In our country, “No, I didn’t feel offended.” actually validates that you got offended. A reply is nothing but a defence for an offence.
Almost a month ago, AIB, better known as All India Bakchod webcasted their insult humour special on YouTube. I don’t need to enlist the celebrities as we all know who came and what happened. The video was eventually taken down after several protests and First Information Reports. Bad. The film fraternity had divided opinions on this topic, which is understandable and appreciated. Some called it the demise of Indian culture. Some went ahead and termed it a doom’s day device for the youth. Worse. But what most of us missed out on was logical reasoning. I am not an expert or pundit of any sort. My article is purely based on what I opine and derive as a student of the art.
First, YouTube doesn’t have dedicated censor buttons on any given page. You are the censor board of your own material. You decide what to erase and what to incorporate. So blaming this Google product would be an act of the uninformed. Second, the video had an ‘18+’ disclaimer to start off with, segregating the target audience and clarifying the content to follow. Third, a roast, technically, is a product where celebrities are grilled, insulted, abused, cussed at and made a mess out of for the purpose of charity. A roast is not something which AIB has invented or created. It exists already.
The problem resides in the demographics chosen for a roast. Over there in the States, a roast is received as a cool thing, something quite hip and funky enough to be liked and embraced by the audience. You might feel that I am going to raise the cultural aspect of things. No, I am not.
Things like roasts never hurt or demean any culture. Comedy hits your senses. It creates an emotion. The reason why roasts are a hit in the west and a controversy here revolves completely around the varied emotional values. If anybody says that culture is what runs the society, they are lying through their tooth. Emotional values do. A culture transforms and evolves with every passing generation. The woman, who quit her education to get married, now has a daughter who wants to be a self dependent woman and live her life on her own terms. Culture is nothing but the way we conduct ourselves with changing circumstances. However, values are what make us Indians unique and different from the lot. There is a particular way in which we treat our elders, friends, relatives (sometimes) and even strangers. We have a softer heart compared to rest of the planet. That is why we are a very colourful country and this very fact has placed us across the global map with people looking up to us in such matters.
The only problem with AIB Knockout was a mean but unintentional hit on the emotional values. If you demean Farida Jalal or Reema Lagoo, who have no worldy connection with either the roast or the participants, things will definitely get out of grip. Indians, majorly, fail to digest anything shot at elders, much because we have been trained and programmed to respect and be accountable to our elders. Since perception is a varied term, everybody is not born with the similar treatment. We all have different meanings and derivations of the term discipline. For some, hanging out with their Dad in a club is a cool thing to get hooked onto. While for some, raising the decibel of vocal chords is assumed as an act of the manner less. That is an emotional value we Indians exhibit. So when you cuss at someone elderly, a part of the audience might not bend heads about it. While another portion might feel like they have been slapped across the face. AIB were doing a roast for the first instance in their life. They had no idea of how to strike the perfect balance between the varied values attached. Next time around, they will be aware; that, however, doesn’t mean they have to rehash their style. They are very good at what they do.
Some say that comedy should be clean. Well, comedy is an art where you create jokes and deliver funny messages by insulting a certain object, instance or individual. Find me a joke where nobody or nothing has been insulted or demeaned. Stupidity makes us laugh. And something has to be at the receiving end to be stupid. Many renowned names have opined that comedy in India rather be clean, neat and decent. Are they talking about comedy or someone’s funeral ceremony?
Coming back to the point of hindrance, the roast, by a long shot, hasn’t even rattled an inch of our culture. I was born in a generation where single screens and Doordarshan were the only sources of entertainment to start off with. If you look back at the movies of the 80s, every bad guy in every other movie had two favourite slangs- “Son of a bitch” and “Bloody bastard”. Mr Bachchan has used the latter in many of his films. Did it harm the culture? No. Then we had an era where TV channels had shows where cuss words were beeped. Well, a beep signifies that you have censored a certain portion of the content. People are smart enough to guess that.
Again, did it affect our culture? No.
Recently we had films like Omkara, Gangs of Wasseypur, Delhi Belly, Zinda, Jannat 2, and many more were slangs, cuss words were incorporated. Did anyone walk out of the theatre and transform into Langda Tyagi? Did anybody walk up to his mother and say, “School ka, tution ka, engineering ka, MBA ka, bank ki naukri ka, sabka badla lega re tera Faisal.”? I don’t think anybody did that. So what has hurt the culture eventually? It has been close to a month since the roast went viral. Did anybody read about anything against the culture apart from headlines demeaning stand-up comedians? Hell No!
So basically, the culture never gets offended. What does is the tight emotional value within most of us. There are certain lines that none of us should cross. We shouldn’t encourage others to smoke. We should eradicate cases of incest. That is where the medium of entertainment should apply brakes on. The detractors should understand that those 34,000 likes on AIB’s video were hit by educated, mentally sound and normal people. People who know how to handle their lives. If they can spare an hour to watch that video amidst their busy lives, they very well know how to handle themselves. We don’t need thought leadership as long as education and logical reasoning exists. And talking about the content every comedian delivers, somewhere down the line, it is a reflection of our own society. There cannot be smoke without a flame nearby. As we all know, “Ek haath se na taali bajti hai. Na uparwaale ko haath jode jaate hain.”
The country has way bigger problems to handle and move ahead to the status of a really developed nation. Let us all focus on that.
