Chandrakanth Viswanath By

KOCHI: Now, with the state government set to don the watchdog’s role in regulating the serials beamed on television, in view of their impact on the audience, a section of the content producers, who advocate ‘control at home’, are up in arms against the censorship since they feel that it may not be pragmatic.

“Art is meant to make society a better place to live in . However, regularly watching content loaded with negativity can render the mind insensitive. May be what is needed is not censorship, but correction,” said T Parvathi, psychologist and actress.

Echoing this view, psychiatrist Dr C J John said studies have shown that content depicting aggression and raw sexuality can indeed impact vulnerable audience.

“There should be a regulatory authority for the serials so that viewers can lodge a complaint if they find anything objectionable,” he said. However, the television fraternity has come out against moves to portray all the serials in a poor light.

“The youngsters are not watching serials. It is true that children are watching them along with women and if you feel concerned about them, you should keep them away from children. To avoid complaints, we have an internal system to screen the content before the actual telecast,” said K Gireesh Kumar, Head (Fiction) Mazhavil Manorama.

And Dinesh Panickar, actor and general secretary of ATMA, while terming the move to keep tabs an impractical idea in view of the countless number of episodes aired daily added that a monitoring authority could be misused and might well harm the industry.

“How can they ensure censorship when there are 30-35 episodes aired everyday?” he said. Kishore Sathya, actor, vouched for the small screen fraternity’s commitment to society, saying, “We also have concerns about the audience and take due care while filming. But can you point out a single instance where serials had proved the trigger for crime?” he said.

Meanwhile, a section of the audience, who agrees that there has indeed been a deterioration in the quality of the content, is also against a ban.

“If bans were to be enforced, we should start with newspaper stories and in the case of television the so-called panel discussions are worse than the TV serials,” said Ravishankar, poet and screen writer.