Sometimes one feels strongly about a subject and comes across a piece that succintly put together one’s own perspective. I came across one such small piece in The Hindu, today.
Aptly titled, Exploiting Innocence, the paragraph by Anuj Kumar, states – “First it were advertisements, where companies exploited a child’s innocence to sell something as mundane as a soap to something as significant as an insurance policy. Now channels and production houses are using the same game to garner some crucial TRPs in their favour. “Balika Vadhu” and “Jai Shri Krishna” set the trend. So far so good. But as both the serials got a great start, so the kids are refusing to grow up. “Uttaran” and “Bandini” followed to milk the new trend, where the emotional turmoil of a kid is used to hook viewers. Reality shows are no different, where kids are now delivering below the belt jokes with innocence intact! It’s time for the policy makers to take note, else things could go awry.”
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Ritu Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 10:04 PMNeedless to say, being a mom of two I totally agree with Mr Kumar!
Vaibhav Says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 AMI don’t have my own production yet, but i still think there is a stringent norms required to keep a tab on such practices.
But i wonder where is starts from, The Movie halls allow the minors to watch stuff which they are not supposed to and over the above the parents don’t fail from encouraging the same practices, Imagine a more than 20-30 families with infants in a movie hall watching a movie like RAAZ.
The first step is to ignore and say NO to such sitcoms and dont allow minors to watch movies they are not supposed to.
I will when i am there make efforts.
Aneesha Says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:50 PMIts a pity that so many educated and aware Indians consciously abhor the exploitation of children in media, particularly on the small screen and yet there is hardly any organized effort to curb and control the upcoming tradition of marathon serials where the child actors are overtly exploited. In the context of child actors in movies and even in the well-remembered serials like Malgudi Days or Tenaliram, the involvement of the children was less with 13-episode or smaller length of serials.. but now, children are being forced by parents to work longer hours, many days at length and act anything but their age.
barath Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 1:45 PMThat was a timely post!!! Its sad that kids are been exploited by the media, And did you see how artificial these reality shows have become?
And parents are too be blamed who think that this would have them proud, aren’t we turning them merely performers than Persons?