As people who had grown up watching Egyptian TV, we all already know that our TV shows aren’t exactly the most self-aware or sensible productions out there. If anything, they’re actually full of problems that we’d only started noticing as we grew older.
And we’re not just talking about one ill-time joke or two. No, we’re talking about jokes that turned into full-fledged character tropes that are now as Egyptian as the Pyramids.
Perhaps the most hurtful thing about this whole shebang is that our TV productions keep normalizing it by pretending like the introduced tropes are funny and comedic, when they’re anything but.
Fat-shaming
We don’t know just exactly when and why Egyptian show-runners thought up this concept. Somehow though, in their eyes, there’s nothing funnier than a person who’s not skinny getting treated as undesirable and made the butt of every joke.
Obviously, this is harmful on many, many, many levels. For one thing, it causes myriad self-esteem and body image issues as well as raises the levels of already-sky-high bullying in schools and daily life.
Blackface
Another long-time staple of Egyptian TV is the harmful tradition of blackface, a literal means to mock actual people’s skin-tones and entire ethnic backgrounds. Not that show-runners are aware of this.
And before you mention that maybe this was a thing of the past, you’ll be disappointed to learn that was repeated too many times to count. And yes, the impact is always awful.
Women and not knowing how to do anything
You know that funny trope where a woman is finally upgraded to having the main lead (or quasi-main) status and she finally gets to run around and do all the big heroic things and…suddenly loses all her cognitive functions and doesn’t know how to do basic things so the male lead has to help her? And that’s funny because she was so sure of herself before?
Yeah, so do we. Sadly, we’re going to keep reliving that one trope countless times until it stops making the producers laugh, we guess.
Suicide
Although joking about suicide and mental health is obviously the ultimate no-go, Egyptian TV seems to be quite at ease when doing that.
Sure, sometimes, it’s poorly disguised which brings some comfort. Other times, though…well, this video says a lot more than we can:
Poverty makes people stupid
Before we delve into anything here, let us just say that a person’s conditions in life, whether good or bad, don’t usually affect their intelligence. Meaning, that just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you’re unintelligent.
This message is one show-runners should be aware of and with good reason.
Literally every show set in humble neighborhoods shows a cast of characters who don’t know basics like 1+1=2. And that is horribly insulting and not in any way funny.
