PUBLICITY

                                                         
Publicity is a double edged sword that can often slice through the very person it has promoted. Besides, the higher the profile gets, the heavier the burden one is compelled to carry. Publicity operates on its own logic. Nobody can claim to have total control over it. However, if one is aware of its pitfalls and treads cautiously, it’s possible to take stock, step out for a breather and then make the next move.

There is no point being struck with an image over which one has absolutely no control. Its important to remain on top of it, to manipulate the image rather than have it manipulated you. When things back fire, you have to ready with a fire fighting operation of your own. The downside cannot be avoided, no matter how clever the positioning. We live in media driven times. Nobody but nobody is so well known or so successful that he or she can refuse to participate in a structured programme.

Yesterday I was invited to spice up an otherwise drab gathering of self important individuals. I found myself seated next to a very high profile civilian. He balanced his heavy ceramic dinner plate on his knees just as I did. It’s hard enough to eat traditional Indian food off fine crockery with silver knives and forks. Harder still when one is forced to load the plate with different curries floating around and merging into an unappetizing brown muddy mess, walk back to a stuffed surface-edged napkin carefully with one hand and balance the heavy plate with another. Then to have to sit yourself down next to a stranger, try and make polite party conversation with out too much eye contact while keeping one eye on the runny river on the flat dinner plate to prevent it from spilling over and staining a favorite dress

Publicity is far crueler to women than men. Many women who generate a great deal of it (beauty contestants, models, actresses, pop singers) do so because of the way they look.

Most people criticize “Cheap publicity” till they get some themselves. Once they see their names in print they want to see it in lights. Once they get public recognition, they want to perpetuate the moment. Once they sign their first autograph, they never want to stop. Very few individuals are honest enough to say so. I have seen it happen even with the most reticent of them, genuinely shy people. I have seen them blush and bloom under the spot light, still insisting they were uncomfortable with the attention, but praying hard for it to not disappear, those who have shrewdly taken the other route (I’m a recluse, I detest publicity) have benefited the most from it. “Committed” commentators who mock the “champagne journalists” do so until they have their first sip of bubbly. Once they get on to those much coveted party lists, they learn to boogey in a hurry and don’t stop till die on the dance floor.

They are some people who are “self declared recluse”. It is one way of keeping the market up. Create an aura of exclusivity pretend to shun publicity and have the media chase you. Very often such people end up with more of it than those who are more up front. It is rather a clever ruse, especially when the person doesn’t have very much to sell besides an ambiguous and enigmatic persona.

Most times, people who claim to “shun” publicity need to rephrase their views. What they actually mean is they don’t really mind publicity, so long as it’s positive. Give them one adverse comment and they go ballistic. Their skin turns to rice paper and they can’t stop talking about how irresponsible the press is. Publicity that stokes their eggs is taken for granted even as they exclaim. Can’t they find their other people to write about?

I overheard a dubious businessman saying coyly to his girl companion. “I have to be careful these days; people like us who are in lime light become easy targets because we are so recognizable. This man would require a placard with his name hung around his neck for anybody to know who he was. But he genuinely believed he’d arrived because some obscure communist had mentioned his name in her column for being the owner of couple of snazzy cars. And this man there on was on publicity high, nobody in his circle dared to shatter, his illusions- they couldn’t afford to. He paid all their bills.

I have noticed that in surveys about sexual attitudes its always the men who are asked question on frequency how many times a week?  A month? A year? Women are rarely asked this. Why is that?