Review on ---- Pakistan - A Love Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLuq978T0vo
Written and Produced by Owais Moeen
Directed by Zubair Siddiqi

A documentary by ‘alienation’ showed that their work was about love stories people want to see on television, but when it comes to our society, then it is a taboo issue altogether. We have Karo Kari and forced marriages in our less-educated or illiterate parts of the society. But what is the impact of these love stories on our evolving society - Positive or Negative?

This was a class project of Iobm students solely prepares to create awareness of Media Ethics.

Review

This documentry began with a song by Strings, Kahani Mohabbat ki hay mukhtasir, which gave them the element to attract the attention of the audience.

According to the view point shown through this documentary, they wanted to make people aware that it is the media which is influencing our society in doing such acts which leads to Karo Kari. And the fact that girls get married against their wishes only because the groom’s family want dowry in return. We do not know the reason why this happens, and why girls get killed because they brought less dowry with them or they belonged to a lower class family as compared to their in-laws.

Most girls are divorced and the rationale given is that she has a bad character or that she was fostering relations with other men, and doing all behind the back of her husband. But the real issue is always dowry

This does happen in our society, but it is our media which plays a vital role in spreading such news and information to the masses, which is not ethical. As private channels grew, they used sensationalism to increase their ratings and viewership, and to do that they started airing news related to sex, rape cases, Karo Kari, girls getting humiliated and even murdered by their in-laws and families.

In this documentary, they also showed the hidden videos of couples belonging to mediocre families, who are indulged in doing oral sex. But here comes the biasness on the side of the group who made this documentary. Such vulgar acts between people of the opposite sex are also a normal act in the upper and upper-middle class families, where “everything” happens in dance parties. Even some people belonging to the middle class family also do such acts but no one highlights them.

In my opinion, the path chosen by the members of this group who made the documentary was clear. But the videos they showed were not appropriate. Not because they were vulgar, but because if they have shown people from the lower class doing oral sex, then vides of people from the upper and upper-middle class doing the same vulgar acts must have shown. This would have given a balanced picture of our society, that both the lower and upper class is having fun and doing unethical acts, which are morally unacceptable in our society.

Whatever they showed in their video is also not appropriate. Such issues of taboo nature are dealt with delicacy. If they had to discuss such a topic, then some other means should have been followed to explain their point. One more thing that I noticed was the imbalanced nature of interviews and videos. The interviews taken were from a different class and the videos of people making out were from a different social class altogether. It must have been a documentary showing interviews of a certain class of people and the people from the same class having a love affair. The members of this group have not justice with the documentary and the topic. By watching their video, one might have a perception that only the lower class is doing immoral activities. But the truth is, every social class is being entertained by such immoral acts. Some get propagated, others remain confined behind curtains.

Regards,
Muhammad Raheel Rauf