Actor Mohammed Ahmed thinks the drama industry is only interested in recycling crass plots, characters
Veteran director, screenwriter and actor Mohammed Ahmed has spilled the beans on the Pakistani drama industry and it’s equal parts saddening and enraging. The Baraat series writer appeared on late night comedy show Mazaaq Raat and appeared visibly perturbed by what he seemed to think has become a stagnant drama industry.
Led by host Vasay Chaudhry, the conversation took this turn when the Cake star was asked how he’s feeling about getting to do a new role, to which he replied, “I had gotten tired of doing the same roles over and over again. I’d just cry in every episode and eventually die.”
Amidst cackles from the Mazaaq Raat team and the audience, he added, “I died consistently for about six years!” However, as he continued to speak on this issue of being typecast, he brought to light the ways in which women are typecast as victims and how the audience’s response to such stories works in tandem with the industry scrambling to meet such repetitive and ultimately problematic demands.
As a senior writer and actor, he said he is privy to the trends in viewership; how they rise steeply as long as the woman in a drama is being subjected to violence and drop sharply the moment the woman takes a single step of resistance or self-preservation. With regards to such stagnant demands from the world of drama in Pakistan, he said, “If you’re a serious writer and you actually want to write what you believe in, you shouldn’t write. Not in this country. Because no one will approve of it.”
Actors such as Anwar Maqsood, Bushra Ansari and Sania Saeed have appeared on talk shows, speaking on the same issue in the past and it only gets increasingly disappointing to hear seasoned writers and actors speak about the industry with this lens of disappointment and ruin. Ahmed unpacked a lot of issues that seem enmeshed with one another, causing this decay.
His remark on audiences not having the ability to understand serious writing appears to be a sweeping statement that generalises the caliber of the entire audience watching dramas, a majority of them being women. The claim, while it may be consistent with viewership trends, lacks nuance because a substantial part of the drama audience is people tired from the day’s work, using the drama as an easily accessible and, consequently, familiar way to unwind. And this is why recycled roles and plots catch fire faster than more innovative storylines. There are, of course, exceptions to that, such as Udaari that brought the light the issue of child sexual abuse and Ishq Zahe Naseeb that had sensitive depictions of gendered issues and split personality disorder.
His remark on audiences not having the ability to understand serious writing appears to be a sweeping statement that generalises the caliber of the entire audience watching dramas, a majority of them being women. The claim, while it may be consistent with viewership trends, lacks nuance because a substantial part of the drama audience is people tired from the day’s work, using the drama as an easily accessible and, consequently, familiar way to unwind. And this is why recycled roles and plots catch fire faster than more innovative storylines. There are, of course, exceptions to that, such as Udaari that brought the light the issue of child sexual abuse and Ishq Zahe Naseeb that had sensitive depictions of gendered issues and split personality disorder.
While we understand the frustrations of writers and actors like Ahmed who have built their careers on creative discourses in the entertainment industry being pushed into repetitive plots, it is also important for the industry to resist the force of the audience’s demands and create space for new voices with new stories to tell. Creative industries such as film and drama cannot function in algorithmic garbage in, garbage out ways if they want to produce work of value and we think that such industries have the power to break this tedious cycle.
During the interview, Ahmed also reflected on how the demands of his audience depict a larger, postcolonial mentality of glorifying pain. He said that as a nation, we enjoy the prospect of pain because we’ve stopped recognising ourselves beyond our suffering, so during the infrequent moments of calm, we don’t really know what to do with ourselves. This seems befitting, not just for the drama industry but for life in general. With the world at our fingertips, instant gratification is frequent and affects our consumption of media, making us lean towards more emotionally charged and thus, often more harrowing content than should be deemed healthy.
While the comments made were ambivalent in their reasoning, Ahmed once again brought to the forefront an issue that is being talked about increasingly within drama and film circles. Despite it being a casual conversation, we are glad that he and other actors like him are bringing this issue to light and creating, what we think can be, opportunities for fresh voices.
