Did She Vomit? Who Slapped Whom?
Before I came to the University of Texas, I used to live in Chennai, India. And when I used to live in Chennai, I sometimes had to sit through Tamil1 serials2 because my grandmother would not give me the TV remote. It was not my unhappiness at missing Cricket on ESPN that made me dislike these serials. Well, it was one of the reasons, but there were many more.
The production quality was pretty terrible and the acting was laughable. It always troubled me as to why these serials were so popular. My grandmother often used to keep track of the story lines of 15 different shows and this initially baffled me. However, as there was always Cricket happening on ESPN, I sat in front of the TV a lot, hoping that the remote would reach my hands. As a result, I started to watch the serials with my grandmother and I realized why it wasn’t hard to follow the story lines for 15 different shows - they were all the same.
One week a daughter slapped her mother. The next week the mother slapped the daughter. The week after that they made up and this cycle continued for 500 more episodes. Some of the scenes from these shows bordered on the insane. I’ve seen an actor on one of these shows take pills from a bottle labeled ‘Poison’. Maybe the director was worried that the viewers might get confused otherwise.
The stories revolve around backstabbing, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law fighting, violence, pregnancy, and of course ‘sentiment’. ‘Sentiment’ happens when viewers go ‘aww’ when a mother and son exchange lines of how they are lucky to have each other. Tears are definitely involved, from the actors and sometimes even from the viewers.
There are certain clichés that have to be used in all Tamil serials. If the female character vomits, it means that she is pregnant. If people are shown traveling in a car, then it means that an accident is waiting to happen. If two people are happily married, then the episode where they will sign the divorce papers is not far away.
It was my deep passion for Cricket and the hope that there was a God that helped me sit through these shows. I truly think that if people just stopped watching these serials, it will make producers come up with better work. It has annoyed me that a lot of Tamil serials show women in a bad light and that they talk mostly about vengeance. It is obvious that this is a powerful medium and I wish that the people who make these shows would show some responsibility. Some of the dialogs on these shows are not worth repeating, but I do not completely blame the producers or the writers. I blame the viewers because they are watching something that can corrupt their thoughts. They also do not get that they are giving careers to people who cannot act and that, to me, is the worst crime.
Footnotes:
1 Tamil is the main language spoken in Chennai
2 A serial (in this context) is a multi-episode, continuity based TV series.
Photo Courtesy: jepoirrier
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What about the one where the female character is always this “submissive, my family is everything, I don’t matter” character? Or the evil in-laws? I love the scheming women.
However, before you slam it, check out Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hi Kijo- this one is about a poor family in Bihar who sells their daughter to a rich man’s worker and so on and so forth. It’s actually rather realistic.
I was surprised by it.
[Reply]
VJ Reply:
June 18th, 2009 at 10:49 am
They all start out promising to be different but, 50 episodes down, degenerate into the trash that has been seen over and over.
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