Sunday, July 17, 2005

How can Indonesian TV sinetrons harm you?

Sinetron is abbreviated from Sinema Elektronik or electronic cinema. The prime time of almost all Indonesian TV stations are now filled with this type of TV production. After watching almost all sinetrons during prime time, I find some similiarities which may be dangerous and mislead the viewer, especially children.
  • Usually there are appearances of peri, angels, or genie. They can be very good or very bad. The good ones will help the protagonists all the time while the bad ones will always try to put the good actors in troubles.
  • There are usually the antagonists which are very, very, very bad and cruel. Sometimes their acts are not natural, non-sense and very exaggerated. Many acts of them can be considered as first class crimes that deserved lifetime prisonment or death sentence, like conciusly planned murder or santet.
  • Many times the good actors act like stupid people, do naive things which make me doubtful whether they have brains or not. So many acts which make me laugh in my heart and think how come a person can do such a nonsensical thing.
  • Some titles of the sinetrons absolutely do not match with the story. For example, one sinetron's title is about love but the story is about ghost hunting! Okay, let's think positively. Maybe they love ghosts.
What is the harm of these examples above? Here are two, especially for children. I can not add more for now because I'm already sleepy.
  • Getting used to watch good angels and genies, children and teen viewer will think divine phenomena like God and his works as physical. When they are in trouble and pray to God for help, they may hope that God will manifest himself in physical forms and help them. Unfortunately, in real life, God mostly doesn't work like that. God prefers to working in mysterious ways.
  • Viewers may use all the acts of the antagonists and protagonists in their daily life if they can not filter them out. No wonder if they may commit crimes because of getting fed by the bad sinetrons.
I really wonder what is inside the skulls of the producers with such hazardous stories. But because they are profit-oriented, then AC Nielsen TV rating will be their master. If these are stories that most Indonesians like to see and the producers produce them, I can not figure out what the future of this nation will be in the hands of leaders whose mindsets have been influenced deeply by sinetrons.

"You can not avoid the flood of information. But you can protect yourself from drowning or getting forced to follow its current. Only living fish that can swim against the current of the sea."

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