Blood and gore become the norm on TV these days. But is it really okay?

Andaz: Tale of rivalryThe other day Nikki Aneja took out a snake from a box and let it loose on a handicapped Ashish Vidyarthi inDastaan. He could only cry out in helplessness. For television audiences, this gruesome scene was dished out as prime-time entertainment.The reason? A whip, stick and electric chair have become passe. Extreme violence is now a norm in soaps and serials. But it's not as if it was not there before. Anger, violence, sex elemental emotions, but never fully expressed in the days of Hum Log, Buniyaad, and Nukkad. It was covert then, hidden in a medium one could safely watch with the entire family.Then one fine day, couch potatoes were jolted by the sight of Ketaki - one of TV's first bitch goddesses played by Neena Gupta in Khandaan - lying dead in a pool of blood. A couple of years ago, a teenybopper, Roma, killed her "friend" Shriya in cold blood in Tara. Soon the sinister became a hallmark of the idiot box. Naya Daur: Gory stuffJust channel surf: inBanegi Apni Baat, a mother gets her son killed. InDaraar, the grandpa keeps his grandchild in captivity for ransom without a flicker of conscience.Mahayagyahas an episode-long rape sequence. InNaya Daur, Ganeshi beheads the village god-man and then thrusts a knife into his mistress' stomach.Violence has many avatars today. There's more variety too: physical, sadistic, gory, emotional. While horror shows, murders and the mafia serials dominate prime time, afternoon soaps harbour verbal altercations, inter family disputes and emotional warfare. Says media columnist Sudheesh Pachauri: "In the context of violence, even Shri Krishna, Mahabharat, Chandrakanta or Betaal Pachisi are no exceptions." The difference is just in degree. So much so that there are even cases of public reaction against the trend. Recently, a letter by 12-year-old schoolgirl Nidhi Telang to the Rajasthan chief justice against the horror show, Aahat, was made into a public-interest litigation (PIL). Nidhi said she got scared when an innocuous doll turned into a ghost in the serial. Anhonee: The shiversIn response to another PIL seeking a ban on horror shows, the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued notices to the Central Government, Star, Zee and Sony. A just-released study conducted from April to December 1995 by the Media Advocacy Group, a media-monitoring agency, shows violence is rampant on TV. Of the 210 episodes monitored, 151 contained 351 incidents of violence.The stops are being pulled out now and blood and gore have been firmly slotted in the form of horror shows and mafia serials. For the first time in the history of Indian television, a horror show, Aahat, has emerged as the top-rated show across all cable and satellite homes (marg and IMRB ratings). According to IMRB figures (for the week ending December 6), it was the No. 1 show in Delhi with a TRP of 15 and came a close second in Mumbai with 9.4.Tulsi Ramsay, the founding father of horror, stresses the need for such shows on TV. "Just like love, action, tears and laughter, fear is also an important emotion," he argues. "In fact, horror shows strengthen the heart. If our shows continue, there won't be any heart patients left in India after 10 years." Chahat aur Nafrat: Hate storyOn the other hand, critics argue that young children are losing the distinction between fiction and reality. "They are taking in the blood and gore and are losing the sensitivity to react against it," says Debasmita Menon, a Mumbai-based media researcher.As if ghosts and spirits were not enough, afternoon soaps are adding another dimension by showing violence in relationships. As close family bonds collapse, revenge underwrites the relationships, and at times revenge is the only relationship. "There's no longer a portrayal of extreme, physical battering but that of verbal attacks," says sociologist and media commentator Rajyasri Rao, who has been researching afternoon soaps for the past few months. Take Swabhimaan. Mahen has an argument with his ex-wife but he doesn't beat her up. He abuses her strongly and walks off in indignation. "It's a violation of ties, a scene of domestic violence," says Rao. Violence on television is inevitable for one basic reason - as a prop to push the soap further. It creeps in because the entire action hinges on elements of conflict. Andaz, for example, is about rivalry between men, either in business dealings or in their love for a woman. Violence is also used to capture the attention of the viewer who could be watching the show in the midst of eating or talking on the phone. Sitting at home, unlike the person in a cinema hall, he is not a captive viewer. It is also a way of keeping in step with the macho trend established by foreign serials like NYPD Blue and Cops. "But we cannot show excessive images because we are catering to a family audience. A murder can go on for six minutes in a film but on television we have to wrap it up in 30 seconds," says producer Himesh Reshamiyya.Television anger is also more ersatz. While filmdom's most famous angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan, turned violent with justification, soap violence is meaningless, never against institutions or social injustices but against individuals. According to sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, the violence in soaps is actually an evasion of real life violence. "It is a very cliched, simplistic portrayal which doesn't give any deep insights into the violence inherent in our social systems," he says. TV violence also differs from what is shown in our films in the way it affects the audience. It's not something you choose to go and see; it comes home for free. The larger-than life silver screen makes violence a fiction while on the small screen it appears more real. "One should be grateful that the violence in films gets over in three hours. The small screen is more worrying because it is sustained and the viewing time for it has also been rising," says psychologist Aruna Broota.Unlike cinema, where violence is justified on the ground that good triumphs over evil, soaps have no such clear conclusions. Good and bad often run parallel in soaps, so much so that the distinction between the two is almost lost. It is this aspect of TV violence - building distorted role models - which is problematic. "In serials the perpetrator of violence gets social approval, is accepted as a winner and achiever. This notion is sending wrong messages to the viewers, particularly young kids and adolescents, says Dr Jitendra Nagpal, a consulting psychiatrist with the Vidyasagar Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Delhi.TV violence becomes a real problem case because there is no regulatory mechanism governing the medium. There are no rules apart from the Indian Penal Code and constitutional provisions, no censor-board certification either. Maybe it's time producers rate their shows. And let the audience decide-to get hooked, or opt out.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 29, 1997 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

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Blood and gore become the norm on TV these days. But is it really okay?

Blood and gore have become the norm these days. But is it really okay?

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