There had been a lot of rumours making the rounds about the authenticity of Big Boss season 5. I’m sure many of us had heard about them, speculated, and reached a point where we just slept over it, because we had better things to do with our time. But could it be possibly true, that behind this façade and pretence of a Reality Show, we are actually being victims of a well-orchestrated, scripted plot? Is it faintly possible that all this is just to get some big shot favourite girl or guy to the winning podium? Could it be that these big guns are just acting out in response to a favour given or asked from them?
Hardly unimaginable, in fact it wouldn’t be surprising at all. It happens all the time now doesn’t it. All of us know about the secret office favours that make the round and some undeserving bum gets ahead in the game.
Keeping aside the office and the covert ploys, is it fair that this is done under the pretext of a REALITY SHOW?
If the Big Boss “scam” has made you think, you ought to look at other so called “Reality shows” for answers. A few years back, MID Day had unveiled one such scandal. This time it was the so called “reality show” - Splitsvilla 2, that was on the firing line. And it was the authenticity of the decisions being made on the show.
According to participant of the cycle – Hitesh, one of the important crew members sided Joanna Magee throughout the competition in return of sexual favours! It does not just end at the behind the scene crew, VJ Nikhill, was also accused of showing favourites. The Mid Day article even talks about a pool party that was organised after the show, that wasn’t aired, where “the favourite girls (i.e. Joanna Magee- one of the finalist and Sakshi Pradhan- the winner)” spent an entire day and night with Hitesh, and some other on screen and off screen crew members.
According to the Participants, when the entire batch of Splitsvilla 2 were set to leave Goa special arrangements were made for Joanna Magee to stay back. (!!!!)
Participants like – Swagata Shah, Varun Jhamb and Nalini Negi, did manage to go out and get their voices heard. The accusations don’t just stop at that, there are also claims made that participants indulged in drugs and smoked weed to gear up for the tasks and the show.
Now all this may seem a little farfetched, even fallacious, taking into account the source of the information – the EX- PARTICIPANTS. One can just disregard the whole thing one the grounds of ‘their grapes being sour’, but when this story seems to be heading for a dead end another interesting lead turns up.
During the ‘Tehelka session’, the ex- participants of the show were asked to sign a contract stating that none of them would reveal to the media or public, what actually happened behind the scenes and what went on at the sets of Splitsvilla. Now here is what I don’t understand, if it is in fact a Reality show why get insecure and make the participants sign some contract forbidding them to reveal anything? Makes you think about what THEY have to hide….? They could have very well let the participant go about saying stuff to the media, and disregarded it by saying they (the participants who came out in the open) were bitter losers, and not made a big deal about it. So this is where, the ball gets rolling, Swagata, Nalini and Varun were literally pressed to sign the contract. Each of them received calls every hour urging them to sign the legal document, forbidding them to go out in the open. Hmmmm……!!!
Now researching about all this has really got me thinking about the authenticity of any reality show. What is the guarantee that these so called Reality shows are not scripted and plotted? What is the guarantee that the votes we pool in favour of our favourite contender is actually being considered. What happens behind closed doors, no one can tell, and we all know too well that for a good TRP, channels can go to any extent. As a viewer I guess we need to be more aware, or at least not take these shows too seriously.
