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TV is a medium that has an extensive reach in Indian households with viewers of varied ages and yet only handful of shows have coming of age concepts and most of the rest are hovering between love stories and kitchen politics. Is TV offering what audience want or audience are watching what is being offered is a haunting question that I am yet unable to answer with certainty.
A show like QH 1, which started with a fresh approach with emphasis on women empowerment by bringing on thought provoking tracks such as women idignification in the name of dowry, wedding taking priority over girl's ambitions, abusive in laws, regressive thoughts in reference to women's dressing sense and so forth, despite being on top of the TRP chart, took a huge U turn to glorify vamp for no good reason and making the antogonist a mere psycho wrecking havoc in female lead's life for all wrong reasons and reducing the once fierce character to a dumb and helpless damsel, who keeps sacrificing to death due to contrived situations. What influenced CVs to take this route? Is it audience, TRPs or lack of confidence in their own story and faltering to old tested formulas to be risk averse ? QH2 is in its early stages and too early to be judged but initial feelers strongly suggest that the leap is more tailored towards the tested formulae of women abuse in several forms.
Its not just Indian soaps but in general TV medium seems to be more insensitive to women's causes, even news channels are more interested in missing Malaysian airlines than missing 200 plus nigerian school girls abducted by militants.
Is this media personification of women as a self sacrificing mortal is born out of age old thinking of women as a weaker counterpart to bear the brunt of social injustice as her birth right or it is what is expected from audience from the media as the only acceptable form of social stories...just a thought to ponder.
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