#anyhoo couldn't fit it in the ask but any tea of Mashion Roundtable?? 👀

[badedramay]

sorry for the late reply i have been buried in wedding festivities for a cousin! i still need to watch udaari and rehai (shame on me i know lololol) so i don’t have a comparison to work off of unfortunately but ig the closest thing kuch ankahi might have done was having one of the characters rally her reluctant friends to report one of their professors so he could be investigated and removed for sexually harassing multiple women. there was also the main family helping their house maid out by helping her son apply to and attend school and then protecting her from her abusive husband so he could shape up. i think kuch ankahi’s problem was that it tackled good issues but bc it had so many plot threads running it wasn’t necessarily able to delve as much into a deeper reality as some people would have liked. the problems characters faced were absolutely real but some of the solutions were somewhat idealized (in terms of characters coming around to doing the right thing) bc they had to wrap the threads up by the end and there were so many threads to wrap up to begin with

that being said, what i liked about kuch ankahi was its focus on “behavioral” empowerment rather than necessarily empowerment by doing some big specific thing, if that makes sense. the characters did have concrete goals and obstacles but the drama was largely focused on daily living for women. so you had sajal’s character focused on the working woman’s experience (the unrealistic expectations, the judgment from society when you appear too independent, the awkward pressures from your boss, the resignation to doing work you don’t like bc you need the money, etc), mira’s character focused on the married woman’s experience (giving into a long engagement bc your mother feared what people would say if you broke it off, trying to exercise patience and kindness to make the marriage work, realizing those things alone aren’t enough if your spouse truly is not invested in you and you deserve better, taking a stand for yourself to separate so that you don’t have to live in a suffocating environment), and so on and so forth

the drama overall felt cathartic bc it was portraying things that were real to women’s daily experiences and while somewhat idealized was trying to give women the courage and support to take a stand for themselves in their daily lives. so the female characters did make plenty of mistakes but those mistakes were also learning lessons and if you understood how much love the director and writer had for the characters then you recognized they weren’t mistakes meant to make the female characters look stupid. there were a lot of complaints that sajal’s character was stupid for constantly doing her boss’s bidding but for one thing she desperately needed money to help buy out her family home before they were evicted and for another she did learn to navigate her professional life and take a stand for herself where needed. people also immensely criticized mira’s character for being so stupid as to go ahead with a marriage she didn’t want merely bc she didn’t want to upset her mother but for some reason none of these viewers understood there was a purpose to depicting this arc where she would eventually take a stand for herself and separate once she realized a marriage couldn’t be made off of goodwill alone

i don’t hate umeed as a character and find her to be quite endearing despite her immaturity and chaotic nature, but it was so odd to see the same people who were constantly championing her as a win for feminism dunking on the above characters bc they didn’t make the immediately smart and independent decisions. like i mentioned in the last ask, the love for umeed is definitely part of a reactionary response to how much we’re used to seeing utterly subjugated women in a range of dramas, so i get feeling attached to her more take-charge and self serving nature (although to her credit that may be too simplistic a descriptor. she does learn to care for and take account of others eventually). but women like the characters in kuch ankahi do exist in the real world and i’m honestly a bit concerned that people would rather condescend to them for being idiots then sympathize with their situations and support a narrative that encourages them to take a stand for themselves too. esp in a family oriented drama that actively involved the parents in their children’s trials and pushed them to recognize their own mistakes in handling their children’s affairs. for some reason people don’t even have a sense anymore for what counts as depicting sympathetic realism versus what counts as glorification. maybe tere bin skewed everyone’s radars lol

ooh hope you having fun at the wedding festivities! i know they can be tiring and overwhelming for the most part but there's joy to be found in those moments! i too had a very busy weekend..literally ab jaake koi breather mila hai.

my opinion of KA is that it was trying to be too many things at once. like i get the intention of it and for the most part the show had its hands on the realism button. but instead of doing an average job of many things, wouldn't a good job of one thing be better? like with Rehai and Udaari (which is a must watch show btw and I highly highly recommend it! the performances, the story, the sensitivity with which the story was handled, the overall message and ending..it balanced the drama with the optimism and did not fall prey to sensationalizing a highly sensitive topic for the ratings. AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW - THE RATINGS AND POPULARITY STILL CAME!!!) the show was focused on 1-2 related social issues which the Foundation was interested in raising awareness about and all of that was balanced by the love story between Urwa and Farhan so we had that as a respite. at no point the horrors became SO overwhelming ke dekhne ka dil hi na chahe. the heart and mind were working in tandem there when the creators got together to make that show so the criticisms about the areas where the show faltered were not ones about the narrative or the pace but more of a couple of acting choices of the actors (whatever the fuck was the Hocane brother doing there i'd never know..Hum ne apna nepotism ka chaddha nahin chorhna kabhi)

idk what Sajal's arc was in KA as well i paid like 0.1% attention to her but the initial reviews of the show that I did follow complained about Mira's character's cowardness. and I agree with them? like..I also had the same complain ke behan, what was forcing you to be married in a family where there was no respect either for you or your family? her father and siblings had her back. she had an open out which she didn't take for no other reason than Ami ka dil rakhna hai. yeah the character ultimately had the arc of her standing up for herself and the mother also ultimately regretted forcing her daughter in a position that put her through so much misery. the complains were that what Mira's character went through is not a unique alien thing. these stories happen all the time. literally every desi household has such story. zaroori nahin hai ke aap dhaka kha ke hi seekho. dusron ko dhaka kha ke dekh ke bhi aap sambhal sakte ho. those were the complains. the family had a feeling this rishta was off. the family had a feeling the daughter will have to struggle. the show is set in current times, right? it's not DurreShehwar where the times were old and the in-laws portrayed such a promising picture for the daughter's future that the family happily got the daughter married. the red flags were all there. and the narrative was giving the character an out. which she didn't take. yes, a woman's agency and all is great but it's not easy to applause when the agency has her swallow ankhon dekhi makhi only to spit out. jab pata tha ke thookna hi hai toh mooh mein daala kyun? it's these...frustrations of the audiences which didn't have them support that character. because for MANY people, they'd kill to be in her position where the family was ready to support the girl if she chooses to break a potentially toxic rishta. so to watch a character have the option of those choices and still not choose to utilize them..annoyance toh honi hai.

(again, haven't watched KA so if i have missed out on the nuances that's a given. i am just going by what i have gathered the crux of Mira's character is)

I see how the above paragraph is putting me in the same list of people you mentioned who are not sympathetic towards characters that don't make immediately smart and independent decisions. but the thing is, it's 2023. the situations where the characters can gain sympathy for not knowing any better have changed. willingly putting yourself in a relationship where you know there's no love or respect is not the story that needs to be told in 2023. or if it is being told the narrative style and choices have to change (like with Iqbal in Yunhi). yehi kahani decades se chalti arahi hai in dramas and written fiction. same lesson kitni baar dohraya jaega? it's not a surprise that a fatigue has settled in. yeah, a character not making immediate smart decisions in a professional work place IS a new story because our dramas don't show career oriented women. a character actively balancing their personal and professional life IS a new story cuz majority of our characters on TV only have the personal life (which revolves around shaadi) to speak of. a young woman trusting their partner and sending them intimate pictures IS a cautionary tale to be told because these topics are not discussed openly. but jaan boojh ke aisi family mein shaadi karna jahan izzat nahin milne wali? yeh toh koi nayi baat nahin.

when Hayat in Yeh Raha Dil gets scammed by her friends into selling her house in exchange of a ticket to Nepal, that makes sense because Hayat's entire character in that point was such that that decision to be trusting made sense. Sonia's character in Aisi Hai Tanhai sends compromising pictures of her to her fiance which later get leaked, the sympathies are still with her because she was trusting the man she was in love with and whom she was set to marry. the tragedy that later happens becomes a tale of caution for the audiences at home. i am not saying women HAVE to be perfect and they cannot make mistakes. they can. they SHOULD. but the mistakes should have some undeniable logic behind them. warna yeah, they fall in the category of stupidity.