Of late, I've been watching bits and pieces of Ekta Kapoor's "K" serials (around 10-15 minutes at a stretch is all I can bear). And I've noticed strange stuff. No, it's not the regressive portrayal of women, e.g. all the "good women" are housewives, career women are mainly ____, nor is it her excessive portrayal of religion, including women fasting for their husband's health. (I've never seen an atheist on her serials)
This is about two techniques used in most of her soaps. Every major dramatic scene is repeated thrice. Mother slaps daughter. Slap. Daughter's face turns with the impact. Cut. Mother's hand rises again to slap daughter. Slap. But this is not a second slap. We're simply seeing the first slap repeated. And for good measure it's repeated again. I doubt if anyone's been slapped just once. It has to be slap, slap, slap!
Advance notice is given just before a __ is about to commit a__ act. If it's Komolika in Kasauti, the soundtrack will belch "Nikalllll." Only then can the viewer be shown the ___ act, otherwise she might die of shock. For Mohini in Kyunki the soundtrack moans a longing "Moh-heee-neee" before she swishes her luxuriant locks and does the evil deed. Luckily Amrita Singh escapes the sound treatment in her serial. For her it's the lights. Suddenly the screen turns green, and hey, you know the___ is on the prowl!
It's not that these are tricks shown for effect once in a while. They're shown every time. But why? I have a hypothesis. Ekta Kapoor thinks her viewers are very dumb. So she dumbs down the content of her serials to be able to reach the supposed mental abilities of her audience. She thinks that unless she repeats a dramatic scene thrice, you won't get the melodrama. Unless the soundtrack utters stuff or the lights go green, you won't be able to discern that something not-nice is happening. You're not smart enough to understand a storyline on your own unless you're given scene repeats and sound / light clues. It has to be rammed down, rammed down, rammed down
**Edited by Viewbie to remove a few strong words. Please post keeping in mind that their are memebrs as young as 13 years, and even younger here.**
Advocate Anjali Awasthi
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