Culture - not a separate appendicitis, Ruben Babayan says
Armenian television lacks child's and youth, cultural and literary programs, Chairman at Writers' Union of Armenia (WUA) Edward Militonyan told reporters at a press conference on Monday. In his words, there are number of wonderful, talented art people, yet they are to be revealed and presented to the public.
“I often hear where the Isahakyans, the Sevaks of our days are. Do we have a literature today? These parallels come out of a skepticism toward the current life, literature. Every writes brings his own unique word at one’s own time,” Militonyan said.
Chairman at Writers' Union of Armenia highlighted the child's and youth programs for changing first of all the distorted linguistic mentality.
“A new linguistic mentality is common in our society expressed in a speech delivered through accentuated spelling of the consonants and skipping the vowels in an attempt to show their credibility, especially among the 14-15 aged, who once used to read much. The linguistic mentally is expressed specifically through their speech and aggressive behavior. I had an opportunity to speak of this phenomenon at a consultation in the Defense Ministry, saying adults with such a linguistic mentality are prone to provoke conflicts in the army,” Militonyan continued.
To his opinion, our values are turned upside down, and much of the discussions are about economic and banking activity, while the culture that has historically been at the top of the values system is considered not as trendy and outdated.
Director of the Puppet Theatre after Hovhannes Tumanyan Ruben Babayan, present at the press conference, expressed a wish to see diverse TV channels, since the Armenian people’s wealth, per him, is in diversity.
“I have the impression that they (TV Channels) are trying to look similar. I wished to see them with distinctive features. It seems the time has come to have specialized TV Channels, as in the world. That is important,” Babayan suggested, adding TV channels should find and present interesting people rather than copying each other.
Babayan next spoke of the TV series, and called for differentiating the genre and the content.
“I see no negative in the genre, yet the content is primitive, superficial and falsely sensitive. To put the other way, we have replaced the Indians films by our Armenian ones. The one and the only objective is to make the people simply cry, without even going deep into the feeling and revealing them. All of us need depth, while the depth requires new faces and people with relevant professional skills. We are often confused by products of poor quality, stressed Babayan.
He dismissed the much-cited public demand that form the television content, saying the culture is not separate appendicitis, a separate sphere, but rather is linked to all other spheres of the life.
To note, the World Television Day is marked today, on November 21.