What People are Talking About in England (and India too)
I first heard of it on Z99, on their morning program, the Breakfast Buzz. They have this English woman on the Breakfast Buzz and she was commenting about the issue with Celebrity Big Brother and Silpa Shetty.
Apparently Big Brother is something like MTV’s Real World, where they stick a bunch of people from different places, with different lifestyles, values and desires together in a house where they have to live together for some long period of time. Why in the world anyone would find such a program of interest is sort’ve beyond me, but shows of this nature have been around for some time now, so I guess people do indeed enjoy them.
Now Celebrity Big Brother is the same thing as Big Brother, but the people on Celebrity Big Brother are people who have some claim to fame, and I guess they are trying to jumpstart their career again by going on the Celebrity Big Brother show. Anyway, in Celebrity Big Brother, one of the people in the house was Silpa Shetty, a famous Bollywood star. See her picture here:
Apparently some of the white English women who were also on the program were abusing Silpa. They taunted her about whether she lived in a hut, treated her rather badly, called her a dog, wouldn’t eat any food that she had touched, etc. Also it seems like they were ganging up on her, they reduced her to tears several times. Their behaviour seems to have created a storm of protest and the whole thing became an international incident, even involving the British Prime Minister and the Indian Prime Minister!
I did a quick search on Youtube myself, I found a couple of clips, you could give them a look see for yourself if you are that way inclined. Here is one clip, here is another, and here is a third. There are a whole lot more where these clips came from too.
The woman on Z99 said that when she watched the clips on Youtube, she felt most ashamed of the behaviour of the English women. I read at the Chief Lymer’s blog that “there has been a record number of complaints – 7,600 - from the public as the taunts have been racist in nature. Channel 4 where the programme is aired, has received a further 2,000 e-mails and calls.”. The woman from Z99 also said that Silpa said (in the Diary Room) that she didn’t think that the whole thing was really caused by racism. Personally, I think Silpa is just very non-confrontational, thats why she said that. It seems to me that lots of Indians are too non-confrontational, based upon those I have met and worked with here in Cayman and in Jamaica. What I would really have liked to see was Silpa losing it and punching a couple of the English women in the face! After all, what I saw on those clips looks like it could all have been sorted with a few well placed kicks and thumps! (Mark you, Silpa would’ve had to have been a rough customer, because she was outnumbered and I am sure that those girls would have ganged up on her). Anyway, Silpa comes across as being WAY too ladylike for that sort of thing.
The Chief Lymer has written an interesting little post on the subject, y’all should go read it, it gives you her impression on the state of racism in England (and she dehdeh ah experience it daily so she qualified to talk)and what she has drawn from this whole incident. It makes interesting reading.
There were other posts at Mad Bull’s Blog and at El Toro Loco, so go give those sites a check too. TTYL.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:09 pm First, I don’t believe that these “reality shows” are anymore real that wrestling. Second, as Silpa herself said, it’s good television. There’s nothing like controversy to get you viewers and advertising in the form of news and blog reports. It doesn’t matter that the “controversy” is entirely manufactured and contrived just so long as there is controversy. Thirdly, I was expecting a fair bit more… well… controversy. That wasn’t much of a cat fight, in the first video. Frankly, it seemed more like a school girl discussion/disagreement. Quite underwhelming really. As for Silpa not feeling it was racism, I’d have to agree. I place the blame squarely on bad script writing. :p Fourth, 7600 complaints? Keeping in mind the fact that some people will complain about everything, even free money, 7600 complaints sounds pretty low for an internationally broadcast program. It seems that the show’s producers were unsuccessful in generating the controversy that they really wanted. But, they seem to have gotten a bit of a stir. Look for a more refined and direct attempt to generate greater controversy in the near future. No matter the fuss, I felt that both Silpa and the blonde were quite hawt (also not a coincidence) and worthy of a MadBull picture post. But, if you want hawt controversy maybe the divas of wrestling is your thing. Cue Arrow - Feelin Hot Hot Hot
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:24 pm Respect, Yawn. Actually, if you had followed the link on Celebrity Big Brother, you would have seen that there were far more than 7600 complaints. There they speak about 50,000 complaints. I think that Chief Lymer has a typo there and the complaints had climbed to 76,000 at the time she wrote. The clips I posted were tame, I agree… Perhaps there are far worse ones, given all the complaints, but I didn’t have the time to go through them all. If you’re interested though, you could. When you go to a clip, Youtube offers you scads of others on related topics so you could watch clips on this stuff all night! I agree with you, Silpa is nice to look at… yes, she is worth a Mad Bull picture post!
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm Some of the noise has quieted down on this now (by the way they have her down as being Shilpa here) and one of the taunters has come out and is crying crocodile tears all over the TV. The new scandal is another channel 4 reality TV show called Shipwrecked where some public school 18 year old said she hates black people (as well as fat people and gays) and thinks that slavery should be brought back. This place is unbelievable! (Thanks for linking the post and sorry for the typo re: numbers)
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:30 pm Actually MB, I was a fan of Big Brother when I lived in England. I was hooked! The premise is that people locked in a house together will soon get on each other’s nerves and what do they do to relieve their frustration. A little like real world, the only difference is no one leaves the house at all! Loved it.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:37 pm Actually, Jade (girl in black & white scarf) in first clip shouldn’t be calling anyone names. She came to fame by being in Big Brother in 2002 (and has since milked the 5minutes and doing well)and she was portrayed as a stupid, crass, uneducated, sleazy girl from ‘no where’. I was following the story and based on the remarks she’s apparently still crass.