Reflections on CHANGE

No, not the change that both Obama and McCain were promising, but a 10-part Japanese drama called CHANGE. It's about the son of a politician who has to get into politics when his father dies. The irony is that he doesn't trust politicians, and because of this he brings a breath of fresh air to the Japanese parliament.

Due to his charm and popularity, senior party members decide to make him a puppet Prime Minister but do not realise that his sincerity will put their scheme in jeopardy. For most of the series our young Prime Minister tries to battle against bureaucracy, party politics and general insincerity and apathy on the part of professional politicians in order to do what he thought all politicians did: serve the people.

Although very orthodox in its format, with sentimental music as a cue for the episode-defining speech, the romantic side-story, eccentric secondary characters who provide comic relief, and melodramatic pauses to emphasise emotional suffering, the series is extremely watchable.

There are a couple of things that I think are really noteworthy about this drama.
The first is that this may be the first time that I've seen a whole political culture so systematically looked down upon and insulted. When politicians are shown in film and television they are often portrayed negatively, but they nearly always are shown as being just a bad apple. Very rarely is their corruption shown to be institutionally endemic. And I don't think I have ever seen drama where the political class is consistently attacked episode after episode, week after week.
The second thing is that this drama isn't aimed at intellectuals. The opening credits bear a striking resemblance to The West Wing, the main characters are young and attractive and the conventions are classical melodrama. There is nothing revolutionary about this show except for the content, which is more political than 99% of what we get on our televisions.

This causes me to ask myself questions: why can't they make a drama like this over here? I'm sure this would not get commissioned by any major channel in the US or Europe. Yes Minister is the closest we ever got to it, but it poked fun at the stupidity of politicians and manipulative civil servants rather than question the political class per se. I have a vague memory of A Very British Coup, having watched it many years ago as a child, but it would probably be considered too controversial nowadays.

In the Muslim world, of course, there's nothing like this. If politicians in the "free" and "advanced" West are corrupt, how corrupt are politicians in the Muslim world? Supposedly Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., are democratic countries, yet in reality they are dominated by a handful of families at best. Surely this would be a fertile ground for powerful dramas which stand up to power. Instead we get poorly acted, poorly scripted, and poorly filmed soap operas about families bickering about who did what to who.

Btw, you can download Change via bittorrent here.