Originally posted by hegdemedha
@ Sush: What you've mentioned about viewership responses is interesting.
Well, I've never asked folks I've met, during the course of my work, from rural areas about their television-watching habits. But, then, that's probably also because most folks I'd meet do not have even have a television at home or do not have electricity in their houses. And, the load-shedding sometimes continues well into the night too. A sobering thought that.
I'd guess that folks out there do find a reflection of themselves in those soaps that we would identify as regressive. Just as we are able to identify ourselves with shows that have progressive content, they are able to identify the realities of their lives in the soaps that we identify as regressive. So, it's easier for them to empathise with the characters on those shows. But, then arises the question of whether these general entertainment channels would care to utilise the hold they have and the reach they have to actually deliver social messages and bring about a societal change.
I have a different view on this.
Good thoughts have to be imposed, progressive ideas have to be imposed. They might not be liked but they have to be shown as an alternative.
If it had not been, women's education, abolition of sati, equality would have all been a dream. Nobody loved it when it was imposed but we all enjoy it in our lives don't we.
One of my maids who works for me come in a bruised state every week saying she fell from the stairs. I told her to tell her husband that i am going to file a police complaint against him and then she said, ti was not her husband but her son who pushed her off the stairs. she looks at me in awe and looking at our lives works even harder to ensure that her grand daughters go to school. It is a different thing that her grandsons quit school earlier than her grand daughters who are slogging it out despite all odds. It is this wish for a better life that they think education can get for them.
Empathising does not solve the problem as much as threatening does.
I did not see balika vadhu as could not see everybody saying 'how cute' to a child bride.
But I have started seeing it now as they are going towards showing the ill-effects of child marriage, after three years of it being on air. Imagine all the elderly ladies seeing Balika Vadhu saying, isiliye toh kehte the, bachpan mein hi shaadi karani chahiye taaki ladki sasural mein ghul mil jaaye. When you get a readymade maid by marriage who will do as you wish, why will anybody not like it. It was glorifying it to such an extent that people were finding good in it.
Sasural genda phool is good. But the heroine is fantastic. I liked the bengali version even more. A good story is good whatever the language. I started seeing Ogo Bodho sundari (the bengali version of sasural genda phool long before they even thought of making it in hindi. i don't know one word of bengali but i was still seeing it religiously in the morning at 9.00. It ahd a certain charm. They did not have the guts to keep the same story of the bengali version in the hindi but it is still okay. Once they started the hindi, i kind of let go of the bengali. But it is still different from normal saas bahu soaps. But they are a rarity.
Most saas bahu soaps show stuff for people as code of conduct which in real life even the actors would not be following. So if a guy threatens you on the train, are you supposed to report him to the police or get married to him and fall in love with him because finally he is a good guy. How can i see such stuff.
see you all tomm
It is a great chance for them to go back to Geet's social justice message alongwith the romance aspect and they can shift it to the 11 pm slot and keep everybody happy. if it is a kitchen romance of geet and nandu, i don't think even the people who want it to stay are going to stick around to watch it. Till it is being telecast, the hope of its story returning to what it started out with is still there. And that is the hope with which I would like to save Geet, the hope of getting back my geet and maan in their original avatars.
