Paper 3 Idea Generation

I would like to explore the Indian prime-time TV show, Big Boss. The show is modeled based on the more popular Western TV show, Big Brother and has been through 5 seasons till date.

Celebrities are put together in one big house and are forced to stay together and perform weekly tasks for a few months. One house member gets eliminated each week. The elimination criteria is supposedly based on viewers choice since the member with the least number of votes gets eliminated.

Having followed a few episodes of Season 3, 4 and 5, I was able to see that the votes of the audience in no way played a part in the elimination process. The celebrity who was loved most often got eliminated before those who were hated by the public. Partiality and influence of the celebrity were the two main contributing, visible factors. If this is the case, then why ask the public to vote in the first place?

Another underlying factor I noticed was that the house member who is the loudest and creates the maximum number of controversies seems to last the longest on the show while the more submissive ones get eliminated in the first few rounds. Even if the louder ones get eliminated mid-way, they are brought back in after a couple of episodes with the Big Boss panel claiming that it was the "viewers choice" to get them back on the show. So does it mean that peaceful entertainment fails to capture our attention while controversies and fights grabs our attention?

Lens View

The sponsor of the Corny Collins Show, from Hairspray, changes his attitude towards Tracy from calling her a “fat communist girl” to “cute chubby girl”. How did this change in opinion come about?

Does Street’s claim that prizes are designed to publicize the organizations that sponsor them help explain the change in attitude?

Street’s claim is that one of the key stakeholders of any prize event is the sponsor and that prizes are designed to generate good publicity and bring in the cash. They see the prize as part of a process of marketing their products. I will elucidate how the change in attitude of the sponsor clearly brings out his claim and the impression that the sponsor has an upper hand in any prize event. Furthermore, I will also analyze how media coverage as brought to light by Street affects the same.

The case against awards, Why the wrong person always wins

On reading this article, I could not help but be reminded of the video shown in class where the most versatile and respected Indian actor, Naseeruddin Shah, describes the whole concept of presenting awards to be an abysmal show that only tries to please rather than appreciate. The author seems to convey the same.

From all the Bollywood award ceremonies that I've seen, it always happens that when a judging committee presents the award to a particular actor, all the other awarding panels follow suit. The judging criteria is now "Who is popular" rather than "Who is the best". A similar situation occurred when A.R.Rahman won the Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire. While the movie was a massive hit (God knows why?!), a sizable majority felt the background score wasn't good enough to bag the Oscar. This said, one important thing to note is that popular is what sells and the best is not always popular. Hence to keep the masses happy and entertained, it becomes imperative to award the popular individual. People are enamored by the outer shell and fail to see the substance within.

From the authors point of view, I find that he seems to have developed a bias right from when he was young. He seems to stress on all the awarding decisions that went wrong and fails to bring to light the ones that went right. It's not "always" that the wrong person wins. There have been several situations where the award has been presented to the most deserving candidate.

For Putin, a Peace Prize for a Decision to Go to War

Right from the title of the article, the author clearly brings out the sarcasm and depicts how much he values the award itself. The fact that the award stands to commemorate peace but is given to a person for having gone to war seems to convey enough regarding its worth and intent. Started by Qiao Damo and others as a competition to the Nobel Peace Prize, it has brought out nothing more than the shameful side of China. While the first winner failed to even turn up to receive the award, it wouldn’t be surprising if Putin did the same. An unheard of award with its intentions clearly gone wrong is all that Putin needs right now.