Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Hard water

I interrupted myself while being swallowed in a piece of work to report something that had me feeling the room was filled with laughing gas.

Now, is it just me, or are the soap operas really so soapy that soap feels it's being given a bad name? The answer seems pretty obvious now that I've made the question out in clear letters.
They are soapy.

Little kids have their own and (allegedly) mothers-in-law have their favourites. Call me a cynic if you think it fits into place, but I can't stand watching one of those oh-so-K-full-shows. The same old effects, the same old sound samples...It just gets irritating.

I don't know what they make these shows for, and I can't figure out what they're trying to tell me through it. A girl goes through a ton of pangs and finally gets married to someone whose family is hell-bent on tearing the marriage apart and there's a not-so-distant uncle who wants all the family property so he teams up with his wife and begins scheming and backstabbing but in the end it finally comes back to where it started from originally. Is that what the writer comes up with and tells the director? "That's gold..."?
They could surely do better.

Point two. Why have they made it their mission to copy music off movie soundtracks? Other than that, why do they have the same stale and dilapidated sound effects going on in the back for different shows on different channels? The same ["swoosh!" zoom camera into a couple of still, lifeless faces], ["cymbals!" zoom out of face and make surprised expression]. What in the world does that mean? Is that a dramatic situation where I'm supposed to gasp in horror?
Whatever it is, I can't get myself to stop laughing when it happens.

Three. Sometime ago, a new revolution was in sight. A breath of fresh air for people who watched TV as it was, because some guys created a show that wasn't based on saas-bahu (I hate that phrase) sagas.
2 months down the line, every other show was like that. "Wow! a middle class girl, who has dreams!". Fine. New it was, and the concept unchallenged, but they went back to their roots in no time. Stretching it out like chewing gum. arggh!

The list won't stop and it goes back to last Christmas, mind you. It's tiresome for me to watch something like that with so much depth and count out what all it's flaws are.
And before you creators start criticizing me for saying all this and begin asking me to make something better, I have a suggestion.
Make something that's good. Something that's believable and realistic, because the way you're going, you get unrealistic the harder you try to be real. It's not without reason that you've been pigeonholed.
To sum it up in a couple of points, be original and honest. Don't make something just because you think it's going to fetch TRP, and then stretch it once the show becomes popular.

And if you were, by any chance, thinking how I could say all this after liking an actress who acts in these shows, then all I have to say is that she's far better off hosting shows.

5 comments:

  1. @canary:
    makes me happy to see you here :)

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  2. I agree!! Totally!! Every evening, I sit with the remote, trying to find something worthwhile. Everywhere it's those soapy zooms and pans on garish faces. I try some more...can't find anything. Give up after an hour, aometimes even earlier. Sometimes I also wonder who'd be watching those things seriously! I mean s-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y. With rapt attention, shedding tears along with their glycerine ones! Is anybody watching at all? Tired with these, I sometimes shift to news (which is more dramatic than these soaps)...but there also, it's the same story after a while....heated dicussion on why Raskhi Sawant sings, Or why Indian men behave the way they do...or some silly family tiff ...who's watching?

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  3. ha..ha..great observation!!
    how the writer would be telling the director!! Just imagine...
    But it also makes me sad..Is this the stuff my country loves to watch!!!

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  4. @anonymous:
    Who's watching? That's what I ponder over...
    and news...watch out for part 2.

    @anonymous:
    It sells. Going by that logic, I think everything would sell.
    Off I am to produce my album...

    ReplyDelete