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or years, our fair country of Indonesia has been reveling in the television world — from gossip shows, to comedy and talk shows and various others. One of the other main attractions of Indonesian television, however, is something that raises questions as to why it would be liked at all: soap operas, or more generally known as sinetron. The shows were clever and perfectly executed forms of drama, tragedy and romance, as they would describe it. Soaps quickly became popular, and the TV stations took heed.

So it was that, since a couple of years ago, TV stations have been producing soaps left and right. At first it was a good thing, though the story is admittedly too good to be true. They ran out of ideas — or at least good ones — so they decided to make everything the same. Whether it was an orphaned little girl struggling to find the grandfather she never knew or a poor woman on a journey to find happiness and the love of her life, they amounted to the same thing in the end — a ridiculous combination of a series of tragedies, over-the-top drama and few and far between happy times performed by the same actors on multiple shows, often with the same roles.

Imagine a beautiful young girl (It’s always a beautiful young girl, did you notice?) who came from a small village, looking for a job in the big city. She bumps into a handsome young man who was spending some time with a pretty woman who feigns interest in him — but honestly, she just wants his money — and they spend minutes staring at each other before walking away. A couple of episodes of chance meetings between the two and about their daily lives — a rich man and a struggling girl — and boom: something bad happens to the girl. More often than not, it’s a car accident.

The man takes pity on the girl, and the money-grubbing woman becomes jealous of her. They proceed to have several episodes where the woman bullies the girl until the man finds out and breaks all ties with the woman and proclaims his love to the girl. However, shortly after, the man gets caught in an accident himself. He loses his memory and the money-grubber who he had broken all ties with suddenly appears and says that she’s the love of his life or something of the sort. She then continues to bully the girl, who tries desperately to woo back the man. Cue accident that causes the man to regain his memory.

The last two paragraphs surmise, more or less, an accurate description of most, if not all, of the soaps appearing today. They continue rehashing the stories in a pathetically ridiculous manner, adding in unnecessary things that only debase the story further. Add in some bad humor and failed attempts at jokes and you’ve got yourself an award-wining show right there. You don’t even need to think of new stuff yourself.

While this may be something of a generalization, it is true that, even among the more unique soaps, there are always mainstream or rehashed parts of the plot. This is even more painfully obvious when you use the same actors — their reactions, expressions and the way they speak is exactly the same.

One of the main reasons why people like soaps is the drama content. Many people like soap opera melodrama, and this is especially true for women. The cliffhanger endings leave you feeling unfinished, and while the plot certainly doesn’t keep you guessing, you don’t know exactly what happens. You know there will be an accident the next episode, but you don’t know how, when or where it will happen, so you always end up mildly surprised when it does.

The other possible reason why so many like soaps is the poor quality of local TV shows. It is an undeniable fact that locally made shows pale in comparison to foreign shows across the board. Maybe it is because of this that people have such low tastes — because other shows are more or less just as bad.

Another possible reason for its popularity might be because it is targeted to people of the lower-middle to low socio-economic statuses, which make up most of the population of Indonesia. Therefore, the TV stations would adhere to the tastes of this group of people, which is, to avoid a politically incorrect term, something of a more simple and unsophisticated type. Indeed, at the end of the day, it is program ratings that matter. The higher the cost per million watchers, the sexier it is to the advertisers — that is, the only source of revenue of any TV station.

With all the facts pointed out above, it is mind-boggling why people would choose some soap operas over others, when they’re actually the same thing, only slightly different. Many would say otherwise, but no matter what they say, the biggest difference between soaps would be, for example, the heroine looking for her father instead of her grandfather.

No doubt, for some people the reason they like some soaps better than others is the delusion of it being “completely different”. Though quality of the shots and actors sometimes do come into account, they are rare. More often than not, people just like something they’ve watched from an earlier point than others.

When all is said and done, there is one thing to point out: Local soap operas are just plain bad. And when they’re not bad, they’re merely average. It is a wonder why they are liked, and even more so the fact that they’re popular. I’m not saying that they can’t be improved — far from it. If TV stations could stop cutting corners — hire or train better actors, write original and interesting storylines, improve quality of shots and editing it would improve the show as a whole. But as it stands, though the general public has yet to find out, the quality of soap operas leaves much to be desired.

Ali Riza
First year student at
Multimedia Nusantara University, Serpong,Tangerang