The Murder As Public Spectacle

It is a strange experience sitting far away from India, as is one is right now, and following an event like the Sheena Bora case exclusively on social media. On Twitter, what one gets are the exhaust fumes left behind in the wake of any event, and in this case these are thick, grimy and quite noxious. Being elsewhere, one is spared the actual experience of 24X7 television, but the cumulative effect of news television has been so intense that it has become a permanent memory, bypassing the need for experience, so that one can imagine the coverage vividly without actually seeing it.

That a case like this attracts so much attention is not surprising; a scandal like this ticks every box there is when it comes to commercial newsworthiness – glamorous people from media, a plethora of entwined backstories, whispers of sexual misconduct, celebrity ‘friends’, and the small matter of murder.

 The first thing has happens in a case like this is that the people involved stop being treated as people almost immediately. They become third person phenomena, to be spoken of freely without any niceties whatsoever. They become characters in our personal novels, and we control their lives which are on lease to us. The small privileges that accompany personhood that all of us enjoy, of politeness and consideration for our feelings are withdrawn, most noticeably by ‘friends’ who reveal intimate details on national television with a marked lack of restraint.

 Of course, even when it is by no means clear as to who is guilty, every aspect of the protagonists’ life is put on trial, and there is no dearth of judges who pronounce stinging indictments. In a scandal, we find it easy to discern the hidden motivations of the key parties involved even if in our everyday lives, we are often clueless about the people closest to us.

 The sensational murder is an invitation to a party, a riotous rollicking celebration of all the instincts we keep tucked away under various veneers otherwise. We get to be our basest selves in a drama of this kind as we hotly drip gossipy saliva over the carcass of a scandal. There are many modes of engagement- we can speculate outrageously, hint darkly of as yet untold secrets and bigger conspiracies, fume at the kind of coverage an event like this gets over other more ‘pressing’ subjects, while following every last detail, sympathise with ‘friends’ while ripping their hearts out on national television for a little more media attention or hold forth on what the Mukherjee saga has to say about society as a whole.

 The sensational murder brings things that otherwise reside at the outer edges of our experience closer into our real lives. Things that we read about in detective fiction or in magazines that cover lifestyles and people we can only fantasise about are now playthings to get our grubby paws all over. Fiction enters the realms of our real lives, becomes non-fiction momentarily before being fictionalized all over again. The stories we construct around the little that we know become intensely real in that they are vividly imagined and articulately propounded. We become theorists of the improbable, and find connections between things that others have missed. Sensational murders allow us access to our darkest, most creative side, and in India the low credibility of the police ensures that ‘facts’ have a liquid oozy quality, a certain dream-like state of almost-being that allows us freedom to paint our own scenarios as we wish.

 The scandalous murder is an open text, allowing us to write ourselves into the narrative as it unfolds. It is a spectacle of a kind where, to reference Barthes, ‘every moment has significance’ and ‘not merely the outcome’. Every element of the scandal is consumed individually, every detail is deemed significant. While it is easy to scoff at a Hindi Channel ‘s Breaking News Story (Indrani Eats Sandwich), it is merely an extreme manifestation of this desire to invest every morsel of information with significance. Interest extends to each character, the sequence of events, the nature of investigation, as well as to how media covers it. The names that have been trending on Twitter, the only currency of transient fame that matters, include not just the victim and the actual cast of characters but also ‘friends’ and commentators whose significance gets duly acknowledged.

 To a certain extent, the sensational murder plays the role played by traditional mythological tales, which dealt with themes that negotiated the extremities of human nature, and invited animated debates about cultural values. Every murder of this kind is a parable, but one that allows for more than one moral of the story. It allows us to explore the other law- the one that runs beneath the legal system. It is this law that is of primary concern, as we hotly discuss the moral and cultural dimensions of a case like this. Who let whom down, who deserves what, what betrayal was the most damaging, whose hurt was the most justified, whose actions the most shocking- these are the questions that are often the most central. The murder itself is only part of the larger puzzle, and every piece in the jigsaw comes with its own moral calculus.

 There are other devices too that serve a similar purpose- the reality show is the modern stand-in for the old mythological story, where we enact a trial using constructed props. The way media covers news in India is again a form of extended and intense trial that follows similar codes. But the sensational murder involving known names is the real deal- the event other formats have been rehearsing for. The Sheena Bora case is about the people involved and complicated as that story is, it is not about much else. The way we consume the  Sheena Bora case is however about a lot more. The circus is in town, and the animals have the best seats.

 (this piece has appeared earlier in the Times of India)