Wednesday, April 25, 2007

For 1%

Gone are the days of good entertaining programming on TV. Now you cant see a drama on TV that has anything but hatred, scheming, crime, depicting only the 1% of the nation's population. Other major ingredients include hijras, dresses you wouldnt see anyone wearing ordinarily in the depicted social class, and lots of other absurdity. There's this program on A-TV in which the host invites rich people to show off their fancy wheels and to tell us how much they bought them for. That' bullcrap! I used to watch a similar BBC program on PTV and they never showcased any billionaire owners, of which I'm sure they have plenty. But our 1% wouldnt be left behind. Then, there's this interior design program, again, for the 1%. Hello, how about us? The 1% can watch their own favorite foreign channels, so why dont you give us what we would like to see.
There was a host on PTV who was talking about "enlightened moderation" saying that we are not adopting western extremism, of vulgarity for instance, but are showing moderation, by balancing with our culture. Well, she got it all wrong. It's not coming down from their side, it is going up from our side. Leaving our extreme and finding a common ground. Like saying, yea, yea, that might be my religious obligation, I understand, but I have to keep the rest of the world happy, too, I'm sure Allah would understand, so I'll just skip namaz and some other stuff and be enlightened moderate. At least get your facts straight.
Talking of the media, what's with these protests against protesters? The ruling party protesting against Jamia Hafsa, protesting against those who are protesting in front of Supreme Court, and being so nice as to have their own rally stopped far from the Supreme Court, "to avoid any clashes." That's a little more bullcrap! The same people who had media people beaten up, talk about freedom for the media, and protest when "the other guys" beat up some journalist during their protests. That's even more bullcrap! Stay tuned, there's much more bullcrap than can fit on this page.

2 comments:

Shahid Usman said...

There is a whole lot more to come on TV.. just hang on. I watched that program Maachis ( check out on youtube)... not much different than Jerry Springer show but in urdu.. totally disgusting.. I mean ,, everyone knows what's inside a gutter, is there a need to open it up and and let everyone experience it involuntarily ? MEDIA has manipulated very well or I would say ..high jacked the enlightened moderation theme.. these programs are commercial art.. and commercial art has to have a commercial value.. otherwise it is a loss of them. The sub-standard will continue to go down and down and down...

Unknown said...

Can you believe how incredibly raunchy today's dramas and commercials have become?! So much for liberalizing the media, its a fact that when you give them (people) a free hand, they'll invariably go down this path. But no, we are supposed to take it as a part of "enlightened moderation" and not raise such parochial objections.