WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY BABY

This grabbed my attention very early this morning. Now we know what our "bocor" MPs watch.
Art imitates life. If you can call the bulk of our local TV drama art they mirror the society or what is perceived as our society. As mentioned by the Deputy President of the Screenwriters Guild of Malaysia (as quoted by the Star) "We are not interested in gender. When we write scripts we want to portray real-life situations. Our dramas are about the daily realities of life. If we portray women as all good, it would not be exciting for our audience. We look for stories that sell." Thus we have clueless datins, evil stepmothers, wayward daughters, conniving and greedy "the other woman" etc. ad nauseam.

Maybe we should watch programs where women are not stereotyped. CSI maybe? James Bond has Judy Dench as "M" but those are movies. What about "Friends"? Ooops, they have a dumb woman in there. "Desperate Housewives" portrayed many female characters. One is a boss. At least one is uneducated about sex (BreI think). Cant think of any other programs at the moment. I watch a lot of documentaries and nobody complains about stereotyping female crabs or lemurs. So you ladies out there, please help me out. While you are at it, ask yourself why are they using a lot women in commercials?

Labels: gender sensitivty, tv scripts