The space of Call Centres: JOHN AND JANE: TOLL FREE

The movie was about how call centers (and the new IT service economy), the new boom of our Indian economy, claiming to provide new job opportunities to us; are becoming agents of a cultural brainwashing. To be efficient in these jobs and serve the customer better requires you to relate to their space, their malls, products, their systems. In the process of establishing this relationship there is a constant comparison, abundance v/s less, variety, choice, brands, better. (They play on our psyche as consumers to sell the product or provide service more efficiently.)

So I finally caught the movie John and Jane at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), a part of the HBO series for introducing New film/ New directors.

The audience: I went there expecting it to be like our Film festivals, a mixture of film enthusiasts like me, the cool critics in their kurtas and pajamas, young aspiring film makers and hoards of the directors friends. Well I was surprised (or should I have been?) 98% of the audience was white. Only 2% were Indians. I was excited when Ashim was introduced. He is from Mumbai. I felt a surge of pride as if I already knew him.

The movie started with shots of Times Square, as if shot from a car, the surreal, undying spirit of Times Square. It then moved into the house of a middle class Christian house in Mumbai, Glen and his mother. She had this irritating throaty accent, whenever she called out to her son “Glaain”(which I liked!).

I liked Glen; he was full of “fuck” all the time and in constant dissatisfaction with his call centre job. Ashim caught it in parts, the dissatisfaction of the youth that is restless, impatient and unable to adjust to the new kind of “customer service” job which does not fit into our imagination of a livelihood. We imagine ourselves to be doctors, engineers, of creating rather than serving. (Is it a middle class aspiration?)

With the call center boom being a relatively new phenomenon, starting only in about 2001, he captured to a certain extent the transition they are creating in our notions of self, work, social life and interaction. Glen’s dissatisfaction with the job because he does not get or Indian holidays but American holidays. It was not only a sense of betraying his country and accepting the loyalty of another I felt but also of getting cut off from his friends and social group or that he does not care who the anonymous customer at the other end of the line is and why he has to be subservient to him. His mother tells him matter of factly, that these are the demands of the job and he has to accept it. (Behind me, two white American women went tsk tsk... look what America is doing to this country. I was getting quite pissed with them)

The movie transitioned to other employees who liked the job and eventually to Shanti? who became the job herself. She transformed herself into a blonde, bleached her hair, her eyelashes and spoke with an American accent. She believed she was American. It was scary.

There was constant feeling of impending danger in the movie, an ominous sound playing in the background. I could not help but question the content. Like one of the audience later pointed that he had eliminated all context i.e. of family, of other existing job opportunities etc. Except Glen all the other employees lived alone, were Christian (hence English speaking), three out of the five lived in slums. Is that the profile of our call centre employees? I don’t claim to be an expert but I felt there was an enormous distortion of reality. Most slum dwellers rarely complete their 10th grade, are educated in Marathi speaking schools and cannot speak in English.

Also I think the movie was incredibly harsh. Even within the call centre fraternity, people form attachments and groups. They do not exist alone (which the movie implied). They go out together, go shopping, “party” together to cope and enjoy with their new life and money. It would have been interesting to know the spaces of pleasure within this new fraternity or how the transition occured from Glen to Shanti.

He excluded the entire middle and upper middle professionals for whom the call centre is job in transition, a means to sustain them till a more stable, “productive” job was found or teenagers as young as the 10th or 12th grade students for whom it is fast money and means to assert their individualism. More often than not they want the GUCCI glares.

I did relate to the married couple, where both of them worked in different shifts and did not have time to meet each other. They spent just 15 minutes together in a day. However the setting, a Mc Donald’s (symbol of American imperialism?), with him bargaining for a free toy. They are both eating a combo and she insisted that she wants a Mirinda. The scene was overstuffed. There was so much symbolism that it I did not know what to see, their lack of intimacy or Mc Donalds' overarching presence. I know a similar situation, where a friend of mine was complaining about how her relationship felt incomplete because she did not see her husband. He came home from a night shift at 7.30 or 8.0 am and she had to leave for her morning shift at 9.0/9.30am. They would have a super fast functional quickie. She missed him, the comfort of his body and their relationship. The movie missed theses nuances or even the harsh demands of these new jobs.

It was too busy relying on symbols without fleshing them out: The new buildings in New Bombay, Hirananadani complex, Mc Donalds..........

On the whole, the movie was disappointing. Rohan described it way too well.