Defending The Cultural Worth Of Indian Reality Television

There has been a recent spate of India-focused reality shows on our screens lately. From the shenanigans of Bollywood wives to Sima from Mumbai’s insistence on compromise and adjustments, most of us have been sucked into Netflix’s upper-caste, upper-class milieu. No matter what you actually think of these kinds of reality shows, the truth is that they are completely unavoidable. The shows make perfect vehicles for twitter trends and meme material and for a generation that reads Twitter as if it were the morning paper, it is only fuel added to the fire of being effectively peer pressured into watching the shows.

So chances are, you’ve probably streamed a reality show or two (or three) in your time as a citizen of the internet. From dating shows to physical competitions, to talent shows, everyone has their flavour of the month. But it is no wonder that we’re so obsessed with reality TV. After a long day at work, there is nothing better than mindless entertainment. Plus, watching drama unfold that doesn’t involve you is more than mildly enthralling. Many people cope with stress and burnout by decompressing with something that does not involve any actual brain effort. Also, watching the reality of someone else’s life is like a legal version of being a peeping Tom. You get to live vicariously through someone else, almost like online-stalking your favourite celebrity, but on steroids. There is also an almost sadistic pleasure that comes with watching someone’s life fall to shreds in front of an international audience.

Let’s take two of the most talked-about shows in the past few months — Indian Matchmaking and The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, both second seasons of two breakout success stories from Netflix India.

Sima Taparia, for the uninitiated, is the main character of the former show. A matchmaker from Mumbai, her claim to fame is being one of the most successful matchmakers in the city. However, at the end of Season 1 of the show, she did not end up triumphant, with any of the matches she made translating into a successful marriage. In Season 2, she retreated into the role of a mildly helpful aunty, with her clients taking centre-stage instead. Both seasons garnered international attention; both positive and negative, with the initial cast of clients becoming semi-famous overnight; gaining fans and trolls in equal parts. But as Meha Razdan said in her Buzzfeed article, “​​The only thing less enjoyable than being on an underwhelming first date is watching a series of other people’s underwhelming first dates.” Season 2 of the show seemed to drag on in a way that the initial season didn’t, with not enough time for its extensive cast members to form natural arcs and instead cutting out halfway or love stories failing before they even got started. Compared to other dating shows or social experiments like Too Hot To Handle or Love Island, which comprise a cast of uber-hot, straight, (mostly), white people, Indian Matchmaking does not have a manufactured villain or melodrama, nor does it have the connection between the cast that UK and USA based reality shows seem to have. There is no clear ‘winner’ or ‘loser’ in Indian Matchmaking, leaving the ending slightly ambiguous and unfinished.

On the other hand, The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is comparable to The Real Housewives series in the United States, with the wives of semi-famous men becoming the stars of the show. Starring Neelam Kothari Soni, Maheep Kapoor, Seema Sajdeh, and Bhavana Pandey, who are all mothers and wives of the Kapoor-Khan Bollywood brigade. The show is weirdly insightful into the nitty-gritty of a peripheral Bollywood life. From loud interior designs to closets the size of regular Bombay apartments and eating at upscale restaurants on the daily, Fabulous Lives lets you fantasise and switch off. In Season 2, the relationships between the four ladies are explored further and it’s a surprisingly nuanced look into female friendships of upper-class women, with both moments of warmth as Maheep and Seema attempt to find Seema a date after her divorce, as well as an underlying snark, as the three women joke behind Bhavana’s back about her attempts to host a vow renewal ceremony for herself and her husband.

But apart from watching these shows to decompress and lose ourselves a little, why is it that when we finish watching, our instinctive reaction is to vow to never again watch a show like this? Often exploitative and trashy, it becomes a guilty pleasure that we watch behind closed doors. Outwardly, we like to show people that watching so-called ‘high-brow’ art is more our speed — Aronofsky, Polanski, Wachowski, and the like. It has led us to believe that content that is serious, dark, and tragic is just better. It’s the kind of thinking that has led us to the creation of ‘chick-flicks’ or ‘chick-lit’, and the idea that women-led media is fluff and of no consequence. But the fact that is women-led does not mean that it is inferior or ‘low-brow’. There is a comfort in the non-scripted, relatable and predictable relationships. As Marie-Claire Chappet wrote for Glamour Magazine, “Ignoring the worth of cultural outputs like these is very often thinly-disguised sexism.”

As viewers, we should not have to apologise for watching trashy TV shows. There is clearly a demand for it as proven by renewals of Season 3 for both the shows. While they do have their problematic moments, it also provides an escapist fantasy from a hard day’s work. The shows are a palate cleanser from the high-brow content that we consume and internet-wide ‘hate-watches’ provide humour and silliness for people to bond over. There is a community that forms via hate-watching, one that is needed in a time that is increasingly divided by strife and struggle.

So no more saying, “It’s so trashy, but…”. It is trashy, and it is okay to embrace that. If no one sees the need to apologise for like shows like Sacred Games and Delhi Crime, then neither should you for watching Indian Matchmaking and Fabulous Lives. The point of these shows is that they are meant to be enjoyable; we don’t need to feel guilty for partaking in that enjoyment. Sometimes, you just need to hear Maheep Kapoor call her friends ‘twats’. And that’s that.

If you enjoyed reading this, we also suggest:

Stay Indoors & Watch These 8 TV Shows While You Are Self Quarantined

Chuck The Cringe, Notice The Nuance: Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking Might Be More Than What It Seems

A Hopeful Indian’s Love Letter To Korean Dramas & Her Top 10 Recommendations