Suggested Topics :
‘The Tribe’ Review: A Show Worthy of the Era of Ambient Viewing
For the most part, The Tribe successfully offers a watchable portrait of privilege that’s ideal while doing chores and folding laundry.
In popular comedian Azeem Banatwalla’s latest stand-up video on YouTube, he takes aim at everyone’s favourite punching bag — influencers. “I believe influencers are the real virus that emerged in March 2020,” he says, adding: “More than COVID, they’re the ones who have caused a loss of taste in society”. "When talented people get motivated, you get art. But when untalented people get motivated, the result is...reels," he later says.
And who among us doesn’t enjoy lamenting the scourge of influencers; the flashy, hollow nothing they seem to contribute to society; and their belief that “content creation” is an art form? Perhaps, most of all — and more than we care to admit — deep down, we’re jealous of the seemingly lavish lifestyle they propagate, and the number of zeroes attached to many of their paychecks for a single social media post.
To capitalise on our unquenchable thirst to look down on them is Amazon Prime Video’s new reality series The Tribe from Dharmatic Entertainment. Over nine episodes, we follow a group of influencers hauled up in a house together in Los Angeles. (There’s a joke in here somewhere about how the makers wanted to emulate a popular American reality series so badly that they literally packed their bags and decided to shoot in LA.)
The Tribe, not to be confused with the brutal, deeply disturbing 2014 Ukrainian drama about the horrific Lord of the Flies-style violence, abuse and anarchy that takes hold of a bully-run state boarding school (though many of the vibes are similar), is hard to mess up. We’re all so ready to judge privileged and delusional content creators that sticking them under the same roof to ignite drama should make for a delicious guilty-pleasure reality series. And in this era of ambient viewing, fed by the need to constantly have something droning on in the background that we’ve convinced ourselves we’re invested in, The Tribe successfully does what it sets out to do.
Let’s meet the group. First up, there's the group's queen-bee Alanna Panday, CEO of CollabTribe, a company that aims to pool the collective social media might of a group of influencers. “Stunning girls with stunning social media accounts living their best life,” as Alanna describes it. She is the cousin of Ananya Panday, the star of last week’s big release — Vikramaditya Motwane’s deeply unnerving Netflix thriller CTRL about how devices and social media will be the death of us. Diving into The Tribe after ruminating over CTRL is a uniquely unsettling experience. Going from the headspace of that film to the performative, sickening synthetic-ness of this series is a recipe for the existential crisis that makes you want to question reality, hug a real person and touch grass. Am I real? Am I content? Is this all a simulation? Are we all cake?
Anyway, back to the roll call. There’s Aryaana Gandhi, a singer-songwriter-influencer (the similarity of her name to that of a leading pop star is apparently purely coincidental). There’s Srushti Porey, daughter of National-Award-winning filmmaker and lawyer Samruddhi Porey. Srushti also has a sustainable swimwear company called Breakfast Party — a concept that arose from combining “everyone’s favourite things…food and butts”. There’s beauty influencer Alaviaa Jaaferi, daughter of Jaaved Jaaferi. In one scene in the first episode, around the dinner table, Alaviaa is explaining to her father what CollabTribe is and what an influencer does, to which he responds, “Koi bhi lukha influencer ban raha hai…The real people who have talent like actors don’t have work, but somehow these people do”. Jaaved Jaaferi is all of us.
Rounding off the group is the new girl, Alfia Jafry, daughter of filmmaker Rumi Jaffery. Alfia aspires to be a culinary influencer and the next Nigella Lawson, but for the others, she’s a tragedy because she’s thus far had a private Instagram profile. You’d think she has a terminal disease the way people’s faces drop each time someone finds out she has a private profile. It’s apparently the worst thing that can happen to anyone, anywhere, ever.
Then, there’s perhaps the most interesting figure of the group — the moneybags Hardik Zaveri, a wealthy angel investor. CollabTribe is his brainchild. He claims to want to start a “movement” to create Indian internet sensations in LA because he grew up watching Entourage, and wants to live that life. I’m still unclear why this is a winning business idea, but I guess it’s because you have money, and you can. Hardik even gets called out by Alanna in the opening episode when she says, “It’s not a fucking movement…just chill, it’s an agency”, and hardly a successful one. During the filming of the series, CollabTribe had 6,000 Instagram followers. Today, it's at 11,000 and will undoubtedly grow through the week. (In a world of streaming platforms routinely casting influencers to bring audiences to watch their shows, you have to love the irony of a reality show being made with the express purpose of increasing the follower count of an unsuccessful Instagram page.)
Over nine episodes (and an unending onslaught of some of the whitest teeth you’ve ever seen on a human person), we follow the group moving to a lush LA mansion and half-heartedly trying to make CollabTribe work. The series kicks off with Alanna’s wedding to her “fiance, co-worker and content-creator partner” Ivor Mccray. Before the wedding, we get a telling look at how influencers seek to monetise their milestone moments. “A wedding is one of the biggest times in a creator’s life…to make deals”, says Alanna to her manager, adding: “It’s a huge opportunity for us to grow on social media. But it’s also a big day for us personally…we are actually getting married, I do love him,” she feels the need to clarify.
In the second episode, the group is off to LA searching for the perfect “content house”, which tells you everything about how they engage with the world. Every corner must be “Instagrammable”. The word “aesthetic” also gets thrown around a frankly violent amount throughout the series. Everything is in service of content and digitally enhancing the act of living life. In the sixth episode, the girls go on a camping trip because “travel leads to insane content”.
The listless pace of the series also seems to mirror the group’s unhurried way of life. For example, they squabble over who gets what room well into the fifth episode. And it’s only in the sixth episode that their first post goes out on the CollabTribe page. It goes without saying that those looking for any kind of insight into the often admirable hustle of being an influencer won’t find it here, considering this group is all seemingly wealthy upper-class Mumbai elite. Many of them even casually admit to declining offers to be launched in Bollywood because it’s “just not their thing”. The Tribe is then a meditation on the lethargic, lavish lifestyle and illusion of productivity that wealth and privilege can afford you. (How's that for overintellectualising a frivolous reality show?)
We also get a look at the prickly politics of posting, which is apparently a whole thing.
“Post it!”“No, I'll just story' it!”
“Bro, I don’t care if you archive it, but you have to post it!”
— is an actual exchange. Suffice it to say, everything I have learnt about social media from this show I have learnt against my will. We also learn that the biggest dig you can take at an influencer is saying things like “as if you can talk, you only post once a month”. It's why The Tribe serves as a strong testament to why you shouldn’t get into business with your friends and a masterclass in passive-aggressive communication and disagreeing to agree.
But it’s not all fun and games. During the aforementioned camping trip, after being triggered by a jibe, Alfia appears to have a serious emotional breakdown, crying uncontrollably. She even demands the cameras leave her alone while she needs some time to herself (it’s the only time in the series that someone references the camera). It’s here that the show momentarily stops being guilty-pleasure viewing and starts to feel irresponsible and uncomfortable.
But for the most part, The Tribe successfully offers a watchable portrait of privilege that’s ideal while doing chores and folding laundry. Whether watching rich people coasting along comfortably and achieving very little is enjoyable TV for nine long episodes is something for you to decide. Now, excuse me while I find a person to hug, and look for some grass to touch.