While the dominant trend in recent British art has toyed with nihilism, the mass media have done the opposite. Technology has been used to manufacture meaning. The camera gives us a snapshot of events and allows us to imagine we are seeing things clearly and plainly. By turning the chaos of sensation into a series of definite images, it enables us to find meaning when it may in fact be fugitive, or even absent. The truth is that we do not know why some people commit hideous crimes, but living in this knowledge is intolerable because it leaves the world a random place. The media cater to our need for order. When the camera is used to construct an icon of evil, it is not simply giving vent to punitive fantasies, but being used to maintain meaning in our lives.
William Leith:
And their (India’s) media is heading for ad-backed celebrity hell faster, and more comprehensively, than ours.
When I see India's superstar TV and newsprint personalities, I never think they bring any order or meaning to my life but I always feel they are smart, wealthy, sophisticated- like Avery Jessup of 30 Rock and totally unlike me- but I don't like what they do and I can always switch off the TV.
I never thought they were so corrupt.
The best comment on this has probably come from unsung Sudhir Tailang who according to me is the best political cartoonist drawing for a national newspaper in India today. If Mr. Tailang were to focus his attention on life beyond politics he might scale even greater artistic heights.
Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, November 28 2010
p.s After I posted the above, I came across this "Welcome to the Matrix of the Indian state" by Siddharth Varadarajan. Please read it to assess India's Who's Who.