Contemporary Sit-Coms

Since it is my first and surely last chance to appear on TV, I am going to delve into this very fine point about vulgarity and subsequently the so-called comedy soap-operas. Vulgarity, in my opinion, opposed to public perception, as I shall explain, has nothing to with nudity, exposure, obscene gestures, immorality and language. Impropriety, as I perceive it, is basically the display of actions or utterance of words, that causes embarrassment, uneasiness and in some cases aggravation to the observer or hearer.

It is only by chance that in our society, that is the contemporary Pakistani society, not the much referred to and strived for model Islamic society, it’s only nakedness, strong language and disclosure, more than allowed by the censor committee, that are causes of mortification for families watching the movie or TV programme having the aforesaid attributes. I personally haven’t met or even heard of a single Pakistani, adult, male who has any objection to nudity and language, provided that he alone and not his family , which in Pakistan means females of the house, is exposed to it. This also alludes to the level of hypocrisy inherent in our society.

Let’s not digress anymore. This situation in our society, which has no idea of vulgarity, whatsoever, other than discussed above, rather suited the young pseudo-intellectual-creative-artists with a penchant for fast money. Most of them had connections with mass communication media and had what little visual arts education available in our country. This sharp wit of money together with the conducive environment gave birth to what we now know as situational comedies or sit-coms.

I have many objections on these sit-coms ranging from their evolution to their current existence style. First, the idea is not original, even the background laughter to prompt the viewers is imported. One can easily find desi versions of ‘Friends’ and ‘Dharma and Greg’ on local satellite channels. Secondly and more importantly these sitcoms thrive or at least make a living by parodying Pakistani movies in general and Punjabi movies in specific, from which these programmes are not very different, rather there are amazing similarities.

They are written by one or two specific writers, directed by a group of specific directors and acted upon by a specific set actors and actresses. It is really difficult for people to tell whether I am talking about desi movies or sit-coms. The only apparent difference being that the sit-coms are over-acted upon by a specific set of college dropouts pretending to be yet in their teens.

One more deplorable aspect of this practice is exploitation of our subservient mentality as a nation, which, self-explanatorily, has failed to free itself from the Raj legacies. People only ignore sit-coms’ similarity with desi flicks because they are performed by burgerish city-boys speaking Urduish-English with twisted lips to doe-eyed girls, pretending to be high school students.

Well the girls, the girls are no different from our desi heroines. Yes, they don’t humiliate themselves by speaking English in Punjabi, but they have other methods which also authenticates the proverb ‘Where there is a will, there is a way’. The English vocabulary of all the sit-com actresses combined together is perhaps fifty odd words. They use these words very intelligently, grafting English words deftly in Urdu sentences. I am sure that if by some order they are not allowed to say ‘like’, ‘actually’, by the way’ and ‘as you know’ many of them will be rendered speechless. As far as acting is concerned, when everybody is having a great time onscreen and that with family, then who cares?

To sum things up, these cheap, over-acted performances with almost all the girls playing buffoons are as vulgar as any thing can be because these stir up in me a feeling similar to the nausea I experience after watching or hearing any vulgar thing. A part of sickness also comes from the indifferent public behaviour that prefers to be fooled by channels home and abroad.