I’ve had this on my mind for quite a while now, but I haven’t had the time to actually sit down and write this. In fact I don’t really have the time NOW, with the day job keeping me occupied, the writerly stuffs I owe a friend, the countless unanswered emails, and of course, the re-write of Path of Defiance. Did I mention I’ve barely touched chapter 2? Yeah, it’s been what….5 months now since I started the re-write? Stupid syntax. Stupid phrasing. :grumbles:
Okay before I start: A little warning. Not everyone will like this post, but hey, it’s just my thoughts. You don’t have to agree with me. I don’t expect that.
Ever watched those local soap dramas on tv? If you have, you’ll have seen the scenarios below (repeatedly, if you’re as unlucky as I was) in varying degrees. If you haven’t, trust me, at some point in your life you’re going to be stuck somewhere (either at a relative’s or a family friend’s home), and they’ll insist on watching the soap, and you’ll have no choice but to sit with them (because you won’t have anywhere else to go. Except if you sit outside. Yeah, I should’ve done that).
Some of the elements in these shows are not bad. Inculcating good virtues, noble acts, the reminder to turn the other cheek whenever you are wronged. Good stuff.
But the majority of the elements are just ridiculous to the point of comedy. There are no gray areas (a more realistic representation of the real world), and only solid good vs evil. Black vs white.
1. How marital problems are solved:
The scenario: Husband and beautiful, gentle, scarf-wearing wife were born into poverty, but through his smarts and a thirty second montage of him working his ass off, he somehow ends up establishing a very successful company, leading to the shedding of his old life, and the donning of a new one, including an expensive bungalow, a Mercedes to replace his rickety old bike, or a bmw. It gets better.
Pretty soon husband receives the eye-flirties from the sans-scarf/heavy make-up covered village slut (there is ALWAYS one in every village, apparently, and apparently if you don’t wear a head scarf you’re bad. Real bad). He falls helplessly, madly in love with her. He ditches his loyal, kind, religiously moral, pregnant wife, becomes the biggest douche-bag you’ve ever seen, even goes so far as throwing her and the kids out the door, ushering in the new wife just because of them eye-flirties.
No one can resist those eye flirties!
The wife, rendered penniless, pregnant, and with kids to feed, spends the next few months crying her eyes out in her parents’ home, doing nothing but pray (and literally, nothing but bawl her eyes out), hoping that somehow God would soften her husband’s heart and make him crawl back to her. When asked to DO something about it (like move on and get a life), she would sigh, put on a sad face and say, “I can do nothing but sit here and cry. Only God knows my pain. It is fated that he is what he is. He is my husband and I still love him. I don’t blame him. Even if he did beat the crap out of me when he threw me out of the house. I will wait for him to change.” Also, when asked to do something, she does nothing because she HAS nothing (which touches on another issue – where total spouse dependency could lead to this unwanted situation and a backup plan is ALWAYS crucial if you’re married. But this of course isn’t highlighted at all. It gets bogged down under a hail of pointless angry shouting, finger pointing (literally), and continued weeping and moans of “Oh god, why me? Why me?”)
I do agree with the power of prayer, but we’ll get back to that in a minute.
So, about an hour and fifteen minutes into the story, the husband’s business predictably starts to go south. The village slut predictably spends all of his wealth to expand the tower of lipsticks she already has arranged like little towers on her vanity, and the guy starts to predictably fall ill. Some unexplained illness that is mostly just karma than anything scientific or natural. He loses said village slut, who predictably, wants him only for his money. Suddenly thrust down to the very nadir of misery where NOTHING he does is right and everything falls apart around him.
I need one in coral blue! Stat!
At this point of the show, viewers will be presented with the douche-bag’s AHA moment – where he realizes that being a mean old, cheating husband isn’t all that it’s cut out to be, that maybe his wild, immoral ways were wrong (duh), that maybe he shouldn’t have fallen for those eye-flirties in the first place.
The story then will end in these three varieties. It could be either one, and yes, I’ve watched about half a dozen of these shows to know that most of them end up with one of these choices:
1) Husband repents, goes back to his wife, miraculously recovers, and just as quickly spends the rest of his life making amends, and predictably they all live happily ever after.
2) Husband dies, either of said disease or, if the disease wasn’t introduced into the show, a car crash, or a freak accident. The manner of his death is simply so horrible it doesn’t bear mentioning. The manner of his burial is no better, and we the viewers are presented with the consequences of practicing jack-assery in life when you shouldn’t.
3) Wife or one of the kids (or sometimes BOTH) die, throwing husband into a loop of absolute despair and hopelessness that is quite sudden and shows that he’s either so traumatized that he forgets that he threw them out and beat the crap out of his wife, divorced her, called her ALL manner of derogatory names and wanted her to die in the first place.
Now, I’m not saying that this happens in EVERY show. Fact is, it doesn’t. What surprises me is that there are enough of them still circulating around at this day and age. The old cliched plotline of good vs evil, of the dire consequences of sinning, of the rewards of being just and true, are played and replayed over and over again with such similar settings that I do wonder if people realize our intelligence has just been insulted. Repeatedly. Here’s why:
The problem:
1. What the show has highlighted is that having patience, virtue and well, not being a horrible human being, makes life pleasant for everyone. Nothing wrong with that, but these messages get bogged down terribly by the overlaying message of “sin and thou shalt suffer and die!”
The positive notes, sadly, disappear under the radar, and most viewers (by most I mean the people I’ve seen who watched this show and shared their reactions afterward), would more likely say, “Booyeah, serves that bastard right! Take that, scumbag!” Which, in itself, is a negative attitude in itself, if you think about it. Taking pleasure in seeing another person suffer, instead of highlighting that the moral of the story is “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Or whatever the morals of the story are.
2. The message shown is also that we as humans don’t have to do anything but just sit there and wait for karma to take its toll. No, really. Don’t bother fighting for your rights. Don’t bother reporting the abuse to the authorities. Don’t bother doing anything. Just sit there and cry, and pray, because God will take care of everything.
Again, I do NOT, I repeat, do NOT refute the power of prayer. It’s one of the most powerful things in the world.
Providing you do something about your life other than just sit in your parents’ house and bawl your eyes out until something actually happens and take the beating/abuse/injustice knowing at the back of your mind that (hehe, this sucker is so gonna get it! Not from me though…Ooh no way I’m getting my hands dirty.)
Aren’t we also given free will, and a mind to think of a way to ACT? To REACT? To do something? This is the same as just saying “I have this disease. I’m sick. It’s fated. Nothing I can do about it.” Instead of hauling your ass over to the hospital to get yourself better or even give yourself a CHANCE to see what you can do about it.
We’ve all heard the idiom, Trust in God but lock your damn car. Do we seriously expect God to do everything for us? What, existence, free will, and the god-given gift to think/feel/act aren’t enough? You want Him to take care of that jackass for you as well? Who are we kidding? We’re not endowed with prophetic powers – a child of prophecy that deserves that special treatment. At the end of the day, we’re human. As susceptible to sin and wrongdoing as the next man/woman. We want something done, we have to haul our ass off that couch and do it!
The argument then would be about vengeance as being a bad thing. Of course it is. But then, the people saying that are the ones who actually hope that at the end of the day, this guy will get his just desserts (just not from us! Teehee!). I smell hypocrisy here. I’m not EXPECTING the victims in the dramas to go and shoot the guy and beat the crap out of him – no. But I expect them to have at least some modicum of realness in them to actually DO something about that shitty situation – Like getting out of it.
Yeah...THAT'LL teach im'!
Heck, even a horse will kick back when he is challenged by a fellow horse and when someone threatens to hurt him. I’m just sayin’. Are we seriously teaching our women to just take whatever abuse that’s being thrown at them? Really?
I think this is pretty self explanatory...
3. It also, in a way, drags God’s supremacy down to becoming a vengeful being, bent only on the destruction of evil because us humans don’t really want to clean up our own mess. Because well. It’s messy. God is greater than that. It’s the same as saying the tsunami happened and wiped out an entire civilization because “those people were meany meanyheads!” and we’re safe because we’re so much better than they are! And god knows I’ve heard this a dozen times as well. It makes me gag just to think about it.
“It’s all about forgiveness” – Really? So it’s okay to be treated immorally and let the guy treat you any way he wants because somewhere in the back of your mind you know the Maker upstairs will take care of it for you and you don’t have to do anything?
Forgiveness is all fine and dandy. Getting OUT of that situation and moving on/ not falling victim to someone’s tyrannical reign, should be on the same pedestal, no? And well, from the dramas I’ve seen, the message of forgiveness is also often bogged down by the suffering of the sinner – like an overpowering taste of garlic in a dish that is supposed to be wholesome and balanced.
TOO MUCH GARLIC!
4. In reality, hoping for a man to change while weeping in your parents’ homes won’t work. Here is proof why:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/4/1/nation/8389596&sec=nation
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/8/16/nation/9304337&sec=nation
Important to note: Report the abuse. You don’t just sit at your parents’ house, bawl your eyes out, and pray for the guy to change on the pretext that you both love each other and that he’s just blinded by that slut who has now conveniently stolen everything you had. Do something about it. Reality isn’t as sugar-coated as the dramas portray it to be.
5. Someone has to die. Or suffer. There is never a middle ground on this, the same as there aren’t gray areas in the moral aspect of the stories. You cheat your wife/husband – someone dies. By the time this happens and the bad guy snaps out of his evilness-ness, it’s too late. And hence, the dozens upon dozens of scenes in graveyards where the bad guy usually howls in despair for his lost spouse.
It paints an even morbid situation than real life does, if you think about it. An attempt to scare us into being moral and just because well, “Damn, consequence! You scary!” – not because it’s about doing the RIGHT thing, and an understanding of morality and just virtues is the foundation of religion and life.
The best way to inculcate a certain behavior IS fear, after all. :rolls eyes:
So yes, there you have it. My rant for the week. Woo, I’m glad that’s out of my system 
On an unrelated note – Happy Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim friends! 
Have a safe drive back to your hometowns. I’m sorry I can’t doodle a card for all of you. My schedule is all wonky lately.
~ Slainte.
