When you open Instagram you come across posts of sexual harrasment , rape and murder of women , every other day. At that time we are very insistent of protesting against these injustices. But has anyone given thought to what is promoting this behaviour? One main culprit, is Our mainstream media : primarily television Dramas, which air absurd content glorified as romance. Some examples are dramas like khuda Aur mohabbat , kaise Teri khudgarzi and khaani.
In these dramas its a one sided love story where a man is attracted to a girl , starts stalking her and then from stalking it leads to kidnapping , forced love and badduas all in the name of love. And instead of viewers thinking this as creepy this is portrayed in a way to give a romantic vibe to all with romantic songs being played in the background and bright special effects . When one sees such dramas the main viewers who tend to be middle class individuals mostly with substandard education, get attracted to the whole scenario and start possessing stalkerish tendencies and give this behavior the name of liking someone . These tendencies are what then leads to someone becoming a noor mukaddam, a Sonia and a hajra all becuase a man cant handle rejection.
If the media is playing such dramas without thinking about consequences and is more focused on banning kissing scenes rather than stories with such nonsensical content then how can one expect better of the nation . It is the responsibility of the media channels to air responsible content which gives meaningful messages rather than just airing content for the sake of viewership and Romanticizing sexual harrasment.When thinking on a deeper level one wonders why Pakistani viewers love such dramas , and one reason which I could think of was beauty. When seen on screen both the male and female are shown as beautiful individuals and look stunning no matter if they are rich or poor. But has one ever thought that in real life These kind of people are neither beautiful nor attractive. When u potray feroze khan as a stalker , his good looks can’t help make the audience ooh and aah, but just imagine if this was a random person with no attractive face would you have the same reaction ?
I can assure you it won’t be, and this is when one needs to put thought into the kind of content which shapes one’s mind and thought process. When your media is glorifying stalkerish behavior and sexual harassment, they are using several things alongside to potray a beautiful picture however, if the media portrayed the same story with a less attractive herione and hero , no romantic songs and no bright special effects , the reaction of the audience would be much different.
Let’s divulge a bit more into the context. As per media channels the main female lead ends up falling in love with the stalker individual , but does that really happen. Ofcourse not ? Would you fall in love with your brothers murderer , or with the person who harassed you. No infact you would be traumatized for life not even wanting to see the individuals face and this can be proven by thousands of instagram posts calling out their sexual harrassers. But our television potrays a completely different story , so when the normal people see this they end up believing that we can attain someone we Like using any method we want and we would be forgiven as well , and when this doesn’t happen , that is what leads to the girls being raped , murdered and kidnapped .