Dr Karuna Thakur
The Maggi two minute noodles advertising campaign, launched in the 1980s by Food Specialties Limited, a subsidiary of the Swiss Multi National Corporation- Nestle, marked the beginning of an era of commercial advertising in India. It sponsored popular Hindi tele- serial -Hum Log and witnessed a tremendous rise in Television viewership with a two hundred fold increase in revenue from the advertising sites. Since then there has been no looking back. Liberalization and privatization of the 1990s expanded the television network and gave further impetus to advertising arena where among others, leaders and policy makers extensively used the medium to either campaign for elections or to disseminate information on issues of social and political relevance . Notable campaigns relating to health, family planning, female infanticide, national unity, and diversity in the recent times have attempted to bring about social awareness. Advertising gurus have also worked hard to invent organization and market strategies to promote sale of consumer goods and diffusion of various messages. However how advertising campaigns stereotype, distort and omit facts about popular culture causing social hurt , exclusion and marginalization or divide among communities is equally well known.
A much hyped campaign on Swachh Bharat launched recently has two protagonists from Hindi Cinema – Amitabh Bachhan and Kangana Ranaut , the latter represents Lakshmi , the Goddess of wealth ,prosperity and purity . In the visual , She is shown as vacating spaces that are unclean or cluttered ; in other words she goes missing from unkempt or filthy surroundings because the Goddess is understood to inhabit spaces which are clean. Amitabh Bachhan’s voice resonates with the message – cleanliness is Godliness. Indeed the concept of cleanliness being next to Godliness is great and makes sense, though the visual form this sublime idea takes is nothing but profane. It ends up as a mere caricature of Lakshmi who goes fleeting out of a house, a car or rides a pillion nonchalantly. A split version of a saree floating away in the breeze symbolically suggests her exit from different places while the camera cleverly slides over to give viewers a glimpse of curvaceous waistline of the Goddess ,who is playful even as she expresses her disdain over unclean surroundings.
Welcome to advertising -Indian style, it educates multitudes of illiterate Indian masses about habits of cleanliness by invoking what is closest to their hearts -God. But the point here is that if cleanliness is Godliness, then the God so selected has to be a universal God, or a collectivity of Gods representing all communities, not a particular one. Whether or not the other communities would lend their respective Gods incarnate to join the Safai Abhiyaan remains an issue of speculation. But certainly, If the object – Safai is general in nature – meant for one and all , then the symbolic representation of characters too has to be generic and not specific to any one community . Clearly, the advertisement misses out on that element of inclusiveness. As for now, Goddess Lakshmi appears singularly responsible for spreading the message of cleanliness for all in the country.
One need not even mention the fact that intuitively believers have a sense about religion: that it is a matter of personal choice or individual faith- something connected with the deepest realms of human heart, mind and soul which ideally become the resting places for their Gods and Goddesses. These inner temples, in a world of material, physical and emotional alienation not only remain sacred and undiluted but also serve as life sustaining force. Obviously, same is not the case with the market world of profit and loss which makes viewers consensual partners in consuming ideas that are designed to ridicule, trivialize or desacralize their religious icons. It is visible not only in the deities being flaunted left and right but even in the selection of models who happen to incarnate roles on screen which are polar opposite to what they symbolize in real life or otherwise. These dichotomies between the real and the reel are deliberately worked out to spice up the visuals. Indeed the choice of female model as goddess Lakshmi in Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan could be the subject of many searching questions. Equally hard to miss is the parting shot of the visual which urges viewers to hold on to Lakshmi with the words: do not let her go……
Surely not everything that Television produces is negative, as a mass medium it also projects social aspirations, dreams and desires. Cleanliness in that sense is a social goal- an aspiration and has to be pursued earnestly and perhaps suitably with some other agents: a mother who labors all day, a teacher, a vendor, even a rag picker or a Safai karamchari , there is really no dearth of role models to drive home the message .
But then, these are the dilemmas of a transitional society where critical issues of daily existence become a subject of manipulation and misrepresentation at the hands of a few. In the face of powerful cultural and market forces, viewers can do little except make a humble plea to the world of imagery and say: keep weaving popular dreams, woo the consumers but for the sake of inner peace of the innocent masses, spare them their Gods and Goddesses.
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