YOUTUBE SENSATIONS
WAITING FOR THE “LIKE”

Darshana Sreedhar

When Andy Warhol famously proclaimed in 1968, that in the future everyone would have a shot at their own fifteen minutes of fame, it is unlikely that he had something like Youtube in mind. Yet, with the democratization of the regime of image production, circulation and consumption enabled by the digital revolution and the internet, the mechanics of exposure, fame and publicity have expanded manifold. Now, the possibility of fame, devised by no-less than the machinations of the individual person has made the dream of public success all the more alluring, especially when it can get you an unexpected moment of glory, even propelling a complete makeover to your life. If your entry in the form of performance or even a short piece of writing could amass the support of thousands of anonymous viewers sitting in virtual spaces, making them rate your talent and even offer you newer platforms, there could be no better publicity required to make you a popular icon in this highly networked era of communication, no matter how short-lived or ephemeral. For the24x7 news channels, making news value out of the mundane everyday episodes, this recent spate of gaining hype on account of “likes” clicks came as a setback to their TRP ratings. This in fact, has put the channels on a run to devise new eye-catching gimmicks to sustain audience interest. More and more online bloggers have taken on the garb of citizen journalists and uploading videos on sites like YouTube has taken on a fascination for all and sundry. Alongside this, one can see a renewed interest it has stirred on the need to give due recognition to hitherto unacknowledged talents, who could not make it to the limelight because of the lack of opportunities and proper exposure. The social media and networking sites here emerge as platforms to use collective viewership as a means to bargain different yardsticks to evaluate performances, ranging from experimental films to other performances like dance and song renditions.
The two instances I want to analyse here have precipitated from the YouTube phenomenon. These are also in many ways complementary, especially on account of how afterlives of their popularity become moments captured by the media in all its vivacity. In 2013, the Malayalam short film For Hire, became quite popular among the viewers for its crisp dealing of its theme and composition. It was symptomatic of the recent trend to experiment with technology and the ways filmmaking has become more of a democratized venture for anyone who has a passion for it, irrespective of whether it is governed by aesthetics or not. Directed by Vishnu Raghav and Anu Mohan and promoted widely by online media, the seventeen minute film explores the happenings set over a period of forty-eight hours. The opening sequence intercut with the credits situates the story at night as one of the characters waits for an auto rickshaw to get home. The intervening moments between his auto trip and his loss of valuables are revisited in course of another three episodes, unravelling the loops which connects the main thread of the story. The trope of night and the female character (Kavitha Balakrishnan) with negative shades are coalesced to emphasize her wily nature as the manipulator who had strategically used all three men in the film to dupe them of their valuables. If in the first two episodes, she is shown as a gullible woman who is stranded in a city, in the last episode she is portrayed as a sex worker who sternly uses her agency to refuse the man she had earlier consented to go with. The real identity of the woman remains a mystery in the film captured poignantly in the concluding freeze frame, stimulating the audience’s off-screen knowledge of many real life characters.