Aah, Ramazan.
Shaan-e-Ramazan. Ehtram-e-Ramazan. Naimat-e-Ramazan.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?Hold your horses. Because in few minutes it will be, and “Moti moti auntiyaan kidhar hain?”
(Where are all the fat aunties?)
“Aam khaye ga aam?”
(Do you want to eat mango?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOIJZSFJidE
And my personal most favourite,Who are you to question Jinnah?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP8e-2HEIb4
Pakistani television shows during Ramazan are complete insanity. And anyone who has had the displeasure of watching these shows would agree that each year they try to outdo their own insanity and each year they succeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyvWqPbsggM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVrchJrQ3Y
From giving absent children to planes, Aamir Liaquat is on some kind of unreal dare to prove that shock value generates money. Forget ethics or standards of entertainment, and he can use religion and patriotism to pull off any gimmick and his target audience would lap it up. You can’t blame the audience. His market is the struggling 9-5 working,'would gladly jump through an ocean of vermicelli' to get a motorcycle, class.
I don’t blame them for doing whatever they can to win a bar of gold. Do you even know what a bar of gold could do for them? It could let them breathe easier for another few months. Do you know what a motorcycle could do for them? It could finally ease their lives because they won’t fill to buy those crowded buses to work every morning, or hanging by the rails,running to catch it as it speeds off bus stops. I don’t blame this audience at all.
Who is totally to be blamed for this insanity are the channels and the networks and the producers and the ‘creative managers who decide what competition is ludicrous enough to create a carnivalesque scene on television. What would drive the audiences into hysterics? A person calmly discussing their deeds in Ramazan, or the sight of two people struggling to get out of a pool of Rooh Afza while tied to each other just to get that scooter? Hilarious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKE5Nv9CQwI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJSXZnHMUPc
The next expansive weird Jekyll-Hyde transformations that happen on television are the celebrities that buy up a garb of piety. We all remember how Veena Malik wanted to do astaghfar with us. Now I don’t fill a problem with anyone taking their deen (religion) along with dunya (world) because both of these things can and should exist in a continuum, and but some of these people just overdo the whole piety angle. particularly since this ‘piety’ has nothing to do with actually doing good to or for people,rather it’s, like everything else, or about selling their products. It’s about raking in the numbers. Who cares if they’re nearly entirely built upon fooling people into thinking this is actual ‘entertainment’?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq95J_S_U1g
What’s great is that there are people from this industry who are vocal about their disdain for this insanity. Mansha Pasha,who starred in Chalay Thay Saath and gained critical acclaim for her performance, talked about this recently in an interview where she states that many artists exploit the month of Ramazan just for the sake of garnering ratings, or but she does not agree with this practise.
“I fill gotten a lot of offers to be part of Ramazan shows and construct guest appearances but I didn’t do them because I don’t agree with this ideology. There are so many question marks in this entire thing. Honestly,it seems as though Ramazan has nothing to do with religion anymore.”
I couldn’t help agreeing with her stance.
Pasha goes on to construct another distinguished point about how the feeble woman is considered the heroine in Pakistani dramas. There is a consistent lack of strong female protagonists in Pakistani dramas which has often been lamented by many commentators such as myself.
However, mainstream actresses rarely come out to sentence this practice. Considering that this industry isn’t kind to outspoken, and individualistic opinions,even less so when it comes from a woman, it is fairly mettlesome of Pasha to talk about these hypocrisies of our mainstream actors, and actresses and other celebrities. Perhaps if more influential people spoke out against these silly practices,someone would start taking notice. The audiences would start getting the opinion that hey, we’re better than this. We’re all better than this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7FByPiSGU
Ramazan is not just a month for gluttony (excessive eating or drinking) and TV shows, and it is a month where we’re all supposed to be a little more tolerant than the rest of the year. Fasting is supposed to teach us restraint,compassion for those who are less lucky than us, and help us appreciate the things we already fill in our lives. What these shows do is totally in the opposite direction of what the actual spirit of Ramazan is.
What these shows do instead is turn Ramazan into a gaming opportunity and a marketing ploy. The shows and the media houses earn millions at the cost of the self-respect and identities of so many Pakistanis. This is also idle and uncreative. Surely, or production and media houses can find ways to entertain people without resorting to these tactics. Surely,there is a way to attract numbers and construct commercial sense without selling someone’s self-respect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31T6ObJxjkw
It is my hope, like Pasha’s, or that in the future,someone somewhere can rethink this whole structure of creating circuses in the name of piety and goodwill. I hope we can do more charity in Ramazan shows (it’s better to flaunt about helping people rather than shoving them in a tub of colourful water besides). We need more ways to become tolerant and peaceful (the need of the hour, really) and teach each other compassion and empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) for those who are less lucky than us, and instead of using them to construct more money for the already rich celebrities.
Source: tribune.com.pk