A recent article in WaPo made me think of two of my Spot-on columns: my article on Shilpa Shetty’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother came to mind, because of the later controversy when Richard Gere kissed her, and my piece on Dinesh D’Souza, because he claims that his home country of India is having its morals corrupted by American culture.
On Sunday, I read an article entitled Indians Divided on Kissing A Cultural Taboo Goodbye. It’s all about how young Indians are prevented, often by force, from PDA – Public Displays of Affection. In other words, they can’t hold hands or kiss in public. We’re not talking about walking around in halter-tops and thongs. We’re talking about the stuff of American movies from the Fifties.
Not Indian films, which showed the first on-screen kiss on the lips only a decade ago. Even today, it’s still tamer than MTV. My fellow Spot-on writer Gopika Kaul, who lives in India, thinks efforts to maintain traditional decency are a bunch of hooey, driven largely by a hatred of Western culture’s influence on India.
The WaPo article included this:
Some civil society leaders and free speech advocates say the commotion over kissing is a distraction from the real issues.
“Where’s the outrage when a woman is raped by her brother-in-law or when thousands of daughters of India are killed every year for an unpaid dowry?” asked Girija Vyas, chairwoman of the National Commission for Women, who sat in her Delhi government office last week fielding calls from girls trying to escape abusive arranged marriages. “These protesters should come out when someone is raped.”
“Domestic violence, bride burning and sex-selective abortion . . . are all still there in many Indian lives,” Vyas said. “We should be opening the sky for Indian women and for India, not wasting energy when someone kisses a woman versus rapes her. These extremists are dividing society.”
Whenever I read of efforts by anyone, anywhere, to fight against the power of pop culture, I want to slow down and take a closer look. I examined the Culture Wars last year and included a quote from the British historian Niall Ferguson, who was a little dismayed by the coarseness of today’s society, without recognizing that the real comparison to Ancient Rome is that there has always been somebody who thinks we’re all going to hell in a hand basket. (Of course, Rome did go to hell, but we think the orgies and circuses were the corruption and they thought Socrates corrupted by teaching the kids to not believe in the Gods of the city-state.)
I absolutely believe in standards. I just want to know whose standards are we supposed to follow?
2 Responses
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The Pop View Says:
Follow-up on the Shilpa Shetty/CBB incident.
Ofcom — the British regulatory body that is equivalent to the American FCC — today published its Adjudication on Channel Four’s broadcast of Celebrity Big Brother 2007.
The investigation found that Channel Four made serious editorial misjudgements, compounded by a serious failure of its compliance process. Therefore, it was found to be in breach of the Broadcasting Code and has been imposed with a statutory sanction. They will have to broadcast a summary of Ofcom’s finding on three separate occasions during the next edition of Big Brother.
From the summary:
1.4 As the fifth series progressed, disagreements began to develop between some of the housemates, in particular, between Shilpa Shetty on the one hand and Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd on the other. Viewers, and others who were aware of the events in the House, became increasingly concerned that Shilpa Shetty was being subjected to bullying, some alleging that the bullying was racist. Ofcom received just over 44,500 complaints about Celebrity Big Brother 2007.
1.11 Ofcom has considered whether a number of events in the House were in compliance with the Broadcasting Code. It has found that there were three events which were broadcast during the series which were in breach of the Code (see paragraphs 8.1 – 8.38 below for a full explanation of the breach findings). Ofcom has found that in relation to the following three incidents, Channel Four failed to appropriately handle the material so as to adequately protect members of the public from offensive material:
- Remarks about Cooking in India (transmitted 15 January 2007)
- “Fuck off home” comment (transmitted 17 January 2007)
- “Shilpa Poppadom” comment (transmitted 18 and 19 January 2007)
1.20 Ofcom also considers that Channel Four failed in its handling of the incidents broadcast to take account of the cumulative effect of the events in the House. The audience’s understanding of the events in the House and, in particular, the alleged racist bullying, was changing as the series developed and therefore comments which may in other circumstances have been interpreted as “borderline” in terms of offence became much more offensive given what was happening in the House, as well as beyond the House, in the outside world.
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The Pop View Says:
For more on what’s traditional and what’s offensive — according to whom? — read this fascinating account by L.A. Times reporter Megan K. Stack about what it’s like to be a female in Saudi Arabia:
Saudi men often raised the question of women with me; they seemed to hope that I would tell them, either out of courtesy or conviction, that I endorsed their way of life. Some blamed all manner of Western ills, from gun violence to alcoholism, on women’s liberation. “Do you think you could ever live here?” many of them asked. It sounded absurd every time, and every time I would repeat the obvious: No.
Through the years I have met many Saudi women. Some are rebels; some are proudly defensive of Saudi ways, convinced that any discussion of women’s rights is a disguised attack on Islam from a hostile Westerner… The oil expert who scolded me for asking about female drivers, pointing out the pitfalls of divorce and custody laws and snapping: “Driving is the least of our problems.”
Driving to the airport, I felt the kingdom slipping off behind me, the flat emptiness of its deserts, the buildings that rear toward the sky, encased in mirrored glass, blank under a blaring sun…
I slipped my iPod headphones into my ears. I wanted to hear something thumping and American. It began the way it always does: an itch, an impatience, like a wrinkle in the sock, something that is felt, but not yet registered. The discomfort always starts when I leave…