The 9 o’ clock fairy tale
From the Blog karachikhatmal - The 9 o’ clock fairy tale October 31st, 2010 when mushie chacha turned off the channels in november 2007, many journalists took to the streets. in karachi, one particular protest was shut down by the police, and the participants arrested. later, they would quote the experience when they spoke of being ‘hardened journalists’ who bore the brunt of ‘a repressive military regime as they fought for the freedom of speech while rocking out to rage against the machine.’ what most of them failed to mention was how their stay in jail for a few hours involved being brought over pizzas and cans of soft drinks as well as untold cartons of cigarettes. the point being, that sometimes things aren’t what they seem. so when dawn.com had issues with my second consecutive blog because of things i was saying about their other employees, i decided to put it on my blog, which is only beholden to me. this doesn’t stand as an example of censorship or any such malarkey, for several reasons. the most important one being that in both cases, the references to dawn employees was not an indictment of them personally, nor was it a personal vendetta against two popular and well respected men. instead, it was an attempt to contextualise their words and actions. so, without further ado, here it is. Before disney took over the job, fairy tales were the realm of the spoken word. instead of animation, grandmothers, or audio cassettes, usually took upon the role of reading out elaborate tales of fantasy, adventure, bravery and magic. each tale was embellished with fascinating characters with pretty one-dimensional personalities. the brave prince, the wronged princess, the devious churail, the friendly giant, the mischievous gnomes, vengeful pirates, bashful fairies, scheming sorcerers, generous djinns, 40 crafty thieves - you get the picture. for the story teller, the liberating aspect of this exercise was the ability to create a whole world, populate it with characters, and trust that the listener would take that on face value. there wasn’t any necessity to provide context. the evil king was evil because that’s what the story said - no one asked to hear about his human rights record, or his control over his kingdom’s sovereignty. a few days ago, one of pakistan’s most respected journalists wrote a rather curious article , in which he spent a long time dissecting the life and times of Angelina Jolie. the inquest resulted in a lot of wink-wink, nudge-nudge innuendo, and some outright tamachay on the wisdom and choices of Ms. Jolie. now several blogs took apart this approach on the interwebs, and i’ll leave you to judge for yourself. but personally, the basic question that arises upon reading this column is why unleash this maelstrom of mense on the actress, who after all was working recently for flood relief victims in pakistan? a quick glance at the article reveals the answer. the article’s conclusion was related to ms. jolie’s complaints about the excesses of the Pakistani government. according to the scribe, this was how low the government’s stock had reached - that even a person with morals as allegedly dubious as Angelina bhabi looked down upon the rulers in islamabad. now, if we step back, and ignore the spicy gossip strewn all over this column, a more primeval reaction arises - ‘huh?’ what is the point of all this? well, pyare bacho, the point is that in order to provide context to a story, to an event, to any scrap of news, one has to create a narrative. a narrative requires certain characters, certain events and their consequences in order to provide a conclusion. narratives help provide allegories, examples and advice on how to make sense of the world. to provide a beginning, middle and end. and the simpler the narrative, the flatter the characters, the more emphatic its message becomes. in pakistan, where we are saturated by news and nothing but news all the time, it appears that we have put our grandmothers to sleep and turned on the television for our fairy tales. and so each day, we stare agog at our screens, as wise men narrate epic tales of evil plotters, court room intrigue, daring heros, corrupt rulers, oppressed masses, wanton destruction, foreign hands and local bodies. unfortunately, while our grandmothers would end the fairy tales when we started to fall asleep, the modern story tellers just don’t let up. and so if our attention begins to waver, they conjure up even more exoticised characters, whose benign actions become symbols of societal malaise. they start weaving together completely unrelated fantasies and present them as a cohesive whole. like the amorous, brazen queen of the heathen tribes of the west, who visited this fair kingdom, and even she, this insatiable devourer of men, was left ashamed by the excesses of the evil king and his supporters. i wonder who disney would get to play the role of the grand vizier? copy paste material
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