Oprah Plays Patronising!
All eyes were glued to Star World prime time; when Bollywood’s very own Aishwariya Rai sat through an interview with world famous talk show host – Oprah Winfrey. Snippets of this great interview were showing on TV for weeks…warming up Indians all over the world to watch the “word’s most beautiful woman” take a big step for women all over India. This grand event, turned out to be 15 minutes long.
Oprah’s long introduction to Bollywood’s contribution to the World’s Top Ten Most Beautiful Women focused on Ash’s looks, her looks, and…oh yea…her looks. So, Ms. Rai’s claim to fame was – you guessed it – her beauty. Now, that being said, why Oprah wanted her to be the spokesperson of Indian women and to talk about the lifestyles of Indians today is beyond me. However, one does expect a certain amount of intelligence from a former Miss. World. Frankly, I don’t think she made as much of the questions she was asked as she could have. If it were Shobha De, Shabana Azmi, or Nandita Das, Oprah would have had a real conversation to deal with.
The first thing they talked about was how weird Indian movies are. It was “What’s with the songs? Just as things start getting intimate, you burst into song!”. The much awaited “My living with my family…is SUCH a topic!” led to nothing. The questions asked could have started interesting conversation, but none of them did. Ash put a pink sari on Oprah, sounded like she was putting on a fake accent, and that was the end of it. By the end of the show, India sounded like this faraway and exotic but backward country!!
Ash wasn’t the entire part of the show. There were people from Iceland, and Poland, and Saudi Arabia, sharing a little bit of their culture with the American audience. There were some really interesting things that were beginning to come up. But somehow, Oprah always seemed to bring it down to the stupidest of things. The first thing she asked to her guests was what the views on sex were. When Ash seemed like it wasn’t something that was discussed so openly, Oprah brought up the Kamasutra! The woman from Iceland was talking about how girls at age 15 do it, and how common it is to sleep with someone the first time they go out. She said “It’s not a big deal, everyone does it!” and Oprah proudly goes “Well, everyone’s doing it here too!” HAHA! So funny. Not that I am asking them not to be open about their lives, but glamorising it at the detriment of someone else, is a different thing altogether. They made it seem like being private, or even conservative, was a bad thing.
Oprah sounded patronising towards everything though. She seemed to turn up her nose at everything that was remotely different from anything American, and everything else needed her stamp of approval. The only complementary thing she spoke of was how this one Muslim woman, broke stereotypes in the Middle East, and divorced her abusive husband, getting custody of both her children. That should have been such an inspiring and feel-good story. All Oprah made of it was this: “Wow…we are so lucky to be American women. We should be truly grateful that we are American and can mould our own destiny”. OMG. The irony is that on all her more serious shows, she picks up the biggest perversions, and talks of how common they are IN AMERICA!
She sounded extremely American-supremacist. She is an influential woman no doubt and intelligent, but she came off very narrow, dismissive and provential in that episode. I couldn’t help but lose a little bit of respect for her that night.
Oprah’s long introduction to Bollywood’s contribution to the World’s Top Ten Most Beautiful Women focused on Ash’s looks, her looks, and…oh yea…her looks. So, Ms. Rai’s claim to fame was – you guessed it – her beauty. Now, that being said, why Oprah wanted her to be the spokesperson of Indian women and to talk about the lifestyles of Indians today is beyond me. However, one does expect a certain amount of intelligence from a former Miss. World. Frankly, I don’t think she made as much of the questions she was asked as she could have. If it were Shobha De, Shabana Azmi, or Nandita Das, Oprah would have had a real conversation to deal with.
The first thing they talked about was how weird Indian movies are. It was “What’s with the songs? Just as things start getting intimate, you burst into song!”. The much awaited “My living with my family…is SUCH a topic!” led to nothing. The questions asked could have started interesting conversation, but none of them did. Ash put a pink sari on Oprah, sounded like she was putting on a fake accent, and that was the end of it. By the end of the show, India sounded like this faraway and exotic but backward country!!
Ash wasn’t the entire part of the show. There were people from Iceland, and Poland, and Saudi Arabia, sharing a little bit of their culture with the American audience. There were some really interesting things that were beginning to come up. But somehow, Oprah always seemed to bring it down to the stupidest of things. The first thing she asked to her guests was what the views on sex were. When Ash seemed like it wasn’t something that was discussed so openly, Oprah brought up the Kamasutra! The woman from Iceland was talking about how girls at age 15 do it, and how common it is to sleep with someone the first time they go out. She said “It’s not a big deal, everyone does it!” and Oprah proudly goes “Well, everyone’s doing it here too!” HAHA! So funny. Not that I am asking them not to be open about their lives, but glamorising it at the detriment of someone else, is a different thing altogether. They made it seem like being private, or even conservative, was a bad thing.
Oprah sounded patronising towards everything though. She seemed to turn up her nose at everything that was remotely different from anything American, and everything else needed her stamp of approval. The only complementary thing she spoke of was how this one Muslim woman, broke stereotypes in the Middle East, and divorced her abusive husband, getting custody of both her children. That should have been such an inspiring and feel-good story. All Oprah made of it was this: “Wow…we are so lucky to be American women. We should be truly grateful that we are American and can mould our own destiny”. OMG. The irony is that on all her more serious shows, she picks up the biggest perversions, and talks of how common they are IN AMERICA!
She sounded extremely American-supremacist. She is an influential woman no doubt and intelligent, but she came off very narrow, dismissive and provential in that episode. I couldn’t help but lose a little bit of respect for her that night.
posted by 
@ 11:35 am
2 Comments:
At 2:53 am, June 12, 2005,
Anonymous said…
Disappointing as it might be to most of us, the cynical world of commercial TV – with the possible exception of those that deal with news reporting – does not work on the premise that they are propagating the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They are, quite simply, not in that business. To be successful, they must create programmes that get them the eyeballs – not necessarily the brainpower – which in turn gets them their advertising revenue.
Whether you like it or not, “dumb blondes” sell in such situations. Hence the preference of Aishwarya Rai over Shobha De and Shabana Azmi or, for that matter, Kiran Bedi, all of whom, in my view, would have contributed towards a more intelligent, less puerile conversation than what apparently took place.
But who says Oprah is looking for an intelligent conversation that would appeal to an educated Indian audience? My guess – and I’ll confess to being more skeptical than Ananya – is that Oprah’s target audience was not the educated cream of American society. It probably was a less sophisticated, if more numerous, audience that has begun to perceive the existence of the outside world only after jobs started to move to Asia. (Do remember that every country has its share of such people, and America is no exception. It might be interesting to find out how many intelligent Americans, with a world view that extends a bit beyond their county – yes, I did mean county, not country – watch Oprah Winfrey. You might find that the few who do, all have the same contempt towards the programme that you seem to have!) And the point here is that Oprah’s assessment might well be that her audience is looking for somewhat of a feel-good-factor vis-à-vis these Indian hordes who are taking all their jobs away. What meets this requirement better than to have a conversation of the kind you described? Do you see that getting an Arundhati Roy in there would completely defeat the purpose?
So, you’re shaking your head, saying, “This programme was designed for an Indian audience! Why else would they advertise it on Indian channels?” Sorry! My guess is that once this programme was produced (for the audience I described above), they just decided to flog their investment some more and get some additional revenue out of an Indian audience. Why not get some more revenue out of a small additional advertising expense?
Bottom line: don’t take Oprah Winfrey too seriously. She’s an intelligent woman doing a good job of what she’s supposed to do: cater to the tastes of a clearly defined audience. It’s just that you don’t fall into her target audience. So, you end up getting offended by what she says or the way she depicts India and Indians.
Quite frankly, it makes little difference to India what Oprah’s audience thinks. The real decisions are made by the Bill Gates and Michael Dells of this world. And their decisions seem to indicate that they are in love with this country right now. (It’s quite another story that their love affair will last only as long as we remain smarter, work harder and are more cost-effective than our competitor nations.)
At 10:12 am, June 14, 2005,
Anonymous said…
Hi! I just have to join in!
It is no consolation to understand the marketability of Oprah's show in terms of her audience (American only). In this global world, everyone sees and listens to everything and social influencers like Oprah had better acknowledge that! This provincial attitude that sold so well in the past is neither relevant nor tolerated now. Posts such as what Meghna put up ought to remind Oprah of just that!
Post a Comment
<< Home