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Parrafin

Silver Screen with Tafadzwa Zimoyo
“Life is not always going to go the way you figured . . . ”

I heard this statement while watching “Third Watch”, a ’90s emergency services drama on DSTV, sometime ago, which features New York firemen, cops and paramedics.

During the episode the characters talked about the moment when this realisation had dawned on them.

They chatted that life wasn’t a story written for them, that it wouldn’t always go the way they had imagined.

We all have had sad and hard things happening in our lives.

Break ups.

Family issues.

Deaths and accidents.

While these events are all hard, when they are over and the grieving process has been worked through, you can still see that it’s still you and life is relatively similar to how it had been before the event.

I didn’t expect a 90s TV show to give me pause to reflect, but watching a character say this made me realise it was a point.

People will go through most of their life without realising this, and others will be unlucky enough to discover it at an age when they should be innocent to the realities of the world.

By this we can safely conclude that dramas play a pivotal role in our lifestyles.

Remember the days of the famous drama ‘‘Desperate Housewives’’, how most women were glued to the television in general?

It is probably not about the people liking the drama in conventional sense but attraction.

With dramas too you can compare what other people want in their lives and how they live.

Gone are the days when our national television used to portray that with a line up of dramas such as “Parrafin”, “Mutirowafanza”, “Gringo”, “Mukadota” and “Zvirimudzimba”.

Although here in Zimbabwe it is still difficult for us to differentiate between drama and soap, with those English dramas we had our closest to soaps.

We have long decried that television is no longer the same.

Our local producers and filmmakers are busy focusing on international products which don’t have any relevance to our society let alone culture, all for the sake of an award or recognition.

Television has brought a whole new scale and intensity to the experience of drama that is without precedent in the history of human experience.

As Raymond Williams has pointed out, there has never before been a time when a majority of any population had such regular and constant access to drama.

It would be wiser to have a section on days for dramas as they don’t only educate but give solution to some societal problems.

According to US psychographic ad targeter, Mindset Media, the TV shows you watch can offer marketers key insights into your personality.

For instance, very modest people are more likely to watch the blue-collar hero show “Deadliest Catch” while altruistic people tend to prefer cooking shows like “Rachael Ray” and reality shows with happy endings like “The Bachelor”.

Your personality determines what you consume, what TV shows you watch, what products you buy, and all the other decisions you make.

BMW, Audi and Mercedes buyers, for instance, are a fairly homogeneous demographic group; however, each car appeals to a different type of personality.

Looking at a comedy drama cartoon series ‘‘Family Guy’’, it draws an audience of rule breakers or rebels.

Rebels don’t like authority, rules or structures they deem unfair, and usually won’t hesitate to make their feelings known with anger or sarcasm.

Looking at those mentioned above, how they signified some scenarios.

I was astounded when I thought of checking whether ZBC TV had one current drama series, to review but was left hopeless.

It is said that television opens us to a wider world, but we must also remember that it cuts us off from it.

For virtually every statement, there is a corresponding counter-statement.

And not everyone is affected in the same way by television dramas somehow.

Generally, the experience of television dramas is most positive where the experience of life is richest and is actively called into play, as a base for the creative assimilation and assessment of television.

With the Valentine’s month approaching, it is also wiser to utilise the opportunities, having dramas revolving so as to educate and enlighten others.

We understand that DStv is already in the mood with advertisements being flighted, but locally we have seen a lot of stories in the media on promiscuity, fornication and abuse among others, which should be very high during his period.