Do you remember those lovely black and white days, where characters were squeaky clean like Archie and Betty or diabolically wicked like Veronica and Reggie? There were clear slots into which one could put the good as angels and the bad as demons. And no matter what the provocation/temptation may have been, the angels were not permitted feet of clay. Even though, we secretly all loved and mooned over the rogues — whether they were Rhett Butler or Heathcliff, in the end it was the straight-laced guys who won the race, the battle, the elections and even the fair maiden.
Well, every dog has his day and slowly this balanced and boringly symmetrical picture changed. The cinemascope of myriad colours lent shades of grey and purple to the canvas and the boundary between good and evil got diffused. It was alright for the men to play casanovas and their fairer counterparts to be femme fatals. “Dil to bachha hai ji…..” and “Sidhi sadi kudi bigad gai…” were the brazen declarations of the New Age native. And surprise of surprises! This did not invite any moral policing, instead it had most of us smiling indulgently and humming along.
The spill-over of the cinematic decadence and surfacing of the slightly immoral inner self (courtesy Sigmund Freud) can also be observed in mass media advertising. The range and the subterfuge of the communication is vast and varied. On the one hand is the brazenly upfront Axe Effect and on the other hand one has the young girl who gets a dragon tattooed on her lower back and listens to her song when she calls on her Docomo.
The debau-ched behaviour might be justified, given the nature of the product category, as one observes for the Axe chocolate, where the girls going wild over the chocolate man appear plausible. Fragrances like Wild Stone have even the typically traditional Bengali woman loosing all control over her rational sense as she fantasises, when she gets a whiff of the scent as she collides into a stranger. Even the cherubic kid in his desire for an Alpenlebe, decides to Chuna lagaye and dupe a South Indian and a bachelor sardar on Holi for money to buy his favourite candy. The tired and staid Dad who’s listening to music on his son’s MotoYuva, jives enthusiastically and swaggers... “Hey Babes! What’s up?” The old grandma also cannot control her desire, when it comes to Maggi pasta. The Del Monte sauce, Milano chocolate cookies and the Lays chips (no one can eat just one), are portrayed as so devilishly tempting that the excitement and sinful indulgence seem perfectly natural.
On the one hand the focus could be on the typical end user who is Thoda sa shareef and Thoda sa badmash. He is the one who chews a Mentos and walks backwards into his class (as he arrives late) so that he is told to settle down rather than be asked to leave. Mentos zindagi versus. Aam zindagi is what he lives by. He gets his best pal to play papa when caught without a helmet by the tough cop. She manipulates her parents into sending her for a late night “essential discussion” with her MBA colleagues. They are the ‘think hatke’ Virgin mobile users. A 50 rupee note can get him a lot of hugs and kisses from the girls he treats to chicken and ham subs at Subway. The smart young Airtel user knows exactly how to negotiate effectively to get what he wants from his father, his professor, his girlfriend and even his girlfriend’s brother by playing the right emotional notes. Baat karne se hi baat banti hai, he tells you confidingly.
The female counterpart is equally brazen and exclaims, “Why should boys have all the fun?’’ Her New Age morality has her talking about multiple boyfriends, two timing with her best friend’s buddy — Bunty; live in relationships and four letter words are very much part of her vocabulary. She is the ‘Fast Track’ girl ready to Move On.
In retrospection of these messages one encounters a typical paradox — what came first the chicken or the egg? i.e. are the communications tools intended to propagate a new perspective or are they simply a reflection of the existing reality?
Well, the answer is not very clear and can be argued from both sides. However, what is an irrefutable certainty is the fact that the New Age Indian is more emotionally and financially secure and thus more adventurous and indulgent. So, the portrayal one observes today is more starkly honest and bare. It grabs you by the jugular and surprises you with diffusible boundaries between the good and the bad. How this is envisioned depends entirely on the vie-wer’s generation. To bend a cliché, perceptions lie in the eyes of the beholder…
The writer is a Professor of Marketing at the
International Management
Institute, Delhi