27 Dec. 2001 - 2 Jan. 2002
Issue No.566
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Dec. 2001 - 2 Jan. 2002 Issue No.566 |
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TV at its finest?
Braving televisual dyspepsia, Hanan Sabra tries to digest a month of stodgy Ramadan serials
A couple of weeks ago we were eating Iftar at a friend's house. The TV was blaring, of course, and conversation soon found its way to this year's television offerings. We were only a few minutes into the first talk-show when a friend remarked: "TV programmes are so dull this year. All talk-shows are similar, announcers are untalented and none has the experience needed to present a good talk-show. And the guests on the programmes are repetitive."
A still from "Justice has many faces"; (right) El-Fakharani speaks of the "flesh and blood" of acting; (below) Layl a Oloui in Hadith Al-Sabah Wal-Masaa
Ramadan is the time of year when actors, if screen writers and directors are taxed to give us their best; is the month that draws in the highest percentage of viewers.
Yet few were impressed with this year's offerings. Everybody at the Iftar nodded in agreement; all disapproved of the year's Ramadan staples. And it was not just repetitiveness and dearth of talent that bothered people, either. Some remarked that there were just too many serials; and so numbing was the fare that it induced in viewers a kind of stupor. All agreed that they would slump in front of their television sets for hours on end, rising only to flick between channels in search of even stodgier provender.
"Those who organise TV programmes care only about the quantity of serials and programmes shown during Ramadan and pay no attention to quality," lamented one complainant. And then casting came up. "Why do they keep casting the same people every year?" asked someone from the back of the room, adding, "What is really funny is that they cast an actor or an actress over 40 to play the role of 30-year-old, irrespective of whether they fit the role or not."
And what are we to make of the recurrent theme of unfaithful or polygamous husbands in many of the TV serials this year? In one serial, Banat Afkari (Daughters of My Mind), directed by Yehia El-Alami and written by Mohsen Zayed, the events revolve around a writer, played by an elderly Mahmoud Morsi, who takes a mistress whom he marries after divorcing his first wife. This role is played by the also less than sprightly Ilham Shahine. Another show, Al-Barr Al- Gharbi (The West Bank) directed by Ismail Abdel-Hafez, tells the story of a poor horseman from the Nazlet Al-Samman district (played by Farouk El-Feshawi) who is married to his cousin (played by Abla Kamel) and has three daughters. Our hero falls in love with a British woman and considers leaving his wife (only the birth of his son scuppers his wish); later his son takes the plunge and leaves his wife for the daughter of his father's lover. But the polygamy serial that takes the prize is A'ilat Al-Haj Metwalli (Haj Metwalli's Family), script written by Mustafa Moharram, directed by Mohamed El-Noqali and starring Nur El-Sherif.(see opposite page) El-Sherif plays the womaniser Metwalli, a well-off merchant already married to three women. The happy philanderer even slots in a fourth by the final episode. The three wives are portrayed as friends who love each other and are quite content to share the same husband: they even live on different floors of the same building and share moments both happy and sad. Without exception, they adore their loving Lothario. "Who can accept this?" scoffed one woman viewer while her husband lamented (perhaps a little wistfully), "It is completely unrealistic."
According to Moharram his script is for, not against women's rights. He told Al-Ahram Weekly, "this series tries to find a reasonable solution for women suffering from maltreatment by their husbands by presenting an example of a man married to more than one woman who is able to treat them all kindly." Moharram sees himself as a devil's advocate: "I'm just trying to throw a stone in calm water. I'm giving a good example of Utopia where people don't suffer any sadness or marriage problems," he said. He added that he isn't urging people to marry a second or third wife, although he himself opines, "It is the solution to most of our society's problems, mainly that of the three million girls who reached the age of marriage and are not married yet. It is all according to one's interest; some women may accept and others may refuse." Moharram did not say whether he himself intended to adopt this solution to society's problems.
Zeinab Radwan, dean of the Faculty of Dar Al-Uloum, Cairo University, Professor of Islamic Philosophy and member of the National Council for Women, has, however, spoken vehemently against both Moharram's ideas and the serial. "This [polygamy] can only happen under certain circumstances: when the wife cannot have children or if she has an illness that prevents her leading a normal sexual life. But even in those two cases, love and respect should prevent a man marrying another woman," she told the Weekly.
Raghda in one of many floppy hats; Metwalli with wife no. 1
Farkhonda Hassan, head of the National Council of Women, agrees. She announced that the subject would be "discussed" with those responsible in Egyptian TV, especially as the serials contradict the strategies the minister of information formed together with the National Council of Women to promote a more positive image of women and relationships between the sexes. "This serial gives the impression that TV programmes are not implementing any of those strategies," she said.
Mohsen Zayed is the script writer for both Banat Afkari and Hadith Al-Sabah Wal-Masaa (Day and Night Conversations), a serial based on a Naguib Mahfouz novel. He told the Weekly that he didn't mean to urge men to divorce their wives for other women, "All I meant was to encourage people who lead unhappy lives to take action towards solving their problems," he said.
A tendency to beat the same drum until the palms are raw was not confined to programmes that outraged feminists, though. The Iftar focus group also moaned that the same faces appeared ad nauseam in serial after serial and programme after programme. This year, actress Dalal Abdel-Aziz plays a girl in her early twenties in Hadith Al-Sabah Wal-Masaa. At the same time she appears in another serial, Lil-'Adalah Wogouh Kathira. In a nepotistic twist, she is cast as the forty- something mother of a girl played by her real-life daughter, Donia Samir Ghanim. In other bouts of repetition, Abla Kamel was cast in both Al-Barr Al-Gharbi and Hadith Al-Sabah Wal- Masaa. Actor Ahmed Zaher appears simultaneously in two serials, and so on (and on).
Ahmed Saqr, director of Hadith Al-Sabah Wal-Masaa said that directors preferred to choose veteran actors as most serials covered all phases of life. Why this should make it better to cast middle-aged people in young roles remains unclear. Saqr also admitted to the Weekly, "In Egypt we still lack the make- up techniques required to convincingly move characters from one age to another without showing the real years of the actor." Quite.
And what of the clothes? Surely they are way too tight for the middle-aged Ilham Shahine and way too flouncy for the less-than-thin Leila Elwy? Samia Abdel-Aziz, professor of clothes and costumes at the Cinema Institute, told the Weekly that her choice of clothes in the serial Hadith Al-Sabah Wal- Masaa was based on a study of clothes worn by people at the beginning of the 20th century. But surely not even that could excuse the hideous hats worn by Raghda in Al-Barr Al- Gharbi.
All in all, the season was trying on the nerves. All that viewers can do hope that they cannot keep it up all year round.
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