TELEVISION IN AFGHANISTAN 2/8/07 Fonte: International Herald Tribune

Posted

Sabato 2 Agosto 2008

A massive phenomenon in Afghanistan: Television
By Barry Bearak The New York Times
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Seven years ago, in a very different time in a very different
Afghanistan, a medical student named Daoud Sediqi was bicycling from campus when
he was stopped by the Taliban's whip-wielding religious police. The
young man immediately felt an avalanche of regret, for he was in
violation of at least two laws.


One obvious offense was the length of his hair. While the ruling
Taliban insisted that men sprout untrimmed beards, they were otherwise
opposed to scruffiness and the student had allowed his locks to grow shaggy.
His other transgression was more serious. If his captors searched his
things, they would find a CD with an X-rated movie.


"Fortunately, they didn't look," he recalled. "My only punishment was
to have my head shaved because of my long hair."


Now, at 26, he is one of this nation's best-known men, someone sprung
from a new wellspring of fame - not a warlord or a mullah, but a
television celebrity, the host of "Afghan Star," this nation's "American
Idol."


Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, Afghanistan has been
developing in fits and starts. Among the unchanging circumstances that still
give people fits: continuing war, inept leaders, corrupt police and
woeful living conditions.


But television is off to a phenomenal start, with Afghans now engrossed
- for better or worse - in much of the same escapist fare that
seduces the rest of the world: soap operas that pit the unbearably
conniving against the implausibly virtuous; chefs preparing meals that most
people would never eat in kitchens they could never afford; talk show
hosts wheedling secrets from those too shameless to keep their troubles
to themselves.


The latest national survey, which dates to 2005, shows that 19 percent
of Afghan households own a television, a remarkable total when
considering that not only was owning a TV a crime under the Taliban but that a
mere 14 percent of the population has access to public electricity.


In a more recent study of Afghanistan's five most urban provinces,
two-thirds of all people said they watched television every day or almost
every day.


"Maybe Afghanistan is not so different than other places; people watch
television because there is nothing else to do," said Muhammed Qaseem
Akhgar, a social analyst and newspaper editor. Reading is certainly less
an option; Only 28 percent of the population is literate. "Where else
can one find amusement?" Akhgar asked.


Each night at 7:30, people in Kabul obey the beckoning of prime time
much as they might answer the call to prayer. "As you can see, there is
truth on the television, because all over the world the mother-in-law is
always provoking a fight," said Muhammad Farid, a man sitting in a
run-down restaurant beside the Pul-e-Kheshti Mosque, his attention fixed
on an Indian soap opera that had been dubbed into Dari.


Women, whose public outings are constrained by custom, most often watch
their favorite shows at home. Men, on the other hand, are free to make
television a communal ritual. In one eatery after another, with deft
fingers dipping into mounds of steaming rice, patrons sit cross-legged
on carpeted platforms, their eyes fixed on a television set perched near
the ceiling. Profound metaphysical questions hover in the dim light:
Will Prerna find happiness with Mr. Bajaj, who is after all not the
father of her child?


"These are problems that teach you about life," said Sayed Agha, who
sells fresh vegetables from a pushcart by day and views warmed-over
melodramas by night.


What to watch is rarely contested. At 7:30, the dial is turned to Tolo
TV for "Prerna," a soap opera colloquially known by the name of its
female protagonist. Then the channel is switched for "The Thief of
Baghdad." Then it is back to Tolo for the intrafamily and extramarital warfare
waged on "Tulsi," the nickname for a show whose title literally means
"Because the Mother-in-Law Was Once the Daughter-in-Law."


Kabul has eight local television stations, including one feebly
operated by the government. "The key time slots are from 6 to 9 p.m. because
that's when people switch on their generators for electrical power,"
said Saad Mohseni, who runs Tolo, the channel that dominates the market in
most of the country. "People love the soap operas."


"We've just bought the rights to '24,' the American show," he added.
"We had some concerns. Most of the bad guys are Muslims, but we did focus
groups and it turns out most people didn't care about that so long as
the villains weren't Afghans."


Mohseni, a former investment banker, and his three siblings started
Tolo TV - Tolo means "dawn" in Dari - in 2004, assisted by a grant from
the U.S. Agency for International Development.


After living most of their adult lives in exile in Australia, the
Mohsenis returned to post-Taliban Kabul looking for investment opportunities
and discovered a nearly prehistoric television wilderness ready for
settlement. People could buy a used color set for $75. But what did they
want to watch? Afghan tastes had not been allowed to gestate over
decades, passing from Milton Berle to Johnny Carson to Bart Simpson.
Everything would be brand new.


"We let ourselves be guided by what we liked," Mohseni said.


For the most part, that means that Tolo has harvested every cliché from
television's vast international wasteland. True-crime shows introduce
Afghans to the sensationalism of their own pederasts and serial
killers. Reality shows pluck everyday people off the streets and transform
them with spiffed-up wardrobes. Quiz shows reward the knowledgeable: How
many pounds of mushrooms did Afghanistan export last year? A contestant
who answers correctly wins a gallon of cooking oil.


Some foreign shows, like those featuring disasters and police chases,
are so generic that Tolo is able to rebroadcast them without
translation. Other formats require only slight retooling.


Sediqi is beginning his third season as host of "Afghan Star." He has
never seen "American Idol" and said he had never heard of his American
counterpart, Ryan Seacrest. Nevertheless, he ably manages to introduce
the competing vocalists and coax the audience to vote by cellphone for
their favorites. "I must tell you that I am having very good fun,"
Sediqi said, employing his limited English.


He is one of several young stars at Tolo whose hipness is exotic enough
to seem almost extraterrestrial to an average Afghan.


Older men who prefer soap operas to singing competitions are quite
likely to want to give Sediqi a good thrashing. "People in the countryside
and the mosques say that the show is ruining society," Sediqi admitted.


Music videos - primarily imports from India - are broadcast regularly.
With a nod to Afghan tradition, the bare arms and midriffs of female
dancers are obscured with a milky strip of camouflage. And yet sporting
events are somehow deemed less erotic. Maria Sharapova played at
Wimbledon with the full flesh of her limbs unconcealed.


But the strongest complaints against Tolo have come from politicians,
including members of the government. Tolo's news coverage, while
increasingly professional, is very often unflattering to the government and
even irreverent. Parliamentarians have been shown asleep at their
legislative desks or in overheated debate throwing water bottles. One lawmaker
was photographed picking his nose and then guiltily cleaning his
finger.


In April, when Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet thought he had been
quoted out of context, he sent policemen to Tolo's headquarters to
arrest the news staff. The ensuing contretemps had to be mediated by the
United Nations mission in Kabul.


"With democracy comes television," said Saad Mohseni, Tolo's chief.
"It's hard for some people to get used to."