A rebellion is brewing in Pakistan’s art community
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At the heart of Pakistan’s entertainment industry is a tolerance for blatant misogyny, intolerance for criticism of the clergy and curbs on artistic expression, leaving the country’s art community in turmoil. An ideological rebellion now brews, centered on the tradition-modernity binary, fueling debates on mainstream and social media.
Is this the start of the accountability of a medium that might shift to finally being modernist? Or will traditional knee-jerk state responses to demands for artistic freedoms, aimed at appeasing conservative sections of society, continue perpetuating an ethos whose time is long past? A rebellion brews, with a myriad of controversial cases to prove it.
The first case is the public backlash against dramatist Khalilur Rehman Qamar’s blatant misogyny in some of his recent interviews on national television, and his equally misogynistic, highly popular and just-concluded drama Meray Pas Tum Ho. The soap opera ended this month on a staple stereotype employed by the Pakistani television and film industry, i.e. the betrayal of virtuous men by scheming women who put money above fidelity.
Reportedly the highest ever rated televised drama in Pakistani history – the last episode was screened in packed cinema halls – concluded with the male protagonist dying of heartbreak after his wife’s betrayal (who also made off with his money, for good measure).
Surrealistically, the fictional death generated breaking news on local news channels and sent large parts of the country’s cyberspace howling with grief.
However, the drama and its author’s oversimplified portrayal of the ‘heartless, materialistic woman’ has also kicked off a storm of criticism at this venomous stereotyping and generated calls for a realistic portrayal of women and affirmative narratives in films and dramas.
The entertainment industry and arts community does not need state chaperoning for artistic expression but greater freedom to combat misogyny and more space for a pluralistic portrayal of the impact of religion on society.
Adnan Rehmat
Most women are not amused at the mainstreaming of misogyny. One female member of the cast, actress Rehmat Ajmal, took to Twitter and said she regretted being part of the show after learning of its author’s personal anti-women views. On a live TV show, renowned rights activist Tahira Abdullah challenged the author’s views and gave him a ‘feminism 101’ lesson, which has also been widely circulated. Kinnaird College University for women in Lahore canceled a meeting with Qamar after its students protested his vitriolic views on women and feminism.
The second prominent case is backlash by the clergy to a new feature film, Zindagi Tamasha, by award-winning writer-director Sarmad Khoosat, whose premiere in January was aborted by the government even though it was twice cleared by the national censor board as fit to screen. The controversy relates to the portrayal of a cleric who struggles with his faith.
After Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, a hard-line religious group, threatened to launch a nationwide strike against the contents of a pre-release trailer of the film, the government buckled to the pressure and sent the film to the Council of Islamic Ideology to determine if Islam and its religious leaders had been ‘misrepresented’ in the film and if it was fit for release.
To embellish its appeasement of the clergy, the government nominated a representative of Labaik to sit in on the judgment in the proposed council meeting! Ironically, only days earlier, several Labaik leaders were given jail terms running into thousands of years for hooliganism. The media is in an uproar about the government’s appeasement of the clergy and for its part, it is feeling the heat. An annoyed Council itself has reacted against the referral, saying it is not a substitute for the censor board, which has already declared the film fit to screen.
Another recent case of Pakistan’s traditional intolerance for artistic freedom includes a raid by authorities who made confiscated copies of the published Urdu translation of celebrated novelist and journalist Muhammad Hanif’s decade-old, popular novel, ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes.’ Employing black humor, it is a fictional account of the last days of Pakistan’s much caricatured former military dictator, General Ziaul Haq.
Yet another case was the banning of a visual arts display by the authorities at the Karachi Biennale that purported to portray the impunity around the alleged murders of 444 persons in staged encounters by a disgraced police officer. The banning drew widespread condemnation and generated a debate around the need for respecting artistic freedoms.
These controversies indicate the dominance of a moribund, outmoded nanny state insistent on guiding artistic expression. However, widespread public backlash against state-patronized patriarchal values and supervised freedoms also constitutes a public rebellion seeking greater creative license and artistic freedoms to tackle taboos and reflect the political correctness of the times.
The entertainment industry and arts community does not need state chaperoning for artistic expression but greater freedom to combat misogyny and more space for a pluralistic portrayal of the impact of religion on society. The Pakistani arts landscape, it seems, is poised on the verge of a metamorphosis.
-Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
