Saturday, November 20, 2004

World of Tamil Serials

First off all, what's the distinction between soap, serial, sitcom, and series ? For a show to be called as soap, i think all the characters in the show should have slept around with most of the other characters in the show. And one character would be introducing other character as the person who slept with this person on so and so date and so on. For a show to be called as a serial esp a Tamil serial (TS) , it would need all its characters to specialise on one particular thing and that it to master the art of crying and the second one is to act like a witch. The last thing a TS character would want to do is to smile.

For a casual viewer its kind of confusing to understand what's going on in a TS. You can see the same actor in more than 2 serials, enacting more or less the same kind of role, which will confuse the casual viewer. And if you ask the household lady any of your questions in between, all you can get is a stern look. But you will get an explanation during one of the various breaks that you will get to see in a TS.

Typically in a 30 min time slot you will get to see around 15 mins of the action. And within these 15 mins, you will have atleast 5 mins of musical interludes where you will see camera shifting from one character's crying face to another character's crying face. And also most of the serials carry loud music, loud as in unbearably loud.

The way the names are drying out for these serials, soon the directors have to take up English names. You know what will happen then, the PMK will be having a busy time monitoring both the movies as well as the serials for English names.

Finally happy watching.

6 Comments:

At 8:29 PM, Blogger J Ramanand said...

... and exactly 7.5 minutes must be spent in hotels and temples.

 
At 2:07 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Also the people making these soaps have a party time whenever festival season comes over. All they have to do to make an episode, is get a family musical and show the whole family in various postures of dance and revelry, in one big hall of course(that house would make the tatas and birlas envious). By the way, of all the festivals Karvachauth is one hot favorite, dont believe me?, check out any serial starting with a K ;).

 
At 2:16 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oops that was me ;).Harsh

 
At 3:17 AM, Blogger cvraman said...

U left the best part of the serial ...Crying...which is why all soaps are still lather

 
At 2:16 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi. Nice posts. Will visit regularly.
Cheers! Vinitha. vinithavijayan@gmail.com
http://honeyvini.rediffblogs.com

 
At 10:45 PM, Blogger Nandini said...

Hi Hari :)

Nice post.. abt that thing...
I noticed that of the 30 mins, almost 10 minutes is recap. The most surprising aspect is that Indians can be so detached so as to view it for what it is - a huge tragic-comedy circus.

 

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