Vomit. Big, chunky vomit.

After a long day of fasting and having a little less energy than you’re accustomed to, only to finally break fast, that is what you’ll be producing once you turn your television on.

You know what?

Your puke might have more texture and substance than whatever show you’ll have the misfortune to find.

You know how Ramadan is supposed to be a Muslim holy month of self-restrain, spiritual cleansing, and self-discipline, where one invests in reflecting about what it means to be a charitable, patient person?

Over the past ten years, in the Middle East, it’s become a month of BOTOX-stuffed actors and actresses, disgusting facial hair on ugly men, huge wigs, and light-weight boxing all brutally wrapped in a thick bow of frustrated sobbing and kilos of make up.

And what for?

In the name of betrayed art, we will soon be bombarded with a very truly, more genuinely defined form of terrorism: shows that breathe, and perpetuate drama, to the point where that word is not enough to define the atrocious freak shows. It’s mythological, the degree of stupidity and exploitation of the feeble-minded that will be engrossed by these shows in less than two weeks’ time. The themes they claim to bring light to are all but undermined when they’re basically put in a clown suit and made to juggle flaming knives of sheer incongruity. Art needs to have a message, and if one wants to provide a lesson to be learned, perhaps these writers, directors, and actors, need to find a better hole to put their heads in, maybe an underground library, this time. Holy month and all. LOL AMIRITE?! I find it disgusting that people’s intelligence is undermined repeatedly.

Take last year for example, one of the more annoying shows was about a woman with around six daughters, a fear mongering husband, and spoilt son. The very fake story’s characters were played by the biggest collection of chimeras on Arabic television yet. I don’t think some of those were even the same ethnicity.  The story was a celebration of misandry, to put it plainly. While it exposed the very general issue of favoritism with regards to sex, it did a very convincing job of making me believe that everyone in the project was either ignorant about the phenomenon being international and transcending all cultures with no exception, regardless of what mainstream television says, or trying to insult their viewers’ intelligence. While there was no physical abuse in this particular project, the father in that tale controlled all the females in his family to the point of successfully making the viewers’ blood boil-if they were intellectually unambitious. The girls had no education past high school, controlled outings, if any, and were treated like crap (which they did a good job of looking like) while the son has free reign and is the source of the family’s woes. I know of someone who believed everything he saw on that show, the proud idiot.

Other shows that I am regretfully aware of that are now simply a given in Ramadan consisted of men slapping their wives in the face, hard enough to ruin their gorgeous make up, adultery, stupid girls, stupid girls, and stupid girls. I like that all the girls are stupid and don’t know any better, and that the men are cruel, vicious creatures. I picked up on the pattern, yeah. The portrayal of females who are not stupid doormats was that they were simply scum and got what was coming to them. Note the layers that would cause one to reminisce a pound cake.

Are Middle Eastern viewers that gullible? I’ve stopped watching Ramadan shows a long time ago. Once bitten is twice as shy.

Oh, and on top of all that, regardless of the show, and out of  about 30 episodes, the character of the mother spends five episodes crying while shrouded by solemn shading, self-pitying music, and sometimes, voice overs.

Now, the obvious thing to keep in mind is that these shows are nowhere near the truth and lose all claims of transparency in the name of presenting social commentary. While they touch up on real themes like favoritism, domestic abuse, drug abuse, bad company to keep, and apparently, everything else (because they’re such artists) the realization falls short. It has been for over a decade. To these self-proclaimed visionaries, the natural remedy for this is to be even more ridiculous with their projects.

The previews of the shows, which is what prompted me to write this entry to begin with, consists of men strangling women and apparently pushing the theme of general ickiness (violence, suggestive faults, and a lot more) to the point of the whole preview being a bunch of sobbing women and monstrous men. As a woman, I can’t help but be offended at this. It’s as bad as when a dude grabs a soap box and starts spewing some gas (you choose where from) about how women are intelligent and can think for themselves. Yeah, we know. Are you so proud of the fact that it’s only you that just discovered this earth-shattering truth?

At this point, I’m seriously starting to feel bad for the guys. Talk about a bad rep. There’s a lot of bad, but you will only run into it if you go looking for it.

Consider this my public service announcement. These shows are an embarrassment.

While I find it unlikely to happen, I hope to be proven wrong this Ramadan. Maybe this year won’t be so bad.

Gulp.

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