Reality TV celebs: Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

Ever since Shakti Kapoor was voted out of Bigg Boss for being too decent, I had stopped following it, breaking my vows only on special occasions — like when Sunny Leone did her pole-dance, as comfortably graceful as Suresh Raina facing the short-ball on a bouncy pitch. However in order to fill the reality lacunae that Bigg Boss left, I found myself gravitating to this new show called Love2HateU, which seemed to have been inspired by the American show H8R, from the theme to the SMS-ese spelling, but hopefully not by its success or, more precisely, the lack of it (It was taken off the air after four episodes).

There were several things about Love2HateU that piqued my interest. One was of course the fact that the show was being helmed by Arjun Rampal, national award-winning actor extraordinaire whose thespian abilities are characterised by an austere minimalism. Second was of course the basic premise, wherein celebrities are brought face-to-face with their most trenchant critics, the assumption being that sparks would fly between them, not perhaps as dramatically as when Osama Bin Laden met some of his greatest haters at Abbotabad recently, but certainly exciting enough to keep us glued to our seats.

To be honest, it’s not easy being a celebrity nowadays. In ages past, you could go to industry parties, be patted on your back or your bottom depending on which rung of the celebrity ladder you were, wave at the adoring crowds and never have to deal with the “haters”. Now in the social media age, having a Twitter account has become de-rigueur for celebrities, direct engagement with the fanbase being favored over old-world aloofness.

Which means that along with the flood of “Sir U R Gr8”s, one has to deal with low-down body blows and sometimes nasty abuse. Now most celebrities are smart enough to not react because in an online cage-match, the non-celebrity automatically gets most of the sympathy. Truth is that celebrities are human beings too and there is only so much teeth-gnashing and knuckle-crunching that can be done without snapping.

Love2HateU gives the celebrities, at least the mid-level ones, a chance to get back at those that snipe at them. 

The problem is that the show is absolutely biased in favour of the “famous people” and their fragile egos. While the “hater” does not know that he/she will be locking horns one-on-one with their object of scorn (they think they will be part of a panel), the celebrities are well-prepped and in some cases, seem to have their retorts well-rehearsed.

Which is why the antagonist, being unprepared for the rules of engagement, comes across as an overawed mass of quivering jelly while the celebrity, on whose side Arjun Rampal as the anchor is firmly on, looks composed, tolerant of criticism and even a good sport. In perhaps the most egregious example of how the scales are tipped, when one of the critics says that people love Chetan Bhagat because they have not read anyone better, she is marched into a room full of Chetan fanboys and made to repeat that opinion to their faces — an experience that must have been intensely uncomfortable, almost as disquieting as being pushed into a group of Sourav Ganguly supporters in Behala while holding a sign that says “Greg Chappell is God”.

And it is this asymmetric nature of the engagement that has taken the sheen totally off what could have been a fine play of point-counterpoint, making Love2HateU a thinly disguised ego-boosting PR exercise for the celebrities.

Arnab Ray is the author of the best-selling May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss