Creativity lost!

Last weekend was a long one, with Friday being a Poya. I was watching the night-time television, just like anyone would do in leisure. The magic box offered some single episode teledramas along with others. I naturally picked the ones directed and scripted by the veterans in the scene.

Then something struck me: we are strapped for creativity. Everything else - technology, visuals and other things - was all right.

Then that started worrying me: why have veterans lost their creativity that was with them sometime back? Is it because they have been doing it overly? I couldn't find a specific answer. Every answer has its antithesis.

Teledrama producers face a good deal of pressure - this is mentioned elsewhere in this section too. The industry has now become a commercial venture, and nothing else. I was flabbergasted to see the number of advertisements in between. Wish I had the facility to fast forward them. The episode is only about 20 minutes or so, while the rest is covered up by ads fooling the ones before the telly. Now those in high seats of decision making would think I am very over-the-hill and hillbilly. I know any channel or station cannot afford an ad-free teledrama, unless the spectators pay a handsome fee to compensate it. Still and all there are teledramas that do not accommodate ads in between. Their commercial break points are both at the beginning and the end.

Seems as if sponsors think they can well hoodwink the audience, or is it that we are very stupid to be fooled like that? I cannot help this thought, when I hear the people sending texts and postcards in response to silly ads.

Well that's it. There is another side. When you keep on doing something, it enhances your capacity as well as dropping the quality at times. Most of the artistes don't seem to notice that it's not the quantity of the work, but the quality that matters. They need an income, if they are professionals in the field. Only a few maintain the quality along with quantity. Guy du Maupassant wrote over 300 short stories with varying themes. Emily Dickinson wrote hundreds of short poems with themes different to each other. Cards on the table, I enjoyed them to the bone.

When you feel the ceasing of your creativity, then it's time you draw curtains. Those veterans, whose names I saw on the telly, should have done that, and thought of something else as the income source - perhaps looking after a plot of land would do!

People may need you to carry on. But you are your own judge - whatever the people say, if you cannot go beyond, then that's it, you have to realise that.

Parakrama Kodituwakku authored many works after Rashmi, but none exceeded its splendour. On the contrary, Martin Wickramasinghe's last novel Bava Taranaya - whatever disputes we may have with its contents - is a masterpiece.

Ken Follett wrote two novels in two different years: The Pillars of the Earth in 1989 and World Without End in 2007. The gap is big, but the two novels are equally masterpieces. Other works written in between are not more than just thrillers. Follett is a good example for fluctuating creativity.

Television can generate creativity just like its fellow media, film and stage. A good script and a director would solve the problem halfway through.

But when they are not given their freedom enough to think and study other world masterpieces, how can the audience be privileged?

That's the thing. What happens to the creativity ultimately with all those restrictions and commercial pressures coming up in loads? I am not a Marx fanatic (or a fan in the least), but I cannot agree more when he states all sacred arts go into smithereens when the capital comes to the fore.

When sponsors think money is everything, they don't know they are wrong in the long run. We need money, and we get it in loads only when we think money is not everything.

When money is not everything, creativity doesn't get lost.

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