I just wanted to relay a conversation I had this morning with a member of the board of trustees who works in advertizing. He shared that he worked for Disney, which got us talking about the process of choosing what scripts and shows to produce. I asked him if he was aware of any discussion on the production side of what types of shows should be produced in order to impact certain demographics. I mentioned that many soap operas in South-East Asia will target certain demographics, primarily house wives, with the intention of promoting gender equality (or some weird version of that) and these effects have been seen to occur. But what he said was that most tv show scripts will be made in the US or in the UK and then filtered through other tv agencies around the world who then tweak the plots to make it more culturally relative. For example, they will eliminate meat-eating from the shows, or promiscuity etc. And the main agencies will start to make their initial scripts easier for this tweaking to be done--which makes it extremely difficult for controversial protagonists to enter mainstream US media. Relating to our discussion a few days ago about how we can dispel Western notions of Islamic masculinity, we see how complex it becomes to have main characters who are Muslim when companies around the world are supporting screen writers to make their characters as simplistic as possible.
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