Tapes of Paris Hilton having fun with Dick and Jane in her bedroom are passe. So are steamy MMSs featuring morphed images of Shilpa Shetty. The new titillation for Peeping Toms is wealth voyeurism: peeking through the keyhole of 'rich lists' in glossy magazines which tabulate just how much money super-rich individuals have.
An unconscionable invasion of privacy? Certainly not, say the publications which feature such lists, citing freedom of expression and the general public's right to information. It is certainly in the public interest that the asset value of a corporation, particularly one listed on the market from which it raises funds, be open to general scrutiny.
But can the personal wealth of an individual fall within the purview of the public domain, or should it be the business of that individual only, and of course of the internal revenue department and credit rating agencies, which are bound by strict codes of confidentiality?
Such ethical nitpicking aside, why do popular publications carry 'rich-lists', the 'who's whos' of the plutocratti? And the obvious answer is that such revelations — like a flashed-open trench coat — are supposedly 'sexy', arousing prurient interest as Paris Hilton's boudoir rompings used to before they became monotonous through robotic repetition. Is financial striptease — revealing a person's intimate economic vital statistics — the new erotica?
Leafing through a Grade IV employee's savings account passbook is not of course an acceptable substitute for Penthouse centrefolds. But what about the monetary equivalent of a 'wardrobe malfunction' of the super-rich, a tantalising glimpse of voluptuous superabundance? Isn't money — or at least supermoney — sexier than sex? After all, even the Kama Sutra is anatomically limited in application. But, surely, supermoney is limitless as a lubricious lubricant of endless desire.
The trouble with supermoney as an object of voyeurism is that, after a point, it just doesn't work. Like any other form of pornography, wealth voyeurism is subject to the inexorable law of reductio ad absurdum, or reductio ad boredom. Years ago, the then editor of Hustler magazine complained that after pubic had been made public, what next? X-ray pin-ups? The bare bones of all pornography's dilemma.
Supermoney, and the voyeurism it excites, is no different. After the vicarious frisson of reading about the private jet that Mukesh bought Nita as a birthday present, or about the palace that Lakshmi Mittal acquired as a pied-a-terre in London, what next? Your own personal desert island, a 100-foot Mediterranean yacht, a custom-built Lamborghini with monogrammed number plates? And after all that and more? What comes after all the seemingly inexhaustible devices and desires of wealth have been exhausted? Beyond the dreams of aspiration and avarice, supermoney as an object of voyeurism becomes just a string of zeroes, meaningless and meaning less with each additional cipher.
Full frontal nudity transformed into full frontal nullity. Literally, a zero-sum game.
-- Jug Suraiya (TOI, 17.12.07)
An unconscionable invasion of privacy? Certainly not, say the publications which feature such lists, citing freedom of expression and the general public's right to information. It is certainly in the public interest that the asset value of a corporation, particularly one listed on the market from which it raises funds, be open to general scrutiny.
But can the personal wealth of an individual fall within the purview of the public domain, or should it be the business of that individual only, and of course of the internal revenue department and credit rating agencies, which are bound by strict codes of confidentiality?
Such ethical nitpicking aside, why do popular publications carry 'rich-lists', the 'who's whos' of the plutocratti? And the obvious answer is that such revelations — like a flashed-open trench coat — are supposedly 'sexy', arousing prurient interest as Paris Hilton's boudoir rompings used to before they became monotonous through robotic repetition. Is financial striptease — revealing a person's intimate economic vital statistics — the new erotica?
Leafing through a Grade IV employee's savings account passbook is not of course an acceptable substitute for Penthouse centrefolds. But what about the monetary equivalent of a 'wardrobe malfunction' of the super-rich, a tantalising glimpse of voluptuous superabundance? Isn't money — or at least supermoney — sexier than sex? After all, even the Kama Sutra is anatomically limited in application. But, surely, supermoney is limitless as a lubricious lubricant of endless desire.
The trouble with supermoney as an object of voyeurism is that, after a point, it just doesn't work. Like any other form of pornography, wealth voyeurism is subject to the inexorable law of reductio ad absurdum, or reductio ad boredom. Years ago, the then editor of Hustler magazine complained that after pubic had been made public, what next? X-ray pin-ups? The bare bones of all pornography's dilemma.
Supermoney, and the voyeurism it excites, is no different. After the vicarious frisson of reading about the private jet that Mukesh bought Nita as a birthday present, or about the palace that Lakshmi Mittal acquired as a pied-a-terre in London, what next? Your own personal desert island, a 100-foot Mediterranean yacht, a custom-built Lamborghini with monogrammed number plates? And after all that and more? What comes after all the seemingly inexhaustible devices and desires of wealth have been exhausted? Beyond the dreams of aspiration and avarice, supermoney as an object of voyeurism becomes just a string of zeroes, meaningless and meaning less with each additional cipher.
Full frontal nudity transformed into full frontal nullity. Literally, a zero-sum game.
-- Jug Suraiya (TOI, 17.12.07)
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