New Delhi: "Why does everyone hate me?" A teary-eyed Shilpa Shetty asks her fellow contestants in the British reality show Celebrity Big Brother. Shilpa on Monday broke down after allegedly being taunted by fellow housemates about her skin colour, accent and cooking.
"Everything about her is infuriating: her haughty way of stalking about, her indomitable self-confidence, her chandelier earrings, her leaping eyebrows, her mirthless smile, her putty nose and her eternal bray," says Germaine Greer, a British academic, writer and broadcaster.
Writing on London's Guardian's newspaper, she says, "There are no good reasons for watching Celebrity Big Brother and very good reasons for not. Not watching will spare you the nerve-fraying annoyingness that is Shilpa Shetty."
"Not to mention the crying jags. What no one seems to have quite understood is that Shilpa is a very good actress. Everyone hates her because she wants them to. She also knows that if she infuriates people enough, their innate racism will spew forth." This is how Greer assessed the events at the Celebrity Big Brother show.
Greer then goes on to narrate how Shetty, as a Tamil, has had to deal with discrimination at home in suburban Mumbai. "Her only motive for parading in front of the other women in the house with whitener on her face was to show what utter hicks they are, how little they understand of her complex reality or of a billion people in the subcontinent who all want to have wheat-coloured skin. I bet thousands of brown-skinned girls in Southall fell off the sofa laughing when she did that," she writes.
Besides the same write-up, Indian-born novelist Hari Kunzru pays a tribute to Shilpa Shetty, saying, "She is a huge star, a much bigger deal than any of the other contestants. It is as if Cameron Diaz or Scarlett Johansson were in there."
Kunzru then goes on to contend that Big Brother is actually a show that "holds a mirror up to national attitudes. If we don't like what we see, we ought to change."
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But the racism issue has not ended at that. Channel 4, which airs the show, has denied that the actor suffered racist bullying, but said it will not tolerate any such controversial incidents during the rest of the series.
Channel 4 pledged to "take necessary steps" to avoid escalating the situation further and media regulator Ofcom received at least 21,000 complaints over the past 48 hours about alleged racism in the Big Brother house, media reports said on Thursday.
Sponsors are not allowed to influence the editorial direction of TV programmes. However, according to a Guardian report, the Carphone Warehouse founder and chief executive, Charles Dunstone, has spoken directly to the Channel 4 Chief Executive, Andy Duncan, about the seriousness of the situation.
In a statement, Channel 4 said there had been a "cultural and class clash" between three other housemates and the Indian star."
Carphone Warehouse said it had "no intention" of pulling out of its current sponsorship of Celebrity Big Brother and was in "ongoing discussions" with Channel 4 about the summer series of the show.
"We are against racism in any shape or form. As sponsor we have no involvement in the content of the programme, but have full faith in Channel 4 and that they will deal with any serious allegations such as this in the appropriate way," the company said in a statement.
Channel 4 and TV regulator Ofcom have had more than 21,000 complaints about treatment of Shetty.
"To date, there has been no overt racial abuse or racist behaviour directed against Shilpa Shetty within the Big Brother house, " the channel said.
The issue has become serious, but according to a write-up in the Guardian, a co-contestant, Jack Tweed, "calls her a cunt. The word was bleeped out, leading many viewers to speculate that she had been racially abused. That is not surprising."
It further goes on say, “It should be possible for both sides to make fun of each other's accents, without pushing the racism button”.
India-UK ties
India on Thursday said the allegations of racist attacks on Shilpa will not impact ties between the two countries.
"This will pass... the episode has not strained ties between the two governments and people of India and UK," Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.
Meanwhile, UK Chancellor of Exchequer Gordon Brown said after the news of insults on Shilpa surfaced, thousands of Britons condemned it.
He said UK wants to send a message that nothing that impacts its reputation, as a "fair and tolerant" society would be accepted.
"We are against any form of racism," Brown said, adding that both India and UK have shared values of fairness and tolerance.
"I am confident that the universal condemnation of the racist remarks will result in change in behaviour of persons associated with the programme," Chidambaram said.
(With agency inputs)
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