Colors TV issues apology to National Award winner Tannishtha Chatterjee for a roast show on her skin colour. Question is do we have it in us to drop crudity from our comedy showsIJ Team Viva reports
National Award winner Tannishtha Chatterjee’s open letter against her racist roast on Colors’ Comedy Nights Bachao became a talking point and generated much outrage, forcing the channel to issue a public apology. The actress was aghast at the “regressive and blatantly racist” attack she experienced when she was invited as a guest to the show where the hosts not only poked fun at her complexion, calling her kaali kalooti, but also asked her if she had been growing up on a diet of black berries. So upset was the actress, despite braving it all in the first part, that she felt nauseous and walked out of the shoot.
Such was the impact that the channel had to issue an apology letter and dissociate itself from the show. “It is rather unfortunate that what you had expected to be fun and novel experience turned out to be traumatic for you on the sets of Comedy Nights Bachao. As a channel, we have always focussed on creating content that is meaningful and addresses pertinent social issues — skin colour bias —being one of them. Please be assured that what transpired on the sets of Comedy Nights Bachao is not a reflection of the channel’s philosophy. It was never our intention, nor a practice for us or the makers of the show to offend anyone at all with the jokes. We have taken this up seriously with the creative team and the production house to ensure that the show is produced in line with the vision of the channel. Please accept our apologies for any hurt that was unwittingly caused.”
But this came too little too late, considering that roasts and humour shows on mainstream Hindi television have been mostly crass and insensitive, requiring an overhaul of ideas and language pronto. Being a fan of Saturday Night live show, the actress was looking forward to be “roasted” as her perception was that a roast is “a celebratory humour at someone’s expense” and “a mock counter to a toast.” After sitting through two segments of the show, the National Award-winning actress walked out of the shoot when jokes like “kaali kalooti, baingan looti” didn’t stop.
Her open letter reads, “Something has shocked me out of my wits yesterday. I was invited as a guest to a popular comedy show called Comedy Nights Bachao to promote my latest release Parched with my director leena Yadav and my co-actor Radhika Apte. I was told that the flavour of the show is COMEDY and the purpose is to roast. My perception of roast was formed by all theSNls I watched over the years, and the commonly held perception that a roast is a celebratory humour at someone’s expense. It is a mock counter to a toast. “I was actually looking forward to be roasted.
And then this show began. This was an entirely novel understanding of roast that equates itself with bullying. And to my utmost horror, I soon realised that the only quality they found worth roasting about in me was my skin tone. It began with ‘aap ko jamun bahut pasand hoga zaroor… kitna jamun khaya aapne bachpan seIJ’ And went on in that direction… the only thing they could roast about a dark-skinned actress was of course her dark skin. They could identify me only with that. I could not believe I was sitting in a nationally televised comedy show in 2016 in Mumbai amid such regressive (I can’t call it humour) and blatantly racist content. Though I was feeling suffocated, I decided to give it another chance and sat through another equally offensive segment. Nothing changed. I could not sit there anymore. I had to leave. When I told the organisers what I felt, they said, ‘But we told you it is a roast!’ I explained to them the common perception of roast and how it is different from bullying. That there is no humour value in a joke about some one’s physical attributes, especially one that stems from deep prejudices. I don’t think they got it. Some friends also told me don’t take it so seriously, it’s just a comedy. I think that’s what the show also thinks. It’s all fun and games! Except there is nothing funny about this.
“Precisely because in a country where we still sell Fair n lovely/Handsome and show adverts, where people don’t get jobs because of their complexion, where every matrimonial advert demands a fair bride or groom and the colour bias is so strong, in a society which has a deep-seated problem with dark skin, which also has deep roots in our caste system, in a country where dark skin is marginalised, making fun of it is not roast. Even considering that dark skin is a joke comes from that very deep prejudice. And I tried to explain why this is not personal but a larger issue about what our mindset is. And why cracking jokes about deep biases in our society is irresponsible. And that it is not a question about apologising to me but propagating this idea and continuing with this mindset in the name of comedy is what is hugely problematic, specially because it is a popular show on a nationalised channel. It has nothing to do with the show at a personal level. But it leads to a larger debate. Why does skin tone still lend itself to jokesIJ How is it funny to call someone darkIJ I don’t get it.. In a India of 2016 I still have to be apologetic about my skin toneIJ What is this white-skin hangoverIJ Where does all our pride as a nation go away when it comes to the acceptance that most of us have a darker skin toneIJ
“Once I was asked, ‘Your surname is ChatterjeeIJ Oh you are a Brahmin. What is your mother’s surnameIJ Maitra! Oh… She is a Brahmin too…’ And then indirectly he hinted how is my skin tone still dark…IJ This is so deep rooted and linked to our perceptions of caste, class and skin tone. Upper caste=fair skin=touchable. lower caste=dark skin=untouchable. Yes I have pronounced it. Probably most of us will not admit to our hatred for the dark skin also comes from our caste bias. I made a film called Parched. Why I am saying ‘I made’ is because all of us who are a part of this film feel that this was not just a film for us. That it’s MY FIlM. We wanted to express a lot of things about gender, body, skin, sexuality, caste, etc through our stories. It has been a revelation that the journey just begins here as we realise through our promotional process that we are constantly subjected to exactly those issues from which this film was engendered. The list is long long and the biases are deep deep….The privilege that allows these are what we had hoped to challenge.”
Everything Tannishtha wrote makes so much sense and it is clear that she is furious with the show for being so blatant about skin colour. As for the ilk of Bharati Singh and Krushna Abhishek, could they get out of their increasingly cheap routine and will the channel be brave enough to offload themIJ And for Bharti Singh, the woman who has made a neat dough by her self-deprecatory humour about her weight issues, every oddity cannot be laughed off so easily.