Karachi Made Drama Doesn’t Represent The Whole Multi-Cultural Society…
Karachi, the biggest city of the country, is the economical hub of Pakistan. This beach city is significant due to many reasons. Not only international trade but it is important being the most modern and advanced city of Pakistan. Our fashion and drama industry is mainly functioning from Karachi. Rather the latter one has more than 70% share of total drama production in Pakistan. It’s because most of the entertainment TV channels, drama production houses, and advertising companies are Karachi based. TV channels’ business is directly linked with advertising companies.
In Lahore, opportunities are less as compared to Karachi. Due to the current situation, many Lahore based artists have moved to Karachi permanently and others are also moving gradually.But this fact can’t be neglected that every producer, director, writer, and artist can’t move to Karachi due to financial issues.
In PTV era, there used to be five TV stations all over the country –Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta, and Peshawar. Now drama production has got limited to two stations only – Karachi, and Lahore. Not only Lahore but the other three above mentioned stations do have creative talent which is being utilized only for regional language programsor going waste. The regional programs are produced only on PTV, or some native language channels that have a very limited viewership so the talent can’t be flourished, especially in acting.
In private channels, onlyATV, and A-plus mainly show Lahore productions. Some Karachi based channels show 30-40% and some channels rarely show Lahore productions.
Cultural Diversity is not being seen there:
Pakistan is culturally a diverse country and different provinces have wide ranging cultural, socio-economical, financial, and family problems. People from all over country should have a representation in our drama stories. There had been a serial “Kailaash” on NTM way back in late 90s, on the cultural, family, and social matters of Kailaash people. Such dramas on specific clan and problems of a region are equal to none at present. Most of the dramas are almost same in content and subjects. Upper middle, lower middle, and urban class mostly is being seen in current dramas, which is not the overall and 100% representation of a diverse culture of the country.
Also the country side (village) stories are rare, though villages comprise more than 60% of our whole population. Don’t they have any tales to be told in drama? In past, we saw Waris on feudal system, Dasht on tribal conflicts and a love story emerging from within, and Rahain was another village story and many more to be cited.Boota from Tobatek Singh, Landa Bazar etc. were also non-urban stories written by Khalil-ul-RahmanQamar who also gave another hit Main Marr GaeeShaukat Ali in 2010. These stories beautifully highlighted the village life and their problems.
Unlike these narratives, Karachi based dramas are limited to family politics, romance, marital and extra marital issues etc. However, we saw three very good tales by AsgharNadeem Syed – BolMeriMachli, Tum Ho KehChup, and Dil TauBhatkayGaduring last few years which highlighted some very critical and not-talked-about social subjects.
Limited to some particular sagas:****
Another thing pertinent to mention here is that romance based dramas are mostly written by female writers. Riseof females in drama writing is a good thing but they are confined to a ‘miserable life of women’ sort of stories by male producers and directors. These directors and producers won’t or rarely go for a writer like AshgarNadeem Syed, Amjad Islam Amjad, Khalil-ul-RahmanQamar, and YounusJavaid etc. because they don’t want to spend money on their handsome fee. Also, they care for ratings at the most.
Our drama production houses have to be wide ranging in subjects and writershave to touch most of the people all over the country. The monopoly of subjects and sameness of stories is going to be a hindrance in development of drama. This halt can be removed and a changed scenario be brought by drama makers themselves!!!
http://enewspak.com/karachi-main-hub-of-drama-production-what-about-other-cities/
I agree with everything written above, lack of cultural diversity is so much evident from the dramas these days.We had so much diversity in the past with contributions from all five TV stations and it’s unfair that talented people from Peshawar and Quetta are restricted only for regional language programes.
flowers: