– Satyakam Ray
Recently one web series has gained popularity on the Indian OTT platform. That’s none other than The Family Man. The Manoj Bajpayee starred spy thriller has become the talk of the town. Apart from the terrorists, Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee) had to deal with his family members – specifically his daughter Dhriti. The teenager is adamant and speaks typical verbatim, which is incomprehensible to Srikant.
When Dhriti was kidnapped, and Srikant questioned her classmates and friends to elicit vital information regarding the kidnapper, he faced a precarious yet funny situation. The generation gap between the father and daughter was visible. The astonishment and bewilderment were written all over the face of Srikant. The puzzled look Srikant gave while listening to the English spoken by the teenagers summed up all.
During this interaction of Srikant with Dhriti’s classmates, one adjective popped up – capitalistic baboon. Of course, Srikant was puzzled as hell! The author, while watching the show, also got confused. After googling the meaning of the capitalistic baboon, the author didn’t get the head or tail of what’d been said.
As gathered by the minuscule intellect of the author, the baboon is a specific monkey found in Africa and Asia. Baboon also means jerk in urban jargon. Capitalism is well around the corner whenever anyone buys petrol for the bike! But what does the capitalistic baboon means combined? The jerk who brags about materialistic achievements or believes in capitalism in general? Very hard to find out, though; it’s possible to find a gen-z to chat with and find out its true meaning!
The boys and girls aged 15-16 talking about capitalism, socialism, misogyny, patriarchy, and ideological differences sound odd to people from the 30+ age range. The smart-ass behavior often looks patronizing to an indifferent older onlooker. The concepts are excellent, but understanding them requires much practical, real-life experience. The theoretical know-how of the terms may look alluring and intelligent to some teenagers, but real-time experiences acquire actual knowledge.
It’s funny also considering the dilemma faced by the 90s kids when they hear such verbatim in their adulthood. Because in the 90s, kids were fighting over remote control or video game as adolescents. The hi-fi words were alien to many youngsters, and still, many adults feel the same upon hearing such tongue twisters. Considering the new world of tech-savvy parentage, it’s a lot of hard work for adults to keep up with the kids nowadays.
Psychologically, the new generation’s mindset has changed drastically in the last few years. Things have become very fast-paced, and those who can’t compete in the rat race are discarded as left-out late bloomers. The bloomer generation belonging to that old-fashioned notion of things often lags behind their offspring. The English-speaking style and choice of words have changed drastically. Many calling out the F word has become a status symbol as English-speaking learned aristocracy.
The augmentation of liberalism has gone beyond its true territorial influence and missed subtle nuances of being polished or gentleman in general.
In the Popular TVF parody of roadies, one bald guy mimicking Raghu keeps roasting the contestant by alleging him as sexist, capitalist, racist, and even an exorcist! The capitalistic baboon was playing in the head of the bald Raghu! Another noteworthy point in the show was the guy’s address (mimicking RanVijay). RanVijay told the contestant that he didn’t know he was a racist! He was heard saying, “Tujhe pata nhi but Tu Hai.”
After observing the verbatim, the author has decided to play cool while talking to the gen-z people next time. With a pocket notebook ready, it will be tempting to note down some new urban jargon spoken by the bunch of baboons. Oops! Did the author say baboons? Not an ideal way of ending an article. But it seems Fworthy to mention the magical word to people with an attention span of 8 seconds!