Why Sonu Nigam's head-shaving act on live TV is sick and disturbing
On Wednesday morning (April 19) singer Sonu Nigam invited the media to participate in a live show at 2pm.
After 2pm all hell broke loose on TV and social media.
Nigam was reacting to a call by Syed Sha Atef Ali Al Quaderi, vice-president of the West Bengal Minority United Council, who had offered a reward of Rs 10 lakh to anyone who will shave Nigam's head, put a garland of old torn shoes around his neck and parade him around the country.
For the uninitiated, Quaderi was upset over Nigam's Monday morning tweets where the Bollywood singer stirred a controversy by tweeting about "forced religiousness" in India. Nigam had expressed outrage at having to wake up by Azaan — the Muslim call to prayer — in the morning.
Nigam's fans, including some media outlets, started singing paeans of the singer for taking Quaderi head-on, literally. For them, this was the perfect answer to the "fatwa".
Huffingtonpost.in reported the "news" with the headline: Sonu Nigam Has The Perfect Response To Maulvi Who Offered ₹10 Lakh To Shave The Singer's Head
Now, sample these headlines:
Sonepat man live-streams suicide on Facebook
Mumbai: 24-year-old jumps off 19th floor of hotel room after going Live on Facebook
Sonu Nigam turning his head-shaving into a public spectacle to be consumed on live TV and social media, is no different from the suicide acts by those depressed, disconsolate youths, who were, in a way, encouraged by a media (whose primary news source is social media), and the instantaneous publicity attached to live acts. It would perhaps be a bit of a stretch to compare these acts with crimes like gangrape broadcast on Facebook Live, but such live acts cannot be analysed in isolation. All these acts are not without a certain sense of perversity.
Just like those youths knew that their deaths won't go unnoticed, thanks to the deformation that social media has turned into, Sonu Nigam too knows how to become a "pinned" item on social media. But can we just blame him alone for his broadcast-stunt?
Celebrity activism, if we at all can call Nigam's act that, has been a convenient vehicle for publicity for ages. More than a genuine concern for some real-life problems, celebs have often taken refuge in activism to stay relevant. And what better than armchair activism. So, Nigam too created an opportunity for himself to trend on social media.
The cleric, Quaderi, also sniffed an opportunity to introduce himself to the world and jumped into the debate, which Nigam had carefully fleshed out with his series of tweets.
But if we call this as playing to the gallery, Sonu Nigam did it because he knows the audience that occupy the gallery — the hungry cabal that feeds on anything sensational. Shave your head on live TV, jump from a hotel window on Facebook Live, eat crap on reality show — the pornography of sensationalism has various means and varied artistes are making full use of it.
The consumers, on the other hand, are still not satiated.
Within a span of three days, Sonu Nigam became a national hero whose cause was being debated with feisty arguments and counter-arguments by an equally jobless, sensation-hungry country — as if everybody's life depended on azaan being recited with or without loudspeakers.
The question that we should ask is why is it so easy to engage us into a debate by anyone with a bit of sensationalism?
Why do we turn every attention-seeking creature into a phenomenon?
Are we really so bored in life that we need to engage in such debates? Do our lives really depend on Sonu Nigam's tonsured head or living up to a maulvi's inane challenge?
Not satisfied with the amount of attention after his Monday morning tweets, Nigam started to indulge people, who slammed him, with nastier tweets and retweets — he even started to comment on people's English/grammar skills.
Not to mention his own cryptic/incoherent tweets.
Nigam for the past three days has been behaving every bit like a politician who desperately needs an issue (even if that means you create one) for his face to be flashed on TV screens and other media platforms. And he has got what he wanted.
There is no dearth of celebs like Sonu Nigam, who rather than putting their talent to good use, choose to become social media news — a singing sensation, indeed!
Also read: Noise of all religions: Why single out azaan, Sonu Nigam?