Hania Afridi
Is it just me, or when we sit down after hours of labour to watch a movie, a drama, scroll through reels and videos, or listen to music, it just feels like a constant repetition of baseless, dramatic, over-the-top media swallowed whole by commercial formulae that only produce to sell? In this process, art and expression are stripped down into standardised products that promise easy consumption with a focus on maximum profit.
In Pakistan today, much of what passes as “art” in television and film relies heavily on spectacle, stylised violence, or predictable comedy structures. Many modern serials recycle the same exhausted tropes: toxic husbands, helpless wives, extreme melodrama, and repetitive moral conflict. These stories, seen in so many mainstream hits that break YouTube view records (like Mere Paas Tum Ho or Chupke Chupke), tend to look and feel interchangeable because they are built on proven formulae rather than artistic nuance.
We often think of it as harmless entertainment. But beneath the surface, something far more serious is happening. The media we consume daily is not neutral. It actively shapes, invents, and restructures our taste, thought processes, and our ability to critique. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer warned of this in Dialectic of Enlightenment, where they introduced the concept of the “culture industry”: the mass production of films, music, and media not to enrich thought, but to standardise taste and encourage compliance. Today, we see this dynamic unfolding in Pakistan, and its effects are deeply concerning.
These stories and narratives are written and adapted to provoke strong emotional reactions, but rarely challenge the viewers’ understanding of social issues and complexities. By repeating the same patterns over and over, audiences are trained and prepared to accept certain emotional and moral cues without questioning them.
Music follows a similar trend. The Pakistani music charts are filled with formulaic pop songs about heartbreak, love, or parties, often using similar beats and repetitive hooks. Underground or experimental music rarely gets a chance to shine through to mainstream audiences, leaving little room for critical engagement with culture. While Pakistani indie bands are pushing creative boundaries, their reach remains limited compared to glossy pop hits dominating social media.
Even cinema is complicit. Big-budget Pakistani films often rely on predictable heroic arcs, romance, or slapstick comedy. Films such as Jawani Phir Nahi Ani and Punjab Nahi Jaungi entertain millions but remain ineffective in provoking viewers to think critically about society, morality, or politics. The result, then, is homogenisation of taste along with passivity. Over time, audiences come to expect easy, emotionally satisfying stories, making them uncomfortable to make sense of or accept complexity and question or analyse their own opinions, beliefs, and assumptions about real-life issues.
This, I believe, directly influences culture and what it entails. It has consequences beyond the screen because homogenised taste completely erases culture and critical thinking. When we are constantly fed predictable content, we are preparing people to stop engaging with ideas beyond surface depth. We react emotionally, but we do not reflect. When films, dramas, music, and even poetry are produced according to market formulae, art is stripped of its risk, its uncertainty, and its capacity to disturb the masses. Instead of being a space for experimentation or critique, it is reduced to a product made to sell. Anything too complex, slightly questioning, or politically uncomfortable is filtered out.
In such a system, the artist is no longer a creator but a content supplier, expected to fit into pre-approved templates. This is a direct humiliation of art itself. Art, that has a responsibility to change, to challenge, to reveal, to expand imagination, is reduced to a decorative good that can be consumed quickly, forgotten easily, and replaced endlessly. The result is a public that constantly consumes but does not think—a “brain-dead” society in terms of cultural and intellectual engagement.
The consequences are very much apparent and real. People have started losing their capacity to debate, imagine alternatives, or recognise injustice. In other words, cultural degradation directly feeds cognitive degradation. They only react, having lost their patience for nuance and difference.
This is not an argument against entertainment, nor is it an attack on individual creators working within restrictive systems. It is a call for awareness. Pakistani audiences must begin demanding narratives that challenge thought and ideas rather than pacify. Our local platforms must create space for experimental cinema, political storytelling, and unconventional music. Critics must speak honestly about declining standards instead of celebrating every commercial success as artistic expression. Pakistani media has the potential to inspire, challenge, and educate, but only if we recognise the danger of formulaic content and actively resist it. Our culture and our minds depend on it.
The writer is a literature graduate whose work explores how stories influence thought, identity, and imagination.
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