When individual becomes an event

What does one do with fiction, while living inside a reality TV/Internet freak show?

While preparing for the part of the hero/protagonist Balram, in Netflix/screen adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s book The White Tiger, actor Adarsh Gourav tells me he realised he’d got it right, when he was once sitting outside his hotel among drivers with their cars parked.

Gourav as Balram was fraternising with his supposed brethren, although the shoot hadn’t started yet (he was simply prepping). He plays a chauffeur in the movie. The film’s producer Mukul Deora was casually getting into the hotel — but he couldn’t spot Gourav anywhere — looking through drivers milling around. Until the actor made their eyes meet. 

As Balram, Gourav had become invisible. Which is precisely what he was aiming for the role of the Everyman. White Tiger as metaphor refers to the rare variety of tigers that isn’t uniformed in the standard golden/orange with black stripes. 

And so it stands out from the crowd, making itself noticeable, therefore of some worth. Which is what the ‘invisible’ Balram wishes to be, in the context of society/book/film. What he does for it is the story I’m not gonna spoil for you.

And that’s set in? Circa 2008. The first thing that occurred to me about the decade that followed that year is: Aren’t we already in a world of white tigers, where hardly anybody, thanks to Internet, is virtually invisible anymore? 

That Balrams of this world would have followers on TikTok, YouTube, Insta, WhatsApp groups, showing their supposedly unique colours/stripes, heralding the age of the hitherto ‘invisible’ asserting itself through the media — by holding it in their hands, and potentially an audience in thrall with it? 

Through dancing, clicking, singing, sharing… All moments, historic; every individual, an event. Why is it that screen actors have traditionally been celebrated so much? They head the same spectacle in the fictional space. Except, reality at a moment when everyone is the legit lead-actor of their own screen, could rival imagination of any sort. 

Even feature films, as a result, you’ll notice, so often resort to blurring the line between documentary and fiction (between AK and AK, Borat and Baron Cohen, even Bollywood wives and their fabulous lives). What we consume all day, on infinite scroll on our phones, are a series of screens/windows with ‘real’ people acting like ‘unreal’ people, anyway.

It was all chewing gum for the family and friends’ brains. Until it dawned on us that this spectacle isn’t the space for the harmless entertainer alone. It’s for anyone seeking self-worth and dopamine high, by holding your nano-second of attention — sometimes for lack of anything else, maybe with their views, so out of way/whack, that we stop to listen.

Maybe we move on. Or maybe join in, creating a bubble of kinship plus conspiracy theories. Forming groups with identities diametrically opposed to another. For, what good is a group, and how do you keep it best glued? But this consolidation needs constant fodder to keep the conversation going — some issue to trade invectives over. All day; every day. 

Groups inevitably align themselves behind figureheads, who equally seem to be reality TV/Internet stars (not Trump alone) — directly pursuing public validation, by the minute, in what the politics professor Bernard Menin calls ‘audience democracy’ (as opposed to ‘party’ and ‘parliamentary’). 

Never in history has it been easier to organise a rag-tag Internet army. The leaders aren’t as much the issue — they come and go, and you can debate individuals. How about Frankenstein’s monsters they willingly feed and embolden in the name of democracy of the street? 

The group identity is transparently simple. Create a binary. Accuse the world of exactly the same things they accuse you of — being ill-informed, intolerant deniers of free speech/expression; misdirected peddlers of fake news. 

And take on the other group’s self-perceived identities instead — activists, speaking truth to power! Until you simply can’t tell between the so-called oppressor and the oppressed. This formula never fails — tell the other side just what it tells you — and mix it with a dark cocktail of envy, schadenfreude and hate, cloaked in self-righteousness. 

A general perception that most trolls and relentlessly brainwashed conspiracy theorists are in effect keyboard cowards at best — shooting away from the comforts of their closed minds and homes — seems correct. Sometimes, just sometimes — the shit spills over.

And so a hitherto invisible called Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, famous online as QAnon Shaman — anti-mask, anti-vaccine, true patriot, with a painted face, bare chest, fur-hat and horns, dressed like an eighth-century Viking (as he puts it, to call attention to himself), an ex-Navy, once an aspiring actor — just offloaded from the Internet, straight into the US Senate’s dais. 

Posing for photos, flexing his muscles, holding a spear with an American flag at the citadel of world’s oldest large democracy. In his head, he was probably executing a coup with the mob by his side! And this is America. I stopped reading fiction ages ago. Who wants the next episode of Black Mirror? At this rate of reality, we’ll probably see it someplace else, soon. That’s the frickin’ fear. Hence the rant!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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