{"id":279,"date":"2005-08-02T18:14:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-02T18:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2005\/08\/ranting-and-raving-in-public.html"},"modified":"2005-08-02T18:14:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-02T18:14:00","slug":"ranting-and-raving-in-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2005\/08\/ranting-and-raving-in-public.html","title":{"rendered":"Ranting and raving…in public"},"content":{"rendered":"
Speaking of MTV Desi, and other Desi television, another thing pops into my mind. Has anyone else seen those annoying advertisements on Z or Sony etc. ? Is anyone outraged by the New York Life Insurance Advertisements on Z TV (or is it Sony) ? If you have seen them you know what I mean. The advertisement which is for life insurance presents this (apparently) desi scenario, a happy desi family, ie; protected by life insurance. What is not happy about these ads is that these are oh-so-patriarchial, typical depiction of desi women – dumb and helpless. The main actress in these ads is Rupali Ganguli, who is sometimes cast as the coy “bahu”, sometimes as the submissive bride, and sometimes as the helpless widow, i.e.; greatly in need of protection. What really gets my goat here, is that she is depicted as oh-so-dumb ; I mean you could call her mildly retarded – she runs around playing with younger siblings, acting up, or jumping around (and I mean jumping around like a hyper 4 year old), eyes glazed with dreams of prospective husbands (??). Excuse me while I throw up.<\/p>\n

OK, on to type 2 – the mom-feeding-spoilt-GROWN-UP-son-with-own-hands category. So here we have a (presumably) adult man abroad, pining for mom’s cooking and also (sob) mom’s love and tender loving care. Oh, how do I know ? Because the guy is shown day-dreaming about what else – Mom feeding him – and I mean actually putting little pieces of food into the baboon’s mouth. As we say in darling Hindi – “Maa ki mamta” and all that. Oh, get the tissues, girls ! Ah, the solution , ready made, pre-packaged food (I forget what the ad is for now – parathas or sabzi). Much to my surprise, the baboon does indeed have 2 hands – none missing, so there goes my alternative explanation for the feeding-and-being-fed-frenzy. So, he pops the food into the microwave, and there, baby, no more missing those evenings when mom fed you.<\/p>\n

Hmm, how come Mom isn’t feeding any of her daughters ? She doesn’t have any ? Oh, come on – joke right ? Yeah, unless of course you happen to live in the Northern Indian States.<\/p>\n

On to the 3rd category, the guy-using-limbs-to-do-useful-work category. And here, we have mom seated at table, eating rotis made by (gasp) her son, (gasp) a man !! And we do have great visuals of son rolling out round (?) rotis, accompanied by an age-appropriate song – the words “Munna” (baby) appear in the refrain – pretty similar to a desi lullaby. Now, this is an ad for “atta” (flour) in the United States, i.e.; the availability of “desi” atta and hence delicious rotis right here in Uncle Sam’s land. Besides the fact that this is the only desi ad. I’ve seen where normal men are actually shown in the kitchen doing useful work, we now have proof that men can indeed roll rotis. The shape of the rotis is still questionable.<\/p>\n

Now, review these ads. Hidden message in here, isn’t there ?<\/div>\n

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Speaking of MTV Desi, and other Desi television, another thing pops into my mind. Has anyone else seen those annoying advertisements on Z or Sony etc. ? Is anyone outraged by the New York Life Insurance Advertisements on Z TV (or is it Sony) ? If you have seen them you know what I mean. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-of-me"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":5,"uagb_excerpt":"Speaking of MTV Desi, and other Desi television, another thing pops into my mind. Has anyone else seen those annoying advertisements on Z or Sony etc. ? Is anyone outraged by the New York Life Insurance Advertisements on Z TV (or is it Sony) ? If you have seen them you know what I mean.…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}