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THE people of this country love watching television. In a population of some 200 million people, according to official estimates some 65 per cent of people, women and men in comparable numbers, watch drama channels (as delineated from those dealing with news and current affairs).
The media can hold a mirror up to society, showing a society what it is, or it can show a society what it can and should aspire to be. This is an old debate amongst media circles, a question of interpretation and sometimes even professional/ philosophical ideology to which there is no definite or ‘correct’ answer.
Consider a serial currently being aired that takes up the life of Qandeel Baloch and, in doing so (as highlighted by a recent AFP feature) seeks to challenge topics that are taboo in the society that constitutes its viewership: a young woman, sexually exploited as a child, using sexual provocativeness to rise to fame, honour killing, concepts of ‘bringing shame to one’s family’ and, at root, women’s right to their life choices. We don’t have the tools to estimate exactly how much of a television viewership Baaghi has garnered, but its pilot episode on YouTube has been viewed over 1.5m times.
The feature links Baaghi to several other dramas that take up societal taboos and endemic issues, particularly those involving gender disparity and violence, with an assumed view to starting debate and spreading awareness. Other examples are Mujhe Jeenay Do, focusing on the scourge of child marriages, Udaari, highlighting the sexual abuse of children, and Sammi, which takes up honour killings, forced marriage and the denial of property rights to women. The story goes on to quote Sultana Siddiqui, television producer and owner of a television channel: she points out that in executing Sammi, her channel wanted to hold a mirror up to society and constitute an example of “how a taboo issue could be displayed in the proper manner”.
The media can show society what it can aspire to be.
In the opinion of some, the popularity of these shows makes them a potentially powerful vehicle for progress. And yes, so may be the case, showing society as they do the ugliest depths of cruelty and rights’ denial to which it can and does descend.
In the opinion of others, though, the manner in which many such shows portray women in particular — perpetually the victim, abused and in tears and forever on the margins of a society in which patriarchy rules most implacably — is a dangerous vehicle for reinforcing society’s worst inclinations. The drama on Qandeel Baloch, for example, has come under criticism for stripping the heroine of the very autonomy of which she was most proud, and instead portraying her as a victim held hostage to the passions of the men in her life.
Which of the two scenarios laid out here is being strengthened cannot really be said. But this certainly can be: leaving aside possibly path-breaking shows such as those mentioned earlier, the narrative-threads and the portrayal of women as victims in the overwhelming majority of our television dramas is undoubtedly regressive and pandering to the lowest common denominator. They outnumber by sheer volume the few productions that can lay any claims to being progressive. And this can all be attributed to just a few simple, pedestrian reasons.
Most obvious is the cynicism of television producers and commissioning desks, buttressed by the nefarious advertising industry that fuels the private television business, who believe that such fare is what will bring in the ratings and the money. Evidence of this is quoted in the ratings themselves, and the advertising revenue, neatly turning the argument into a self-referential tautology.
In fact, very rarely if ever have the people who constitute the television viewership been asked about what they would ideally want to watch. Passive consumers, they must choose between whatever is made available to them.
Secondly, where the issues of the media industry now and then come under discussion, one vital point often overlooked is that Pakistan has a serious dearth of decent scriptwriters. Many of the plots of our soaps are taken from the women’s digest publications from earlier decades, which today stand exposed as regressive.
Then, the paucity of the intellectual depth that goes into competent scriptwriting is easily linked to the plummeting standards of education that Pakistan has witnessed over generations — education that means thinking and critical skills, as opposed to the ability to read and write, and memorise textbooks. The consequences of this problem are evident across the spectrum of professional fields in the country, in the falling standards of general knowledge, the fewer people (as a percentage of the population) interested in books, the increased polarity of society in general with black-and-white thinking on the individual level, and a crippled ability to think critically.
There is no reason for the media, be it television, radio or the theatre, to have escaped the scourge.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2018
