The boob tube

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Just a reminder: A 12-minute segment on Aishwarya Rai, entitled ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Woman?,’ airs tonight at 7pm on 60 Minutes (CBS). Here’s Apul’s post on the interview.

The press release is incredibly disingenuous, asking the questions usually done by trashy film mags:

Rai’s first movie kiss, should she do it, will be a minor scandal among her fans, especially in India… The country that gave the world the Kama Sutra, one of the oldest known sex manuals, isn’t prudish, just not into public displays of intimacy… Rai… dances delicately around the subject of screen sex. “We’ll cross the bridge when we reach it,” says Rai of the inevitable love scene in her American film future.

Kama Sutra reference, check. Desperate bid to boost viewership, check. Aishwarya’s ever-so-precious virginal mugging for Stardust, Filmfare and Cineblitz, check.

A 31-year-old actress/model will have done a hell of a lot more than a public kiss, and more power to her. No matter how much fans may confuse reel life with real life, the Britney Spears impression isn’t necessary, discretion works fine. But the fault probably lies more with the interviewers than the actress. It’s the kind of tissue-thin softball usually tossed underhand by Baba Wawa.

Update: Watch the first 2:45 of the video: mirror 1, 2; torrent. Aishwarya seemed extremely nervous, her humor strained, this is her big U.S. launch. Her answers seemed unrehearsed and forced, her giggling a touch shrill; she was like a liquored-up Cameron Diaz on Craig Kilborn, truly cringeworthy. The interviewer spent a third of the segment on ‘you’re so hot,’a third on explaining Bollywood (pretty decent — they clipped her best films) and a third on ‘why won’t you kiss on screen?’ Ahh, hard news — I thought I’d escaped the Hindustan Times, but 60 Minutes dragged me back in.

60 Minutes has the same tone as morning talk shows, a dorky, Katie-Couric-for-your-grandma aesthetic. I used to love watching the show Sunday afternoons with my dad, but the harsh light of adulthood has diminished it. Like most TV shows, they use short words and simple sentences, they talk down to their audience. Before Aishwarya, the show cooed over Google with the same script mass media has been using about tech for 25 years: they’re young, rich and eccentric, those crazy kids. I winced watching Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin trying to put together sound bites that would be modest and non-techie, I’ve been on that side of the lens. When asking about Google’s interview questions, the profiler massacred the word ‘icosahedron,’ stressing the wrong syllable, turning it over gingerly in her mouth as if it were Greek.

Which it was, originally, but still. She was proud it was a ‘technical’ word, she pounced on it for the camera like a delighted kitten. This is to be dispelled, not exalted.

Update 2: Reuters picks up the non-story.

Update 3: Here’s the Google segment.

14 thoughts on “The boob tube”

  1. Saw it. Aish was looking effortlessly “fine” (and I mean that in the vernacular sense), as always. Three thoughts.

    1. Was it just me, or was the interviewer a little flummoxed by her superhuman Aish-ness?

    2. And also: I think her English accent has improved! She’s been taking lessons.

    3. But still, but still, I think all this talk about her making a big splash in Hollywood is a little premature. “Bride and Prejudice” is going to sink like a stone. And then what? You can’t just plug her into Julia Roberts romantic comedies, and expect it to fly.

  3. When are they going to stop referring to the Internet like it’s some kind of novelty? This is not the Internet, this is the world. Television media would do well to recognize it, and not think of the Internet as a subset of mass media, but as a superset, a representative of the world.

  4. What you’ve just witnessed in this CBS broadcast was merely a puppet of commercialization brought to you in the form of what appears to be a woman ridden with publicity and hype to fulfill her obvious purpose on this earth – a walking poster girl to define India’s “tradition” to the google-eyed and ooglefied men and women that thoguht this interview was something worth waiting for. She’s as good a household name as Apu Nahasapeemapetilan or Gandhi; so if you’re expecting a surge of talent to come from this washed up actress in Hollywood, it’s only as her Hollywood agents aim to present her as…

    Then again, there was a time when Sabu and Omar Sharif reigned in Hollywood..

  6. Amardeep said: And also: I think her English accent has improved! She’s been taking lessons.

    I’m not quite sure what you were insinuating by this comment. Do you mean to say, her accent sounds more “American”?(which doesn’t necessarily translate to an ‘improvement in accent’) Because, as far as i remember Aish always spoke impeccable english. Just that, this time around she spoke with a more pronounced american accent.

  7. She did sound coached into using more aspirated consonants, more British/American than Indian English, when you compare last night’s interview with her older ones.

  8. She made a fool of herself by her constant giggling, fake weird accent, asking silly questions ( read : do kids really move out of their parents home etc.,) I think she needs to grow out of her bubbly teenage valley girl routine if she wants to be taken seriously as a Hollywood actress.

  9. At first, I found Rai’s giggling distracting, but after awhile, I began to remember other interviews with American actors. Because actors do films that are mostly silly or absurd. American actors adopt a false sense of gravitas when being interviewed. They seem determined to make the audience forget that they read lines written by others, wear clothes selected by others, and behave at the direction of others. In short, they are mostly fashionable versions of the scarecrow from Oz. Rai, to her credit, recognizes that what she does is entertainment, so why not have fun? Particularly in India, where the masses need entertainment, if only to temporarily escape from the elbowing, pushing, and shoving that modern urban India is.

    I still think Bride and Prejudice is gonna tank at the American box office.

  11. who cares what anyone says-no one has the right to declare her the most beautiful woman in the world…they haven’t met me.

  13. ashwariah im a huge fan of urs like other fans hopefully ill see u live somwhere in a concert seemul