On the Road to Ruin with David and Victoria Beckham: A Message from India
UK and India
Every time I return to the UK from India it is inevitable that someone will ask me, “What is India like?” Many hold mindsets about the place based on outdated stereotypes. You know the ones: mass poverty, beggars, suffering and that kind if thing. But I guess they want to know how different it actually is from the West. It can be difficult to explain. Maybe I should take a few newspapers back next time to give people a snapshot of the place: disinvestments and privatisation; disputes over rivers and water shortages; arguments over temple-building at Ayodhya; cross-border terrorism and Pakistan; Bollywood hits and flops; film stars Sanjay Dutt in trouble and Salman Khan in even bigger trouble; and the latest in the political world with the Laloo Prasad saga and the Jayalalitha drama.
The newspapers give the reader a daily dose of the very serious, the quite serious and the not so serious. In a way, they also provide some insight into the Indian psyche. For a foreigner, the newspapers in India can be fascinating. There is just so much happening in terms of politics, religion, and economic and cultural change. But what can you expect in a country of over a billion people, so many languages and such diversity?
Over the past eight years or so I have spent more time in India than in the UK. My recent arrival back home heralded my stark awareness of just how homogenised and dulled the British mentality has become. Sometimes, it can be a long journey back from where you have been. It is quite paradoxical really; at a time of increasing globalisation the national consciousness appears to be stuck in an insular quagmire. In the UK we have the serious press and TV news programmes, but by and large the nation is gripped by tabloid gossip that masquerades under the banner of news. And in a nation of sixty million people, it never ceases to amaze just how narrow concerns have become.
Now and then people may be jolted by business of a much more serious nature. For instance, I recall watching the BBC World TV channel while in India in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld, Powell, Bush and Blair stood in front of the cameras on an almost daily basis attempting to justify war. But back in the West did it become easy for the orgy of press conferences and sound bites to turn into a daily ritual of armchair entertainment to be consumed and then almost forgotten? And when it began, did it become just another TV-dinner war designed to be gazed at in some kind of post 9-to-5 after-work hypnotic stupor? – apparently not.
This time around, too many could see that it was a mere charade being carried out under the guise of democracy. Thankfully, there is hope. When people stop believing in it – democracy – the game is up. Liberal democracy may arguably be the best shell for capitalism (to borrow from Lenin), but it in the run up to war it was cracking and spewing out its guts for all to witness in the forms of protest marches on the streets of London, Rome and Sydney. But I suppose that after the Iraq thing eventually dies down, for most people it will reach the point once again where normal service is resumed, and trivial desires and concerns once again prevail.
This is hardly surprising in an affluent society where for many the hardships of yesteryear have largely gone. The life and death issues of filling your stomach and finding decent shelter have taken a back seat. News has often become frivolous: a form of entertainment or public theatre, undermining the democratic ideal of a well-informed populace. I guess that consumerism distracts and apathy consumes.
In mid-2003 after returning from India, I would not have believed it if I had not been there to witness it at first hand. The aftermath of the Iraq invasion still simmered in the background, but the nation was fixated by the belief that it is being swamped by marauding bands of asylum seekers, allegations about a TV celebrity and his supposed sexual misdemeanours, and by Beckhamisation.
Beckhamisation is centred upon David Beckham and his pop singer wife, Victoria. They have become Britain’s celebrity couple. She is a former Spice Girl and he is the former captain of the England soccer team. They court the press wherever they go and whatever they do is splashed across the papers and on the TV news. At that time he had just been transferred from one club to another for £25 million (around $40 million). Both of the Beckhams are multi-millionaires and most of us would find it difficult to imagine the enormity of their wealth. The nation was gripped by his move, and what it would mean for the country, his wife and their son, “Brooklyn.” The end of civilisation as we know it perhaps! Blair had recently made changes to the constitution but that was overshadowed by the Beckham phenomenon.
Indeed, the Beckham thing is becoming a global affair. He even appears on some satellite TV channel in India pouring a well-known motor oil into himself. Super-powered Beckham. Football is not such a big thing in India, but Beckham now transcends the world of sport and is launching itself as a global market brand.
Concerns over globalisation, GM crops, adopting the Euro and global warming are on the agenda, but by and large Britain has become Beckhamised. German philosopher Herbert Marcuse noted this trend toward Beckhamisation in the West in the 60s and 70s – long before Beckham was born – a one-dimensional culture obsessed with trivial pursuits and false needs and desires where the type of car, size of house and cut of clothes are all that matter. And these days the measuring stick for all of this is – you’ve guessed it – the Beckhams: they who wallow in self-infatuation.
But what can we expect? People are animals. No, that is not meant in a derogatory way; I quite like animals. Quite naturally, we like to elevate our own species and view ourselves as possessing inherent virtues. And yes, we are capable of love, altruism and logical thought. But reality also shows us, however, that people can be pretty brutal, intolerant and are easily swayed by greed, dogma and fads and fashions based on popular myth and emotion. Beckhamisation.? Well people are people and lofty ideals such as democracy, diversity of thought, and informed opinion are always under threat and in danger of being swept aside by forces that appeal to our narrower and baser instincts. Increasingly, in these times, those forces sometimes seem almost irresistible.
In Britain, we have largely done away with the need for God in daily life, but we still need to believe in something and worship it in the pages of a glossy magazine or tabloid newspaper. And the more it is cloaked in myth, with a sickly sweet coating, the better.
India however has Kali, Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh, Krishna and a million and one representations of God and ultimate values. It may also have a burgeoning film industry and the cult of celebrity following in its trail, but when compared to the real stars of Hinduism, they almost pale into insignificance. India has a long way to go before it ends up where British culture is. But look out: coming to a satellite TV station in India soon – the Tendulkarisation (or should that be the slow death and murder?) of popular culture; that is, of course, if Beckham doesn’t get there first!
And for those who don’t know, Sachin Tendulkar is India’s biggest cricket player.
