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BOOKS
Tackling
Telly
Asia's
Doordarshan lookalikes grapple with an unforeseen phenomenon
By
Sevanti Ninan
Television
In Contemporary Asia
Ed by David French & Michael Richards
Sage
Price: Rs 550
Pages: 452 |
 |
Television
is almost as much written about as it is watched. Though it sustains a
minor publishing industry in western countries, Asian studies have begun
to appear only in the last decade. Sage is publishing two major books
this year on Asian television: the volume under review and one which will
release next month, Satellites Over South Asia.
David French
and Michael Richards obviously believe the subject is a good one to return
to. Television in Contemporary Asia was preceded by Contemporary
Television-Eastern Perspectives by the same authors in 1996. But despite
their inability to think up very original titles for their successive
volumes, this one is sufficiently different in content from the first.
For one, that did not cover mainland China, chapters on which constitute
a fair chunk of the present study. For another, even though some of the
contributors are the same, the material they present in this book is a
little different.
The best
thing about the TV revolution in Asia is that it makes such wonderful
copy. Here is a region scattered with Doordarshan lookalikes coping with
a phenomenon they could never have imagined before it arrived uninvited
from their skies. From India to Malaysia to China to the Philippines,
state television, shouldering the burden of forging a national identity,
was suddenly confronting the cultural agents of the big bad West.
The confrontation
has not, however, been entirely a story of capitulation, as this book
records. Instead, globalisation has mutated into glocalisation in television
terms (a coinage for the localisation of the global TV networks), and
English, as the vehicle for international advertising has been replaced
by Hinglish. Further, the notion of technological determinism following
the satellite revolution-which was technology driven-has to be modified
in light of the fact that governments in the region have subsequently
determined the terrain within which technological innovation takes place.
We only have to look as far as the Indian government's hand in the fate
of direct to home television here.
French and
Richards also look at the limits of intervention in a situation where
the state's monopoly over television has been demolished. Their contributors,
drawn from India, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea,
Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, document the emerging broadcasting environment
in these countries.
The book
also discusses the ways in which television plays a role in the reconstruction
of national identities. The crackdown at Tiananmen Square, shown widely
over television in Hong Kong, helped crystallise the identity of the Hong
Kong Chinese, writes Paul S.N. Lee. While alienating them from China it
awakened their own Chinese identity-They were deeply upset by the events
because they were Chinese, like the students in Beijing. Then again, after
1997, television news helped to underscore the newly resumed Chinese identity
that was politically entailed by the return to sovereignty. The prefix
Chinese was dropped from the designations of Chinese leaders, coverage
of Chinese politics increased, and the tone became more favourable. Polled
before and well after the takeover, the percentage of people who identified
themselves as Chinese rather than Hong Kongers increased.
Books written
by academics for other academics do not read like a dream. This one is
dense with facts and figures densely stated. But it is solidly analytic,
and a valuable resource on countries whose media we read very little about,
such as the Philippines and Taiwan. And as a footnote, it is interesting
to learn that Doordarshan has three times as many employees as China Central
TV Station, with less than a third of the TV stations.
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