Effects Of Soap Opera On African Culture

Soap opera is a radio or television series typically
broadcast in the afternoon or evening about the lives of melodramatic characters, which are often filled with strong emotions, lightly dramatic situations and suspense.
Obviously, majority of female and few male folks are consumed with the urge of watching soap operas from European countries including Korea, Philipians, India, Brazil etc. As a result of this, most Nigerians stay glued to their television sets for a long period of time watching the hourly broadcast.
House wives are also victims as most of them spend the whole day watching these programmes and end up achieving nothing meaningful for the day. Most of them get so addicted to these operas such that it has become their way of life.
Watching soap operas is really interesting and entertaining, but it also has negative effects on the audience. Besides consuming precious time the audience should have spent on meaningful ventures, it is capable of encouraging bad moral attitudes especially among school children and teenagers.
I beg to argue that programmes like Telemundo and Zee World on cable have far more negative consequences on children than advantages. Regrettably, some parents, either out of ignorance or moral pervertion encourage their children to watch these programmes.
The fact that these programmes are mainly for entertainment does not de-emphasized the fact that they portray violence and encourage moral depravity.
Writers of soap operas develop fictional characters that model positive and negative characters and through their stories and struggles, their audience learn about issues ranging from domestic abuse to personal bankruptcy.
I also see some of the story lines of these programmes as an affront on African culture. These programmes tend to promote other cultures, to the detriment of our own culture. Besides, the people’s addiction to these foreign soap operas is killing our own movie industry, in addition to economic disadvantage on the country. Most Nigerians now have less interest and pay less attention to local movies which ordinarily have the potential of promoting African culture and language among Nigerians youths.
It will be recalled that before the advent of soap operas, the Nigerian broadcast media used to show programmes that educate and promote our culture. These days, however, Nigerian broadcast media have caught the bug of showing and Telemundo and promoting more foreign movies than those of local movies.
For instance, too much exposure to soap opera has the disadvantage of promoting drug trafficking, prostitution, murder and injustice and other vices that are associated with it. This is not good for the upbring of our children.
Although soap opera as an educative influence on it’s audience especially in the area of home management and good understanding of relationship, yet its negative influence for outweighs its benefits. Therefore, it would be more beneficial if our local producers can devote their energies and skills to injecting more of our local cultural contents in their movies in such a way that it can inculcate good habits in the audience, especially the new generation of youths.
We must be conscious of the negative moral effects foreign movies have on our culture and therefore strive to change the trend by encouraging local programmes that are not only entertaining to sustain audience, but that can also showcase our cultural values to the world, the same way programme like the Zee World promotes Indian culture – Lest, our culture may be heading towards total extinction.
Obelele is a student of Abia State University, Uturu.

Mirian Obusele