Reality doesn’t bite, it chews off

There is a scene in the 1998 film, The Truman Show, which has Ed Harris as ‘Christof’ talking about the birth of Jim Carrey’s character, Truman Burbank, in a TV interview. Christof describes how Truman was the first live birth on television. The ‘director’ tells the interviewer about Burbank being chosen from five unwanted children to star in a reality show about the life of a ‘common man’. He, then, goes on tell about his future - and an almost sinister - plans as the director of the reality show: he will have Truman and his wife Meryl making a baby: the ‘first live conception’ on television.

That is 70-mm screen tale. But something similar to the film may just be up for the television viewers in the UK. Jade Goody’s life since being diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer has become another show for television junkies.

The film, however, was a successful prediction of the future of the television in the coming decade. Live beauty pageants and talent competitions became second-rate. And, reality shows - based on the most inane subjects - exploded on the tube on either side of the Atlantic. The successful prime-time telecast made sure spin-offs and copy cats spread to other parts of the world on telly. It made celebrities out of wannabes and gave rise to ‘instant stardom’. The 15-seconds-of-fame transformed into 15 minutes, then 15 hours - the duration of fame just kept increasing.

It also gave birth to reality celebrities: they were the ones who hit the jackpot on reality shows.

Jade in Progress, as the programme is called, will not be aired on Indian televisions --- we are still stuck in the time warp of soap operas --- but the global news will tell us all we need to know about Goody’s spreading disease and her simultaneous struggle to live a little longer. Her morphine drips and medical treatment has already become a staple on the show. Her wedding will soon be on air. Her life has become a free-for-all and as there is always a first, perhaps, Goody’s death will become the first ‘live televised death’ and another thing to watch on television.

The film, as the title suggests, is a reality show: watched-across-the-globe chronicle of the life of Carrey’s character, who doesn’t know he is a television star with a fan club of million or more people. Truman has his signature lines in the film that are not written for him but his own little quirkiness, like any other normal man. “In case I don’t see you: Good afternoon, good evening and good night”, is a classic line to be imbibed into a normal person’s life.

And the UK people, like the ones in the film, live for these moments. Jade is in progress or decline, but the viewers will take immense delight in her pain or joy. Her time with her son, her time with her young toyboy, Jack Tweed, is something to watch with relish – not because of the real life drama, but a woman’s last – however futile it may become afterwards – attempt to draw the fullest of it.

The increasingly morbid fascination with life and death of somebody else will test its limit in Goody’s coming days. The subconscious necrophilia in many of us will prompt us to pray for Goody’s death and its telecast on the tube. When the time comes and if there is, indeed, a death on live television, I can bet that would become another first in terms of maximum viewers and subsequent TRPs.
And reality TV will hit another first --- becoming the substance that stripped us of our morality and break the barriers of our ethos and pathos to turn us into a different sort of sadists.

We cannot --- should not --- find faults with the way Goody is conducting her life right now. Like any other person who wants something better, she tried. Her methods to seek it might be questionable to many but it’s almost same as offering your heritage house as a ‘bed and breakfast’ or offering your body for sex. Find one thing that might appeal to the masses, and make an enterprise out of it. Many, including Goody, do it for personal gain. Her reasons, at least, are worthy of it. Her sons will be much better off in life after her publicised death than Goody has been in her life.

But again is the question of viewership. Should we be part of the circus? We are, after all, the ones for whose benefit this entire parade is being carried out. Goody will ‘earn’ the money, the channel will ‘earn’ the TRP, and we... We will earn the righteous indignation of moralists for drawing pleasure from someone else’s misery.