The Sinetron

Since the reform took place in 1998, Indonesia has changed from a very closed conservative society where censorship is very common, into a more open liberal society.

One of the industry which is effected is the television movie industry, popularly known as the Sinetron (short for Sinema Elektronik) shown by every local TV stations.
Every day, each TV stations tried their very best to show their own popular movie series so that many viewers would want to watch them, that way many companies would want to place advertisements on the TV program.
But in spite of the many titles, actors/actresses, stories that those Sinetron shows, actually most of their topics are the same, i.e. either Horror or Love story. The worst thing is that they all have one thing in common i.e. they show Emotional Violence where role players scream, shout, curse, etc. as if our society is emotionally violent.

Frankly speaking, I never watched one Sinetron till the end, simply because I get bored by the reasons that I have mentioned above. But please don’t get me wrong; I do believe that there are many Indonesian movies which are worth watching, the latest one being Laskar Pelangi. And in the past, there was a memorable movie: Badai Pasti Berlalu, and TV movie like Si Unyil and Keluarga Cemara.

Considering that TV movies are watched by unlimited people with all kinds of backgrounds and ages, in my opinion they should have more variety of topics, not just Horror and/or Love, but also educative topics related to the Environment, Patriotism, good moral standards, etc.