The Choice of Our Obsession With Naagins, Especially the Hot Kind

“They love the idea of a hot woman dancing, dressed in a scanty mythical attire.” What’s the obsession with Naagin?

The Indian audience is at a very interesting crossroads. On one hand, narratives like Lust Stories are finding space and the right kind of appreciation in the mainstream. But on the other end of the spectrum, Naagin 3, which recently launched its latest season, has once again emerged as the highest viewed show on television, grossing close to 15 million viewers in its 24th week running.

In a recent interview, Ekta Kapoor says that the TV show owes much of its popularity to the audiences’ weakness for the genre - “a great typical love story in a atypical world” - a premise that allows the audience the willing suspension of disbelief, without having to question their conscience for it.

That’s also perhaps why, Kaushani, a 20-something social media manager does not feel the need to hold back when she admits that she follows the series with embarrassing enthusiasm. “It is a great series to trip on” she tells me. Because one does not have to worry about the existence (or the lack of) a story, or invest in the possibility of connecting the dots.

“It’s mindless entertainment, plus they cast a hotter looking Naagin every season”. This, she tells me is a subject that she and her male friends often discuss. “They love the idea of a hot woman dancing, dressed in a mythical attire, scanty as it is.” Kaushani is someone I’ve worked with in a play before, so when the same evening when she messages me to ask if it’s okay to name and shame someone she barely knows, who randomly started asking her for nudes, I do not have the heart to point out the irony.

I tell her to go ahead; the shame is certainly not hers.

The next conversation I take up is with a junior from school - Sukarna Mondal. She now works with the digital team at Voot and actually gets paid to watch serials, she tells me. She has a more balanced view, if not one that’s rooted in the economics of it. “Ekta’s created a franchise off of the folklore. Though the show is targeted to an audience between 25-50 years of age, a large segment of the viewers watch it on the app. She has a captive audience, who might not necessarily watch the show as it airs on the weekend, but makes sure to catch up on it on the app.”

Sukarna has been an entertainment journalist in the past - she gives me another interesting insight into the popularity of the show - “it’s glam quotient” - both men and women draw fashion inspiration from the actors’ never-repeating wardrobes.

In an effort to figure what the hullabaloo is about, I watch 4 episodes of the latest season of Naagin, nurse a headache, and start worrying about the subliminal messaging that passes on between the episodes. Then again, I tell myself that it’s a revenge drama spanning several generations of shape-shifting serpents, set in the outskirts of Bombay; subliminal was possibly not on the checklist.

In defense of its popularity, this eponymous series is not alone. Both our mythology and popular culture are steeped with references of the supernatural. In fact, the tussle for power between mankind and the snake (kind?) is not new. Traditionally they are a class of demigods, which allows them a hierarchical superiority over mortals. Man drunk on his impudence or greed or both, goes out of his way to insult and agitate the snake (kind) causing them to turn into vengeful destructive beings. This is the base storyline of any and all such narratives that have marked popular media.

Thereafter, I turned to my own culture for inspiration and some much needed research. Take for example, the story of Manasa - the Hindu snake goddess who is also the daughter of Shiva. She requested Chand Saudagar - an influential business tycoon of the time (who was also a devout follower of Shiva) to start the practice of her worship by paying obeisance to her.

Unfortunately though, Chand Saudagar was an arrogant ass who refused to worship a Pagan god, sparking off a revenge saga that eventually immortalised the story of Behula-Lakhindar, the quintessential couple. All layers of such folklore are lined with climactic moments of drama, revenge, self-sacrifice, with subliminal messages of morality and humility, that would give any of the contemporary renditions of the Naagin a run for its money.

While this is just one example, most pagan cultures are rife such dramatic narratives.

All Ekta Kapoor has done with this particular series, like many other smart businesswomen and men before her, is commercialised our collective fantasies. I do not want to harp on why such commercialisation had to ride on the back of regressive reinforcements, particularly when the content it derives inspiration from was not so, considering the social fabric of the time.

Enough and more has been written about it. I do however want to point out that herein lies the inherent dilemma.

Today, armed with a smartphone and an internet connection anyone (read everyone) is an influencer and dinnertime entertainment has moved beyond communal viewing. The urban audience today has a plethora of choices when it comes to options in their form of entertainment - you can stream everything from a Satyajit Ray film, to a stand-up special to Wild Wild Country, while enjoying the AC at the exact temperature you prefer.

VOD platforms are not even limited by aggregator services any longer - networks like Zee, Balaji, Colors have their own native platforms. These homegrown apps have an understanding of local tastes and are actively creating content that are not necessarily, over-the-top dramatised accounts that the Indian audience identify with televised entertainment.

Conversations about sex, sexuality and associated taboos that plague middle class India are naturally emerging as a recurring theme, taking advantage of the blurred lines of censorship (and watery codes of morality) that govern these platforms, though interestingly many fringe narratives like Bose: Dead/Alive, The Test Case and Zero Kms are also finding their rightful space and audience.

In a recent interview post Lust Stories, Anurag Kashyap suggested that the penetration and popularity of digital platforms has opened up the scope of entertainment for both audiences and content producers. Creators are no longer limited by a presumptive understanding of what the audience wants, because real time data is available. Analytics can easily detail out data to the extent of which episode of which show triggered more subscriptions.

One man’s guilty pleasure, is thus another woman’s empirical data.

And while this might seem a biased (read socio-culturally entitled) perspective, viewership numbers of Naagin 3 in the urban GEC are almost double that in the rural segment. Access has become easier than ever, robbing the urban audience of our most viable excuse - the lack or difficulty of availability of responsible content.

At the helm of this dichotomy today is choice - the choices we make now will shape the narratives of popular culture for the years to come. At the cost of sounding preachy, it is therefore our prerogative, as an audience with access and agency, to choose and in turn demand content that is more socially responsible and relevant. We have to at some point start being accountable for our choices - be that in our outtake of entertainment or our brand of politics.

If we keep normalising the sexualisation of our Naagins, do we retain the right to complain about the entitled demand for nudes?

(Aishwarya Guha changes professions, like the Icchadhari Naagin changes form. She's recently learnt thinking, and urges everyone to give it a shot. She rarely tweets @assortedtales.)