For a book that
promised to be so cool, I was surprisingly underwhelmed by the reading
experience. I think I have spent so long reading good reviews of Fatima
Bhutto’s writing that I automatically assumed I would like her work; in
situations such as these, when I know I have high expectations, it is only when
I’m done that I realize that maybe my anticipation had set the whole endeavour
up for failure. In this case, the only reason this book escaped a one-star
rating is because those ratings are reserved solely for the books that I hate
with a passion, and while this book fluctuated between the slightly-interesting
and the somewhat-boring, it never actually veered into the sort of territory
that makes me start counting the pages until the ending.
That’s not to say that the whole book is completely unworthy of the casual reader. For anyone who has the slightest interest in Bollywood, Turkish dramas, or K-pop, this book has lots of random facts that you probably won’t have known before, and enough interviews to satisfy the starstruck amongst us. In fact, probably the thing I liked the most was how the author connected real life to the cultural output of a country, showing how the things we consider as purely for entertainment can have consequences in the things we do and say.
The Supreme Court ruling that required not only the anthem to be played but also audiences to stand in solemnity came as a direct result of K3G. Having gone to watch K3G in a darkened Bhopal cinema in 2002, a Mr Shyam Chouksey was so stirred by the scene of Khan’s son singing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ at his English school concert that he stood up from his seat. His fellow audience members were not amused and complained that he was blocking their view. Chouksey was so insulted at his compatriots’ lack of respect for the national anthem that he began a protest outside the Bhopal cinema. When that yielded no results, he filed a case in Madhya Pradesh’s High Court, banging on until his cause reached the highest bench in the land.
She further strengthens the writing by flipping it both ways, showing how the geo-political climate of a country affects the kind of movies, TV shows, and music being produced. In fact, I think I could safely argue that a significant chunk of the book is about how the politics, foreign policy, and social milieu of the day and age play a huge part on the type of entertainment being churned out at that time. The whole spread of the book from the first part, which focuses on Bollywood, to the second portion dealing with Turkish dramas, and then onwards to the smaller section concerning K-pop follow almost the same pattern of detailing how the things going on in the world influenced the media of that time.
Such a pattern of non-fiction writing is usually my favourite form of narrative structuring, because connecting real life events to the things we see on TV or the kind of music we listen to is such an intricate and fun web to untangle, and I’m always in awe of writers who manage to do it with elegance and ease. Bhutto gets point for choosing to tackle her areas of interest in the same way, but she gets lost somewhere in the middle by the rambling and chaotic manner in which she chooses to cover these things. Without a proper sense of flow in the writing, and lacking the sort of structural integrity that I’m used to in my non-fiction reading, it felt like the book had good intentions but was too formless to satisfy the editor in me, who has spent too long poring over manuscripts pointing out the very same flaws this book fell prey to.
Beginning with Bollywood, the first obvious issue was the fact that the book is split into only two parts instead of three, with the first one entirely dedicated to India’s entertainment industry, and the second part dealing with both Turkish dramas and K-pop in a truncated, hastily put together version of the amount of coverage Bollywood got. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that Bhutto was able to interview Shahrukh Khan, who really shouldn’t need an introduction. Even I, whose parents exhibited a slightly xenophobic attitude towards all Indian movies, and who grew up more enamoured with One Tree Hill than with K3G, knew about Shahrukh Khan, because it’s impossible to live in Pakistan and not know about him. He’s the biggest celebrity there is, both in India and in Pakistan, and according to this claim, possibly in the world. And it seems that the author is very aware of the fact that her scoring an interview with him is a Big Deal, since she seems to go on about it for quite a while. (As an aside, Fatima Bhutto is part of the Bhutto clan, and must surely have had regular exposure to the hoity-toity members of society, so shouldn’t she a little less amazed by the presence of a celebrity? Just wondering.)
Surprisingly, the Shahrukh Khan interview was less interesting than the other stuff Bhutto mentions (probably cause Khan gets interviewed a lot and we already know all there is to know about him?), such as how Hindu-Muslim relationships caused famous actors and actresses to change their names, or the ways in which the main players in the acting industry have acted in accordance with the rising power of Modi’s government. Bhutto touched upon a fair number of movies stretching all the way from the era of partition up to the present decade, tracing how intersecting interests of politics, religion, and public interest have shaped the Bollywood industry.
In 1937, the All India league of Censorship, a self-designated Hindu cultural police, announced its objective to cleanse ‘the film industry of all its non-Hindu elements’ and many aspiring Muslim stars–including Meena Kumari who was born Mahjabeen Bano, Madhubala, nee Mumtaz Jan Dehlavi, and Dilip Kumar–changed their names in order to avoid being blackballed.
Overall, I found the Bollywood portion of the book more fascinating than the Turkish or South Koran parts, but that might just be my bias playing a part. While it’s true that the number of Pakistanis fans of Turkish and S. Korean dramas and music have continued to swell dramatically in the recent years, I’ve never been particularly enamoured by either of these two forms of entertainment. I knew about them in the sort of peripheral way where you hear your friends rave about it, but I’ve never watched any of the dramas, nor listened to any of the music with the sort of devoted following that constitutes familiarity, and am prepared to admit that that might have played a part in the limited interest I showed in the second half of the book.
That being said, there’s still a significant amount of interesting stuff in there. For one, I did not realize just how famous these Turkish dramas, called ‘dizi’, were. The fact that dubbed versions of them were being watched so religiously in Pakistan should have probably given me some idea, but the fact of the matter is that, according to the statistics presented in this book, they’re huge. With the widespread popularity of certain dizi such as Ask-I Memnu (Ishq-e-Mamnoon in the Urdu-dubbed telecast), Muhtesem Yuzyil (aka Magnificent Century), and Fatmaagul’un Sucu Ne? (otherwise known as What is Fatmagul’s Fault?), viewership from all around the globe has steadily been increasing, and Bhutto made a valid, if somewhat sub-par, attempt at explaining the rise in the interest of these dramas, both in terms of the political climate of the recent decade as well as in the ways in which people’s desire to watch certain things dictate the popularity of the type of media they consume. By quoting articles that spoke of wives expressing displeasure because their husbands didn’t come up to the standards set by their wives’ favourite Turkish heroes, or discussing in detail the Saudi Prince MBS’s desire to take over the channel MBC by pulling famous dizi off the air and holding the founder in luxury jail in 2017, Bhutto does an interesting job at connecting the multiple dots that all interconnect to make a foundation for the popularity of a certain type of show. While her topic placement and content structuring might not be the most remarkable, there is still a great degree of fascinating material in the book to uncover for the casual reader.
The Turks had done something neither the Americans, the Indians or our own shows did: they had achieved the perfect balance between secular modernity and middle-class conservatism. Unlike the deviants of Santa Barbara and The Bold and the Beautiful, the Turks were ordinary folk, chemical engineers or mechanics, simple men battling to live good, fair lives. The protagonist was not the begum, reclining on a sofa and shouting at her deprived, migrant maid, but the maid herself. In contrast to Pakistani or Indian serials, in Turkish shows the maid was not invisible, relegated to the periphery of the story, her poverty used only as a prop to elevate the master’s house. Here she was the architect of her own destiny, an innocent who comes to the city to provide for her family and change here fortune and she does so without any spiritual or material corruption, no matter the obstacles placed in her way.
It is the South Korean portion that is the weakest in the whole book, even though it feels like she might have interviewed the most people for it. Partially that is because people appear and disappear after having contributed only a singular quote, where I would have preferred a more comprehensive discussion with those who have been in the industry. Since the South Korean music industry might be considered the most successful in the west (Psy’s Gangnam style and the popularity of boy band BTS come to mind), it is a shame that we didn’t get to read about it in more detail. In fact, given that I’ve had such passionate (for their part) discussions with my friends who are fans of Korean dramas and music, I expected this part to provide me with the most interesting titbits, and while some parts of it did, overall it was slightly disappointing to be so disappointed by it.
In 2019, the Ministry for Gender Equality and Family warned local broadcasters that K-beauty standards, by which all stars ‘have similar appearances such as skinny body figure, light skin colour, similar hairstyle, body conscious clothes and similar make-up’ may lead to unhealthy perceptions of beauty. The ministry had gone so far as to issue guidelines as to how to approach what they called a ‘serious problem’ but were forced to withdraw them after an immediate outcry from fans screaming censorship and oppression. ‘In Korean they’re not called “artists”,’ Ashley Choi, a Korean-American music executive told me in Seoul. ‘They’re called “celebrities”, they’re called “entertainers” because they don’t create music. They call them “idols” because they want them to be gods, they want them to be untouchable.”
Overall, I’d recommend this book for those who have free time (which, given the current global situation, some of us have a lot of, while others have none at all) and some interest in the topics being discussed. It isn’t really the best non-fiction, and probably isn’t even the best in talking about these subjects. I’m sure there are better, more nuanced discussions of what Bhutto has touched here in other books, but as an introductory first step, I guess it’ll suffice.
That’s not to say that the whole book is completely unworthy of the casual reader. For anyone who has the slightest interest in Bollywood, Turkish dramas, or K-pop, this book has lots of random facts that you probably won’t have known before, and enough interviews to satisfy the starstruck amongst us. In fact, probably the thing I liked the most was how the author connected real life to the cultural output of a country, showing how the things we consider as purely for entertainment can have consequences in the things we do and say.
The Supreme Court ruling that required not only the anthem to be played but also audiences to stand in solemnity came as a direct result of K3G. Having gone to watch K3G in a darkened Bhopal cinema in 2002, a Mr Shyam Chouksey was so stirred by the scene of Khan’s son singing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ at his English school concert that he stood up from his seat. His fellow audience members were not amused and complained that he was blocking their view. Chouksey was so insulted at his compatriots’ lack of respect for the national anthem that he began a protest outside the Bhopal cinema. When that yielded no results, he filed a case in Madhya Pradesh’s High Court, banging on until his cause reached the highest bench in the land.
She further strengthens the writing by flipping it both ways, showing how the geo-political climate of a country affects the kind of movies, TV shows, and music being produced. In fact, I think I could safely argue that a significant chunk of the book is about how the politics, foreign policy, and social milieu of the day and age play a huge part on the type of entertainment being churned out at that time. The whole spread of the book from the first part, which focuses on Bollywood, to the second portion dealing with Turkish dramas, and then onwards to the smaller section concerning K-pop follow almost the same pattern of detailing how the things going on in the world influenced the media of that time.
Such a pattern of non-fiction writing is usually my favourite form of narrative structuring, because connecting real life events to the things we see on TV or the kind of music we listen to is such an intricate and fun web to untangle, and I’m always in awe of writers who manage to do it with elegance and ease. Bhutto gets point for choosing to tackle her areas of interest in the same way, but she gets lost somewhere in the middle by the rambling and chaotic manner in which she chooses to cover these things. Without a proper sense of flow in the writing, and lacking the sort of structural integrity that I’m used to in my non-fiction reading, it felt like the book had good intentions but was too formless to satisfy the editor in me, who has spent too long poring over manuscripts pointing out the very same flaws this book fell prey to.
Beginning with Bollywood, the first obvious issue was the fact that the book is split into only two parts instead of three, with the first one entirely dedicated to India’s entertainment industry, and the second part dealing with both Turkish dramas and K-pop in a truncated, hastily put together version of the amount of coverage Bollywood got. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that Bhutto was able to interview Shahrukh Khan, who really shouldn’t need an introduction. Even I, whose parents exhibited a slightly xenophobic attitude towards all Indian movies, and who grew up more enamoured with One Tree Hill than with K3G, knew about Shahrukh Khan, because it’s impossible to live in Pakistan and not know about him. He’s the biggest celebrity there is, both in India and in Pakistan, and according to this claim, possibly in the world. And it seems that the author is very aware of the fact that her scoring an interview with him is a Big Deal, since she seems to go on about it for quite a while. (As an aside, Fatima Bhutto is part of the Bhutto clan, and must surely have had regular exposure to the hoity-toity members of society, so shouldn’t she a little less amazed by the presence of a celebrity? Just wondering.)
Surprisingly, the Shahrukh Khan interview was less interesting than the other stuff Bhutto mentions (probably cause Khan gets interviewed a lot and we already know all there is to know about him?), such as how Hindu-Muslim relationships caused famous actors and actresses to change their names, or the ways in which the main players in the acting industry have acted in accordance with the rising power of Modi’s government. Bhutto touched upon a fair number of movies stretching all the way from the era of partition up to the present decade, tracing how intersecting interests of politics, religion, and public interest have shaped the Bollywood industry.
In 1937, the All India league of Censorship, a self-designated Hindu cultural police, announced its objective to cleanse ‘the film industry of all its non-Hindu elements’ and many aspiring Muslim stars–including Meena Kumari who was born Mahjabeen Bano, Madhubala, nee Mumtaz Jan Dehlavi, and Dilip Kumar–changed their names in order to avoid being blackballed.
Overall, I found the Bollywood portion of the book more fascinating than the Turkish or South Koran parts, but that might just be my bias playing a part. While it’s true that the number of Pakistanis fans of Turkish and S. Korean dramas and music have continued to swell dramatically in the recent years, I’ve never been particularly enamoured by either of these two forms of entertainment. I knew about them in the sort of peripheral way where you hear your friends rave about it, but I’ve never watched any of the dramas, nor listened to any of the music with the sort of devoted following that constitutes familiarity, and am prepared to admit that that might have played a part in the limited interest I showed in the second half of the book.
That being said, there’s still a significant amount of interesting stuff in there. For one, I did not realize just how famous these Turkish dramas, called ‘dizi’, were. The fact that dubbed versions of them were being watched so religiously in Pakistan should have probably given me some idea, but the fact of the matter is that, according to the statistics presented in this book, they’re huge. With the widespread popularity of certain dizi such as Ask-I Memnu (Ishq-e-Mamnoon in the Urdu-dubbed telecast), Muhtesem Yuzyil (aka Magnificent Century), and Fatmaagul’un Sucu Ne? (otherwise known as What is Fatmagul’s Fault?), viewership from all around the globe has steadily been increasing, and Bhutto made a valid, if somewhat sub-par, attempt at explaining the rise in the interest of these dramas, both in terms of the political climate of the recent decade as well as in the ways in which people’s desire to watch certain things dictate the popularity of the type of media they consume. By quoting articles that spoke of wives expressing displeasure because their husbands didn’t come up to the standards set by their wives’ favourite Turkish heroes, or discussing in detail the Saudi Prince MBS’s desire to take over the channel MBC by pulling famous dizi off the air and holding the founder in luxury jail in 2017, Bhutto does an interesting job at connecting the multiple dots that all interconnect to make a foundation for the popularity of a certain type of show. While her topic placement and content structuring might not be the most remarkable, there is still a great degree of fascinating material in the book to uncover for the casual reader.
The Turks had done something neither the Americans, the Indians or our own shows did: they had achieved the perfect balance between secular modernity and middle-class conservatism. Unlike the deviants of Santa Barbara and The Bold and the Beautiful, the Turks were ordinary folk, chemical engineers or mechanics, simple men battling to live good, fair lives. The protagonist was not the begum, reclining on a sofa and shouting at her deprived, migrant maid, but the maid herself. In contrast to Pakistani or Indian serials, in Turkish shows the maid was not invisible, relegated to the periphery of the story, her poverty used only as a prop to elevate the master’s house. Here she was the architect of her own destiny, an innocent who comes to the city to provide for her family and change here fortune and she does so without any spiritual or material corruption, no matter the obstacles placed in her way.
It is the South Korean portion that is the weakest in the whole book, even though it feels like she might have interviewed the most people for it. Partially that is because people appear and disappear after having contributed only a singular quote, where I would have preferred a more comprehensive discussion with those who have been in the industry. Since the South Korean music industry might be considered the most successful in the west (Psy’s Gangnam style and the popularity of boy band BTS come to mind), it is a shame that we didn’t get to read about it in more detail. In fact, given that I’ve had such passionate (for their part) discussions with my friends who are fans of Korean dramas and music, I expected this part to provide me with the most interesting titbits, and while some parts of it did, overall it was slightly disappointing to be so disappointed by it.
In 2019, the Ministry for Gender Equality and Family warned local broadcasters that K-beauty standards, by which all stars ‘have similar appearances such as skinny body figure, light skin colour, similar hairstyle, body conscious clothes and similar make-up’ may lead to unhealthy perceptions of beauty. The ministry had gone so far as to issue guidelines as to how to approach what they called a ‘serious problem’ but were forced to withdraw them after an immediate outcry from fans screaming censorship and oppression. ‘In Korean they’re not called “artists”,’ Ashley Choi, a Korean-American music executive told me in Seoul. ‘They’re called “celebrities”, they’re called “entertainers” because they don’t create music. They call them “idols” because they want them to be gods, they want them to be untouchable.”
Overall, I’d recommend this book for those who have free time (which, given the current global situation, some of us have a lot of, while others have none at all) and some interest in the topics being discussed. It isn’t really the best non-fiction, and probably isn’t even the best in talking about these subjects. I’m sure there are better, more nuanced discussions of what Bhutto has touched here in other books, but as an introductory first step, I guess it’ll suffice.