Your Celebrities Are Corrupt! Here’s How

Famous people promoting products and services is often seen as getting more out of your good fortune and rarely as explicit corruption. Should there be something bad or immoral about encashing fame? Or are the celebrities simply trading for money what they have worked hard to earn? When a celebrity appears in an advertisement, most people notice it, some ignore it, the gullible ones get persuaded, and the judicious ones try not to get persuaded. This is how we deal with it today, but a substantial social good can be achieved by viewing such endorsements as corruption and counterfeiting. 

The idea of corruption is not to be confused with acts of taking bribe or misusing public money. Corruption is valuing something less than it is worth. Not respecting rules or breaking them for illicit gains is corruption. Taking more than you are worth is corruption. Exploiting an expectation is corruption. Our celebrities are guilty. 

On what counts can we term a celebrity’s earnings from endorsements as illicit? 

People usually accrue fame on account of their talent and achievements in arts, sports, leadership or any other realm of mass appeal. This makes them recognizable faces and attracters of attention. When they feature in advertisements, the attention they attract is diverted to a commercial item. What the celebrity in an ad basically says is, ‘Hey, look at me. You know me I’m sure. Now look at what I’m wearing/eating/drinking/using, etc. and copy me.’ They often stop short of saying, ‘Buy this’ to make the element of promotion less obvious. The first thing to notice is that the celebrity is encouraging a choice at which (s)he is no better than the targeted customer. What makes a film actor an expert in the composition of a cough syrup, or its relative merits over other cough syrups? A starlet singing the glory of a beauty soap does not tell you that her beauty is explained by an accidental conjoining of chromosomes, careful grooming for limelight since childhood, her lifestyle and probably the avoidance of the very soap she is selling to you. Should a cricketer vouch for the quality of the sports equipment he uses daily (which of course he will do) or, as we see more often, the nutritional value of a biscuit or the trustworthiness of a real estate company? 

If an ordinary person was to make judgements in matters wherein he is uninformed and then to publicize his views, he will most likely be branded as insane, or as an imposter. When such fake expertise is offered by a celebrity, it is seen, regrettably, as innocent sharing of experience, or worse, as performance or public education. Would a celebrity be less a thief if he picks someone’s pocket? Then why should one spare him for publicly lying (to people whose admiration he enjoys)? Why is he not shamed for counterfeiting the currency of fame and trust? 

The celebrity can argue: ‘I am rich in the currency of fame. I use it in whichever way I please, or turn it into real currency or invest it in things that will make me more famous. Isn’t it stupid to argue that the money made by selling chocolate cannot be used for buying furniture?’ 

Dear celebrity, money in functional terms is pure value disassociated from processes that led to its generation. Fame, on the other hand, is value with inextricable antecedents. ‘Famous for ________’: if the blank is not filled, it is no fame at all. 

The most disturbing instances of the black market for popularity and celebrity-hood relate of course to Bollywood and cricket. Films are often just a means of getting known, and the business starts only after the public image is created. Cricket is often a public presentation of a player, and his livelihood comes from the endorsement acts that follow. Large-scale deception? No, this is a new business model. 

Corrupt politicians misappropriate public funds for personal purposes. Corrupt celebrities misappropriate a host of things endowed on them by the public: appreciation, approval, acceptability and trust. 

There is a suggestion that celebrities be made liable for making false claims on behalf of brands. To what extent can a moral problem be dealt with using legal solutions? We have seen that laws do not stop corruption.

Can we instead expect responsible and reformed among celebrities to condemn the endorsement business? 

Let’s wishfully peruse the script of this celebrity declaration:

Celebrity Declaration

 Dear admirers, fans, viewers, listeners and other people, 

Over the years you have celebrated me as the emblem of several virtues, charms, talents and other attractive qualities. I have betrayed all your expectations and trust by endorsing products the quality of which I am not qualified to certify. In other words, I have lied to you on a frequent basis. Though much of the damage cannot now be undone, I must do everything I can to minimize the loss to the victims of my business clients and my own campaigns. I hereby declare as unverified and contestable every claim that I have directly or indirectly made on behalf of commercial brands. I sincerely (trust me) apologize. I acknowledge that profiting from endorsements amounts to immoral exploitation of public trust. I earmark all portions of my wealth accrued from brand endorsements for causes related to consumer protection and fair advertisement practices. 

Yours Sincerely

The Repentant Celebrity 

This message to the public will never come from any celebrity. This article will not stop celebrity endorsements. Imposed choices will rule people’s lives. Only common sense can end this form of corruption.

Safe Diwali

Whose Songs Are These? Why We Are Getting It Wrong

The perverse trend of tagging great songs with the names of actors who happened to be part of their screen rendition is gross injustice to the artist. It robs the credit from the real creative minds and bestows it on the passive vehicles that lend songs a face. Actors should serve as no more than useful associations, and should remain as such. If you loved the food the credit must go to the chef and not the waiter or delivery boy.

It is painful for those who care about music to hear expressions like “a Dev-Anand song”, “an Amitabh-Bachchan song” and “a Kamal-Hasan song” when what really should have been said is “an O.P. Nayyar song”, “an S.D. Burman song” or “an Ilayaraja song”. Who would have pardoned Rajesh Kahanna or Shammi Kapoor if they had really sung “Mere naina” and “Yeh chaand sa roshan chehra”? (Well, we are sometimes forced into submission when catastrophes like “Kolaveri” happen, when the actor is also the singer, where one horror becomes the voice of another, and the gullible public mind is surprised and overwhelmed by publicity machines.)

It is needless to say that many of our cine superstars are owners of stolen fame and they prospered from the simple tastes of the audience. Their glory is unearned and disproportionate to talent, if not totally undeserved. On top of that we give them the credit that is actually due to the real talents that make them stars.

Justifying it as the fate of all behind-the-scene contributors is illogical too. Music is primarily the tune, which is what we hear. The one who makes the tune owns it. His is the actual performance, realized in the act of listening. Who invited the actor into this?

See how two popular online music services group songs:

The actors may be easy reference points to identify a song, but we cross the line when the song is attributed to them. This may seem a convenient but innocent method of categorization that helps a layman look for his songs easily. This is however not so. The musician is forgotten faster than the actor, he is paid less, gets less recognition and is appreciated by only the minority that takes the effort to discover the antecedents of a song they loved. The actor on the other hand profits from the beauty of the song, and walks away with the fame, just like a child that gets an A+ for the assignment done by the parent. The analogy isn’t harsh enough perhaps.

“Hiindi films are an excuse for the music,” Lata Mangeshkar is known to have said. Only a great musician can produce great music. A monkey with money and a dozen rehearsed antics is a superstar at least in India. Their publicized squabble about who can claim to be the king of clowns is the extreme opposite of music.

Is this mere ingratitude on the part of the distributors and consumers of creative products? Injustice, gross and mindless, is what we should call it. Manipulating value perceptions is fraud indeed. Yet, everyone seems to surprisingly tolerant of this, letting crass TV show hosts, radio jockeys and website designers tamper with sacred ideas of creativity and authorship.

Some Common Assumptions That Make Us Mediocre

Being mediocre is a matter of choice just as much as thinking or living different is. Every one of us is vulnerable to these common assumptions, which once contracted leave us mediocre individuals and prevent us from experiencing the world fully.

1. Education is the same thing as schooling and that you need to be taught in order to learn something.

2. You have to be intentionally disorderly to show that you are young and rebellious.

3. Technology and computer programming can solve most problems.

4. Reading “serious” books will make you boring.

5. My choices must be clear cut: yes/no, agree/disagree, support/oppose, black/white.

6. I am the way I am.

7. It’s ok.

8. I cannot “understand” classical music/philosophy/art.

9. TV debates make a difference.

10. Celebrities are interesting people.

Readers are welcome to add more to this list.

The Positive Side of Negative Publicity

No society can probably give us more examples of negative publicity turning good than India. Among its 1.24 billion citizens, many trends are such that blend notoriety and fame into an unqualified advantage of publicity.

Among the most prominent instances of negative publicity turning good is the movie superstar Amitabh Bachchan, a hero of the seventies with average acting skills, who in a few decades turned into a brand ambassador for India. After several flops in the late eighties, he was gradually being retired, when presumably to make a living, he started brand endorsements appearing in ads of such diverse enterprises as a cement company, a pen maker, a fabrics company, a hair oil brand and the tourism department of the state of Gujarat. It was nothing but this offensive ubiquity that made Amitabh Bachchan one of the most valuable cultural exports of India, even though many regard him as a severe embarrassment to the national image.

Another example from the movies is the Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, who has spurred a genre of jokes on him that relate to his impossible on-screen heroics/antics that often challenge the rules of physics.

Here are some more instances of positive mileage coming out of negative publicity:

1. The song ‘Kolaveri’, which went viral in spite of having nothing musical or lyrical about it. Though no one knew why they liked it or shared it, the fact that they did made the song a superhit.

2. The music director and singer Himesh Reshammiya, ridiculed for his nasal voice, gained huge though short-lived fame, mainly because of the criticism that went around.

3. Innumerable polticians who ride on the media waves focusing on the scandals and corruption cases against them, and use this as opportunity for free publicity.

4. The television talk show host Arnab Goswami, whom everybody loves to make fun of for being too overbearing and not letting his guests speak, is however popularised by the very ctitics.

The polyphony of opinions in India on what is acceptable or good stems from both wide economic and educational disparity and cultural diversity. Having too much to choose from seems to have made Indians weary of choice itself, allowing mediocrity to flourish and dominate the mind of the nation.

Putting News in Its Place

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Fill Questionnaire to Become a Literary Superstar

Mittikatel Press, one of India’s leading English-language publishers, is commissioning a new generation of young authors to write books of fiction. Kindly complete the following questionnaire and send it to us. Based on the number of satisfactory responses, we will shortlist tomorrow’s literary superstars.

1. Have you ever been a student of an IIT or IIM? If not, can you write like you have been?

2. What is your annual income? If nil, what is your father’s/husband’s occupation and annual income?

3. Were you educated abroad? If educated in India, in which hill station is your school located?

4. Name at least 5 socialites in Delhi you are close to. (Skip this question if the answer to question 7 or 8 is yes.)

5. Name at least 5 media-persons in Delhi you are close to. (Skip this question if the answer to question 6  is yes.)

6. Are you a Bengali?

7.  Are you from a royal family?

8. Is either of your parents or your spouse a diplomat/civil servant/senior judge/minister?

9. How comfortable will you be writing on the following themes? Number at least five in the order of preference.

a) an urban adolescent in search of the meaning of life
b) virginity
c) IIT
d) NRI life
c)  fashion designers’ life/adultery
d) the Raj
e) Nawabs, palaces and NRI descendants
f) funny non-English-speaking Indians
g) spices/coasts (including Kerala, Goa, communism, Pondicherry French, etc.
h) Bollywood/the underworld
i) Kolkata

10. Among the titles listed below, which fits best the book(s) you are going to write?

a) The Inhibited Desire of Abandoned Lotuses
b) Windless Nights of Kolkata Autumn
c) Cocktail Butterfly
d) The Famished Pelicans of Pune
e) Foupe (Don’t reach for the dictionary, it’s not there.)
f) Tamasha Gallery
g) The Milk-van Owner’s Wife
h) A Book without Silk
i) (Any word with 3 or more syllables) + -wallah
j) Turmeric/Tamarind Mistress

10. How many Facebook friends do you have?

11. If your book is published, how can you help in the promotion? Mention a rough figure.

12. Name 2-3 celebrities by whom you can have your book released (at your expense) if published.

13. Mention the number of foreigners (whites) you will be able to arrange for the book-release party.

14. Have you ever written any book review?

15. Optional: What is your experience in creative writing?

Please complete the questionnaire in as much detail as possible and email it to litstar@mittikatelpressindia.com

Checklist for an Aspiring Intellectual

1. Enrol for a Master’s, M. Phil or Ph. D. in Humanities at a University.

2. Declare your contempt for what people generally like. Whatever that seems good is a construct.

3. Feel free to criticise everything. Choose criticism as the primary form of verbalising thoughts.

4. Attend film festivals. Sleeping through a South Korean film is permitted, but memorise the director’s name for use in a speech or article.

5. Despise all forms of wealth creation. The conspiracy of “work hard” should be replaced by the philosophy of “think hard”.

6. Try as far as possible to use the ideas of Derrida and Foucault instead of your own common sense.

7. Rule for argumentation: Make an argument only if it can confuse everyone, and most importantly yourself. Never change your beliefs. They are right.

8. Choose a recognised intellectual as your mentor. He/she will guide you on who to read, how to read only what you want to read in what you read. Your mentor will also tell you who is always right and who is always wrong.

9. Protest, protest, protest. This is the primary duty of an intellectual.

10. Same as point 9. (On Facebook this time.)

11. Needless to say, oppose all State policies. The most closely felt totalitarian and fascist activities of the State include repeatedly preventing you from clearing the UGC NET. This not only divests you of the intellectual’s fundamental right to earn a salary by rigorous deconstruction unobstructed by the illegitimate demands of the academic system to submit to conventional and inherently oppressive structures like classroom teaching.

12. Have strong, unshaken faith in the commandments above
(a) until you manage to get a private/corporate job or get rich in any other way
(b) until your children are settled abroad and take you to live with them, by which time you will have retired as a professor but you will still have been actively practising deconstruction as a mentor.
(a) until you are dead, if nothing else in life works for you.