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Dhaka Day by Day

Almost, but not Quite

by Abdul Hannan
There is a disturbing unfamiliarity, casting a strange light on ourselves as well as the tri umphant Western reality, that one gets when one watches youth in Dhaka imitate satellite TV-acquired images. What Jean Baudrillard might have called the ironic simulacrum bome of seduction by the sign. Satellite TV entices us, repeats to us its ,iren-like mantra, "Channel V You're in it." It seems to be only a matter of time, therefore, that the contest of Channel V enters us too. It is our young, singled out by media carrot-dangling, that re sponds first with the de rigueur uniform of raybans, basketball boots, jeans and Metallica T-shirts.
But there is something amiss; something not quite right; something (what can it be?) that doesn't seem to click. Is what we see surreal, the twisted delirium of a mechanical reality? Or is it metaphysical and therefore not of reality at all? Why is it, when one looks at' our youth aping the icons of a faceless global network, that one experience an uneasy bubbling sensation inside?
We should avoid simplistic and essen-tialised polaritiestn our answers, meaning the view that Guns 'n' Roses et. al. represent the Great Shaitan and the innocent Bangalee is its hapless, warped victim. Such a characterization we shall mark for what it is — palpable nonsense.
To begin with, it is useful to start where our reality comes in to being. This is neither on the Tv screen nor in our isolated imaginations. It is in the Ideation of experience, in in terpretation, in acting out images. What creates the greatest consternation is the failure to realize that we can never get things quite right This is becomes an inherent feature of mimicking somebody, else's defined image is its ultimate falsehood.
The inferiorisation of the copier begins with the very desire to be something he is not and cannot be, however qatrnest the attempts tv adopt the properties of the original, what results at best is a highly flattering approximation of the projected sign, in this case the pop icon. At worst the result of this mimicry is embarrassing second ratism.
The Dhaka pop drone is quite different from the cultural hybrid that has emerged Jrom a fusion of influences in immigrant communities in the USA and UK.
One of the most popular celebrations of this hybridity comes in the music and lifestyle of Apache Iqdia, who builds upon his multi cultural background, its Asian, Afro-Caribbean and English influences. Can such children of hybridity be accused of dislocated mimicry? Not really. We heed to draw a critical distinctions between the Apache Indian experience and our own Dhaka pop drones to explain why.
For cultural forms to grow in variegated ways into sustainable interpretations, there needs to be a close association between culture and physical location. The hybrid generation of Apache Indian evolve in interaction with their luring, responding environment in Birmingham, East London, Leicester and Bradford. Their peers in Dhaka do not have this combination of cultural imagery and location. The medium of transfer is not an embedded flux within societies but an abstracted, two-dimensional and passive association with the TV screen. Cultural metaphors are therefore exchanged in a undirectional relationship. Without anything else to go by, they capture the form of the cultural metaphor only to miss its content. The result is phantom initiation. The fragility of the new image beavers is marked by the near-aggressive enthusiasm with which these TV identities are iterated. The identities are ghostly, the youth uncomprehending and the result cultural dereliction.
Reference to the space from which images emerge gives us the chance to enter ii|to •selective interaction with different cultural influences. It allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff. But satellite TV, the new agent Orange, instead, gives us an Uprooted wet of association that sells signs to youth who, in turn, no longer belong to their own cultures. The image fetish creates a global army of mimics that belong to a new youth community without place, chasing the ghosts of me dia iconography, taking for granted the desirability of western lifestyles, believing blindly that development is linear, that west means, best, that we’ must be like them.
But always one step behind. Being like then but never being them. Getting it just right. Well, almost but not quite.