State Interference

Thelondonpaper ran a centre-page spread earlier this week about Bollywood’s leading actresses. Not being a film buff by any stretch of the imagination, the subject matter failed to grab my interest. Yet my gaze was averted long enough to note that in informing us about each of the leading stars, they made a comparison with a leading Hollywood lady. Shilpa Shetty was Sandra Bullock – rich and famous, without doubt, but last made a big film in the 90s. Another was compared to Renee Zellweger – not a traditional beauty, but my goodness, can she act. When trying to explore a new subject, there’s an undeniable tendency for us to relate knowledge to things of which we have a far better understanding. And that is where the most interesting story to come from this week’s Big Brother racism row lies.

Within the past 12 months, there have been three major news stories that have two main features in common: that they are primarily cultural in nature, and that they involve Westerners making negative portrayals of non-Western countries. I refer, of course, to the ‘cartoon wars’, to Borat, and to Big Brother. There’s a third thing that unites these stories, too – in every single case, the government of the denigrated country (or countries, in the case of the cartoon wars) has appealed to the Western governments to take action against the companies responsible for the cultural slight.

There’s a certain irony in seeing our political leaders being forced to comment on TV programmes which they almost certainly have no interest in. In particular, there’s an irony in Gordon Brown travelling to India to present himself as a statesman, and instead finding himself harangued at every turn by angry Bollywood fans, and having to find soundbites on Big Brother. But there’s also something unfamiliar about it. Politicians like to show they have the common touch by commenting on popular culture – although if this has any effect at all, it is normally to come back and haunt them.

Yet we would never, ever expect politicians to take an active role intervening in these matters. Denmark’s Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, earned a great deal of respect when he refused to bow to international pressure and take action against the editor of Jyllands-Posten over the printed cartoons, saying that as long as the newspaper stayed within libel laws, what it printed was a matter of editorial policy, and so it should remain. Nor did we ever expect George Bush or Tony Blair to take the Kazakhstani authorities seriously when they asked for Borat to be banned for the negative portrayal of their own country.

Perhaps we could understand the sensitivity of Kazakhstan in these matters, though. After all, its democracy is in its earliest stages; it has never experienced a transfer of presidential power since independence, and it had years of existing as one of the poorest relations of the USSR. This week, however, India’s government felt compelled to speak out on the supposed racist treatment of one of its national icons, making official representations from Cabinet Ministers to Gordon Brown in relation to the Big Brother affair. India, despite having a thriving cultural industry, despite having a stable democracy, still saw matters of broadcasting as something that should be subject to governmental interference.

This raises broader issues about the specific features of Western democracy and the legacies of colonialism. Here in the West, we’re more than used to the existence of repositories of power and culture existing outside of directly political structures. Indeed, it is the notions of an independent press, of the rights of people to have the freedom of speech, of very specific limits being placed upon the operation of political power, that define the Western notion of democracy.

How different is that outside of the Western world? As noted above, the traditions of democracy, and the traditions that inform the content of Western democracy, have far weaker roots. The legacy of colonialism, too, is one where an outside power exerted considerable authority. Military strength alone was not sufficient to perpetuate such control – there was a need to co-opt local elites and power groups into the ruling classes as well, so that colonial rule had a local power structure on which to lean on (for example, it is notable that when Saddam was emasculated militarily after the Gulf War, he increased the role that religious leaders played in Iraq).

The knock-on effect of all of this is a different conception of power relations. Where local control of the political system has arrived only recently, there’s an understandable desire for total control of the apparatus of the state. Whether this proves feasible in practice or not is a somewhat moot point – the fact is, by appealing on a government-to-government level, they reveal the attitude that they believe that cultural matters are an appropriate area for that sort of intervention. In the West, while I’d expect politicians in Britain to comment on, say, the racist taunts endured by England players in football matches abroad, I’d be very surprised if they were to appeal to the Spanish government to take action.

Of course, there is a model through which government can make a positive intervention on these cultural affairs. What it involves is an understanding of the way politics operates in the West – that is, that it keeps its nose out of trying to run the press. Instead, it plays along with the media game, exploiting opportunities for favourable write-ups. One government of the three I mention realised the error of its ways, and managed to win considerable support and publicity by playing the media exposure for all it was worth.

Kazakhstan’s government quickly realised that it was making no headway with its complaints against Borat – and worse still, it was committing the heinous crime of being unable to take a joke. So it turned away from railing against Western authorities for not listening to their concerns, and instead took the opportunity to send their ambassadors on goodwill missions, writing editorials and giving interviews in which they extolled the virtues of their country. Which, by and large, had the effect of making Borat appear the boor. Ultimately, their decision to fight a media war, not a diplomatic one, paid off handsomely.

India’s government could learn a lot from the approach. Rather than haranguing Gordon Brown as he attempts to establish strong links with an emerging economy, they would do much better by approaching Channel 4 for a right of reply, at the same time as launching a cultural mission to bring greater awareness of India’s heritage. Maybe they could even invite Jade Goody to spend some time travelling the country and opening her eyes to a culture that is more than just poppadoms. If they really want to influence coverage of the media row around Big Brother, they’ve got to understand the political culture in which they operate. Britain will respond far better to an information campaign than they will to any diktat from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.