Posted:
I understood your use of Star Plus as a metaphor, and was actually continuing it in my response: that I don't understand how a puja or aarti is so fundamentally Star Plus-ish, which is to say that I don't consider it inseparable from the metaphor you're talking about and hence my not finding it out of place in a youth show.
Thank you for sharing your opinion in a precise reply.'Star Plus' here has been used as a metaphor- and I guess I don't have to explain what the 'Star Plus' metaphor represents.I would adhere to my opinion- I remember I cringed the first time Sharon uttered Bhagwan ji, and after that she uttered it quite a couple of times and I cringed every time. And I'm not saying they'll do aarti everyday, but yes this made me cringe too.Not that I haven't watched other shows with aarti and stuff (even youth shows too) but this was way too non-Swaron for me.Like I said earlier watching scenes like this is like undoing the Swaron I know.And about reading too much into it... well I may be the jumping the gun here, but for me, it's the little things like this that matter- the little things that you associate with a character and the little things that make you feel alienated. 😊
Bhagwaan ji didn't go down brilliantly well with me when I first heard it either, but I took it to be a part of how they wanted Sharon to be, and ultimately I do think they did it quite nicely as another facet to her character. Having faith in God or terming Him Bhagwaan ji, again, is not something I see as inseparable from Star-Plus-ness, I have friends who use similar terminology and beliefs and it doesn't ring oddly for me.
And as for undoing SwaRon and the little things that matter, I'm of the same opinion as you at least in the latter: like you, for me too it is the little things that craft SwaRon as the characters and the love story they are. And there are so many little things there, that I don't think it's fair to see one little thing as undoing the many, many other little things. Especially since I don't see how that one thing can so fundamentally contradict the rest, let alone even slightly tarnish them. If they did something major like a Star-Plus-ish track or made the two of them mouth Star-Plus-ish dialogues for a sustained period of time, I'd have a problem. But like I said before, this is one scene and it's already over. Even if I thought it's too Star-Plus for me it is hardly enough to raise questions over all the other little things that make SwaRon what they are and see it as undoing them. This is what I feel.
And one last thing I'd like to add is that sometimes, as also in this case and some other cases I've seen in other youth shows, there is something very problematic about defining metaphors like Star Plus with such solidity. Because we have seen Star Plus do certain things on their shows to death, use certain tropes and stock scenes so many times over the years, it doesn't actually mean those things, tropes or stock scenes are in themselves Star Plus by definition. They do exist outside the metaphor, and that is where my being quite okay with their use on D3 - within limits, of course - comes from. Because the aarti as well as Sharon's Bhagwaan ji-ing may be something we've seen a lot within the said metaphor, which is possibly what made you cringe, but were here put to use outside of it. I'm not sure if I'm being able to explain this right, but I personally don't think it is fair for them to be viewed only within that metaphor when they do have an existence and an identity outside it. That's how I see it. 😊
Fan Fictions
