Trash TV has more depth to it than you know. These days, much that is dished out by cable television is shocking enough to turn the laziest couch potato into a hot, curly fry—all twisted and confused.

Add to the existing confusion the warped, bored, restless and somewhat psychotic audience, and you have described the average viewer from age eight to 80—after repeatedly watching what comes on TV without an age or decency bar attached. In the war over television rating points (TRPs) not so long ago, many of the channels went berserk with daily two-hour morning shows featuring lavish weddings that ran for a whole week.

There it was: the beaming couple with their in-laws, film actors, designerwear and gear from mehndi trays to the anchor person’s farshi gharara… the producer rolling in a high budget like a fly on the cake, several sponsors and many, many live callers generating huge revenues for the channels. One anchorperson actually had her sister’s wedding in the studio where nothing was kept under the shroud of privacy. Now aren’t we lucky not to have details on post-rukhsati developments.

Ghosts, ghouls and goblins

Finally, the wedding fever that ran high ad nauseum came to an end and now we have ghosts, ghouls, the morbid and the sordid as the latest entrée on what the channels have to serve as their most exciting fare. The morning shows are currently obsessing over super beings, i.e jinns, ghosts, poltergeists and other paranormal activity for which some morning show sets are relocated to old havelis, swearing they are haunted. A scared but immaculately groomed anchor can be seen sitting among thorny bushes scattered on the floor with candles burning and confessing that she couldn’t sleep properly the night before as she knew she would be in a haunted house for the recording.

In the quest for higher ratings, there is an ultra-driven anchor roaming inside graveyards, talking to gravediggers, zooming in on graves, etc. The latest was a topper-whopper interview on a news channel: the host sat interviewing the man who has recently been arrested for raping dead, young women who had been… yes, just buried. First, the breaking news comes on screen just before bedtime to tuck you in with the most grisly tale ever. A couple of days later the interview follows. You don’t need the IQ of Mark Elliot Zuckerberg to figure what kind of questions the host asks the perverted criminal. For the longest time there was no caution of any kind to the viewers, no censorship rating at all. Not all material shown is suitable for people of different ages and sensitivities which makes it all the more crucial to have some kind of a rating system in place. Only recently some of the shows have thankfully opted for a warning that precedes the show.

Then, we have wandering gypsies, pir babas, fakirs and quacks telling us what paranormal activity they know of around a certain tree, a grave or a house. There are people in the studios talking about their weird experiences; one woman talked about the huge amounts of meat on bone that she has started consuming since a family of 14 jinns have started living in their kitchen. Kilos upon kilos of sweetmeat being consumed on top of the meat, not forgetting to mention that the woman with her face half covered, for reasons best known to her, was obese.

Then, there is this horrible, distorted ghost of a young man with a bloody face following someone’s young wife and leading her to a graveyard where he tells her husband how and when he fell in love with her and will remain on some multi-verse planes and visible only to her until she dies. There is a pir sahib who is doing some black magic and makes a young woman leave her bedroom to go to him in another house somewhere all in a trance till he decides to come to her house and murder her dad and fiancé.

If you doubt my sensibility and sensitivity, please don’t and just tune into FIR, Meri Kahani Meri Zabani, Wardaat, Crime Scene, Raid, Police File, Be-naqab, Vehem, Pur-asraar, Mano Ya Na Mano, to name just a few.

Sensuality, lies and videotapes

To add more masala to the menu for the audiences are crime shows running on most channels, mostly based on re-enactment.

They pick up sensational tabloid stories from the brothels, rape victims, and assaulted girls to produce their material: men harassing housemaids, etc, as long as it’s morbid and sordid. These so-called reality shows are popularly viewed because the content is all that cannot be featured in a soap or a teleplay where the script is fictitious.

Crime show re-enactments employ amateur actors with zero identity and the situations depicted are rape, murder and prostitution with the most sleazy undertones. The dialogue, because it depicts a situation that happened in reality, is crude, even vulgar and often suggestive, while the situations and scenes are a voyeur’s delight. They don’t show rape in the frame but there is the uncanny audio, and then other characters in the forefront discussing whatever’s supposed to be happening in the background.

Are such TV shows really creating awareness against crime or promoting criminal activity, you are left to wonder. Are they reporting facts or creating material for voyeuristic pleasure? Many say they are now scared or confused about sending young girls out to work or for errands because of what is being drummed into their minds through a daily dosage of such shows.

An interesting question arises: isn’t there crime in society that doesn’t involve girls, brothels, sex and rape? What about counterfeit consumer products, fake medicines, polluted drinking water, corruption in government departments, monopoly of private schools, pressure on parents and all that afflicts the average citizen of Pakistan in terms of grossly inflated utility bills and their payment, taxes, etc. But then that is not juicy enough, is it?

In the words of Alfred Hitchcock, television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it. While television becomes desperately hungry for material, bored and intellectually unstimulated viewers gnaw on mindless soaps, sensational news, and anything but the truth, 24/7, steadily becoming as moronic and warped as that being shown to them.