Parannoyed Delusions

No, I'm not talking about the Palestinian conflict, or the southern Thailand issue, or the brutal and senseless assault on Sharifah Aini. I'm talking about Malay TV dramas. Watching them, it seems that the Malay psyche consists entirely of overtly sentimental values. These dramas seem to think that people will automatically react to the catastrophic and tragic slope of drama. Either that or slapstick, tasteless comedy. We're either “sentimental, or mental”, to roughly quote Yasmin Ahmad (even though it's a bit out of context). A Malay drama is never made without it's usual elements: someone crying, someone screaming their heads off, someone psychologically ill, someone overweight and someone making fun of an overweight person. Damn us. We need to move on, be passionate about other things. Aren't we passionate enough?

Notice that I'm concentrating on Malay and Malay drama, not Malaysian in general, because it's true, we Malays seem to be trapped within this sad and melancholic state of mind. Astro Ria and RTM is still showing P. Ramlee reruns. Not to say that P. Ramlee stories are only sad and melancholic either, it's just that P. Ramlee is dead, it's time we move on.

Let's take that Anita Sarawak show for further example. Almost every story feature on it seems to be a sad story, or at least something “controversial”. They had a story about a family living in poverty. She had the mother crying on TV, together with the studio audience, sobbing almost in unison. Okay, it probably ended on a lighter note, having Anita Sarawak donating money to the family or something like that.

But where are happier, “what a wonderful life”, more enlightening, awe inspiring, soul inspiring stories? Stories of selfless heroism, of human dedication, of a more positive outlook on life? Stories about enduring love, not forbidden love? Am I just too optimistic? I guess so. Sure I am. Just look at any local newspaper. If you don't have anthing better to do, try this: open up NST for instance and skip to the local news section, count every news article that has any combination of these words: dead/death/die(s), kill(s), accident, robbery, arrested, convicted, murder, rape, molestation, etc. etc. you catch my drift. I bet you 90% of local news stories is about or has something to do with these words.

So what's happening here? I'm not trying to give any answers, just making observations. And hoping beyond hope that observations can one day lead to answers.