There's something missing in our entertainment industry today

"If Tanhaiyaan was created today, Saniya would have been lusting after Zain and Zara would have been a meek, roti-dhoti mazloom aurat [weepy, helpless woman] trying to save her fiancé from her evil sister," my younger sister quipped as our mother reminisced over the lost golden era of PTV. I looked at my sister in a daze. A mere young girl of 17 was dropping some absolute facts.

Growing up in a household where both my parents had separate bookshelves catering to their interests in literature and where I would sit down with my uncles discussing Shahabnama over a cup of chai at the mere age of 10, reading was the essence of the values my parents tried to instil in me and being glued to a TV screen took a backseat. However, my parents made sure my sisters and I had our fair share of visual entertainment. My father would handpick movies like Spirited Away and encourage us to become the Chihiro of our lives. As we grew up, instead of making us watch the regressive Pakistani dramas, my mother made sure we watched Tanhyaiyaan, Ankahi and Dhoop Kinaray where women took charge of their lives and didn't waste their time waiting for a knight in shining armour, where the ideals of love, warmth and a proclivity for good literature prevailed, where life was celebrated but at the same time the writers never shied away from presenting the tragedies of life.

I was probably too young to understand the subtleties of such characters, so I recently decided to rewatch the dramas that my mother was so fond of. I was sure that now with the eyes of a young and progressive journalist, I was bound to find at least one regressive plot that would reinforce my belief in the conservative society of Pakistan. However, as I watched Zara take the reins and the elegant Aani living life on her own terms, I was left in complete awe of the relatable yet realistic embodiment of women. On the other hand, the clumsy Qabachha, the sagacious Buqrat and the historical references articulated by the latter without making them sound odious or preachy showed me the true portrayal of a society's priorities. Then we had Zain and his intense eyes on Zara. One glance was able to convey more than what a whole drama fails to do today. It showed us what true love looked like, so pure yet so fulfilling.

There was also the most beautiful father-daughter duo from Dhoop Kinaray and the sky hitting aspirations of a gullible yet true to her heart Sana from Ankahi, how we all believed in the values of friendship and love while getting acclimated to the harsh reality of grief and tragedy.

Family values, ambition, the essence of friendship, true love, purity of relations and social issues that once ruled the hearts of Pakistani dramas are now a lost glory. Perhaps the main cause lies in the lack of experimentation, dearth of new thoughts and the over commercialisation of TV channels, which is done to make up for the intellectual and aesthetic chasm. The same industry that once enthralled viewers, that once had the power to leave highways deserted during drama broadcasts, is now a picture of social disintegration.

To put it in the words of dramatist Haseena Moin herself: "Having two to four good dramas being produced on some 77 channels is not an extraordinary feat at all. The process of drama writing has come down to gathering some people in [a] room and having them write various scenes which are then put together to make an episode. This is not how a drama is written, this is not how anything is written."

When Prime Minister Imran Khan addresses the public and laments society's collective fall, the fraying social fabric, dying family systems and skyrocketing divorce rates, what he does not realise is that preaching will not bring change in society.

What we need is a platform that can bridge the gap between dying values and the evolving traditions of the 21st century. A platform that is not afraid to hold a discourse on Machiavelli and at the same time talks about the importance of financial literacy. A platform that reignites the ideals of love and ambition. A platform that immortalises truth and celebrates love.

In May 2019, recognising the need for such a platform, Pemra auctioned 12 satellite TV licenses to education and infotainment channels intending to fill in the crevice. However, almost three years down the lane, there still has been no development.

The redundant themes of the present entertainment industry make me realise that instead of acclimatising ourselves with the 21st century, we are reverting to the 19th century when the Akbari-Asghari trope was introduced i.e. showing characters in black and white. It is either the too good to be true woman who has the power to dim the light of Mother Teressa or the evil woman capable of outshining the notorious Blood Countess, Elizabeth Bathory.

When the industry decides to venture into more creative aspects, the best they show are sisters and friends lusting after each other’s partners, body shaming, unrealistic beauty standards, domestic violence, cheating husbands, polygamy, romanticising immaturity, an unattainable lifestyle, women tearing each other down, toxic hero culture, two extreme economic classes, patriarchal social patterns, lack of raw emotions, lack of good writing, crass humour and artificial romance.

Despite all that is wrong with today’s industry, the idealist in me still hopes that media giants leverage the opportunity given by Pemra and come up with a platform through which they are able to delve into old-world charm while staying abreast of the changing times and resultantly revitalise the destitute condition of art and literature.