'DNA' spends a day in the 'Bigg Boss' house

Reality TV bears as much resemblance to reality as Lays chips do to potatoes. It’s the equivalent of watching a badly scripted, slow-moving TV show with amateur actors. It’s therefore hard to imagine why such humiliating, pseudo-realistic drivel would continue to be a mainstream success.

But it is, and is growing exponentially. The interesting question, really, is why we love it so much. Is there really nothing ‘good on the TV’? The easy and obvious answer is that people are dumb. But that answer is condescending, reductionist, elitist and wrong. Unfortunately, the real answer is even more depressing.

As fake as it gets
I am in a position of authority in this matter, for I, along with 13 other journalists, got to live together in the Bigg Boss house for 24 hours. A brief taste of the reality of reality TV. We had no phones, books, music, paper, pens, money or credit cards. We did tasks, we were punished, we ate and slept only when we were allowed to, and we saw no one else except each other. Of course, we were watched by 55 cameras, over a 100 crew members and camera people, by a creative director, and lights and sound technicians. The key factor — being watched by the entire country — was missing, but it was enough of an audience.

We were blindfolded and taken up and down stairs, sideways, backwards, over gravel and cobblestone pathways, at the end of which we were successfully disoriented.

The House is unnervingly colourful and synthetic, done up in lurid shades of pink, green and blue. I tugged at the grass around the shallow swimming pool, only to have it rise and fall like a sigh. Fake grass. We peered into the mirrors (which constituted 95 per cent of the ‘walls’ around the house) only to see startled cameramen jumping back: fake mirrors(the one-way mirrors hadn’t yet received their final coating, and cameramen had strict directions to not be heard or seen. This, of course, led to hours of mirth for us as we peered back at unsuspecting cameramen, making them scamper away).

The stove had no gas connection, the bedroom walls were glass, there were microphones in the bathrooms, and cameras that obediently trailed after us as we shuffled from room to room. The only thing real was how we reacted to all the fakeness.

Bigg Boss depicts a disparate — and occasionally famous — group of strangers living in an oasis of fakeness while trying to get along (or not) with each other. It is static: each season is a variation of the last; the contestants are more famous or more psychotic, the house is bigger or smaller, or the tasks are more humiliating or more elaborate. All of the cast members in the new season will be — regardless of who they actually are — variations of previous House members. There will be a new Dolly Bindra, or another Rahul Mahajan. They will fit their archetypes of the shrill woman, the aggressive man, the demure dark horse.

As the hours passed in the house, we got more and more restless and annoyed. Bigg Boss hadn’t given us any task, and now we were getting hungry. We didn’t know it yet, but weren’t going to be fed till one am. One of us was locked up in the mosquito-infested ‘jail’ for two hours for no reason whatsoever. The bitching began in earnest: how the house was mediocre, small, dilapidated, how the show had lost its initial sparkle, how many mosquitoes there were, how small and ugly the bedrooms were.

We simmered in jealousy about how the house had been so much larger last year, how one of the journalists was hogging the best chair, how the TV media was getting more attention than the print. We were sitting pretty in a bungalow with all the attention on us, but we were still dissatisfied.

Why does Bigg Boss do as well, or even better, than other shows with an actual storyline and character development? It’s because Bigg Boss is powered — as are most other reality TV shows — by the overwhelming centrality of jealousy in normal lives. We will find something and someone to complain about, to bicker with, and be envious of, no matter how good we have it.

This is why Bigg Boss feels sort of real to people, though they know it isn’t. This is an advantage that the best scripted show in the world can never hope to have.

Dragging down the ‘greats’
We were made to dance, to serenade each other with blowup toys, court each other to the tune of Switty-Switty, and generally make complete fools of ourselves. No one was allowed to sleep till 4am, and deafening alarms went off if someone dared to nod off. We danced, swayed and mouthed lyrics, as cameramen undoubtedly stifled their giggles.
Most TV shows are based on ideal versions of ourselves: the actors are prettier, funnier and have much more successful love lives.  But this also reminds people that TV is fake, and it will rarely show them glimpses of what their own lives are like. Meanwhile, the semi-constructed world of Bigg Boss and other shows are able to mirror, though in a perverse way, life as it actually is: repetitive, humiliating and the mediocre majority rise to the top while the worthier — the smarter, nicer people — are pushed aside.

In the morning, we were woken up after three hours of sleep to yet more tasks. We did laughter yoga, ate clumsily with handcuffs, and finally: we eliminated an innocent. It was strange how what had previously been all fun and games suddenly turned watchful, even ominous. A couple of people laughed uncomfortably, everyone denounced the idea of nominating someone when we barely knew eachother. “No hard feelings, okay guys?” said one woman earnestly, nodding around at the group assembled in the living room.

Every nomination, every name picked ‘at random’ was followed by accusing looks and why-me expressions. Despite us barely knowing each other, we had been sucked into the game. No one was laughing or joking anymore. Getting kicked out of the house 30 minutes before everyone else was suddenly a matter of grave concern. Finally, one girl was chosen. Picked out for the offense of having disturbed everyone’s measly hours of sleep, she was expelled.

You would think that having known each other only for a night, we would be able to laugh it off. But the air crackled with tension, and the cries of ‘no hard feelings’ got weaker and weaker. She left, and we — guilty but secretly triumphant — went back into the house. Our fake surroundings had generated real, negative emotions.

Reality TV is real in a way that ‘non-reality’ or ‘fiction’ shows are not. It also allows us the pleasure of watching famous people — mythical creatures of perfection — make complete asses of themselves, reveal petty emotions, and generally de-glamorise themselves till they’re shadows of their former starry selves. There are no ‘great’ people on Bigg Boss. It will drag the societal ‘greats’ — starlets, ageing actors, and miscellaneous celebrities — to the middle. They will be just like us. Reality TV shows work because they are real in a way we don’t want to admit. They also work because people are secretly cruel, and will watch debasement, emotional torture, humiliation with a glee more befitting of crowds milling in front of a beheading in the 14th century.