We Are What We Watch

Just how much does what we watch on TV and read in the papers influence us? Shouldn’t we be able to use our own creativeness and intelligence to preserve our individuality instead of mindlessly following the standards being set by the media and becoming a a zombie advertisement billboard ourselves?

The media is shaping the way we think and most of the time we are not even aware of it. Since the introduction of several TV channels some years back, we now crave TV like never before. We watch about five or six hours of TV everyday and most of the time it is not the local channel either. We are watching Hollywood and Bollywood movies, Hindi soaps, fashion channels and the likes. We pay a considerable part of our salaries to keep watching these channels. But the question remains, what are the negative impacts of exposure to these foreign societies through media and is it affecting our lives and our culture? Most certainly!

Before Trendz channel came along, few people were exposed to the wonders of skinny women flitting around in weird costumes that barely or sometimes didn’t even cover their privates. Women are sexualized and men are supposed to be the people who gawk at the women and judge them on their breast or butt size. All of a sudden, our impressionable young ones are taking to the streets looking like skeletons, wearing almost nothing or loose hanging clothes; in the style of Eminem or Beyonce and the likes.

Women are trying to walk the walk of the models on the catwalk on our unevenly paved roads with high heels and wedges. Men are seen with pants that hang so low that by the time they arrive at wherever they are going, their trousers or jeans are twice as heavy with dust and sand than when they started out. And let’s not forget the underwear. If you can’t see it, then you are obviously not wearing your trousers low enough. It doesn’t concern them that it might not be fitting or appropriate for our society or culture. Stick thin models with stick straight hair mostly. This is what the media is portraying as the perfect men and women. People are going on hunger strikes to stay thin and buying slimming products which are supposed to work miracles. We have all seen these products on the tele-shopping channels.

But it’s not just the media either. We have local magazines as well now which sells these images to the general public. There are tips on flirting and how to do your hair a certain way, as apparently this is the ‘cool do’ that you should have and the images all portray women in skimpy clothes who are again stick thin or men that have a certain style which just has to be imitated if one wants to be cool and accepted. Individuality is a thing of the past and almost every gullible person is convinced that their actual self is not worth anything and they need to be sporting some celebrities’ style.

Undeniably media is a powerful thing. Something to ponder on for a while. Almost all the Hindi soaps that Maldivians watch mostly deal with women in the Indian culture. A woman who gets cheated on by her husband several times, women who are submissive and religious and lots of religious stuff is always going on. Murders, psychos and god knows what else.

This is not really the kind of thing that actually suits our society. But we watch them all the same, and our children watch them and they start thinking it’s completely normal for men to cheat on their wives. The media normalizes these things to us.

As a country with a high divorce rate, these rates are going higher every year. The amount of extra marital affairs is also on the rise obviously. Statistics show that the divorce rates in Male’ alone have risen from 862 divorces in 2002 to 1184 in 2004. Men are cheating on their wives just like in the Hindi soaps and the women are crying at home and not doing much most of the time. The number of ‘illegal coital relationship’ cases dealt by the Judicial Courts have risen from 183 to 187, this is not a big change, however, it is also most certainly on the rise. Married people are having affairs left and right, be it men or women.

Sadly, it’s not only the Hindi soaps that are showing these things now. Our local series and movies are picking up on what sells and local soaps now show the same kind of situations. Men and women don’t even feel ashamed to be caught in these situations anymore as they are shown that the sacred bond of marriage is nothing by these fictitious people who seem to have no real emotions. Women don’t feel bad to be the ‘other woman’ anymore as seems to be a most common thing and the ‘other woman’ is always cooler.

Stereotyping is another issue: we see the cool calm villain who can order for someone to be killed without remorse; the shy wife who obeys the husband although he is a drunkard, mistreating and cheating on her; the sex kitten and the likes. We see advertisements which sell a certain product with the image that you are not complete without it. But then again that is what advertisements are supposed to do, one can’t really find fault with them, can we?

Then there is the ever popular wrestling. Violence and more violence, they say the strong survive and they are talking about spilling blood and actually flying through the rings. Whose watching these channels religiously? Our children, of course. They watch these and are affected by them and despite the warnings all throughout the shows, they are convinced that they can do the same stunts without any prior training. After all, it’s just fighting right?

What our society needs to learn is that the media is what it is; a source of entertainment and information. People need to stop looking for role models where there is none to be found. It’s simply entertainment for you and the advertisements are simply selling a product, not the image.

When will our society come to realize this? When will our society stop believing everything they see on the media to be real? Individuality is a good thing when done right. It’s your own personality, attitude and attire that you need to acquire, not someone else’s. People need to make up their minds not to be negatively influenced by the media as this is the only solution to this perhaps.

All local research taken from http://www.planning.gov.mv
Other sources: http://www.media-awareness.ca