Haidar Saif
Are all programs suitable for all?
It is the Dhakaian filmmakers who shouted the slogan for the first time: a film worthy to enjoy with ‘whole family’… The slogan was inevitable because meantime Bangla cinema took an unhealthy turn towards vulgarism. To bring the audience back to cinema halls, filmmakers invented the slogan which, in course of time, became a prime necessary for the television producers as well. Now you cannot watch all TV programmes sitting together with your family members.
It will, however, not be fair to brand all television programmes with the same level. Yes, there are enough programmes, descent and well-made, which you can tune on with your seven year old son beside you. But you cannot filter them out of tens of channels you subscribe as a single package from the cable operators. In your absence, your little kid, might be reluctantly, tuning around many channels that are not healthy at all for him.
Let’s make a short list of programmes broadcasted on Bangladeshi channels. First, there is news; then news based programmes like talk shows, documentaries, news reviews. If news is excused, talk show comes next. These are not for the kids, neither for the juveniles. If you don’t count the biased commentaries that darkened some of the talk shows, these programmes are not that harmful to your children. Documentaries are perhaps most educative of all programmes, necessary also, and that is why most neglected simultaneously to the producers and audience. The producers always have a semi-true excuse: documentaries cannot bring in advertisements. Well, the real truth is perhaps the producers are not interested in producing anything free of minimum so-called entertainment that they have huge in music and dramas.
Then comes musical programmes. All of those high rated channels telecast more or less ten types of musical programmes every week. In the autocratic days of BTV, there were musical programmes, where prominent singers used to sing alone on the stage. The videography was so simple. Now, sandwiched by Hindi and English channels, musical programmes have refurnished themselves with quite new and surprising elements that, most of the time, make them unfit for multi-member family to watch together. Anchors in some musical programmes always have their keenest interest on their attires which becomes shorter and tighter in every episode. During presentation, their body language provokes away the audience to something far beyond mere music. Then, there are music videos, filmed with identical semblance to English music videos. The ill-intension more often compels the actors to dress and act like western puppets. What finally borns has no identity, neither they can serve the least to the musical appetite.
A great change has occurred in case of TV-Drama
Next the dramas. The theme has been drastically changed from where it was 15 years back. Some, in advance, have outlined the golden heyday for drama when from playwright to actors, all have a vision to serve with something better. The dream is still there but among a few who are mostly neglected on screen now. A huge number of youths have been enrolled in drama industry most of whom have not the minimum training. They are bedazzled in advance with upcoming glamour. Along with young actors-actresses, the theme also has been concentrated mostly on teenage dilemmas. Here again, the problem is in culture. What they screen is not familiar to us. The language they talk is not ours. The relation they nourish or dream to build with their friends were never our inheritance. The dresses have been craftily designed to shape our taste. At the day’s end we rush to the shopping malls to buy the dress that dazzled in last Sunday night’s super-hit drama. What our children learn from this is how to talk over mobile overnight with college friends. And many more…
One thing we should not skip is the talent search programme. It was not entirely bad where it started. The programme makers picked up mainly musical talents from across the country. They came, sang and won the people’s heart. Then the real competition started. All channels started introducing similar programmes. Rather than searching for talents, it became a way to exhibiting one’s strength in managing musical stars and the glamour. Alongside music, there started other talent search as well. Many are now searching for heroes-heroines. Again the imitation, the costume, the culture they exhibit remind us of something else, something not belong to us. The way the competition moves ahead again remind us of the very slogan we quoted in the beginning. Very few of us, fortunately, again feel the ancient quest for something worthy to watch with ‘whole family’.