Dreams unlimited: The make-believe world of advertisements.

Among the most important shifts that have occurred in the electronic media since the days when the state owned Doordarshan was the sole player in the field is the centrality of advertisements, i. e., the presence of the market in dominating the images and narratives that are put out in its many programmes, whether news, chat shows or serials. Once the government stopped financially supporting the Doordarshan, advertisements began to make their presence. Those of us who have watched the many avatars that the TV industry has undergone in the last two decades will recall the slow entry of ads, first at the beginning and end of the programme, and then more pressing in terms of its capacity to determine the unfolding and timing of the programmes themselves. Privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation have vastly enhanced the dominance of advertising in TV programming and this has had serious consequences for viewing and shaping the reception of messages put out on the electronic media. Since ads are about goo ds and goods are about who can buy them the vast majority of Indians are in reality excluded from the workings of the market even as they are incorporated in other ways. The ads therefore target the 20% of the Indian buying public although it is questionable whether this proportion of people can actually buy many of the goods being advertised on TV. Nevertheless, given the power of the market to sponsor progammes and the fierce competition that exists between the private channels to capture viewership, which in turn is linked to the rates paid for the display of the ads, we have a vicious circle at the centre of which is the market.

Given these factors it is not surprising that all the private nationally operating channels have the same biases in terms of class, caste, gender and region with their focus on urban India and the celebrated 200 million buying public whether it is in terms of targeting the ads, serials or other shows. The naturalising of this segment of India, standing for the whole of India, is marvelously brought out in the Kaun Ban ega Crorepati ad; Amitabh Bacchan's punch line for participating in the show is: agar aap 20 hazar ke hisaab se kamete ho, kitne saal lagenge ek crore kamene mein--dus saal, bees saal? Pachas saal lagenge; lekin yahan issi samay, pachas minute ke andar ek crore kama sakte ho! This is a statement that has relevance only for a tiny fraction of our people in terms of earning capacity--how many earn 20,000 a month--but it plays on the dreams of everybody else who is watching, or is waiting in line to be among the watchers. And that is the only other India that the market wishes to target!

The only time the real other India comes into focus is in the news during election time or in the form of disaster stories--natural havoc, or class, caste and ethnic violence. But before anything sinks in this reality too is immediately overlaid by the glossy urban India via the mandatory commercial breaks which must go on regardless of the tragedies that the news might fleetingly bring to the consciousness of its viewers; 'commerce is clearly above tragedy' and the ads impose their own reality as the camera cuts from the particularities of a tragic event--be it drought deaths, cyclone havoc or violent killings-- to the universality of consumption desires. What does this do to our sense of comprehension? Does the other India register even when the camera does focus on it when every two and a half minutes or so our senses are invaded by the ubiquitous lure of goods? Can the electronic media, under the power of the market, communicate the enormity and the complexity of the experiences that people and regions a re undergoing in our country?

Given the importance of advertisements in shaping TV viewing and the manipulation of our ways of thinking--and buying--it is important to try and examine the unstated and stated assumptions of the advertisements. Among the most striking features in this segment of programming is the shift that has occurred in portraying women: whereas earlier women were almost invariably used instrumentally to sell goods, many of which they did not use (and this type of ads continues even today) now women are being targeted by the market directly. Further, they are being targeted not merely as consumers of goods but as desirers and active buyers of goods. This was evocatively depicted in the saucy mobile phone ad where a glamorous but completely confident single woman, played by Kavita Kapoor the now famous other woman of Saans, in an expensive restaurant demolishes the confidence of a sophisticated--but decidedly middle aged--executive type by apparently mistaking him for a waiter; as he moves from his table to hers having misread her seductive conversation with an unknown male on the tiny Nokia, hidden within the palm of her hand, as an invitation to join her she makes her point by firmly stating 'one black coffee please!' The image of the successful woman whose confidence lies in her ability to be the discriminating buyer grants a new agency to women which is a new creation heralding the gender friendly globalised market. 'New relations are thus being made between consumption, pleasure and culturally specific notions of femininity;' in this context Malini Bhattacharya has persuasively argued that the image of the new woman in advertisements has wider meanings than the mere act of her buying a particular consumer item, and is linked to wider national and international economic processes: it serves the function of demonstrating the vibrancy of the market when even women, and now children, have been drawn into its grip.

A number of changes can also be discerned in the orientation of the ads. Initially women had figured in the ads as buyers mainly in the area of domestic goods; this was particularly so in the celebrated war for possibly one of the largest markets between companies in the soap/ detergent ads. The early ads varied in terms of the constituencies they were targeting: for example the lower middle class investment in family honour at the time of the milni during the reception of the baraat was built into the narrative of a husband's impending humiliation, clad as he is in a yellowing shirt. The husband takes out his frustration by shouting at his wife. Matters are rectified by the miracle wrought by the relevant detergent in the very next frame; the wife has upheld her husband's honour so it is she who gets to wearing the pagri that the men sport at the time of the reception of the baraat as the visual fades out at the end of the clip. The wealthier middle class was represented through the clever ad in which the c redit for the choice of the detergent, made by the daughter in law--against the opinion of the mother in law -- is appropriated by the mother in law in the famous 'tum hum aur wheeel/rin/surf (I can't remember which), kya team hai'. The message in all the ads was that the smartness of women lay in their ability to get the best bargain, typified in the Lalitaji ads put out by Surf. These ads, and the war between Surf, Rin and Wheel, continue to play out the theme of the smart woman whose pride lies in the startling whiteness of her family's clothing but the narratives of whiteness are also subtly changing. On the one hand the wife's choice of detergent leads to better finances for the household, enhances the husband's image in the office and makes for happiness in the family; once the wife chooses the right product the husband's shirt is so dazzlingly transformed that his boss, who never noticed him before, now not only notices him but also straightaway gives him a promotion and a posting abroad; the wife's lo w self esteem, a consequence of the husband's depressive state of mind, because of being ignored by the boss, thus gets its own required boost. All in all, the market has effective solutions for every situation ranging from stagnant careers to the ups and downs of everyday marital relations! On the other the hand dazzling white makes for a better-dressed careerwoman herself as she storms into male bastions: A woman's confidence, as she steps into a meeting filled with male executives as their boss, is propped up by, or perhaps even contingent upon, the dazzling whiteness of her sari. One ad that plays on the emergence of the new woman shows a woman prancing about in a dazzling white naval uniform but what is left subtly unstated is whether it is her uniform or her husband's that she is play acting in; the image is left open ended for the viewer to fill in -- thus satisfying both constituencies, the working woman in a newly opened field of work and the full time 'housewife' for whom a career is still in the re alm of secret desire. And finally, the realm of desire itself is very cleverly played out by linking adolescent love with whiteness of the clothes--a smart move with something as mundane as washing powder--in one ad a young girl's blue streaked school shirt leads to her humiliation as boys chortle 'O nile dhabbo wali!' to her on the school bus. When mother sorts the problem out with the correct washing powder the boys sing a chorus to welcome her into the world of male attention with the jingle 'aja sawariya, aa aa aa!' In another ad a young girl seeking to be noticed by her secret love wears the same blouse her sister wore when her jijaji first noticed her; of course the blouse's yellowing condition is first miraculously restored through the use of the right washing powder. The blouse works its magic and the boy notices the girl, and even drops her back to her home. The point to note however is the gendered nature of the ad where it is men or boys who must notice girls (otherwise they will just sit on the sh elf) which is the underlying motif in both ads: it is explicitly stated in the second, 'jiji apne kya kiya jisse jiju ki nazar turn par padi.' We can see that while the ads have become trendier their ideological bases have remained more or less the same.

The range of ads beamed on TV now also indicate that the field for buying has been vastly extended beyond detergents, cosmetics and the kitchen--the longstanding domain of women's goods--to other objects but that they are still centred on the home, the special domain of all women, whether in careers or not; ads of high class plumbing have moved from thieves stealing the stunning faucets to the more trendy depiction of a beautiful wife, whose sole occupation seems to be to shop, seductively pleading over the phone (we may note that the sequence is also enacted by the actress playing Manisha in Saans--the seductress par excellence by now) with her harried and hardworking husband while he is busy at work. Another ad for expensive plumbing fixtures has the young and attractive wife of a very tubby husband packing to leave home; the husband throws things at her for her to take away along with herself in an angry fit but all ends well as the husband lets drop the crucial information that he has got her what she wa s fixated on --the beautiful taps. Both ads norm the male as the earner/provider and the female as the non earning but persistent consumer of goods; the latter ad also makes domestic violence a humourous playing out of everyday domesticity and in any case the market has quick fix solutions for every marriage whatever be its apparent ills.

The appearance of the new working woman and/or the assertive woman who knows what she wants is one situation where role reversals are brought in but always with a dose of humour; husbands now either make the tea for the working wife (on the whole working women are rare in ads), or claim to do so, as a necessary element in the new man's ability to please and care for the woman in his life so that power relations within the home are shown to have dissolved (these would be regarded as the gender friendly ads!); in these ads husbands are either charming fools who are caught out lying because the wife is so smart (as in the Duncan Tea ad where the husband cannot say how much tea he used) or they are appliers of soothing balm upon the fraying nerves of their hysterical working wives, via the hot cup of tea. The role reversals however only go as far as making tea, or using the washing machine to atone for clumsy actions (one even featured Kapil Dev)--all of which are designed to make the wife happy but ensuring that this is done without too much exertion; as one husband puts it endearingly kuch paane ke liye kuch dhona bhi padta hai, you have to wash a little if you want to gain a little! Only in one ad does the husband attempt to make something as basic as a chapati: the rest of his family watches with dumbstruck awe his attempts to bring perfection (an attribute which is the monopoly of the male, naturally!) to the making of the roti. It is clear that no one will have dinner that night so it might be better for mama to deal with the chapatis if life is to proceed normally.