Language: Hindi
In the second episode of Disney+Hotstar’s Escaype Live, a ferociously competitive and probably clinical psychopath pulls off a gruesome prank on the loving mother of an acquaintance; all for a social media stunt. It’s the kind of prank that can kill middle-aged men and women and has probably become the bane of families who have been turned unsuspecting allies to ludicrous acts of online ‘creativity’. We’ve seen them all, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, awkwardly appearing in vlogs and reels, their privacy and sense of being instantly tattered by the camera and the judgement that follows. Escape Live is a fascinating exploration of sex, gender, class and self-worth in the age of this social media daze. It’s chaotic, brutal, unflinching and a more than worthy second cousin of the dystopic series we all love – Black Mirror.
Escaype Live does not have Black Mirror’s humour because it is too dreary and dark to be able to pull that off. Siddharth plays a Bangalore born and raised techie who joins Escape Live, a social media platform that has – like Tiktok maybe – taken the country by storm, as a moderator. The app not only serves as a platform to post content on, but unlike most apps, acts as a funnel for direct payments. i.e. people, influencers can be paid not just in likes, but diamonds that translate to actual money. The app obviously takes a cut. It’s a good enough idea to get actual Bengaluru entrepreneurs gunning for the whiteboard to start something new. But while the model seems plain and simplistic on the surface, it hides beneath the sheath of its exterior harmlessness a double-edged sword.
Besides Siddharth, the first few episodes focus on four distinct ‘creators’. Darkie (Sumedh Mudgalkar) is a near sociopathic urban influencer with a god complex. Plabita Borthakur plays a waitress moonlighting as a sleazy internet sensation. Ritvik Sahore plays a parkour athlete from the slums of Mumbai and then there is a young dance enthusiast from the city of Jaisalmer. The four are presented as creators, aspirants to the vaguely definitive throne of the app’s most loved star.
Escaype Live posits the idea that the externalisation of all happiness, the greed for approval can drive people to insane limits.
“Everyone with a phone can become a star, everyone”, says a company executive at one point in the series. The possibility is the point. The perceivably democratic route to popularity and therefore instant success teases, almost pushes, people into doing maniacal at times even suicidal things.
Siddharth as the conservative techie, inside the system, gives an uneven performance in a series that is crying out for an emotional core to hold its moving parts with. The tangential stories, though tragic in their own way, are intriguing. From Darkie’s blusterous, elite mannerisms, to Plabita’s twin life as a waitress and a hidden sex object available for online consumption asks important questions about just how much of yourself can you reveal to the world. Thakore’s young parkour athlete who does odd jobs to make a buck and a young small-town dancer are walking, breathing tragedies. They see Escaype Live, quite literally as a way to escape that little bit faster towards their dreams. It makes them do inane, inexplicable things almost at the cost of their own lives.
Escaype Live suggests that while social media offers power and fame, you are never really in control of either. Rather than wish for the seed of destiny to blossom, social media is a colonising empire that wants to devour more and more land. Yes, it can’t live without people becoming popular, but it also cannot live without desperation, angst and anxiety that pushes people to live on the edge of despair, to turn that edge into commoditised content. It can be gross, gruesome, erotic and disgusting, but as long as it encourages in you a shift, a flinch, even a yawn, it is working. It’s why Escaype Live doesn’t actually function like an equitable society, but as an electorate. It wishes to platform one over the other, because without competition, there would be no survival instinct. Only when the crown is transient does the greed to wear it become permanent.
All that said, Escaype Live could have been better performed. Siddharth as the moral heart of the story appears rigid and uninterested. Some supporting roles, including the usually dependable Jaaved Jaaferi underwhelm. The production design is too basic to qualify as a deceptively current view of tech dystopia. Also, the show is conveniently anchored by lower-class characters. There is then the missing bite of the Black Mirroresque gaze unpeeling the rich.
Nonetheless, Escaype Live is fascinating for the many ideas it confronts, from gender to identity, from class to the politics of internal borders. And foremost, as a fluid critique of the social media ecosystem that has spawned many fake lives, often at the cost of some original ones. The price paid in the creation of these lives is what Live wants to construct and explore. And for that, it can have all my money.
Escaype Live is streaming on Disney+Hotstar
The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal.
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