Truth Pre-wails: Satyamev Jayate

Magic mirror on the wall / Who is the fairest of them all?

The Queen addresses the question to the mirror and it answers truthfully. The mirror does not answer unless being asked a question. But, we certainly do not belong to the age of mirrors, where we ask and it will answer truthfully, nor can we dare to go through the looking glass, as Alice did, and find another reality. Rather, we belong to the age of Screens where there is no possibility of asking, it answers without being asked a question and it answers all the questions. The magical thing about these mirrors is that Snow White never comes out of the mirror nor does the wonderland come to our-land. The Snow White is only reflected for Queen to act out. This is not the case with screens. The Snow White often comes out of the screen to our-world. I am not referring to the Snow White truth (satya) that Amir Khan is proclaiming to come every Sunday on our screens. The Snow White comes out of the screen in many instances. Recently, Rekha and Sachin (the people of Screen) were nominated for Parliament and all I could do was to revisit J. G. Ballard’s novel Hello America’s these lines: 

It was an excess of fantasy that killed the old United States, the whole Mickey Mouse and Marilyn thing, the most brilliant technologies devoted to trivia like instant cameras and space spectaculars that should have stayed in the pages of Science Fiction . . . some of the last Presidents of the U.S.A. seemed to have been recruited straight from Disneyland.

The people that should stay in the screen are coming out and not only coming but also coming to wake you up and that too “Sunday Key Sunday”. Amir khan in his new Intellectual-philosopher-social activist avatar proclaims to do all the three jobs. The truth of this job is as valid as the claim of Lays chips and the cricketers making their own flavors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSNZCgCA3pE).

Amir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate is a big guiltless corporate venture sponsored by Airtel, Aquaguard,  Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Skoda Auto, Axis Bank, Berger Paints and Dixcy Scott. The show has made itself guiltless in the sense that it deals with ‘social-issues’, is aired on DD, the sms costs are low and no Amir Khan ad will be there in-between the show. But that does not change anything. The show has a typical reality show format where social issues are raised and backed by the sms’ that people send in the form of YES or NO through and to various corporates. Whatever the picture this show shows, it cannot take the corporates out of the show.

Where various corporates now have taken the job of teaching and inculcating values, ethics and morality (Agar Daag Lagne Se Kuch Accha Hota Hai, To Daag Acche Hain), or of Feminine Power (Hema, Rekha, Jaya aur Sushma and ambulance save), and almost every branch of social and Human Sciences, the show marks a typical example of semio-capitalism, described by Franco Berardi ‘Bifo’ as:

The new regime characterized by the fusion of media and capital. In this sphere, poetry meets advertising and scientific thought meets the enterprise.

And

Semio-capital, in fact, is not about the production of material goods, but about the production of psychic stimulation. The mental environment is saturated by signs that create a sort of continuous excitation, a permanent electrocution, which leads the individual mind as well as the collective mind to a state of collapse.

The feel-good format of the show ending with “jadu ki chaddi” contends to solve the problem on and through the screen. Amir Khan is the Queen asking the question and we the mirrors answer back not in our own language but in Y and N format of the corporates. The fact is that all the social issues need a discussion (which the show does not allow). They cannot be digitalized as Y and N and resolved.

P.S: It does not shock me that if tomorrow the show comes up with a slot on Farmer Suicide and people know Amir Khan more than P. Sainath.