10 reasons why
Indian daily soaps are crap.
Indian daily
soaps are crap and I wouldn’t turn back three times at you to repeat that. I am
sure a significant part of human population shares my disgust. Well, at least
the male part. This is partly due to the phone calls of emergency that the
husbands received at work of an emergency back home, usually by a sobbing
better half. “Mihir mar gaya! ”, was what they heard after the rush back home.
Those who thought that it was the end of melodrama were proven wrong by an
absence of lunch. This was consistent with the Indian tradition of stoves not
being lit in those houses where there is a death. Let me give you 10 more
reasons of my disgust.
1. No variety.
Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi ran for eight and a half years. What followed
afterwards was little different, be it Kahani Ghar Ghar ki or Kasauti Zindagi ki. Most of the shows are centered
on the hardships of a female character, in many cases a newlywed being
exploited by a mother-in law or more appropriately monster-in-law.
2. Too many tears.
One industry that might have grown with the viewership of these soap
operas is the glycerin manufacturing industry. Most of the episodes start or
end with a character in tears, sometimes it is both of the times. May I please
suggest a dose of :
3. Women are shown in a subjugated way.
Most of the shows depict women sacrificing stuff to make other members of
the family happy. A model woman is shown to be the one who obediently takes
orders from her husband and does everything to make him happy no matter if it
kills her self respect and subjugates her personality. This gives out a wrong
message to young girls who follow the soap operas that a woman is meant to
sacrifice all her happiness just to see other people happy. Its big time the
makers stopped stereotyping Indian women.
4. Lack of an interesting script and
repetitive dialogues.
The producers are so skeptical of introducing new plot and elements that
they stick to the same age old formula and put it under an infinite loop. Little
effort is put into writing dialogues and you can easily predict what a
character is going to say next. Those responsible for the storyline of these
shows need to break out of their shells and give us something new and catchy.
5. Logically inaccurate.
Film and documentary makers have the freedom of twisting elements of the
plot in their favor in order to create a better dramatic effect that pleases
the audience and keeps them engrossed. However, this freedom has corrupted the
makers of the Indian soap operas who introduce such twists and turns that
literally murder logic. The soap opera makers use and overuse memory loss and
plastic surgery as their favorite plot twist whenever a new actor comes up to
play a character or whenever they run out of story.
6. Too much K.
There was a time when you switched on the TV and you found a serial
starting with the letter ‘K’. You changed the channel only to find another
serial running on another channel that like its predecessor began with the
letter ‘K’. You can thank Ekta Kapoor for this K bombing. This is a perfect
example of how one person’s obsession with an alphabet can impact the entire
nation. Too much K(potassium) in your blood can lead to hyperkalemia which in
turn leads to cardiac arrest. So, the next time someone asks you for possible
reasons for an increase in heart ailments in the country, you know whom to
blame.
7. Too much make-up.
There is no place for Sherlock in a country that has CID. Isn't it?Seriously, who goes to sleep with their make-up on? Our soap heroines do.
The female characters are found to be under heavy make-up no matter where they
are. They are adorned with jewelry right from the forehead up to their feet. Kumkum’s
bindi was so large that she could use it as a Frisbee whenever she got bored.
The day is not far when we would hear about an actress being crumbled to death
under the weight of her jewelry and make-up.
8. Idiotic sound effects and zoom-ins.
The soap opera makers seem to have taken an oath to defy all the
advancement that has been made in the field of graphics and sound mixing to
give us the same old repetitive sound effects and face zoom-ins that they have
been using since time immemorial. The delivery of almost every dialogue is followed
by a zoom-in towards the face of the listener starting from the left side then
from the front and then from the right. Sometimes, to the viewers’ dismay, the
process repeats itself. Sometimes, these effects seem irritating and at other
times comical. The sound of thunder crashing every time something unexpected
happens has caused ear damage to many people with home theatre systems.
9. Too much melodrama.
Everything that the makers of soap operas lack in terms of a story and
script, they seem to make up by introducing too much melodrama. We can take up
the example of Pammi in “Desh me Nikla hoga Chand”. She expressed nervousness
or surprise by heavy breathing and a hand on her chest that showed the large
amount of air that she took in and then exhaled. This made many to suspect that
she might be suffering from asthma. The characters are emotionally
unpredictable and no one can say when they will start crying or shouting or
dancing with joy.
10. Too many episodes.
The makers of soap operas are so driven by profit that they go on
producing new episodes even if they have run short of plot. This results in too
many episodes with no progress in plot. Some of the serials reach a point where
each episode seems to be a repetition of its predecessor.
We all miss her though. Don't we?
