SMOKERS’ CORNER: BREAD, BUTTER AND RATINGS

Published June 25, 2017
Illustration by Abro
Illustration by Abro

In the 1996 black comedy The Last Supper (dir. Stacy Title), a group of liberal Ivy League university graduates are seen sharing a house and an immense distaste for various reactionary folk. Disgusted by their own rhetoric, the students invite far-right conservatives to lunch/supper for a discussion. But when one of the guests, a US marine — who is persistent about his (positive) views on Hitler and his hatred towards blacks — threatens the disagreeing students with a knife, the students kill him (in self-defence). They bury his body in the backyard of the house underneath the organic tomato trees that the students have been growing.

The students panic but eventually rationalise the killing as a good thing because now there is one less person spewing hatred. This convoluted rationalisation of murder emboldens the students and they decide to invite more reactionary figures to lunch but get rid of them by poisoning their food.

They set a rule that the guests will be spared if they change their views after a discussion, and if they don’t, they will be poisoned. The students poison a number of people, including a homophobe, a racist, an anti-environmentalist and a censorship advocate. They are all buried under the tomato trees.

Sometimes people pander to values they don’t believe in simply to attract eyeballs

Even though the students are by now gripped by a curious mixture of guilt, paranoia, self-righteousness and elation, they manage to invite a popular right-wing TV talk-show host to dinner. The host is known for his extreme right-wing views which he unapologetically expresses on his TV show.

However, when this guest appears at the house for dinner, he is nothing like what he is on TV. He casually explains to the students that he doesn’t believe in even a single thing he glorifies on his show and that he only says them because there’s a huge audience out there who like to hear it (thus giving his show the required ratings).

This confuses the students who can’t agree on what to do with him. They eventually decide to poison him for his amorality, cynicism and the fact that he would go back to spouting reactionary hatred on TV even if he doesn’t believe in it. The host is quietly warned by a dissenting student about the ‘bad wine’. The last shot sees all the students lying on the floor dead and the host standing over them smoking a cigar. He had secretly poured the poisoned wine in their glasses while they were debating what to do with him in the kitchen.

The film is a satire on how the paths of ideologically-charged conservatives and liberals can converge on a similar plane when it comes to self-righteousness and delusion. The most exceptional character of the film is the last guest, the amoral and cynical TV host.

The realm of TV news channels around the world are full of such men and women. I have personally met a few as well. During a media conference in 2011 in London, I was surprised to notice how pleasant and enlightened a Pakistani TV anchor was in person, whereas (at least till then) he had come across as a crass, gossipy and somewhat reactionary man on his show.

I couldn’t help but mention this to him. He just smiled, saying (in Urdu), “Yaar, my producer and bosses [at the TV channel] do not let me do an ‘intelligent’ show. My ratings drop when I invite ‘moderate’ guests or take a liberal stance on an issue.”

The film is a satire on how the paths of ideologically-charged conservatives and liberals can converge on a similar plane when it comes to self-righteousness and delusion.

Basically, what he was implying was that he was not what he appears to be on TV and that he was actually playing a role (like an actor would) for the sake of ratings. I also asked him how he would feel if the ideas that he espouses on his show (but doesn’t quite believe in) end up encouraging hate crimes in the society. To this he had just shrugged his shoulders and remarked, “Naukri hai [It’s just a job].”

I do not watch a lot of TV and despite many invites, politely refuse to appear on talk shows. But between 2007 and 2009, I was actually part of a satire news show with two other hosts. It was an enjoyable concept and the pay was good.

But by the second season of the show, I began feeling rather uneasy. The reason for this was that I was asked to play a role (that of a ‘disillusioned former leftist’). I was nothing of the sort.

Secondly, during the first season of the show (in 2007, at the height of the lawyers’ movement against the Musharraf regime), the channel kept insisting that we (the hosts) continue to come up with sarcastic remarks and jokes against the regime. The idea of the show during that season was to use satire to jump on the media-fuelled bandwagon of the ‘anti-Musharraf wave’ and the lawyers’ movement.

Personally, I was not all that enthusiastic about the movement. I believed it was moving too much to the right. Nor was I convinced about the apparently revolutionary credentials of the ousted Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP), around which the movement was revolving. So I kept cracking snide remarks against the movement instead, but, to my utter amusement, most of the jokes about the CJP were edited out.

Well, the show was cancelled in 2009, even though by then the main host, Fasi Zaka, and I had begun to script it entirely ourselves. I guess we weren’t reactive enough for the show to continue. Ratings, you know.

In 2014, I once had dinner with a former Pakistan cricketer who often appears on sports shows on TV. I asked him why so many ex-cricketers were always spewing bile against Misbahul Haq?

“There is nothing personal against him,” he replied. “We are just expressing the frustrations of the viewers.”

What about the frustrations of some ex-cricketers, I had asked, in a joking manner.

“No frustration at all. I personally quite like Misbah,” he explained.

“And yet so much constant criticism of him, even when he does well?” I asked.

Quite remarkably, this is what he said: “Naukri hai yaar!”

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 25th, 2017

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