Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Producing a TV serial is much easier than making a movie, provided you have a firm conviction that all your viewers will have no sense of logic. Then, you do not need a lot of funds since in this trade you earn in the form of ads as you spend on production. You do not need a costly star cast as family soaps are not star-based but story- or suspense-based. Any handsome young man with muscles to show, or a fair-complexioned girl with a well-contoured figure, will serve the purpose. When any actor leaves or is shunted out, the director has to merely display on the screen that, henceforth, the role of such and such character will be played by so and so.
When Satyajit Ray got his Oscar for his lifelong services to cinema, the representatives of so-called mainstream cinema complained that he had only displayed poverty and filth in India. Present-day family soap makers have completely washed away all that poverty and filth. The families live in the grandeur of palatial houses with breathtaking furnishing and separate rooms for a large number of couples.
The pitch-dark character is generally a bhua father8217;s sister or a nanad husband8217;s sister though married symbolised by an inverted family planning sign in red on the forehead. But the bhua or nanad invariably lives in her parents8217; household and not with her in-laws. The phoopha bhua8217;s husband or a nandoyee nanad8217;s husband is rarely shown in the episode. This too reduces the cost of production as phuphas and nandoyees do not come free of cost!
