Much like life, TV viewing sometimes begs the question: If you have to choose – would you go for content that is authentic or idealistic?
In life, what to do when living authentically doesn’t comply with the very trendy notion of impersonating how you ideally want to be? My peers will know that this notion of “fake it till you make it”, or rather, “fake it till you become it”, has gotten me obsessed and slightly jarred!
I did feel better when my super smart friend clarified that, actually, the origination of the phrase comes from Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy who was more precisely talking about how our body language can kick our hormones into action and alter how we feel and how we appear. And I get that particular reference to how gesturing your body to act and feel confident can exude confidence and arrange future tackle tactics. I also can also understand how, another theory, that imagined happiness or success by way of daydreaming, for example, can earmark the right goals and align one’s stars.
But for me, dreaming of and embodying how one wants to be is one thing; but to get the inner self and her feisty sister, ego, to comply or catch up with the “fake” self one is emulating is quite another. I don’t know if I buy into the idea that I should smile my way through an emotional wreckage nor can I. But should I be challenging that default setting? According to what I have been reading – and as reaffirmed by a friend who is an avid listener to BBC’s Desert Island Discs – the most inspiring and successful women heroines we look up to – Swear. By. It.
For TV, I think the jury is still out on authentic vs idealistic. But for me, I find authentic drama realistic characterisations and their somewhat experimental and raw narrative arcs far more satisfying these days (aka since I got older and chronically sleepy) than the escapist alternative I was happy to go along with in the past (when I was young and perky). And it is for that reason and many others that I am finding it difficult to watch Arabic content even during its season d’etre – Ramadan.
As someone who has spent endless hours watching and catching up with Arabic series over the years (2001 – 2015), this pains me to my core. I am someone who irrationally, but willing stayed up till 3am binging on episode after episode of a series I started watching on TV on holiday at my mom’s; and wound up watching on my own on some obscure website while in bed laying between my two daughters, headphones jammed in my ears on super low volume, knowing that I have to be up on mom duty a mere three-hours later. Cut to a few years later – I now cruise through drama after drama on the myriad of Arabic channels, only to give up and sign into OSN Play, Netflix or iTunes (mine or that of a friend’s) to watch something American or British. I do relate to some the female characters who, mind you, are not even written by or for my age group – more so than I do in Arabic ones that have been written supposedly, allegedly specifically for someone like me!
Yes, I am aware that according to blanket profiling, I am a late thirties mother of two who is the main purchaser of domestic goods badly advertised within these supposedly well positioned shows. But I can’t stretch my imagination or be forgiving anymore! It’s too much hard work for little gratification.The reason I don’t relate to the heroines or supporting female characters in Arabic drama may appear to be about a grid of intercrossing variables; but truly it is about a set of two possible scenarios:
1- They are not written by women, nor by men who know the first thing about women (not in the slightest at ALL really).
Or, 2- they are written by women who are placing a lot of responsibility and burden on their shoulders to represent; to fit a lot of female related issues and questions into the little opportunity they have been bestowed. They resort to stuffing the mother-load into these female characters that end up being a very saturated version of anything relatively resembling the real. So we wind up with the bleak reality of slim pickings between flaccid idealism and pastiche realism.
The pendulum is drastically swinging between escapist idealism and slit-wrist versions of authenticity. Tick tock, tick tock. It really does feel like ticking time bomb sometimes and I hope it blows up soon and we can get back to the drawing boards and have a second change at this women in dramatic roles business. (An Article in Assafir last year make some interesting suggestions.)
And of course there are exceptions by way of some Syrian drama a few years back (and NO! Not Bab el Hara, get over it already) and Egyptian drama since 2011. And, of course a lot of this has to do with the ills of drama writing in our region across the ball; and yes, maybe even men are struggling to find someone to look up to or relate to in Arabic series as well. But, it truly pains me that with all the raw talent that we have, with all the challenges and brilliantly inspiring journeys women in our part of the world often face – that I need the likes of HBO’s Girls or (slightly more age appropriate) Big Little Lies, NBC’s This Is Us, even Netflix’s House of Cards, to get my dose of what I’m going to call aspirational reality.
After all, isn’t drama meant to provide us with insight and give us relief, balancing the act of elevating us from our grubby life while reflecting some of it back at us? So I guess in the authentic vs. idealistic tug of war, I am saying what some (OK probably a lot of) frazzled female audiences like me are craving the aspirational variety: we are seeking the thrill of the intriguing and the cathartic.
Hopefully, just like in life, TV will soon catch on to the biting actuality that a mini revolution is going on where women are no longer waiting to be catered to; they are going ahead and forging platforms and content for themselves (and somewhat liberated men). I just can’t wait for us to start seeing our TV screens getting a makeover the way the screens of our phones, laptops and movies are slowly but surely doing.
