The end of imagination

Carlin’s suit has sent ripples through the American entertainment industry. E Online reported that organisers of the latest Grammy award even agreed to an unprecedented five minute time lag in telecasting the live show to give time, if necessary, for editing material to protect viewers from ‘‘the high jinks of whacky entertainers’’. High jinks?

Forgive me for being sceptical but lady where you bin? Don’t you watch movies? Commercials? Music videos? Haven’t you watched Kylie Minogue squirming in a near orgy with her dancers? Haven’t you seen the Oscars? The Golden Globe? Why, had you but watched the Grammy awards last week you would have seen enough cleavage to launch a million barges. And no, it wasn’t part of the ‘‘high jinks of whacky entertainers’’ but simply haute couture.

The fact is and I don’t see how you could have missed it — that daring degrees of nudity have long passed into a state of public acceptability. It is difficult to pinpoint when it happened. There were landmarks along the way: Demi Moore in nothing but paint on a magazine cover, Richard Gere’s bare back on film. But any lines drawn then of what constituted good taste and respectability seem to have long disappeared under the red carpet. These days, the media routinely shows stars in a state of expensive undress (recall Jennifer Lopez in the backless dress, Liz Hurley in safety pins). It has near nude models on runways. It comments unhesitatingly on the body parts of actors, tennis players, singers: ‘‘best butt’’, ‘‘best legs’’, ‘‘best biceps’’. And if that’s okay, then what’s so shocking about a flash of Jackson’s boob?

Is the outrage about something else? Is it, perhaps, about a need to reassert that there is such a thing as conventional morality? Particularly in the face of every known custom being turned on its head? Last week the BBC reported on the fact that a state in the United States of America had taken the historic step of legalising gay weddings. Even as the camera panned over shots of same sex couples happily holding hands the newscaster talked of President Bush making a speech reasserting the values of traditional marriage. So what is it? Is it fear that things have gone too far? Is it a need to pull back to some remembered state of order and innocence?

One cannot argue with the need. There will always be people with varying moral perspectives in society. And the differences need to be respected. But when a whole public controversy erupts over something that is taken for granted on a regular basis it makes one wonder. It makes one wonder if it has anything to do with morality at all.

Or does it really have to do with a lack of imagination that elevates a tawdry stunt to a global talking point?

Is it about Janet and the lengths a fading pop star will go to create asensation? Or is it about us? And by us, I mean audiences everywhere for much of international entertainment, events and tabloid gossip these days gets transmitted all round the world, and in many places the trends are picked up locally. India, for instance, gasped when Zeenat Aman wore a bust popping gown to compete with Gina Lollobrigida at the launch of a Krishna Shah film in the seventies. Today the flimsy dress sense of socialites and celebrities doesn’t raise any eyebrows while movies that would have run surreptitiously in C-grade cinema halls earlier are celebrated in print.

The Janet episode then is about us and the low expectations that people — celebrities, publicists, the media — have of us. It is about the belief that we need to be shocked to have our attention grabbed. That we need to be inundated with triviality (Was it a staged stunt? Did Timberlake know? How many layers was he supposed to have pulled off?). That we need to be tantalised with gossip, rumour and innuendo. Does it work? Almost 2000 entries accumulated on the Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson episode on the net in a week — so it does feed on itself. Do you care? Now that is the million-dollar question.