The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

Watch whom the guest in your home brings….
What is worse than rioting students who appear on television? Striking workers?
Though that sounds as if it is part of one of those riddles that sub-Editors of newspapers plonk down on various newspaper spaces every now and then, it quite captures the general television culture that's developing in this country.

In those days when terrorism was still a cottage industry, Margaret Thatcher came on British TV and said that "the British media should not afford any propaganda to the Irish republican Army terrorists.'' She said, "the media provides the oxygen for their survival.''

These days George. W. Bush is giving the terrorists oxygen that could enable them to survive on Mars, but that's another matter. In the local television culture, the going ethic seems to be that anyone who makes the news is welcome on the channels. It will not be long before they bring rapists and convicted murderers on the same forum with the Minister of Justice. That's not a strange juxtaposition of people -- sometimes, convicts want coverage, it's like their oxygen, and Ministers want coverage -- it is their oxygen.

Two things are particularly striking in the relatively new media culture of television in this country, one of which is the amount of mileage that newspapers offer for television. The newspapers have made a needless and unrealistic concession to the television industry that television is the godhead of all communications.Newspapers devote entire sections for television related material, from programme guides to lurid reviews and inane blurbs.

But television does not offer the same type of exposure for print. There is no quid pro quo on that. If the print medium wants, the most it can do is to take out an advertisement for a newspaper on one of the channels. The other trend, however, is that television while not determining the headlines, hogs the news background. If there is one thing Sri Lankans can do it is to talk until the cows come home, and this the television medium has exploited to the maximum. The talk shows have never been divine. This they can't be because television talk shows in their basic orientation resemble a cockfight.

People are literally pitted against each other, and the moderators are eager to get the participants gouging their eyes out, even though when it comes literally to the point of gouging their eyes out, they intervene and sometimes even stop the show.
All that's done of course in the name of entertainment, but like a pornographer who might call his work art, the presenters call their cockfights intellectual discussions.

(''Sangwaada'') It is all very polite and sanitised stuff, but it’s a matter of going through the paces. Everybody pretends that they are discussing the nation's crucial issues and that there is something profound that's going to come out of the evenings proceedings, when in fact, everybody including the moderators and the viewers know that the discussants are in it for some cheap mileage.

But the problem is that, after all of it, the viewers really delude themselves into thinking that something that terribly effects their lives has been discussed at these talkathons. They might even know that talks shows are meant for putting on a show. But, even so, they know that the topics under discussion are for the most part issues that have a very important bearing on their lives, such as the issue of the Interim Administration, or the issue of peace with all its ramifications.

It is this disconnect between audience expectations and the ethic of putting on the show that makes such television talk shows appear to become curiouser and curiouser. They can take on a positively dangerous life of their own. Marshal Mac Luhan it was probably who once said that television is like a guest in your home. That makes for strange drawing room situations. April of last year for instance saw most of the Sri Lankan South playing host to Velupillai Prabhakaran who has been the public villain number one in their lives for a long time.

But Prabhakaran has a monopoly on violence, and it has been a historical verity that those who command a monopoly on violence generally end up being the monarchs or the princes of the realm. But callow students who unleash violence on their fellow students at the Sri Jayewardenapura University do not enjoy a monopoly on violence. But television talk shows canonise these youth by bringing their callow baby faces into the glare of the media spotlight.

Once there, they are treated with kid gloves. Their petit majesties say the most preposterous things and makes justifications for violence with such a grave profundity that you could see the basic fault lines in our society written in their faces.

They epitomise the campus student culture and ethos that says that students being the chosen people, are entitled to live off the fat of the land. To say this is not to be insensitive to the plight for instance of the unemployed undergraduates. But it is to explore the mindset that is fairly represented by the blood-red lettered posters on the campus walls that scream "upakulapathiya gedera yavavu.'' "ape illeeem denu.'' (Chase the Vice Chancellor, hand our demands now.)

Campuses are infested by such crypto fascists, whose underlying belief is that campus issues can only be solved by violence. But then, a society that is said to be repelled by Prabhakaran's violence, puts these student crypto fascists on the small screens and make them guests in your own homes. Their Education Minister and their Chancellor who do the first mistake by sharing the same forum with such crypto fascists generally end up looking cowed and splattered with egg on their face. But, strangely there is no self regulation for television.

A talk show is like a town meeting, It is not a structured discussion, such as a literary debate that goes on in the columns of a newspaper. To that extent, it is televisions strength. The immediacy is powerful. But yet, it is the closest we have come to having a free for all passing off as a media culture. On occasions it has been in fact a free for all. A show was stopped on Swarnavahini, and the bodyguard of two of the participants had to come into the studio to ensure that their charges had safe passage. Perhaps this kind of thing, in the absence of any direct regulation, is best regulated by remote control. Turn yours off.

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