Lack of Innovation

The target audience of this particular blog is limited to middle age parents whose children are between 2 years to 8 years, other than this criteria you might not get the essence of this blog. Although the concerns mentioned in this article are not much worrying at the moment but maybe after few years it will be top line issue for our children. Overall take it lightly and think over it!

When I was a kid the hot favorite cartoon series in those days were Tom & Jerry, Pink Panther, Woody wood pecker and few more. If I remember correctly, there was a fixed time daily, 30 mins. in morning and 30 mins. in evening. Good old daysJ. With the advancement in technology and bloom of media, 60 mins. became couple of hours and finally many dedicated channels for children were launched and the transmission became nonstop.

Nice innovation! No one is against it and infact it became easier for both parents and children as they do not have to wait for a specific time, whenever they get a chance they can watch cartoons. Usually most of the cartoon series in our time were purely for entertainment purpose and educational element was not emphasized, but with the progress today’s cartoon series are multipurpose, education with entertainment. Again not a bad modernization!

As you all are aware that we haven’t contributed much in animated media yet, most of these cartoon series are either made in west or now in India, the trend of western cartoons are not much changed as compare to our time, still pure entertainment but with only one enhancement, male/female relations are now highlighted in their stories like some love affairs or dance parties etc. As a matter of fact this is now in every media from Pakistani drama serials to Hollywood/Bollywood movies and if we want to switch on our TV sets than we have to leave with this fact.

Another major contributor of animated industry is India and you know the fact that desi will be attracted with desi, so most of our children are addicted to Indian cartoon channels, “POGO” is these days a super doper hit channel among children. They are doing excellent job from their perspective as they have amalgamated their religious teachings in their cartoons, initially there were some specific series for religious teachings and when they realized that actually this idea has worked beyond their expectation they adopted this idea in other cartoon series as well.

Interesting part of these cartoon series are, they focus on one religious person, for example these days a cartoon series “Hanooman” is being watched by most of the children, they have scripted it so well that the religious teaching is done in an appealing way. They have started the story when “Hanooman” was a child and highlighted all his small small stories so well that children are getting addicted to it. I must say that this is an excellent way to teach religious events and autobiography of religious heros as you all are aware that “a picture is worth 1000 words” and what if it is a full fledge movie? Another great advancement they did is every popular cartoon series are launched in two versions, English and Urdu and we all know that no matter how good our children are in English, Urdu has its own attraction for children of our society.

The easiest answer for this concern is to stop our children from these kind of cartoons, but is this really a good solution? Let me quote one more recent example, these days a cartoon series “CHOTA BHEEM” is most popular series among children, if you want to know the popularity graph just type “CHOTA BHEEM” on Google and check out the ratings. This cartoon series is no doubt very interesting and every second child waits for it, I have really seen a 3 year old child waiting for this cartoon and child’s day is not completed without watching this cartoon, you can imagine how popular this would be. It was use to be a pure entertainment series with some of Indian culture but as soon as popularity graph rose they introduced a new character “KRISHNA” a religious personality in Hinduism, now a new version of this cartoon series is launched “CHOTA BHEEM AUR KRISHNA” and same tactics are being followed in this cartoon also, teaching the autobiography and piousness of Krishna.

On the other end our children are not so much aware of religious persons of Islam, they only know what they are taught in schools or madressas and you can understand that there’s a huge difference in both the learning system (pictorial and theoretical). I was astonished when a 5 year old child was telling me details of “Hanooman” and “Krishna” and was singing their religious song “oom”, when I asked the child to tell me name of 12 imams he was speechless.

I admit that few organizations have worked on animated movies for children describing the event of Karbala and some animated videos to teach wazu and namaz but sadly it couldn’t grab children’s attention. We need to know that children needs entertainment and you have to device a way for educational entertainment.

If not thousands, atleast there are hundreds of stories describing childhood events and small educational lessons from different prophets and Imams (a.s.), the way they use to live during their childhood, their interaction with different people of their age and elder people, stories of their sons and daughters etc. What does our child knows about it? The only source for a normal Muslim is the subject “Islamiat” taught in school and at max the madressa but again it is very difficult to build their interest as they take schools and madressas as a part of their studies and not entertainment, I don’t know whether it is permissible to make animated videos for children based on prophet’s and imam’s (a.s) stories as a complete serial in an entertaining fashion, but if this is not an option, we have to look for some alternatives else our children will remain unaware of Islamic personalities. Same as what we are today, if I take my example I don’t know much about childhood of different prophets and imams, all I know is what usually mentioned in majlis or what I have learned in madressa. That’s it! But yes my kid will know lot about other religious personality as compare to his own religion and this is only due to “LACK OF INNOVATION”.

What do you think!