TELEVISIONISATION…in Pakistan!
By Raju Jamil
TV is another kind of car, a windshield of the world. We climb inside, drive it, and it drives us, and we all go in the same direction, see the same thing. It is more than a mobile home, it is a mobile nation. It has become, in our country, our common language, our ceremony, our style, our entertainment and anxiety, our sympathetic magic, our way of celebrating, mourning, worshipping. It’s flimsy glue, but for the present it appears to be the only thing which is holding us together!
I remember having read somewhere that “TV is not the truth”…of course it’s not…I consider it an amusement park, a circus, a carnival or a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers and sportsmen…specially cricketers.
Past five years or within, Television in Pakistan has become the entertainment which is flowing like water. With so many popular satellite channels managed by Pak-based groups, TV has become like a station bookstall…something we might pick up to titillate the brain very gently ought not to be observed with the same critical standards as something designed to feed the minds of our society.
Credit, however and at all cost, must go to people like (Late) President FM Ayub Khan, (Late) Altaf Gauhar and the wonder man Aslam Azhar ( whom I consider the BABA-E-PTV ) who, by introducing TV in Pakistan, lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry…we see today.
Current Affairs accepted as the fact of life on almost all channels for their survival, but even more sought after is the profit via commercials which, primarily, is achieved through telecast of DRAMA which must continue to walk tiptoe and in agony lest it offend some tea or soap seller ( or buyer! ) from below the UMRAO JAN ADA line… but some very serious questions have cropped up about the volley of adverts. between the telecast of the serials and dramas and, reportedly, a very large majority of viewers are getting rather disillusioned and disgruntled on abrupt repeats which, they say, is spoiling their fun to watch and is becoming a waste of their time and money. They say that they do understand the necessity of commercial slots in between but voices speak of a fine management of same by the networks marketing departments. At this point it will be in place to mention that there is an insistent tendency among solemn social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human nature in normal or impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial.
This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependant on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.
Television in Pakistan, is a triumph of equipment over people, it is a kind of thing people pay attention to even if they don’t wish to. It is a chewing gum for the eyes! Television in Pakistan is first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. ( But I do sometimes wonder…what people really want? ).
If any reader of this article is in grip of some habit of which he is deeply ashamed, I advise him not to give way to it in secret but to do it on TV. My fellow artists on TV would bear me out that no one will pass them by with averted gaze on the other side of the road. People will cross the road in order to say “We saw you on the telly”. Books and TV plays are diversions about which most of us exercise some decision even if our selection is based on totally misleading publicity. The movies are a twilit zone…..TV is even lower down the scale of human choice. We nearly always see it by default. We must remember that in Pakistan ( & maybe a few other under developed nations ) there are certain difficult problems on television…It is in the nature of pictures to reflect action. It is very difficult for them to represent thought or policy.
Finally, the responsibility of those responsible in this context…is to carry, television, into the greatest number of homes in Pakistan EVERYTHING that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavor and achievement and to avoid anything which are or maybe hurtful. It is occasionally indicated to the TV-Networks that they are apparently setting out to give the public what they think they (Public) need, not what they ( Public) want. But few people know that what they want and very few what they need. There is often no difference. In any case, I thought that it is better to over estimate the mentality of the public than under estimate it.
As an artist, it is my considered opinion that on TV an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance!
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