Sinetron: Television’s most prolific entertainment
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Image: CTV
Earlier this year, a clip taken from a sinetron depicting a Hello Kitty plush getting boiled and startling an entire family went viral on social media. Not long after, a clip from another sinetron also went viral; the clip shows a male character with no arms, but in one of the scenes he is clearly seen tucking his arms under his shirt. This was a mistake that seemingly could have been easily re-shot or edited. Yet it was not.
While many found the clips fascinating, nobody was actually shocked that a sinetron could have aired such scenes. Sinetron has long been deemed a low quality programme targeting the lower class. Over the past years, sinetron has been consistently scored as one of the lowest rated TV programmes in terms of quality, according to surveys by the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission.
The stigma extends beyond the programme itself. There is shame in being associated with sinetron. A fan of sinetron we interviewed for this piece refused to have her name mentioned in the article because she felt embarrassed. Lily Nailufar, a scriptwriter who has crafted scripts for sitcoms, TV programmes, movies, and – for a brief period – sinetron, echoes a similar view.
“My mother sometimes finds it difficult to differentiate between sinetron and other scripted TV shows, so she sometimes says that I am a scriptwriter for sinetron. And I get angry at her, “No, Mom, I write sitcoms, not sinetron. They’re different!” I always say,” Lily shares.
To be fair, sinetron has not always been this badly stigmatised, especially during its golden era in the 1990s. It was this era that gave birth to legendary pieces such as ‘Si Doel Anak Sekolahan,’ ’Janjiku,’ ‘Tersayang’ and the notoriously lengthy ‘Tersanjung.’ They were overly dramatised and sometimes unnecessarily long-winded, but their biggest ‘sin’ was the charmingly terrible special effects.
Sinetron stars from the 1990s, such as Jihan Fahira, Desy Ratnasari and Anjasmara, were considered A-list celebrities, and they are still well-known even decades later.
Back then, given the limited option for TV entertainment, sinetron was the talk of the town. The mostly weekly programmes were highly awaited, usually aired during prime time.
And then came ‘stripping.’ Suddenly, the world of sinetron as we knew it was over.
Generally, stripping refers to the instant nature of sinetron production, from the writing, shooting, editing and eventually airing. The entire process to produce one sinetron episode could take less than 24 hours. Raam Punjabi is often hailed as the leading figure who popularised this practice when he aired religious sinetron every day, instead of once a week, in Ramadhan of 1998.
Since then, the industry was never the same. New production houses emerged, more titles were produced and even the public started to expect a daily dose of their favourite sinetron. The effects on the production team were brutal.
Lily recalls her days as a sinetron scriptwriter back in 2005, “The writers were housed together in an apartment, and we were like a machine. There was a cook and a cleaning staff at the apartment, so all the writers had to do was write.” She explains that there are two main roles in sinetron scriptwriting: the storyline writer and the main writer.
The storyline writer is tasked with watching other programmes as reference – usually Bollywood or Korean dramas – to gather the essence of the programmes and create a storyline based on it. The storyline is then divided into episodes, and the main writers will write the complete script based on the materials provided by the storyline writer.
“There was a time when we received the storyline at 4am and we had to have a complete script by 6am. It had to be immediately sent to the set, but not everybody had emails back then, so we had to fax it,” Lily adds. She also notes the difference in quality control compared to other programmes, such as sitcoms or web series, that require extensive research, “There was no revision or brainstorming process in sinetron.”
Sinetron also comes in a fairly rigid ‘template’ that the cast and crew must follow. Lily once tried to stray from the template, “I used to write for a series, and the production house wanted a ‘softer’ script. For example, the characters may be angry, but they can express it through words or emotions; nobody needs to hit anyone.”
Unfortunately, the TV station protested this artistic choice and deemed the script too soft, “They forced us to change it. Their idea of an angry scene involved hair pulling and pushing people against the wall.”
Guntur Arief Saputra, a director of photography who has worked for advertisement, web series and sinetron also acknowledges this template. “Honestly, what we see in sinetron these days is technically a template. Rating rules, and that does not only affect the storyline, but also the technical aspects.” Like Lily, he also tried to stray from the template and faced the same resistance.
“I once found one scene that I personally thought would be great if produced seriously, so I strayed from the template, gave it treatments that I thought would look good,” he explains. He ended up receiving complaints from producers who insisted that he changed the scene as their template was what gave them good ratings and audience share.
As such, Guntur takes no credit for the classic ‘zoom in, zoom out’ camera works in sinetron he worked on. “It was written in based on the initiatives of the producers or editors,” he confesses.
To those involved in the making of a sinetron, blunders such as the examples we listed at the beginning of this article are not surprising. Guntur highlighted the preparation process, “If the preparation part in a non-sinetron project is 100%, in sinetron it is only about 30%.” He adds, “We always have to guess what tomorrow’s scenes, how the sets will look like. Frequently, we would be taping in the morning and the scene would air on the evening of the same day.”
Given the situations described by the people behind the scene, we can understand why sinetron remains the way it is. It is not as though there are no efforts from the production crew to improve the quality; it is just that the industry is not ready to replace the proven formula with a new one only for the sake of quality. Some would say that sinetron still maintains the status quo because the demand is there.
However, Guntur argues that just because a significant portion of TV viewers still enjoy sinetron as it is, it does not mean that they are not open to changes. “I believe that if TV stations can open themselves up to new ideas and production methods, viewers will not complain. It is not that sinetron crew are not capable of making good content, but they are set not to as they have to follow a template,” he says.
For those who can suppress their ideal and artistic integrity, though, sinetron may be an option in earning good income, especially for writers. “All of their daily needs, such as rent and food, are provided, so they can use their entire income to do or buy things they like,” Lily explains.
Beyond that, let us remember that sinetron could also become a big part of the lives of its audience. Indosiar’s ‘Suara Hati Istri’ (Wife’s Conscience) is a fine example of how sinetron, even with all its flaws, could steal the hearts of millions of Indonesian wives. Being one of the top 20 TV shows with the highest ratings in Indonesiav, ‘Suara Hati Istri’ has succeeded in building its own fandom. The fandom is, however, based on something that is more than meets the eye.
‘Suara Hati Istri’ mostly focuses on the hardships a wife has to go through. It is all about horrible and cheating husbands, mean mothers-in-law and all the expectations a wife has to meet. Apparently, this resonates with millions of Indonesian wives. They feel represented by the so-called wifely experience the sinetron made stories out of and they find the content to be highly relatable. It also helps that the female leads of this sinetron are showing self-empowerment more and more.
At the end of the day, sinetron will go in the direction industry players want it to. The only stronger force is public demand. Sinetron will only improve if the public demands better quality content and shuns low quality programmes. Until then, we shall expect more sinetron scenes to go viral in the coming years.