Is it just me, or when we sit down after hours of labour to watch a movie, a drama, scroll through reels and videos, or listen to music, it just feels like a constant repetition of baseless, dramatic, over-the-top media swallowed whole by commercial formulae that only produce to sell? In this process, art and expression are stripped down into standardised products that promise easy consumption with a focus on maximum profit.

In Pakistan today, much of what passes as “art” in television and film relies heavily on spectacle, stylised violence, or predictable comedy structures. Many modern serials recycle the same exhausted tropes: toxic husbands, helpless wives, extreme melodrama, and repetitive moral conflict. These stories, seen in so many mainstream hits that break YouTube view records (like Mere Paas Tum Ho or Chupke Chupke), tend to look and feel interchangeable because they are built on proven formulae rather than artistic nuance.

We often think of it as harmless entertainment. But beneath the surface, something far more serious is happening. The media we consume daily is not neutral. It actively shapes, invents, and restructures our taste, thought processes, and our ability to critique. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer warned of this in Dialectic of Enlightenment, where they introduced the........

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