and act like adults makes them easier targets for pedophiles.
Agreed we do not have a well documented history of Indian pedophile cases. The only ones that make the news are when foreigners abuse children under the guise of orphanages or children's homes. But that does not mean that pedophilia doesn't exist in India.
The actions of these children is perfect fodder for the appetites of pedophiles. They even look obscene to the general public (I hope its to the general public and not just a minority of people like me)
So why are these children doing this ? Is it pressure from parents or from the media to be all grown up and dance like a vamp? Or is it because the Shiamak Davar dance classes makes them seem ok? - His dances choreographed for children are reasonably age appropriate, but he sometimes has a couple of children dancing with the older members of the troupe and performing the same steps as the 20+ year old troupe members.
Fortunately Javed Jaffery tried to bring about a voice of sanity in an episode that I watched today of Sansui Boogie Woogie - he is the first Indian celebrity who I have heard talking about age appropriate steps. But he wasn't strong enough in condemning this practice. As the celebrity anchor on the biggest launch pad for dance talent in India, he could afford to be much more stronger on his disapproval of some of the steps.
I hope parents begin to see sense some time soon. They are always going to try to live out their own dreams through their children - that isn't going to change any time soon. But I do hope they stop turning their children into adults before their time.
There are a surfeit of reality programs/contests geared for kids on TV these days. There are also a number of kids who act/dance in TV serials and movies.
I have a few basic issues with child performers and their overall development as human beings, after being thrust into the limelight at a young age. But at the end of the day, their parents are their custodians and should be taking care of the mental development of their children.
Coming to the singing and dancing contests, most of the judges do try to be gentle with the children, but some of them are quite rude and fancy themselves as the Indian answer to Simon Cowell. This is terrible for the self esteem of young children who have not yet developed the coping mechanisms of dealing with negative comments directed at them (especially on National TV)
A friend of mine in the advertising industry, told me of an audition they had called for, a week ago in Bombay. It was on a week day during school timings. More than 5000 parents turned up with their children. Obviously the company could not see them all on the same day. The parents whose children did not get a chance on Day 1 were prepared to come back every day of the next week and longer if it meant getting their child a chance to audition. Not a chance to act, not a chance to be in a movie, but the chance to audition. They were willing to have their child miss school for over a week for a chance to audition for a silent role in an advertisement.
My mom would have turned down Karan Johar or Yash Chopra themselves, even if they had guaranteed me or my siblings a leading role in their upcoming movie, if it meant missing even half an hour of school.
Parents these days are trying to push their children into the limelight too soon. We do not have much data on grown up child stars in India. But look at Hollywood. With the exception of the Olsen twins (who also had their weight problems) which of the child stars has emerged as a balanced human being ?
Inspite of all this background, my main issue is with the kind of performances that some of these children are being coerced into displaying here in India.
They are dancing to item number songs. 6-12 year olds dancing to the steps of Helen or even worse - Rakhi Sawant and her ilk. Rakhi is old enough and smart enough to know what kind of effect her jhatak mataks & clothes can have on the adult male population. What do these little ones know and why should they know it so early in their life?
Look at the kid in the "cutting-shutting" paint ad. She was memorable for being what a normal 7 year old child would be. So why is the media trying to con us into believing that 6 year olds are old enough to be dancing as vamps and item girls? Why are they sexualizing young children?
The US has a long history of child beauty pageants and an equally long history of pedophiles who follow the child beauty pageant circuits. Mental health experts almost all agree, that exposing young children to the sordid world behind the glamor is completely unhealthy for their well being. And the end result of making children dress, dance and act like adults makes them easier targets for pedophiles.
Agreed we do not have a well documented history of Indian pedophile cases. The only ones that make the news are when foreigners abuse children under the guise of orphanages or children's homes. But that does not mean that pedophilia doesn't exist in India.
The actions of these children is perfect fodder for the appetites of pedophiles. They even look obscene to the general public (I hope its to the general public and not just a minority of people like me)
So why are these children doing this ? Is it pressure from parents or from the media to be all grown up and dance like a vamp? Or is it because the Shiamak Davar dance classes makes them seem ok? - His dances choreographed for children are reasonably age appropriate, but he sometimes has a couple of children dancing with the older members of the troupe and performing the same steps as the 20+ year old troupe members.
Fortunately Javed Jaffery tried to bring about a voice of sanity in an episode that I watched today of Sansui Boogie Woogie - he is the first Indian celebrity who I have heard talking about age appropriate steps. But he wasn't strong enough in condemning this practice. As the celebrity anchor on the biggest launch pad for dance talent in India, he could afford to be much more stronger on his disapproval of some of the steps.
I hope parents begin to see sense some time soon. They are always going to try to live out their own dreams through their children - that isn't going to change any time soon. But I do hope they stop turning their children into adults before their time.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Twenty20 - Reactions From a Non-cricket Watching Indian
Nothing personal against cricket, but I don't watch sports ! (This is my first post where I've chosen "Sports" as the Section) Except gymnastics, ice skating and synchronized swimming.
Equally crazily, I am married to the ultimate cricket fanatic, who watches matches, repeats, highlights and replays on the news (that's all of them - not an either/or choice). Who remembers statistics from games I never knew were played. For eg. He just said "We have never lost to Pakistan in a world cup" OK, not a great example, but it needed repeating :)
Another of his gems just before the last ball "For a moment, I thought about the last time a Haryana bowler named Sharma had the last over against Pakistan in a final. New Sharma, New ending"
Now these nuances are lost on me, but I'm sure there is a large group out there who can appreciate them. (Like the employees of various MNCs in India who officially closed office at 4 P.M. today.)
Being away from India for the first time on a long posting, he quickly ensured that we got all the right technology installed at home for regular access to cricket matches.
There's a small population of desis in Cairo (about 500) and an even smaller subset of cricket "fan"atics. The previous matches in the last year went by without much community feeling and viewing in this country. But this 20/20 brought a large portion of the Indian community together.
A couple of rational reasons for this would be the shortened timings in offices due to Ramadan (offices close by 3, the matches started at 2 - Egypt time) and the BCA showing the matches on a big screen where desis could get together and watch the matches in a group with alcohol available to drown sorrows or celebrate victories.
The group did avoid meeting at the club on the day of the India-England match because of the larger number of British supporters. But they regretted doing that by the end of the match.
Many of the Indians met up at the BCA for the days the Indians were playing. The non cricket watching wives would sit around and watch each others husbands bemusedly, wondering which of them would make a bigger scene at a missed catch or a wide ball.
We were of course happy that the matches were shortened, it meant less time sitting around. But it also meant shorter, almost non existent ad breaks (except 2 very irritating Horlicks & Sensodyne ads on Ten Sports) to try and communicate with your cricket lover.
Some of them would sit in the same crazy position that they were in when the last 6 was hit or wear the same clothes/shoes to every match. All kinds of crazy stuff that only fans can indulge in.
This was a good opportunity for us to get together and celebrate being Indian outside of India. Yuvraj's 6 sixes was obviously the biggest highlight till today's match. He does deserve the quarter-million and its good to see the BCCI giving something back to the players.($2 million for the team)
We watched today's match at home, but the phone calls kept coming and going throughout the match from across the world. Reactions & moods of the husband were oscillating from wild elation to extreme dejection at each ball. The little bits of the match that I did watch, I found it difficult to keep track since I couldn't recognise more than half the players (I had completely lost track of cricket from the time the slide started, plus this team had tons of newcomers to the international field)
But it was good to see a young team selected and though they had their health problems, they kept at it. Their confidence and perseverance are to be commended & rewarded. The cup and the 40 lakhs each are just a beginning.
Dhoni from all the conversations I caught, more than proved himself as being an able captain willing to take risks (who else would play a complete newcomer as opening batsman in a world cup final?)
He also showed more class in taking his shirt off and giving it to that little kid (I didn't catch who the kid was) rather than waving it around :)
From the strange tie breaker at the last India Pakistan match to the 6 sixes, to the final world cup win, it was an amazing journey even to the part time spectator.
The final run around the field with the Indian flags was a "rungte kadhe hone wala" scene that would warm the cockles of any Indians heart.
Way to go Indian team. This is a victory to savor for a long time and I hope it paves the way for more new comers into the playing Indian team.
By the way, we did this without a coach !
Photo Credit : Cricinfo.com
Sunday, June 24, 2007
When the US media starts to lose track
ACCORDING TO CNN, AFGHANISTAN IS LOCATED IN SYRIA!
Many in the US have a difficult time differentiating between Arabs and Iranians. President Bush has been caught many times being confused between Iraq and Iran. Some even went as far as suspecting that his poor knowledge of the area was behind the mix-up that led to the involvement of the US in Iraqi quagmire.
Apparently, the leader of the Western world is not alone in this mix-up. Even CNN, the news channel which heralded the 7/24 news broadcast world wide, has a difficult time locating Afghanistan
Here's Anderson Cooper, doing his thing...
And for those of you who aren't quite sure where it is, Afghanistan is located...
... in Syria.
And for those of you who aren't quite sure where it is, Afghanistan is located...
... in Syria.
Afghanistan would be three countries to the east, Just past Iraq and Iran.
I guess there's a point where U.S. foreign policy is such a near-total failure in so many countries, aggravating extremism in the name of fighting it, that even the media starts to lose track of.
I guess there's a point where U.S. foreign policy is such a near-total failure in so many countries, aggravating extremism in the name of fighting it, that even the media starts to lose track of.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Al Jazeera being beamed in English - Is the News Good or Bad ?
"The latest weapon in the Middle East is neither a missile nor a bomb. It is a Television Station" - I read this the other day in an editorial in Business Monthly - a journal brought out by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.
The editor who is talking about Al Jazeera English going live, goes on to say that - By all reckoning the slickly produced news broadcast is more powerful than the 170,000 coalition forces in Iraq with the potential to destroy administrations & topple governments.
Al Jazeera International was launched on 15th November 2006 as the first global English language news and current affairs channel headquartered in the Middle East.
Al Jazeera International is already available all over the world & free to air in most of them. (May be all of them) They claim to reach over 80 million cable and satellite households worldwide. It is also potentially available to the one billion users of the Internet worldwide as a live stream.
Headquartered in Doha, Al Jazeera aired its first exclusive on the 20th of November : News Footage of Naypidaw in Myanmar – formerly Burma – and a high level interview with the Minister of Information, Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan.
Al Jazeera English was granted exclusive access to Naypidaw – a first for a foreign broadcaster. The interview ranged from Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention, the roadmap to democracy, the move to Naypidaw, insurgencies around the country, and the effect of sanctions and the lack of aid to Myanmar’s people.
Al Jazeera English's SOP states that : Broadcasting from within the Middle East, looking outwards, Al Jazeera English will set the news agenda and act as a bridge between cultures. With unique access as the channel of reference for Middle East events, and broadcast centres strategically placed around the world in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC, Al Jazeera English will balance the information flow from South to North, providing accurate, impartial and objective news for a global audience from a grass roots level, giving voice to different perspectives from under-reported regions around the world.
Al Jazeera English is building on the ground-breaking heritage of its sister Arab-language channel – Al Jazeera, which was responsible for changing the face of news within the Middle East, now extending that fresh perspective from regional to global.
Viewers of "Western" News Channels will find the formats & imagery quite similar. They even have the familiar faces of David Frost (ex BBC) & Riz Khan (ex CNN Correspondent)
Reactions to Al Jazeera English, here in Egypt have been mostly positive. Considering that a lot of the population here has friends / relatives / acquaintances among the nameless & faceless people who are simply Collateral Damage to the American War on Terror. These people who are dying on "the other side" are simply statistics & numbers to the "Western" media. Forever to remain unnamed.
Hence Al Jazeera's tag line of "Watch the Other Side of World Events, Hear the Other Side of the story" has found its mark. Their other affirmations like "We want to change the News Agenda - Its a Fundamental Goal", "Do the Right Thing for the Right Reason" all have found their mark at least among the English speaking population of MENA
They don't seem to be heavily slanted in their perspective as of now. Someone mentioned that its somewhere between the spectrum of FOX News & Hezbollah's Al Manar Channel & will slowly find its gradient on this scale of extremes.
The editor of Business Monthly summed it up brilliantly when he said that "Western Governments will need to carefully consider their political strategy - the World has a New Perspective and it comes from the people on the receiving end of their Foreign Policy"
Also published at Desicritics.org
The editor who is talking about Al Jazeera English going live, goes on to say that - By all reckoning the slickly produced news broadcast is more powerful than the 170,000 coalition forces in Iraq with the potential to destroy administrations & topple governments.
Al Jazeera International was launched on 15th November 2006 as the first global English language news and current affairs channel headquartered in the Middle East.
Al Jazeera International is already available all over the world & free to air in most of them. (May be all of them) They claim to reach over 80 million cable and satellite households worldwide. It is also potentially available to the one billion users of the Internet worldwide as a live stream.
Headquartered in Doha, Al Jazeera aired its first exclusive on the 20th of November : News Footage of Naypidaw in Myanmar – formerly Burma – and a high level interview with the Minister of Information, Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan.
Al Jazeera English was granted exclusive access to Naypidaw – a first for a foreign broadcaster. The interview ranged from Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention, the roadmap to democracy, the move to Naypidaw, insurgencies around the country, and the effect of sanctions and the lack of aid to Myanmar’s people.
Al Jazeera English's SOP states that : Broadcasting from within the Middle East, looking outwards, Al Jazeera English will set the news agenda and act as a bridge between cultures. With unique access as the channel of reference for Middle East events, and broadcast centres strategically placed around the world in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC, Al Jazeera English will balance the information flow from South to North, providing accurate, impartial and objective news for a global audience from a grass roots level, giving voice to different perspectives from under-reported regions around the world.
Al Jazeera English is building on the ground-breaking heritage of its sister Arab-language channel – Al Jazeera, which was responsible for changing the face of news within the Middle East, now extending that fresh perspective from regional to global.
Viewers of "Western" News Channels will find the formats & imagery quite similar. They even have the familiar faces of David Frost (ex BBC) & Riz Khan (ex CNN Correspondent)
Reactions to Al Jazeera English, here in Egypt have been mostly positive. Considering that a lot of the population here has friends / relatives / acquaintances among the nameless & faceless people who are simply Collateral Damage to the American War on Terror. These people who are dying on "the other side" are simply statistics & numbers to the "Western" media. Forever to remain unnamed.
Hence Al Jazeera's tag line of "Watch the Other Side of World Events, Hear the Other Side of the story" has found its mark. Their other affirmations like "We want to change the News Agenda - Its a Fundamental Goal", "Do the Right Thing for the Right Reason" all have found their mark at least among the English speaking population of MENA
They don't seem to be heavily slanted in their perspective as of now. Someone mentioned that its somewhere between the spectrum of FOX News & Hezbollah's Al Manar Channel & will slowly find its gradient on this scale of extremes.
The editor of Business Monthly summed it up brilliantly when he said that "Western Governments will need to carefully consider their political strategy - the World has a New Perspective and it comes from the people on the receiving end of their Foreign Policy"
Also published at Desicritics.org
Monday, March 27, 2006
Kya Karega Qazi - Zee News - The irresponsible & disgusting Behavior of media
One of the most irresponsible & disgusting Behavior of media that I have seen in recent times.
Caught the tail end of a program called "Kya Karega Qazi" on Zee News a little before 8pm today. It disgusted me, as to the depths to which media responsibility has sunk.
Essentially a muslim woman, has been divorced by her husband for being abusive. The panel comprised of this muslim woman totally unidentifiable in her simple burkha, another woman in a saree who wasn't saying much, the husband who was getting very aggressive, a qazi who was ostensibly there to sort out the matter & an extrmely irritating, irresponsible, unempathetic, rude anchor who thought himself to be India's answer to Oprah Winfrey. And a studio audience.
From what I could understand about the matter:
The husband had divorced the wife because she was abusive. They have a 4-6 year old daughter. The husband now wants custody of the daughter too. The qazi was trying to resolve the matter.
What went wrong in the process:
The anchor kept pressurising the woman, asking her what she wanted. Now asking a woman what she wants or how she wants to resolve a matter is a good thing, but the way you ask it, your tone, your manner, should be one that puts her at ease & not one that scares her to death.
The studio audience of about 40 comprised of only 2 other women both of whom were also wearing burkhas. (I do not have anything against the burkha or women who choose to wear one. That is their choice.)
The social background that the protagonists seemed to come from was lower middle class. Now most of us are aware that the status of women in this class is lower than that of women in other strata.
In a lot of interior regions in India (not just the rural areas) women are not comfortable talking to their husbands in public (even if they dare to talk to them in private, it is an achievement)
Women are not expected to talk when there are males present.
In this scenario of a 99% male gathering, the anchor was pressurising this poor woman to say something against her husband. Is it logical ? Is it reasonable ? How can she break generations of suppression to become an advocate for womens rights ? Did the anchor honestly think that if he was rude enough, he might discover another Nisha (the one who said no to marrying the man who demanded dowry the day of the wedding) ?
Instead of empathising with the woman, trying to make her comfortable in an alien setting and being gently probing (which may or may not have got any answers, but is at least a better approach) he was downright rude & insolent. He was shouting at her and saying "Why aren't you saying anything ? You will lose your child also, don't you have any balls ? Why don't you say something? You are going to lose everything."
Culturally, socially, economically. what foot could this woman stand on ? I can only imagine the fear this poor woman must have been trembling with.
What hapenned in their marital home, none except those concerned know. Who is at fault is not up to us to decide. The religion they belong to, who said what, how they should behave, is not relevant to my post. What I want to know is, who is going to bring such irresponsible news anchors to task ? Is there a governing body ? If this same scenario between the anchor & the woman had taken place in a prison instead of a news studio, the Human Rights commissions could have gone ballistic on the way the woman was being treated.
At the end of this disgusting display of reprehensible media ethics, an SMS vote was thrown open to the public. What do u think she should do :
a. Go back to her husband ?
b. Start living on her own ?
c. Go & live with her parents ?
Is there anything we can do, to stop such denigration & degradation of women on National Television ?
Caught the tail end of a program called "Kya Karega Qazi" on Zee News a little before 8pm today. It disgusted me, as to the depths to which media responsibility has sunk.
Essentially a muslim woman, has been divorced by her husband for being abusive. The panel comprised of this muslim woman totally unidentifiable in her simple burkha, another woman in a saree who wasn't saying much, the husband who was getting very aggressive, a qazi who was ostensibly there to sort out the matter & an extrmely irritating, irresponsible, unempathetic, rude anchor who thought himself to be India's answer to Oprah Winfrey. And a studio audience.
From what I could understand about the matter:
The husband had divorced the wife because she was abusive. They have a 4-6 year old daughter. The husband now wants custody of the daughter too. The qazi was trying to resolve the matter.
What went wrong in the process:
The anchor kept pressurising the woman, asking her what she wanted. Now asking a woman what she wants or how she wants to resolve a matter is a good thing, but the way you ask it, your tone, your manner, should be one that puts her at ease & not one that scares her to death.
The studio audience of about 40 comprised of only 2 other women both of whom were also wearing burkhas. (I do not have anything against the burkha or women who choose to wear one. That is their choice.)
The social background that the protagonists seemed to come from was lower middle class. Now most of us are aware that the status of women in this class is lower than that of women in other strata.
In a lot of interior regions in India (not just the rural areas) women are not comfortable talking to their husbands in public (even if they dare to talk to them in private, it is an achievement)
Women are not expected to talk when there are males present.
In this scenario of a 99% male gathering, the anchor was pressurising this poor woman to say something against her husband. Is it logical ? Is it reasonable ? How can she break generations of suppression to become an advocate for womens rights ? Did the anchor honestly think that if he was rude enough, he might discover another Nisha (the one who said no to marrying the man who demanded dowry the day of the wedding) ?
Instead of empathising with the woman, trying to make her comfortable in an alien setting and being gently probing (which may or may not have got any answers, but is at least a better approach) he was downright rude & insolent. He was shouting at her and saying "Why aren't you saying anything ? You will lose your child also, don't you have any balls ? Why don't you say something? You are going to lose everything."
Culturally, socially, economically. what foot could this woman stand on ? I can only imagine the fear this poor woman must have been trembling with.
What hapenned in their marital home, none except those concerned know. Who is at fault is not up to us to decide. The religion they belong to, who said what, how they should behave, is not relevant to my post. What I want to know is, who is going to bring such irresponsible news anchors to task ? Is there a governing body ? If this same scenario between the anchor & the woman had taken place in a prison instead of a news studio, the Human Rights commissions could have gone ballistic on the way the woman was being treated.
At the end of this disgusting display of reprehensible media ethics, an SMS vote was thrown open to the public. What do u think she should do :
a. Go back to her husband ?
b. Start living on her own ?
c. Go & live with her parents ?
Is there anything we can do, to stop such denigration & degradation of women on National Television ?
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Five minutes of watching Indian channel leads to five hours of watching Indian channel
NEW YORK—A five-minute sampling of Hindi-language channel Zee TV stretched into a five-hour Indian TV marathon for Craig Mieritz, 23, Monday. "I have no idea what's going on, but I can't turn it off," the channel-flipping Mieritz said about a colorful, frenetic musical number on the soap opera Tum Bin Jaaoon Kahaan. "Maybe I'll just watch another minute..." Following the soap, Mieritz watched a Hindi pop variety show, 11 music videos, and the three-hour Bollywood epic Khuda Gawah, the remote in his hand the entire time.
Monday, February 14, 2005
The Great Indian Absence - from media
Tsunami Relief — The Great Indian Absence
By Ashutosh Sheshabalaya | Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Why did the U.S. and European media virtually ignore the post-tsunami relief efforts mounted by the Indian military? Ashutosh Sheshabalaya argues that this failure is just another sign of the West’s inability to get over its stereotypes of India as a backward country. It’s time for the global community to give due recognition to this fast-emerging giant — or risk itself becoming out-of-date.
On January 5, 2005, several thousand tons of wreckage and debris were cleared from Sri Lanka’s tsunami-crippled harbor of Galle, following round-the-clock operations by the Indian navy. This effort paved the way for a sea-borne lifeline, to enable both relief and delivery of heavy reconstruction materials.
India to the rescue
Even as it coped with the tsunami’s impact at home, India moved decisively to help its neighbors.
On December 27, 2004 — within hours of the tsunami — an Indian naval hospital arrived at Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee harbor, followed by helicopter-equipped corvettes and other ships for search and rescue.
The Indian air force added muscle to the effort, using heavy-lift transporters to deliver fully-staffed field hospitals and clinics, as well as its own Mi-17 helicopters to airdrop relief supplies.
Late, but good PR
The Indian relief mission outstripped those of all other powers in the region, involved over 20,000 military personnel and almost 35 warships — operating in an arc from the Maldives to Indonesia.
For a variety of reasons, this colossal deployment went largely unnoticed in the rest of the world. Observed by bemused Indian sailors, the world media made a beeline on January 10, 2005, to welcome the USS Duluth to Sri Lanka — two weeks after the arrival of India’s navy to assist with relief operations.
Not much left to do
The irony escaped the Associated Press, whose January 17, 2005, report did nothing to explain comments by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in Sri Lanka: “Help from U.S. military engineers,” he said, “won't be needed much longer.”
Largely unnoticed, the Indian military had already finished doing much of the work for which the Americans had, belatedly, arrived in that country.
Such a mindset — of overlooking an obviously huge contribution from outside the Western world — is central to what I call the Great Indian Absence.
It is part and parcel of the matrix of ‘us and them,’ which regretfully defines the worldview of many Americans and Europeans. They are handicapped by a continuing inability to accept India’s often quiet, but potentially dramatic, rise.
Europe behind the curve
Sure, there is plenty of awareness in the United States and Europe about the rise of India as an outsourcing power. But this development tends to accentuate — rather than diminish — the feeling that India is not an equal.
Thus, the observations by some European commentators about how the tsunami spared none — neither rich Western tourists, nor those (presumably serving them) from the poor Third World — are at least five years out of date.
Too little expertise in the media
In Sri Lanka, much of Southeast Asia and — in the near future — New Zealand and Australia, Indians are the highest-spending tourist group.
Part of such oversight is clearly due to the media’s poor military-technical expertise. In their reports about the challenge of delivering aid on the scale required after the tsunami, BBC correspondents repeatedly failed to underline that America’s proposed relief coalition with India, Japan and Australia depended heavily on India.
As it happens, the Indian air force has three times the transporter fleet of Japan and six times that of Australia. In addition, its IL-76 Gajraj carries twice the payload of the C-130 Hercules military transporters used by Australia and Japan.
In Washington, too
The Great Indian Absence, however, also extended to the Washington Post. On its website, the paper presented a striking sequence of pictures about the tsunami’s aftermath.
One showed a woman in India with outstretched hands, drawing attention to the “lack of helicopters” in the region.
Uncle Sam to the rescue
Another depicted an American SH-60 helicopter, stuffed with food. In spite of the Internet, ‘Post’ reporters had not consulted sources such as the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
They would then have learned that India’s military operates more helicopters than Japan, Indonesia and Thailand combined. This includes the Indian Dhruv helicopter, now being considered by several countries for search and rescue.
Notwithstanding its scale, the Indian relief operation involved only about one-tenth of its 225 military transport aircraft and 400 helicopters. In spite of the subtle allusions to a helpless but savaged region, India’s capabilities should never have been an issue.
Quite ironic
One of the most surreal examples of the Great Indian Absence, however, occurred when European experts on television were using Indian IRS remote-sensing satellite imagery on the tsunami damage — while complaining about a lack of technology in the region.
As it happens, IRS images about a potential Tibetan dam burst in the summer of 2004 led to a mass evacuation in northern India. This riverine equivalent of a tsunami might otherwise have resulted in several thousand casualties.
Indian high-tech
India’s high-technology early warning and disaster management systems go further than remote-sensing. They also include sophisticated weather satellites directed at the routine — but still-devastating — hazard of cyclones.
Across the entire Indian Ocean, seaborne search and rescue is enabled wholly via the Indian-designed INSAT 3-A satellite.
And more recently, India’s post-tsunami relief efforts were buttressed by sophisticated satellite hook-ups at its Integrated National Command Post, which provides real-time links to all military units across the country — and to every naval vessel out at sea.
Just the facts
Knowing such facts may help put relief and disaster management issues into perspective in the future, both in Asia and elsewhere, long after the media has gone home.
One salutary case would be the widely reported gush of Western sympathy for victims of the earthquake at Bam, Iran, in December 2003.
Following up on Bam
Until the tsunami, few journalists — or NGOs — cared to follow-up this story, and report that just $17 million of the $1 billion pledged by the international community had been received by Iran.
Four months after the Bam quake, a paragraph buried within a report by the British Guardian newspaper referred to what was clearly one of most significant contributions to that relief operation.
An “elaborate Indian military hospital that treated 48,000 patients and performed 2,500 operations since the earthquake”, said the Guardian, “packed up this week, leaving a serious gap in medical services.”
Indeed, questioning the relief and disaster management capacities of a country like India reveals an outdated mindset.
Respect where it is due
India has 25 million tons of food stocks, produces one-sixth of the world’s generic medicines, exports doctors and nurses to fill shortfalls in the West — and, in April 2003, vaccinated 100 million children in just one day.
Clinging to the idea that India is entirely backward is clearly a waste of time — and only serves to keep stereotypes alive well beyond their expiration date.
Adjusting institutions
As hysterical outbursts about the threat of epidemics finally wane, India’s own relief efforts however seem to have also disappeared off the world media‘s radar.
In a rare exception on January 19, 2005, a social worker told Charles Haviland of BBC News that newly-orphaned children in India were, relief-wise, “very satisfied with what they are getting.”
True, much more remains to be done. But an analysis of India’s response to the Asian tsunami only underlines the point that the world urgently needs to adjust its thinking — as well as its institutions — to such new realities.
India on the Security Council
This also concerns the G-7, whose exclusion of countries like India and China risks making it an anachronism.
And last but not least, the United Nations could only benefit from the presence of a mature and capable India as a permanent member of the Security Council.
For more details on what India is doing, check out :
India shifts the regional geopolitical cards
India takes care of its own
even Business Week carried out a coverage accepting the changing status of India
India pulls together amid disaster
By Ashutosh Sheshabalaya | Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Why did the U.S. and European media virtually ignore the post-tsunami relief efforts mounted by the Indian military? Ashutosh Sheshabalaya argues that this failure is just another sign of the West’s inability to get over its stereotypes of India as a backward country. It’s time for the global community to give due recognition to this fast-emerging giant — or risk itself becoming out-of-date.
On January 5, 2005, several thousand tons of wreckage and debris were cleared from Sri Lanka’s tsunami-crippled harbor of Galle, following round-the-clock operations by the Indian navy. This effort paved the way for a sea-borne lifeline, to enable both relief and delivery of heavy reconstruction materials.
India to the rescue
Even as it coped with the tsunami’s impact at home, India moved decisively to help its neighbors.
On December 27, 2004 — within hours of the tsunami — an Indian naval hospital arrived at Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee harbor, followed by helicopter-equipped corvettes and other ships for search and rescue.
The Indian air force added muscle to the effort, using heavy-lift transporters to deliver fully-staffed field hospitals and clinics, as well as its own Mi-17 helicopters to airdrop relief supplies.
Late, but good PR
The Indian relief mission outstripped those of all other powers in the region, involved over 20,000 military personnel and almost 35 warships — operating in an arc from the Maldives to Indonesia.
For a variety of reasons, this colossal deployment went largely unnoticed in the rest of the world. Observed by bemused Indian sailors, the world media made a beeline on January 10, 2005, to welcome the USS Duluth to Sri Lanka — two weeks after the arrival of India’s navy to assist with relief operations.
Not much left to do
The irony escaped the Associated Press, whose January 17, 2005, report did nothing to explain comments by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in Sri Lanka: “Help from U.S. military engineers,” he said, “won't be needed much longer.”
Largely unnoticed, the Indian military had already finished doing much of the work for which the Americans had, belatedly, arrived in that country.
Such a mindset — of overlooking an obviously huge contribution from outside the Western world — is central to what I call the Great Indian Absence.
It is part and parcel of the matrix of ‘us and them,’ which regretfully defines the worldview of many Americans and Europeans. They are handicapped by a continuing inability to accept India’s often quiet, but potentially dramatic, rise.
Europe behind the curve
Sure, there is plenty of awareness in the United States and Europe about the rise of India as an outsourcing power. But this development tends to accentuate — rather than diminish — the feeling that India is not an equal.
Thus, the observations by some European commentators about how the tsunami spared none — neither rich Western tourists, nor those (presumably serving them) from the poor Third World — are at least five years out of date.
Too little expertise in the media
In Sri Lanka, much of Southeast Asia and — in the near future — New Zealand and Australia, Indians are the highest-spending tourist group.
Part of such oversight is clearly due to the media’s poor military-technical expertise. In their reports about the challenge of delivering aid on the scale required after the tsunami, BBC correspondents repeatedly failed to underline that America’s proposed relief coalition with India, Japan and Australia depended heavily on India.
As it happens, the Indian air force has three times the transporter fleet of Japan and six times that of Australia. In addition, its IL-76 Gajraj carries twice the payload of the C-130 Hercules military transporters used by Australia and Japan.
In Washington, too
The Great Indian Absence, however, also extended to the Washington Post. On its website, the paper presented a striking sequence of pictures about the tsunami’s aftermath.
One showed a woman in India with outstretched hands, drawing attention to the “lack of helicopters” in the region.
Uncle Sam to the rescue
Another depicted an American SH-60 helicopter, stuffed with food. In spite of the Internet, ‘Post’ reporters had not consulted sources such as the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
They would then have learned that India’s military operates more helicopters than Japan, Indonesia and Thailand combined. This includes the Indian Dhruv helicopter, now being considered by several countries for search and rescue.
Notwithstanding its scale, the Indian relief operation involved only about one-tenth of its 225 military transport aircraft and 400 helicopters. In spite of the subtle allusions to a helpless but savaged region, India’s capabilities should never have been an issue.
Quite ironic
One of the most surreal examples of the Great Indian Absence, however, occurred when European experts on television were using Indian IRS remote-sensing satellite imagery on the tsunami damage — while complaining about a lack of technology in the region.
As it happens, IRS images about a potential Tibetan dam burst in the summer of 2004 led to a mass evacuation in northern India. This riverine equivalent of a tsunami might otherwise have resulted in several thousand casualties.
Indian high-tech
India’s high-technology early warning and disaster management systems go further than remote-sensing. They also include sophisticated weather satellites directed at the routine — but still-devastating — hazard of cyclones.
Across the entire Indian Ocean, seaborne search and rescue is enabled wholly via the Indian-designed INSAT 3-A satellite.
And more recently, India’s post-tsunami relief efforts were buttressed by sophisticated satellite hook-ups at its Integrated National Command Post, which provides real-time links to all military units across the country — and to every naval vessel out at sea.
Just the facts
Knowing such facts may help put relief and disaster management issues into perspective in the future, both in Asia and elsewhere, long after the media has gone home.
One salutary case would be the widely reported gush of Western sympathy for victims of the earthquake at Bam, Iran, in December 2003.
Following up on Bam
Until the tsunami, few journalists — or NGOs — cared to follow-up this story, and report that just $17 million of the $1 billion pledged by the international community had been received by Iran.
Four months after the Bam quake, a paragraph buried within a report by the British Guardian newspaper referred to what was clearly one of most significant contributions to that relief operation.
An “elaborate Indian military hospital that treated 48,000 patients and performed 2,500 operations since the earthquake”, said the Guardian, “packed up this week, leaving a serious gap in medical services.”
Indeed, questioning the relief and disaster management capacities of a country like India reveals an outdated mindset.
Respect where it is due
India has 25 million tons of food stocks, produces one-sixth of the world’s generic medicines, exports doctors and nurses to fill shortfalls in the West — and, in April 2003, vaccinated 100 million children in just one day.
Clinging to the idea that India is entirely backward is clearly a waste of time — and only serves to keep stereotypes alive well beyond their expiration date.
Adjusting institutions
As hysterical outbursts about the threat of epidemics finally wane, India’s own relief efforts however seem to have also disappeared off the world media‘s radar.
In a rare exception on January 19, 2005, a social worker told Charles Haviland of BBC News that newly-orphaned children in India were, relief-wise, “very satisfied with what they are getting.”
True, much more remains to be done. But an analysis of India’s response to the Asian tsunami only underlines the point that the world urgently needs to adjust its thinking — as well as its institutions — to such new realities.
India on the Security Council
This also concerns the G-7, whose exclusion of countries like India and China risks making it an anachronism.
And last but not least, the United Nations could only benefit from the presence of a mature and capable India as a permanent member of the Security Council.
For more details on what India is doing, check out :
India shifts the regional geopolitical cards
India takes care of its own
even Business Week carried out a coverage accepting the changing status of India
India pulls together amid disaster
Friday, December 03, 2004
Tommy Hilfiger 'Racist' Rumor Is Fashionable Again
Netlore Archive: False rumors alleging that fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger made racist statements on Oprah Winfrey's show are circulating (again) by email
A whole lot of nice, earnest folks who surely don't consider themselves liars are using the Internet to spread a false and libelous rumor about fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.
It comes to them in the form of a forwarded email message. They read it, they either believe it to be true or don't care if it's true, and they pass it on to friends, associates and people they hardly even know with the click of a mouse button.
Knowingly or not, each one of these people thus becomes a link in a growing chain of lies.
Check Urban Legends for the whole debunking.
And next time, before forwarding such malicious emails, look it up. It takes all of two minutes to find the answers. Try it youself. Go to Google and do a search on the keywords "hilfiger racist."
If you're among the truly diligent, you'll eventually come across the best resource of all, and certainly the one those "in the know" would have checked out first: the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
Type "hilfiger" into the handy search box there and you'll be treated to "Tommy Rot," Barbara Mikkelson's well-researched article debunking the pernicious rumor. She explains how essentially the same story haunted designer Liz Claiborne for many years before it became attached to Tommy Hilfiger. You'll come away with a bit of historical perspective, and the truth.
You might also consider visiting Oprah Winfrey's own site to see what she has to say. Turns out she did a special segment during her January 11, 1999 show specifically to put this lie to rest. "Mr. Hilfiger has never appeared on the show," reads the synopsis. "In fact, Oprah has never even met him."
Lastly, to find out what Mr. Hilfiger himself has to say about all this, why not visit the Tommy Hilfiger Website and look for his official statement? It's all right there in black and white.
In closing, friends, let me remind you that there's a point to all this apart from the plain fact that the Hilfiger rumor is false. The point is that a lie is a lie, whether you say it with your mouth or send it in an email. The point is that you needn't bear false witness against your neighbor when the truth is only a few clicks away.
A whole lot of nice, earnest folks who surely don't consider themselves liars are using the Internet to spread a false and libelous rumor about fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.
It comes to them in the form of a forwarded email message. They read it, they either believe it to be true or don't care if it's true, and they pass it on to friends, associates and people they hardly even know with the click of a mouse button.
Knowingly or not, each one of these people thus becomes a link in a growing chain of lies.
Check Urban Legends for the whole debunking.
And next time, before forwarding such malicious emails, look it up. It takes all of two minutes to find the answers. Try it youself. Go to Google and do a search on the keywords "hilfiger racist."
If you're among the truly diligent, you'll eventually come across the best resource of all, and certainly the one those "in the know" would have checked out first: the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
Type "hilfiger" into the handy search box there and you'll be treated to "Tommy Rot," Barbara Mikkelson's well-researched article debunking the pernicious rumor. She explains how essentially the same story haunted designer Liz Claiborne for many years before it became attached to Tommy Hilfiger. You'll come away with a bit of historical perspective, and the truth.
You might also consider visiting Oprah Winfrey's own site to see what she has to say. Turns out she did a special segment during her January 11, 1999 show specifically to put this lie to rest. "Mr. Hilfiger has never appeared on the show," reads the synopsis. "In fact, Oprah has never even met him."
Lastly, to find out what Mr. Hilfiger himself has to say about all this, why not visit the Tommy Hilfiger Website and look for his official statement? It's all right there in black and white.
In closing, friends, let me remind you that there's a point to all this apart from the plain fact that the Hilfiger rumor is false. The point is that a lie is a lie, whether you say it with your mouth or send it in an email. The point is that you needn't bear false witness against your neighbor when the truth is only a few clicks away.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
How the Million bucks on Reality shows actually works out
From its first publicity release regarding For Love Or Money, NBC has played up the angle that the winning bachelorette will collect a Survivor-sized $1 million prize if she chooses money instead of love. However, astute viewers on the Reality TV World message boards have discovered that NBC's claim, like bachelor Rob Campos' claim that there was "absolutely nothing irregular" about his service in the Marines, is seriously misleading.
NBC will indeed pay the selected bachelorette $1 million ... but only at the state-lottery-like rate of $25,000 per year over 40 years (if, indeed, she's still alive 40 years from now). NBC is offering a lump-sum option to the lucky lady, if she prefers to get the present value of her winnings now, but it has not revealed the anticipated future interest rate at which NBC would discount the winnings to determine the lump sum.
If the rate was similar to the current level of interest rates -- say, 5% -- then the winner would still be able to abandon Rob on the altar and make off with about $450,000 -- less than half of the reported million, but still comparable to other reality shows. However, if NBC not unreasonably figures that future interest rates would bounce back to historic levels and used a higher rate -- say, 8% -- the winner would come out with less than $325,000 -- less than a third of the million. And, if NBC is really chintzy, it might pick an even-higher discount rate -- say, 10% or 11%.
In other words, the winner won't get a million dollars, regardless of NBC's claims to the contrary. She won't even get a half-million. She may be lucky to get a quarter-million. On the other hand, if she chooses the cash, however little it is, she won't get stuck with Rob. Therefore, we think the "hard choice" is still an easy call, even if the cash prize were only a U.S. savings bond.
NBC will indeed pay the selected bachelorette $1 million ... but only at the state-lottery-like rate of $25,000 per year over 40 years (if, indeed, she's still alive 40 years from now). NBC is offering a lump-sum option to the lucky lady, if she prefers to get the present value of her winnings now, but it has not revealed the anticipated future interest rate at which NBC would discount the winnings to determine the lump sum.
If the rate was similar to the current level of interest rates -- say, 5% -- then the winner would still be able to abandon Rob on the altar and make off with about $450,000 -- less than half of the reported million, but still comparable to other reality shows. However, if NBC not unreasonably figures that future interest rates would bounce back to historic levels and used a higher rate -- say, 8% -- the winner would come out with less than $325,000 -- less than a third of the million. And, if NBC is really chintzy, it might pick an even-higher discount rate -- say, 10% or 11%.
In other words, the winner won't get a million dollars, regardless of NBC's claims to the contrary. She won't even get a half-million. She may be lucky to get a quarter-million. On the other hand, if she chooses the cash, however little it is, she won't get stuck with Rob. Therefore, we think the "hard choice" is still an easy call, even if the cash prize were only a U.S. savings bond.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
For Love or Money 4 - Spoiler
Hey,
R u like me ?
do u watch just the last 5 minutes of reality shows, just to see who gets eliminated or fired ?
If so, then heres the spoiler for Season 4 of "For Love or Money" (Its true because this comes from the US where its already been aired, ages ago. - aah, the wonders of internet)
Rachel & Amanda are both brought back for Part 4. No major fireworks on screen, so if thats what u were going to watch it for, avoid!
At the end of first episode the 15 guys have to chose between the 2. 8 choos Rachel, 7 choose Amanda, so Amanda has to leave with the 7 guys who chose her. They are eliminated.
Last episode Rachel chooses Caleb, who also chooses her. His cheque is worth $1. She again choses Caleb over the money.
But apparently one month after the show screened in the US, they split up and Rachel is currently considering posing for Playboy.
Preston and PJ are supposedly still going around.
Now arent you Indian viewers, glad abt this info. Now u save at least 10 hours of watching this inane show, just because u have to know who got thrown out this time. Use this extra time productively to cook up a special something for dinner.
Cheerio
R u like me ?
do u watch just the last 5 minutes of reality shows, just to see who gets eliminated or fired ?
If so, then heres the spoiler for Season 4 of "For Love or Money" (Its true because this comes from the US where its already been aired, ages ago. - aah, the wonders of internet)
Rachel & Amanda are both brought back for Part 4. No major fireworks on screen, so if thats what u were going to watch it for, avoid!
At the end of first episode the 15 guys have to chose between the 2. 8 choos Rachel, 7 choose Amanda, so Amanda has to leave with the 7 guys who chose her. They are eliminated.
Last episode Rachel chooses Caleb, who also chooses her. His cheque is worth $1. She again choses Caleb over the money.
But apparently one month after the show screened in the US, they split up and Rachel is currently considering posing for Playboy.
Preston and PJ are supposedly still going around.
Now arent you Indian viewers, glad abt this info. Now u save at least 10 hours of watching this inane show, just because u have to know who got thrown out this time. Use this extra time productively to cook up a special something for dinner.
Cheerio
Inside Scoop on "the Simple Life"
It sounds like such an easy thing to do: take two pampered, spoiled, beautiful young women to rural America and film them living "The Simple Life." However, as Fox and Bunim-Murray Productions are learning, there is nothing simple about it ... and keeping it a secret isn't simple either. RealityTVWorld.com has been told some exclusive details of events during filming of the upcoming Fox reality TV show The Simple Life, starring the socialite team of 22-year-old hotel heiress Paris Hilton and 21-year-old music heiress Nicole RIchie.
to make sure that a local family would welcome them, Fox built an addition onto the house of the people with whom they were staying, at Fox's expense. No mobile homes for Paris and Nicole!
Paris and Nicole's skimpy attire has certainly drawn attention ... and criticism, although mostly behind their backs. One local referred to them as the "nearly naked models." Apparently, many of the locals are giving them a wide berth -- but at least their looks impress the teenage boys (and their underlying wealth doesn't hurt any, either). Needless to say, the teenage girls are jealous.
Paris and Nicole have been stuck with an old blue truck for use when they are being filmed. The truck is a piece of junk and has broken down several times. However, when they aren't being filmed, the two vixens apparently have use of an SUV. Not exactly the simple life, after all. In fact, another local referred to the entire venture as "bogus bullsh--."
Fox's The Simple Life, starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie -- a show which may have pushed the boundaries of reality TV too far. Under closer examination, some of the sequences on The Simple Life seem to be nothing more than improvisational comedy, no different from a Whose Line Is It Anyway? set in the Ozarks with two amateur comediennes.
Take, for instance, the scene in the show's second episode where Paris and Nicole, while working at a dairy, fill glass milk bottles with a hose, while Danny Council, the dairy farmer who owns "Danny's Dairy Farm," pushes them to get more bottles completed for a rapidly-approaching shipment on a delivery truck. Ultimately, according to the sequence as aired, Paris and Nicole were pouring water from a bucket into the bottles to deceive Danny and fill their quota.
Our summary of the episode notes that Paris and Nicole were told by Danny that the milk was unpasteurized and asks whether it's legal to sell unpasteurized milk in Arkansas. The answer? No.
According to the Arkansas Department of Health, all cow's milk sold in the state must be pasteurized. A dairy can sell up to 100 gallons of unpasteurized goat's milk in a month, but customers for that milk must come to the farm to buy it. Thus, there is no way that unpasteurized milk could be bottled for delivery ... and, anyway, this dairy farm just had cows, so all of its milk would have to be pasteurized before sale. Under state law, either Danny should be in jail, or the only thing "real" about this scene was that it "really" aired on TV.
One of our favorite writers, Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times, noted that People magazine talked to dairyman Danny Council. Should Danny be in jail? No, because the scene was completely staged. Said Danny, "None of that [milk] meets health department standards. It was totally for the show." In fact, even the presence of the glass bottles that Paris and Nicole filled was fake -- the show supplied them, apparently because glass bottles are more in keeping with the "look" that the producers wanted for rural Arkansas.
So ... the bottle-filling, the delivery deadline, the devious filling of the bottles with water ... every bit of the scene ... was all play-acting by Paris, Nicole and Danny. We fail to see how this is different from improvisational acting.
Although most of the show's participants are bound by confidentiality agreements and aren't talking, we find it difficult to believe that many of the other events portrayed in the show so far are any more "real" than this scene was. In fact, although The Simple Life was billed as a reality-sitcom, it more closely resembles scripted comedy, since even such choices about what activities to perform and what type of props to use seem to be made by the producers ... and, perhaps, the writers.
Now we know why the local teenage girls were jealous of Paris Hilton during her stay in Altus, Arkansas to film Fox's The Simple Life.
The New York Post reports that, during filming, 22-year-old Paris had a "fling" with 18-year-old Trae Lindley, at the time a high-school senior. Only problem: Trae, who ranked third in his high-school class and had been named homecoming king, had a long-time steady girlfriend: Carolyn Cains, the homecoming queen. However, to Trae, the choice between the two was easy; he wanted to see Paris in the springtime.
Paris met Trae during one of her early "day jobs" for the show (which was largely filmed in May 2003): working in the Lakeside Food Mart. She picked him out of a crowd of kids in the store and asked him to "'stay here and talk awhile,'" he said. "I was too nervous at the time to remember what I was talking about. I couldn't even remember what was said after I was done talking to her." But Paris had enough wits about her to ask for his phone number before he left.
Almost immediately thereafter, Trae and Paris were having two-hour phone conversations, and, in his words, "people knew she had the hots for me and I had the hots for her." Exit Carolyn, enter Paris.
During filming, Trae took Paris to the movies, the mall and the bowling alley ... ending up with plenty of camera time while locking lips with the hotel heiress. Paris came to his high school graduation, sparking a near-brawl with Carolyn and her friends, and went out with him to local restaurants.
A manager of Fat Tuesday's decribed Trae and Paris as "really cute," calling their relationship "more of an innocent, teenage-type relationship." In other words, except for the fight with the "other woman," it had little in common with Paris' much more public relationship with Rick Salomon, the married owner of "Beverly Hills Pimps & Hos" and Paris' sexual partner on the infamous sex tape on the Internet.
While this characterization may be hard to believe, even Trae's parents have nice things to say about Paris and her co-star Nicole Richie, whom they entertained for dinner. Trae's father George, who owns a real-estate company in nearby Ozark, said that "they were very well-mannered. Paris was very nice, very sweet and not like she is portrayed in magazines." Trae's mother Tammy added that "they were very normal when they came to dinner. They thanked us." Nice to know that Paris and Nicole still retain a semblance of good manners when not on videotape or drugs.
Ultimately, Trae had to make a choice. When Paris returned to L.A., she offered to take Trae with her and to find him work as a model. But Trae, who would have been giving up a full scholarship to the University of Arkansas and doesn't have a multi-million dollar trust fund to fall back on, showed that his parents raised him with good sense by turning her down and heading for college instead.
Trae has remained in contact with Paris, although contact has become harder since the sex-tape scandal broke. Says Trae, "When I did speak to her, she was really stressed out and said she can't leave the house anymore, she can't have fun. I feel embarrassed for her. I feel like she got a lot of crap from it and I feel sorry for a lot of what she's going through."
Shooting on Fox's controversial The Simple Life reality show, starring LA socialites-dilletantes Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, in Altus, Arkansas wrapped up a week early, apparently due to troubles between the "stars" and the crew, according to a RealityTVWorld.com poster from the area. According to this poster, Paris and Nicole threatened to quit the show after being reprimanded for spending four hours on the phone. Although the show still had planned to shoot for two more weeks, Paris and Nicole spent little time with the locals during the next week, and the production came to an unscheduled end that Friday.
, the producers and the crew clearly seem to have been "loathed" by the locals, for their apparent intent to portray the Ozarks and Arkansas as one step regressed from the Clampett family in The Beverly Hillbillies. The Fort Smith (AR) Times Record reports that the producers, for example, set up a phony "grape-stomping" booth at the Altus Spring Gala for Paris and Nicole (who wisely declined to take part) and filmed unkempt areas around town whenever possible.
Even an 11-year-old girl watching the filming got the point, stating that the producers "are making fun of us. ... They were saying, ‘They’re so totally poor,'" Only the mayor of Altus, who still hoped (forlornly?) that the show would portray Altus in a positive light, seemed comfortable with the filming.
As for Paris and Nicole, yes, they may be beautiful and spoiled, but they at least seemed to be open to trying new things and avoiding rural stereotypes ... certainly more so than the producers and crew were
In The Simple Life, the only thing "real" appears to be the slender, tanned, silicone-free bodies of Paris and Nicole. Will that be enough to compensate for the most unreal "reality" show to ever hit the U.S. airwaves?
to make sure that a local family would welcome them, Fox built an addition onto the house of the people with whom they were staying, at Fox's expense. No mobile homes for Paris and Nicole!
Paris and Nicole's skimpy attire has certainly drawn attention ... and criticism, although mostly behind their backs. One local referred to them as the "nearly naked models." Apparently, many of the locals are giving them a wide berth -- but at least their looks impress the teenage boys (and their underlying wealth doesn't hurt any, either). Needless to say, the teenage girls are jealous.
Paris and Nicole have been stuck with an old blue truck for use when they are being filmed. The truck is a piece of junk and has broken down several times. However, when they aren't being filmed, the two vixens apparently have use of an SUV. Not exactly the simple life, after all. In fact, another local referred to the entire venture as "bogus bullsh--."
Fox's The Simple Life, starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie -- a show which may have pushed the boundaries of reality TV too far. Under closer examination, some of the sequences on The Simple Life seem to be nothing more than improvisational comedy, no different from a Whose Line Is It Anyway? set in the Ozarks with two amateur comediennes.
Take, for instance, the scene in the show's second episode where Paris and Nicole, while working at a dairy, fill glass milk bottles with a hose, while Danny Council, the dairy farmer who owns "Danny's Dairy Farm," pushes them to get more bottles completed for a rapidly-approaching shipment on a delivery truck. Ultimately, according to the sequence as aired, Paris and Nicole were pouring water from a bucket into the bottles to deceive Danny and fill their quota.
Our summary of the episode notes that Paris and Nicole were told by Danny that the milk was unpasteurized and asks whether it's legal to sell unpasteurized milk in Arkansas. The answer? No.
According to the Arkansas Department of Health, all cow's milk sold in the state must be pasteurized. A dairy can sell up to 100 gallons of unpasteurized goat's milk in a month, but customers for that milk must come to the farm to buy it. Thus, there is no way that unpasteurized milk could be bottled for delivery ... and, anyway, this dairy farm just had cows, so all of its milk would have to be pasteurized before sale. Under state law, either Danny should be in jail, or the only thing "real" about this scene was that it "really" aired on TV.
One of our favorite writers, Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times, noted that People magazine talked to dairyman Danny Council. Should Danny be in jail? No, because the scene was completely staged. Said Danny, "None of that [milk] meets health department standards. It was totally for the show." In fact, even the presence of the glass bottles that Paris and Nicole filled was fake -- the show supplied them, apparently because glass bottles are more in keeping with the "look" that the producers wanted for rural Arkansas.
So ... the bottle-filling, the delivery deadline, the devious filling of the bottles with water ... every bit of the scene ... was all play-acting by Paris, Nicole and Danny. We fail to see how this is different from improvisational acting.
Although most of the show's participants are bound by confidentiality agreements and aren't talking, we find it difficult to believe that many of the other events portrayed in the show so far are any more "real" than this scene was. In fact, although The Simple Life was billed as a reality-sitcom, it more closely resembles scripted comedy, since even such choices about what activities to perform and what type of props to use seem to be made by the producers ... and, perhaps, the writers.
Now we know why the local teenage girls were jealous of Paris Hilton during her stay in Altus, Arkansas to film Fox's The Simple Life.
The New York Post reports that, during filming, 22-year-old Paris had a "fling" with 18-year-old Trae Lindley, at the time a high-school senior. Only problem: Trae, who ranked third in his high-school class and had been named homecoming king, had a long-time steady girlfriend: Carolyn Cains, the homecoming queen. However, to Trae, the choice between the two was easy; he wanted to see Paris in the springtime.
Paris met Trae during one of her early "day jobs" for the show (which was largely filmed in May 2003): working in the Lakeside Food Mart. She picked him out of a crowd of kids in the store and asked him to "'stay here and talk awhile,'" he said. "I was too nervous at the time to remember what I was talking about. I couldn't even remember what was said after I was done talking to her." But Paris had enough wits about her to ask for his phone number before he left.
Almost immediately thereafter, Trae and Paris were having two-hour phone conversations, and, in his words, "people knew she had the hots for me and I had the hots for her." Exit Carolyn, enter Paris.
During filming, Trae took Paris to the movies, the mall and the bowling alley ... ending up with plenty of camera time while locking lips with the hotel heiress. Paris came to his high school graduation, sparking a near-brawl with Carolyn and her friends, and went out with him to local restaurants.
A manager of Fat Tuesday's decribed Trae and Paris as "really cute," calling their relationship "more of an innocent, teenage-type relationship." In other words, except for the fight with the "other woman," it had little in common with Paris' much more public relationship with Rick Salomon, the married owner of "Beverly Hills Pimps & Hos" and Paris' sexual partner on the infamous sex tape on the Internet.
While this characterization may be hard to believe, even Trae's parents have nice things to say about Paris and her co-star Nicole Richie, whom they entertained for dinner. Trae's father George, who owns a real-estate company in nearby Ozark, said that "they were very well-mannered. Paris was very nice, very sweet and not like she is portrayed in magazines." Trae's mother Tammy added that "they were very normal when they came to dinner. They thanked us." Nice to know that Paris and Nicole still retain a semblance of good manners when not on videotape or drugs.
Ultimately, Trae had to make a choice. When Paris returned to L.A., she offered to take Trae with her and to find him work as a model. But Trae, who would have been giving up a full scholarship to the University of Arkansas and doesn't have a multi-million dollar trust fund to fall back on, showed that his parents raised him with good sense by turning her down and heading for college instead.
Trae has remained in contact with Paris, although contact has become harder since the sex-tape scandal broke. Says Trae, "When I did speak to her, she was really stressed out and said she can't leave the house anymore, she can't have fun. I feel embarrassed for her. I feel like she got a lot of crap from it and I feel sorry for a lot of what she's going through."
Shooting on Fox's controversial The Simple Life reality show, starring LA socialites-dilletantes Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, in Altus, Arkansas wrapped up a week early, apparently due to troubles between the "stars" and the crew, according to a RealityTVWorld.com poster from the area. According to this poster, Paris and Nicole threatened to quit the show after being reprimanded for spending four hours on the phone. Although the show still had planned to shoot for two more weeks, Paris and Nicole spent little time with the locals during the next week, and the production came to an unscheduled end that Friday.
, the producers and the crew clearly seem to have been "loathed" by the locals, for their apparent intent to portray the Ozarks and Arkansas as one step regressed from the Clampett family in The Beverly Hillbillies. The Fort Smith (AR) Times Record reports that the producers, for example, set up a phony "grape-stomping" booth at the Altus Spring Gala for Paris and Nicole (who wisely declined to take part) and filmed unkempt areas around town whenever possible.
Even an 11-year-old girl watching the filming got the point, stating that the producers "are making fun of us. ... They were saying, ‘They’re so totally poor,'" Only the mayor of Altus, who still hoped (forlornly?) that the show would portray Altus in a positive light, seemed comfortable with the filming.
As for Paris and Nicole, yes, they may be beautiful and spoiled, but they at least seemed to be open to trying new things and avoiding rural stereotypes ... certainly more so than the producers and crew were
In The Simple Life, the only thing "real" appears to be the slender, tanned, silicone-free bodies of Paris and Nicole. Will that be enough to compensate for the most unreal "reality" show to ever hit the U.S. airwaves?
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