Bengali Television
Bengali Television - 9:27 pm 8/20/2005
Sitting in the hotel room, watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", Bengali-edition. The set, lights, and music are exactly like the American version, and the questions are mostly in Bengali except for words like "Computer, would you please", "Right answer", "Phone-A-Friend", etc. The questions appear on the screen in English, however, and the answers are read by the announcer in English. Typical question: "Which of the following forts is not in Rajasthan? A. Mehrangar, B. Bandavgarh, C. Chittorgarh, D. Kumbhalgarh" (B, FYI).
Tonight's contestant used up his 50/50, Phone-A-Friend, and "Ask the Audience" early on- around RS 3,000 (around $70USD), so we thought he was done for. He's been doing quite well since that, though— seems to have hit a stride.
Oh, just now, the question is about what the "W" is Dubya's name stands for. The contestant gets it right.
It's odd- the current question ("Which is the largest mammal to build a nest, every day?") was read in English. Very strange... the contestant answered incorrectly (Kangaroo, the right answer was Gorilla), and his shot was over. He walked away with RS 20,000 (about $476 USD). Considering the average income around here, I'm guessing that this was not as disappointing a showing as it would have been in the US.
Oh, and the weirdest thing— the stated goal in the show's title is not to be a millionaire, but rather to have "2 Crorepati". "Crorepati" is not in my phrasebook's list of quantities, so I'm guessing that its use here is idiomatic for something else.
OK, an ad for cement just came on. Yes, you read correctly— cement. As in the heavy stuff that comes in bags that you mix to build stuff with. It was sandwiched between an ad for a Nokia cell phone that is so hoopty that we don't even have it in the US yet, and one for what appeared to be some sort of financial services company (guessing on that one— clean-cut, responsible guys in suits striding purposefuly around skyscrapers, the occasional word like "endowment" in the midst of the Bengali, the same color schemes, fonts, and logo styles as in similar ads). It's amazing how much of an ad's information comes from things other than the spoken script and the written content of the titles.
Also of note was an ad for motorscooters. A full discussion of the place that motorscooters play on Kolkata's streets will have to wait, but suffice it to say that the scooter serves a similar purpose here as a minivan or station wagon does back in the US: an all-purpose family vehicle, complete with lots of seating1 and plenty of storage room2. Now, there were two main things that stuck out as notable about this ad. First, the scenes of the scooter being driven bore little-to-no resemblance to anything we've seen thus far in India: Very few other cars on the road; no cows, buses, taxis, or autorickshaws going the wrong way down the street; no pedestrians walking out in front of the driver and his companion, etc. The second thing that struck me was that, at one point in the ad, the driver was in front, while in the back sitting sideways on the scooter was a woman who was presumably his wife, holding a small baby in her lap. Neither the mother nor the child were wearing helmets. Now, this sort of thing happens all over the place here. In the fifteen-minute drive from the hotel to the office, we easily saw at least two dozen such families on scooters. Stop for a second, though, and imagine the uproar that would ensue if such an ad ran in the states. Driver and passenger with no helmets, child riding in lap, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Imagine Harley-Davidson airing a commercial essentially advising its customers to ride helmetless with their young children held in their laps. Somebody would actually try and do this, get themselves, their spouse, or their offspring killed, and sue the company back into the Bronze Age. Here, it's a regular ad for what appears to be a relatively upscale scooter company. The central gist of the campaign was strkingly similar to that one a few years back, by either Toyota or Chevrolet, about how many miles various people had put on their cars— sort of a double-barreled cocktail of "reliable, faithful, durable, etc." and "our vehicles are more than just modes of transportation, they're parts of your life".
[Update: 2 Crorepati is RS 20,000,000, which is about $476,000 USD.]
1: Lots of seating, if you don't mind having your kids placed precariously on your and your passenger's lap.
2: Lots of storage, if you don't mind liberal use of twine, laps, etc. Also, it helps to not mind having large things like ladders, spools of wire, jugs of water, and so forth hanging off the side of the scooter.
Sitting in the hotel room, watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", Bengali-edition. The set, lights, and music are exactly like the American version, and the questions are mostly in Bengali except for words like "Computer, would you please", "Right answer", "Phone-A-Friend", etc. The questions appear on the screen in English, however, and the answers are read by the announcer in English. Typical question: "Which of the following forts is not in Rajasthan? A. Mehrangar, B. Bandavgarh, C. Chittorgarh, D. Kumbhalgarh" (B, FYI).
Tonight's contestant used up his 50/50, Phone-A-Friend, and "Ask the Audience" early on- around RS 3,000 (around $70USD), so we thought he was done for. He's been doing quite well since that, though— seems to have hit a stride.
Oh, just now, the question is about what the "W" is Dubya's name stands for. The contestant gets it right.
It's odd- the current question ("Which is the largest mammal to build a nest, every day?") was read in English. Very strange... the contestant answered incorrectly (Kangaroo, the right answer was Gorilla), and his shot was over. He walked away with RS 20,000 (about $476 USD). Considering the average income around here, I'm guessing that this was not as disappointing a showing as it would have been in the US.
Oh, and the weirdest thing— the stated goal in the show's title is not to be a millionaire, but rather to have "2 Crorepati". "Crorepati" is not in my phrasebook's list of quantities, so I'm guessing that its use here is idiomatic for something else.
OK, an ad for cement just came on. Yes, you read correctly— cement. As in the heavy stuff that comes in bags that you mix to build stuff with. It was sandwiched between an ad for a Nokia cell phone that is so hoopty that we don't even have it in the US yet, and one for what appeared to be some sort of financial services company (guessing on that one— clean-cut, responsible guys in suits striding purposefuly around skyscrapers, the occasional word like "endowment" in the midst of the Bengali, the same color schemes, fonts, and logo styles as in similar ads). It's amazing how much of an ad's information comes from things other than the spoken script and the written content of the titles.
Also of note was an ad for motorscooters. A full discussion of the place that motorscooters play on Kolkata's streets will have to wait, but suffice it to say that the scooter serves a similar purpose here as a minivan or station wagon does back in the US: an all-purpose family vehicle, complete with lots of seating1 and plenty of storage room2. Now, there were two main things that stuck out as notable about this ad. First, the scenes of the scooter being driven bore little-to-no resemblance to anything we've seen thus far in India: Very few other cars on the road; no cows, buses, taxis, or autorickshaws going the wrong way down the street; no pedestrians walking out in front of the driver and his companion, etc. The second thing that struck me was that, at one point in the ad, the driver was in front, while in the back sitting sideways on the scooter was a woman who was presumably his wife, holding a small baby in her lap. Neither the mother nor the child were wearing helmets. Now, this sort of thing happens all over the place here. In the fifteen-minute drive from the hotel to the office, we easily saw at least two dozen such families on scooters. Stop for a second, though, and imagine the uproar that would ensue if such an ad ran in the states. Driver and passenger with no helmets, child riding in lap, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Imagine Harley-Davidson airing a commercial essentially advising its customers to ride helmetless with their young children held in their laps. Somebody would actually try and do this, get themselves, their spouse, or their offspring killed, and sue the company back into the Bronze Age. Here, it's a regular ad for what appears to be a relatively upscale scooter company. The central gist of the campaign was strkingly similar to that one a few years back, by either Toyota or Chevrolet, about how many miles various people had put on their cars— sort of a double-barreled cocktail of "reliable, faithful, durable, etc." and "our vehicles are more than just modes of transportation, they're parts of your life".
[Update: 2 Crorepati is RS 20,000,000, which is about $476,000 USD.]
1: Lots of seating, if you don't mind having your kids placed precariously on your and your passenger's lap.
2: Lots of storage, if you don't mind liberal use of twine, laps, etc. Also, it helps to not mind having large things like ladders, spools of wire, jugs of water, and so forth hanging off the side of the scooter.
posted by steve | 3:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home