SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Pritish Nandy

The Media as Villain

Last week, I saw two new films during my travels. The latest Bond film. Starring Pierce Brosnan, BMW and Ericson, each of them setting the marquee ablaze. And a breathtaking thriller starring Harrison Ford and Glen Close. Where the American president is hijacked (in the world's most secure aircraft, Air Force One) by Kazhak ultra radicals.

Brosnan is the best Bond we have had since Sean Connery greyed into other roles. He has the same panther walk. The same deadly insouciance. A devil-may-care attitude. What he lacks in dry wit he makes up with his effortless sex appeal. While BMW and Ericson prove that we have finally reached an era in which brands can be as sexy as stars. You should have heard the wolf whistles in the auditorium when Q (dressed in an unlikely red blazer) unsheathed the glistening new, ash blonde BMW before a speechless Bond. She took his breath away!

As did Ericson. In the ultimate denouement, with missiles, grenades, guns and howitzers blazing away in a magnificent display of pyrotechnics that could have made World War 3 look like Diwali sparklers, Bond polishes off the bad guys not with his usual Beretta but with his handy Ericson cellphone which doubles up as a deadly exterminator. Infinitely more dangerous, more exciting than the Uzis and the AK-56s sported by his adversaries with varying Teutonic accents. German engineering at its phoniest best.

But the highlight of the movie does not lie in the star appeal of its brands. Or in its deadly start-up graphics and music that could have moved a dead man's crotch. It lies in the restyling of Bond for the nineties. Attitude et al. The South Sea island cotton shirts are fine. So is the old fashioned holster under his arm, where 007 snuggles his blunt-nosed Walther PPK. The gun that replaced his Beretta. The not so dry martini, shaken, not stirred. The effortless cool that sets Bond apart from the rest of the hyperactive, muscle wielding morons who run their macho act on screen. In the name of God, country and Pussy Galore.

The heroine, this time, is no blonde Nordic Mata Hari double dealing regimes on both sides of the Cold War. Bond shares his beat (and, as usual, his bed) with a chalu Chinese agent who has left her little Red Book behind. She poses as a journalist to begin with but very soon gives it up for scuba designer wear and assault rifle artistry. It is fun seeing 007 -- usually obsessed with aggressive Western notions of beauty -- snuggling up to a flat chested, tight arsed Commie with a flair for karate and the two look a scream racing through busy Asian streets, handcuffed on a mobike, chased by villains in armoured copters. In a sequence that makes Conair look like a teddy bear's picnic.

But it was not the idea of Angrez Chinese bhai bhai that surprised me. Or 007 pumping, to quote Moneypenny's memorable expression, a Commie in bed-- for information. Her legs wide apart in surprise. After all, he has done worse with SMERSH and SPECTRE agents. What surprised me was the villain of the film. Carver.

For Bond, the archetypal hero, has finally zeroed in on the archetypal villain of the nineties.

The media baron.

Carver is 99 per cent Murdoch who wants to control the world with his wicked tabloids and satellite television channels. With a 1 per cent Bill Gates. But to sidestep defamation laws, he also resembles a boastful Ted Turner and finally metamorphoses, Kafkaesque, into Maxwell. When 007 finally blows him up at the end, M of the nineties (the MI-5 chief as a tough, leathery, middle aged woman, who accuses the sexist admiral of thinking with his balls) issues a press release stating that Carver has fallen off his yacht at sea. A suicide case, you could say. Or, simply, deja vu if you recall how Maxwell died.

Fleming was always a master of villainy. He chose the devils of his time to create the perfect counterfoil for his devil-may-care hero. Doctor No, Auric Goldfinger, Scaramanga with three nipples and a golden gun. But his successors, who have kept the legend of 007 alive and even improved upon it at times, have not always succeeded in creating new villains as exciting as Fleming's. Carver is an exception.

He has seized the imagination of the Times. Technopower is the new adversary. Bond is no longer warring against a Cold War monster but a nineties nerd. A greedy, grabby, gargantuan media manipulator. Hungry for power. Building his triumphant base on technobabble and sleazy mind control.

The villains in Air Force One are more predictable. Ultra radicals who see the US destroying the mighty Soviet state to put in its place puny, sycophantic mini-nations grovelling before the West. So what do they do? They enter Air Force One as Russian journalists hitching a ride for an exclusive brief. There, they bribe and shoot their way through security to seize the world's most guarded aircraft. In mid flight.

The rest is a spectacular action thriller but not strictly relevant to this column. What is relevant is changing perceptions of the media in our time.

There was a time when media stood for the good guys. When newspapers and magazines, radio and television symbolised all that was good, noble, upright. All that we valued and treasured in this imperfect world. They exposed governments, punished politicians, fought for justice and truth, shone in the clear light of goodness. That is why many of us gave up successful careers in other professions and joined it.

It seemed the right thing to do. Journalism.

It was not easy. Media owners were tough, difficult people. The politicians we fought were cunning and devious. The establishment we stood up to was ruthless and cruel. But what kept us going was popular support. The fact that the people were with us.

That has now changed. The Maliks have taken over the media. Worldwide. Everyone knows this. And this has hurt the credibility of what was once the modern world's most powerful moral authority. The professional journalist, the new editor is now seen as a wimp. If you think I am bluffing, watch the new Bond movie. It tells you exactly what people see us as. Puppets on a string. Run by wicked and ruthless men like Carver.

No wonder the media itself has become suspect. Its heroes are dead. Its villains have emerged from the closet, larger than life. Greedy, ambitious people desperate to control the world. Not for reasons of truth and justice. But for money and power. For sheer avarice. That is why in popular movies, as in popular mythology, the media is emerging as the new hate object. Run not by the Saint Georges of journalism, ready to slay the dragons of injustice and exploitation, but by devilish owners building huge networks of power and control that can earn them frenzied bucks and political opportunities to manoeuvre, manipulate.

This may not be an entirely correct picture. I hope it is not. But we, in the media, must redefine our own credibility to prove this. We must be voices of freedom, of courage. The good guys fighting for the right causes. Or else we will be written off from the textbooks of our time as puppets on a string. And the media malik will become what the politician or the businessman is today. A crass symbol of oppression, corruption, crime. An archetypal villain.

Popular cinema is sending us a message. We must listen to it.

Pritish Nandy