Living with live shows

Experts can talk till the cows come home of how interconnected the post-global media world has become. But look around and you’ll find people existing in several universes. There’s the real world where we live and breathe in the pollution. There’s the one dominated by the word, where Arundhati Roy’s announcement of a treatise against nuclear India can set off cocktail party conversation. There’s the one dominated by the image, where a recent salwar-kameez convert Jemima Khan can become an ambassador for the sub-continent’s sartorial superiority. And then, there is the Web, where hackers set off nuclear alarm bells.

It is rare for these worlds to overlap. Only occasionally can a character cross over — take Laloo Prasad Yadav. From being a politician who could mobilise upwardly mobile castes in Bihar, he has become a stand-up comedian who insists on conforming to the urban, middle-class Indian’s idea of what a lumpen prole should be.

Mostoften, fame is restricted to its universe of origin. Take a look at starlets like Pamela Anderson Lee. She’s a creature of the Internet if ever there was one. Sites devoted to her proliferate in direct proportion to the decline in her career. We know more about her children, her abusive husband and her cosmetically enhanced anatomy than even Hello would care to tell us. In the World of the World Wide Web, she’s famous. Outside it, she’s still the staple of the limited-interest Hard Copy.

But she’s not alone in her lack of privacy. It’s all around us. From politicians who embarrass nations by consorting with overweight interns to the student who has positioned a camera in her dorm to broadcast her daily regimen to the world at large. Why should Diane and Mike be grudged their shot at sharing their sentiments with the world? It’s not fame which drives them. It’s the urge to merge. It’s the desire to be part of a broader multitude. The multitude that worships Diana at her new Althorp temple. The one that wantsto lynch David Beckham for losing England the World Cup semi-final. The one that pours out into the streets to celebrate Pakistan’s nuclear tests. The one that turns up to gawk at Sonia Gandhi.

No one likes to be lonely, not even if you can have the Net for company. We want it all. And fame is anything but democratic now. Primarily because of the nature of the media, with companies such as Time-Warner and Disney going on Godzilla acquisition drives. With just a few behemoths controlling the world and all talk of a New WorldOrder having been given a quiet burial, the outlets may be many, but plurality is at a premium. So, even if we are bored with Shahrukh Khan pitching his acting skills to us, we can’t escape from him selling Bagpiper and Hyundai. Is it any wonder, then, that in this age of plenty, we are increasingly restricting our consumption of the media to one medium? Why bother with reading when you have the Net and why watch television when you have cinema? Isn’t the best way out, then, to live andhave a live show? Look at Elizabeth of the live birth fame. The woman who chose not to reveal her surname (because of a bank fraud and not, as she said, for the sake of her privacy) delivered and disappeared. It took a battery of investigators to smoke her out. Media may be all, but it’s not all-encompassing.