Television has dominated our lives ambiguously. From the bahus to over-excited youngsters in reality shows, TV is becoming depressing rather than entertaining. It negatively impacts the viewers of the new generation when limited “reality” is present, occasionally scripted and edited for entertainment. Our youth tend to think, enact, and endure the characters they perceive, enabling them to lose their sense of thinking and true emotions towards actual situations. The actions in these shows are replete with negative portrayals and graphic violence, diminishing one’s perception of reality.
Where in real life do you see a household like they show in TV serials? Highly regressive households, where daughters are married off sans basic education and where parents mouth platitudes like “the more you educate the girl, the greater problems she would have adjusting in the new family”! The men of the household return in a group each evening and are greeted by bedecked wives at the door, urging them to freshen up while they serve tea.
At the other extreme, reality TV dishes up hyperventilating youngsters, most with scant talent, dreaming bigger than is healthy for them, ready to burst into tears at the first sign of defeat. This is where the camera seems to get a paparazzi life of its own, unabashedly relaying close-ups. These sorry specimens of humanity can go to any extremes for that one moment of fame.
Switch to a news channel and you hear the ear-splitting shrieks of anchors, treating each small incident like the scandal of the century! They would have you believe you live in a world full of gangsters, rapists, corrupt individuals and rabid politicians. The limited images and high-octave accusations are repeated so often that in a corner of your heart you start empathising with the man caught sneaking or the politician stupid enough to be caught accepting a measly sum!
And of course there is no escaping Bollywood. It invades all channels. You are repeatedly treated to close-ups and commentaries on the latest affairs, where every hero seems to have had a fling with every heroine on the eve of a release.
Talk shows, you’d think, should be informative with sensible debates. The problem here is none of the talk show hosts seem interested in hearing what the guests have to say, so focused are they on their own voices. They outdo each other in humiliating and cutting short the guests.
Spiritual and business channels give me a sense of discomfort for the same reason. I do not indulge enough in either of the two activities. So, what does one watch for entertainment? Movie channels? Sure, when they are not constantly repeating the same old movies.
So I settle for Friends and The Simpsons. I think I had found my answer till I was soon reeling with the innuendos. Last on my list were NGC and Discovery Channel—a peep into the world of animals, the untouched wild with no feigned responses. Animals live and let live.