The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Pandora’s Box
Newspapers, radio and television stations enjoy peeping through people’s lives including private lives, some of them straight into their bedrooms.
Well, if that is where the news is, little wonder.
There are many interviews that put many people on the spot, big and small people, as radio and newspaper personalities squeeze secrets and private information about people’s lives. A lot of journalists and radio or television personalities rejoice in digging out even the dirtiest linen and some of it is washed in these no-holds-barred interviews. Well, that may be what is called media freedom.
But who checks the sanity of all this? How far can the media go to make sure its freedom to inform educate and entertain remains within the limits of sanity?
Are their discussions or interviews radio or television programmes we can say are literally way out of the general scope of sanity? Can we talk about anything on radio and claim to observe the norms of sanity and level headedness? Or surely the media, particularly the radio, is slowly becoming too obscene and certainly crossing the line and going over board?
Do we still have some things in our lives and African culture we can say we do not talk about in public even if it means we are on radio? What are our checks and balances or controls as a cultured people on things we can discuss or not discuss in public? And radio, newspapers and television are public domains. Is radio “more civilised” now than its listeners to talk about just anything and any topic under the sun without any sense of what do we call it, ubuntu, reservation, restraint?
Do radios have any sense of hither-and-no more or they are free to discuss anything under the sun so long as they warn children to move away, slip into their blankets and sleep? And who knows if these children actually go to bed and eventually sleep?
Does anybody need to be very intelligent to know that if you tell children not to look, they will look more curiously? If you tell them to go to bed, they will, but quietly put on their earphones to defiantly listen to what you don’t want them to hear? Does anyone need to be a psychologist to know that the most avid listeners of programmes loudly “outlawed” for children’s listening are children?
And anyway, who carried out the research to establish that describing graphically how hyenas eat goats will improve their appetite for goats and habits of eating them? Or to be more direct, who said that radio lessons on how babies are made will improve the relationships or those who make them?
Maybe married people do not want a baby; but even so what guarantee is there that lessons on how to eat the “forbidden” fruit will improve a marriage? Have human beings become so base and simple that only the physical relationship once graphically described or taught as if it was a sporting discipline, it will stop marital problems and stresses? Who conducted this research that radio stations have so keenly adopted?
Where is this sexual philanthropy, going to end? Will it end when those who present the lessons literally instruct from radio, “On your marks! Get ready! Goooo?” And then allow the participants from home some time to try the new tricks and positions. Then ask them “How was it? How did you feel? Good, that’s the idea?” — with DJs or presenters commanding from the radio station and people from home responding and giving feedback. Command bedroom gymnastics! We are soon getting there anyway. Mark my words! We are almost there.
The argument, “If you don’t want the ‘education’ offered, switch off,” may sound sensible. How tired or cheap the argument is! Are people in the society free to say anything and simply instruct others to shut their ears if they don’t want to be offended? Can radio stations tell people who pay radio licences to switch off willy-nilly because the radio finds nothing harmful or absurd about what they are broadcasting?
If this imposed “switching off” becomes the norm to allow the radio to broadcast live sex and the gymnastic techniques involved, how many other programmes will remain listenable?
Many radio presenters are no more scared to speak suggestive language on radio. They can easily turn a programme into a sex-club anytime and resort to bedroom language or use language that is idiomatically or metaphorically suggestive and explicit. It has become fashionable to be sexually suggestive on radio. Imagine Zodwa on radio or television!
What with today’s young presenters and broadcasters? (Excuse me, not all of them. We still have many who are decent presenters governed by sanity, but too many overexcited and clueless as to what the word “decent” means.) Is it a problem of age here and time? Is it civilisation? Are these 21st century skills Dokora daily talks about? Is sex a new curriculum subject in the media?
Who okays these programmes, I ask? And what value do sex programmes add to radio? Ndiyo inonzi sex education yacho iyoyi? Then employ Zodwa to be the Minister of Education and Curriculum Development.
Of course, one of the three radio objectives is to entertain. The other two are to inform and educate. Where does bedroom gymnastics fit in this equation? Is it education? Is it information? Is it entertainment? If anybody sees the relevance of one of these coming into play, we have a serious problem of values in society today.
If this is what the new curriculum means by inculcating values into society, we have a serious problem of self-contradiction? These bedroom physical education lessons, we never imagined, would come into the public domain. They were there since time immemorial – since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and anybody who wanted them “googled” them from a tete, mbuya or sekuru. They were not public lessons. For a public broadcaster to offer naked and explicit sex gymnastics and expect society to shut up and enjoy it is to push sanity or is it freedom of speech, too far. The argument that tetes and sekurus have disappeared is cheap and tired. If they have disappeared, who are you to replace all of them? We cannot centralise the conversation and command of sex education, marriage and family life.
Please note that the views expressed in this article are personal and not necessarily the views of The Manica Post or Diamond FM Radio. Mtisi writes in his personal capacity as an independent social commentator. DON’T MISS PART 2 OF THIS PANDORA’S BOX NEXT WEEK.
Meanwhile, listen to the radio and read The Manica Post. Enjoy.
Talk to me. My name is Morris Mtisi. Make a date with me to discuss or debate this “can of worms” on radio. The programme is Head-To-Head with MM. We will open up lines for the public to participate. May be you and I have a few lessons to learn this or that side of sanity. My cellphone number is 0773 883 293 also on WhatsApp. My email: [email protected]
