Constraints of doing joint family stories on huge sets is killing off all good stories: Abhigyan Jha

MUMBAI: Abhigyan Jha, who has produced shows like Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Pishachini, to name some, and directed and produced ground-breaking show like Janani - AI Ki Kahani, believes that some movies and shows started the trend of showing joint families on the screen, and everyone is now just following it. He feels that to show a joint family, makers spend huge money on creating big houses and almost have nothing left after that to explore new stories.

“There was a movie that showed the culture of a joint family and how happy they are, and then came a show in the 2000s showing a joint family and the drama that revolves around them, but before that there was no traditionalism in the Indian entertainment industry. There was another movie that normalized that even if you love someone, you need to ask for her hand from her father in order to marry her. If you see a Raj Kapoor film, they just eloped and got married, and it was in the 50s,” he said.

“People are now showing joint family with almost 10-15 people in the family; it is such a bad idea because a joint family crushes an individual. You can’t make choices there, and it’s a terrible idea to show it on the screen now,” he added.

He pointed out that a joint family is a tradition but it is not actually or necessarily a part of our culture. He stressed that there is a difference between culture and tradition, as tradition is closed, while culture evolves. “People used to live in a joint family before because there was no money. When you put more people in one space, it is chaos, and people are normalizing it without understanding that it leads to conflict,” he said.

“We show that men go to work and women stay at home; that is what leads to the problem. The set today is so big that all the money has gone into making it, and that’s why you don’t have enough money to showcase anything else other than the joint family and things revolving around it. So now even if we show a woman is working, we can’t show her at work, because there is no money to show her workspace,” he added.

He further mentioned that makers then need to bring actors to fill in the space and make it look like a joint family when the actors have very little to add to the shows.

“If you see the budget has gone up because you have to pay the other actors too, who have literally zero to two lines or are just there in the background.  So instead of all these, if people focused on a better story, then of course the audience would come. The constraints of doing joint family stories on huge sets is killing off all good stories. The audience craves a good story, but we are just going around doing the same thing,” Abhigyan ended.