Keeping Up With Uorfi Javed – and Her New Reality Show

The weekend episodes of Bigg Boss have always involved the host lecturing participants on their inability to be ‘real’ and forge honest friendships or enmities with each other. The expectation is that a reminder will perhaps nudge them in the direction of ‘reality’, a somewhat important attribute of a reality show.

Sadly, no amount of berating can turn the tide on this genre of television that has developed its own format, template, and pattern. It simulates reality but is often far from it.

It is no surprise then that reality shows such as Bigg Boss, Splitsvilla, and Khatron Ke Khiladi reproduce versions of themselves with each season. Participants are more than happy to play character types that seem to do well (the angry young man, the cute and ditzy woman, the friendless loner). As viewers, we also don’t expect anything more than an imitation of authenticity.   

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Uorfi Javed’s recently released reality show on Amazon Prime Video, Follow Kar Lo Yaar, has been scripted following the same pattern. Reality might be stranger than fiction, but the real life of Uorfi Javed seems oddly similar to the real life of Kim Kardashian. In the show’s nine episodes, we get a glimpse of Uorfi and her siblings' lives, choices, hardships, and joys.

From sibling rivalries, oddly-staged lunches with friends, visits to plastic surgeons, to conversations about filler injections, and a brazen display of wealth, Follow Kar Lo Yaar has all the ingredients that make up the familiar reality TV khichdi. 

What’s interesting about this show is that it really doesn’t bother pretending to be original. By episode two, you realise that Uorfi is keen to show you her many selves, inviting the camera into spaces that are intensely private.

There is really no going back once she has pulled you into her therapy sessions, multiple camera angles catching her breaking down. Here’s the vulnerable me, she seems to say.

We follow her into a dermatologist’s clinic for botox injections. Here’s the vain self. With her siblings, she is the parental and overbearing sister. Here’s the responsible self. At her work meetings, she is ambitious and no-nonsense. Here’s the accomplished self.

These reflections of the different selves should give us a pretty good idea of Uorfi and her selfhood, it is implied. 

'Where Does Uorfi Begin & The Performance End?'

The only problem is that it is always suspicious to take a calculating self’s word as true. In what she chooses to show us and in her lack of hesitation there is already a deliberate attempt to create a certain self. How is this Uorfi different, then, from the one we see on our Instagram screens? ​​How real can she really be, especially if she has shaped her online and offline personality entirely and totally for public consumption?  

Perhaps her bluntness is authentic to her, but over time it is also what has come to be expected of her. Where does Uorfi begin and the performance end?

It is hard to shake off the feeling that she is cosplaying both her ordinariness and her claims to celebrity. For example, she is quick to always set herself apart from other ‘influencers’ who are not at her level. She claims this elevated class position for herself precisely because of the ordinariness of her middle-class past. The fascinating thing is that she is aware of this completely. Several times, she tells you her intentions clearly — to use this show for fame. “I am not hungry for success, I am greedy!”, she declares at one point.

The show’s title, too, doesn’t hint at any other desire than for you to witness her, watch her, and follow her every move as she makes that transition from ordinary to extraordinary. And here lies the genius of Uorfi Javed — she is gaming the reality TV genre, and she wants you to be an equal and willing participant.

When she subverted the idea of paparazzi ‘spottings’ and red carpet looks by serving DIY fashion looks on the streets of Mumbai, her social media audience catapulted her to success. The show is a similar barefaced embrace of the neoliberal, capitalist demands of reality TV and its attention economy. She needs to perform the market-oriented desires, anxieties, and behaviours that define the reality TV genre in order to garner success. Simultaneously, it is the audience that must consume but also create her stardom. That’s why, follow kar lo yaar.

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'The Show Lays Bare The Infrastructure of Celebrity Culture'

This performance of reality comes with an all-access pass to the private lives, traumas, and secrets of the Javed family. While it is uncomfortable to be witness to their family quarrels, Uorfi’s workplace disagreements, and even her insecurities about her small boobs, these are also the things that help you connect to Uorfi.

Frankly, she makes for excellent reality TV — she is uninhibited, speaks her mind, and has no qualms admitting she is desperate for fame. If this throws you for a loop because you can’t quite figure out why she has her own reality show if she isn’t altogether famous, well that’s on you. Reality TV is going to be both the means to and the medium for her fame.  

What is particularly great about the show (something that was absent from others like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, and Moving in with Malaika) is that it lays bare the entire infrastructure of celebrity culture. We get to see Uorfi’s ‘real’ life, but we also see everything that goes into the making of Uorfi — the star.

A whole network of publicists, business managers, makeup artists, designers, friendly paparazzi, contacts in the industry and journalists keep Uorfi’s relationship with attention going. A crisis consumes the team when Uorfi posts a poll on her Instagram account, asking her audience if she should get a boob job.

“We had created such a classy perception of you and this poll takes everything down to zero. Please delete it,” her PR agent advises her. Has controversy's favourite child been tamed by the celebrity making machinery? Will her trademark audacity now be blunted to make her more digestible to the larger public?  

'Uorfi's 'Thing' Is & Always Has Been Her Mind'

In a telling scene, Uorfi realises that unlike other creators, she has no way to perform her talent — she can’t sing, or dance, or act or do comedy. Her claim to fame has been her ability to design outlandish outfits and create iconic fashion moments on the street — not something you can translate to the stage or the big screen. “Making a DIY dress every time isn’t essential. We need to do normal stuff!,” she says often. And she is right. There isn’t much standing in the way of her becoming another embodiment of that great adage of our age: “famous for being famous”. 

Except perhaps her untamable, loud, bold and gutsy personality.

Her ‘thing’ is and always has been her mind. The fearlessness with which she calls out sexism and Islamophobia, the sheer daring with which she dreams so bloody big is what makes her a star.

With this show she might have attempted daily life as a public performance, but ultimately, her stardom lies in her eagerness to forsake the ordinary and embody the spectacle. The push and pull between the two makes it impossible to know how much of Uorfi is real. And that is precisely why her show is a total delight to watch. 

Say what you want, but this girl was a reality star even before she got her own reality TV show.

The author is a writer and photographer based out of New Delhi. She writes about the intersections of culture, politics, gender and social justice.