Generally I do not watch such programmes because often such interviews are problematic for two major reasons. For one thing, they appear absolutely scripted. There is an unmistakable feel of everything about the interview being staged, the rehearsed "q-n-a" types.
Yet another problem is that the interview is often Inter'View'. In the sense, the 'expert' editor would ask certain 'probing' questions to certain interviewees with a certain profile. Such daring may not often be there with, may be, politicians with lots of muscle and money power! Anyways, most interviewees are excellent at hedging, too!
Much worse are the views expressed by the 'viewers'. Most spectators 're-view' any programme from a certain 'view'point that could include caste biases, for instance. Most often, the language used to express the 're-view' is extremely vulgar so much so that the very concept 'freedom of expression' itself gets maligned!
All these thoughts crowded my 'views' because I watched Gautami Patil's interview. There were only two valid questions in that lengthy chat. One of the lady journalists asked Gautami her opinion about the fact that that only a stage (and folk) performer gets trolled for 'inviting' gestures that otherwise are rampant in films, for example. The same lady asked another valid question. Why blame the dancer for 'provocative' dances because actually blameworthy are the organisers and the spectators. Most probably, the purport and the purpose did not reach her.
The rest of the interview appeared more like the "Chandramukhi" interview. I have not watched the film. I read the book because the film was the talk of the town. The Gautami Patil interview sounded a little too similar to the final interview in that story.
Yet another question that emerges from this Inter'View' is the glorification and validation of the lowly instincts because they sell. It amounts indeed to making poverty, grief in to consumer goodies. The moot question, moreover, would be, 'just because a girl is poor, why should she choose to be a (bar) dancer or a woman who sells herself'? Bollywood films, too, are full of such cliched simplifications.
True, not everybody is good at studies. Even then, there are very many alternative honest and honourable professions. One can be a 'mavshi' for the old or an 'ayah' in a hospital, for example. Many households with the elderly need such help. Girls can be electricians to cooks/chefs these days. Such, and huge, is the variety available.
The problem is that the payment would be a paltry five hundred per day. In comparison, as a vulgar dancer, the earnings would be mind-boggling! Unfortunately, such are the contemporary mood and moral(e)s that 'very less work with truckloads of money' is the goal!
Hence the disturbing view regarding such an inter'view'. In the race for a huge TRP, whom to glamourize? By co-opting such vulgar dancing (Impossible to watch are kids dancing to ugly songs on the channel 'talent' hunts which thus sexualise a child's body! Equally horrible are college competitions full of re-runs of awful double meaning 'lavani' performances), not only the art but also the very taste of an entire society are trivialised and vitiated. Can the concept of 'entertainment, entertainment, entertainment' get away with anything and everything?
The moment the celluloid or the television (much worse as it enters the very household) screen ennoble the wrong, in my view, the good would always get demeaned/defeated!
Pratima@ As a public performer, do not the entertainer, the t.v. channels, and such have any responsibility towards a given art, the larger society, and, finally, to their own conscience?
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