Don’t ban this horrible movie

It was horribly written and badly performed. Some industry sources even say that it was going to be taken off the screens in a couple of days anyway due to a lack of demand.

But the ban on the movie was just the shot-in-the-arm that it needed, if not financially, but in terms of marketing buzz. The makers of the movie Maalikhave already appealed against the censor board’s decision in the Lahore High Court. If the court decides in their favour, then expect this thinly-veiled propaganda film to rake in a killing at the box office. Already, the politician-hating urban middle-class demographics are very vocal in decrying the ban.

The litany of complaints against the film: ethnic stereotyping (Punjabi heroes, whereas everyone else are crooked caricatures of what mainstream Pakistan imagines non-Punjabi, non-Urdu-speaking Pakistanis to be); anti-politician narrative (to the extent that the political characters are one-dimensional cartoon villains); the security guard, a former SSG fellow, kills the CM that he was supposed to be protecting.

Though all these things make for a pretty silly movie, do they justify a ban? Barring the last bit about the guard killing his charge, which is problematic in the post-Mumtaz Qadri world, none of the other reasons justify a ban.

Our ideals about the freedom of speech are tested most when the right to say something one does not agree with is being defended. Yes, we do have a censor board for a reason and some censoring, bleeping and even outright bans, are their mandate. But these instances should be kept to a minimum.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x47cirz_newseye-27th-april-2016_news

On Dawn News’s Meher Bokhari-hosted News Eye, some from the political class were taking to task the film’s exclusive look at political corruption. Are only the politicians corrupt, they asked. Again, I think this is a problematic position to take. The recent movie Moor, Pakistan’s official submission to the Oscars, took a look at the nexus between the crumbling railways department and the scrap metal mafia; surely that film shouldn’t have been banned because it did not talk about corruption in the irrigation department.

If someone does subscribe to the ridiculous assumption that all the evils of the country stem from the political class, then their art should represent those views. If the film’s writer, director and lead actor Aashir Azeem thinks that Pakistan’s biggest problem is “feudalism” (whatever that means anymore), then his film should reflect that.

If progressive forces stick to defending the film’s team right to show their films, then they would also be able to make films that call into question the role of the military in the country. Not just the now-uncontroversial subjects like East Pakistan, but also the current war against terror and the whole Good Taliban/Bad Taliban matrix.

Speaking of the military, the problem that should have been focussed on, which the PML-N’s Mohsin Ranjha and the PPP’s Moula Bakhsh Chandio touched upon, if cautiously, was that the film was funded by the ISPR. Everyone has a right to their views, but why was a government organisation funding such a movie?

This is a more than valid argument that one can make without getting into the prickly areas of free speech. Ashir Azeem kept clarifying that the ISPR did not fund the movie, only facilitated it. So did the retired Brigadier on the show. Well, one doesn’t know how these people think movies are budgeted, but facilitation IS funding. A film like Top Gun, say, got the use of the US Navy’s best aircraft. An anti-army film like Apocalypse Now, on the other hand, was hideously expensive to make because the military wasn’t providing any assistance.

If the ISPR provided technical, logistical support and the use of military hardware, be it helicopters, C-130s or guns, it means the ISPR has partly funded the film. End of discussion on that one.

Mehr Abbasi even defended the military’s version and said that this isn’t the only movie that the ISPR has helped produce; that it is an entire battery of feature films that are being made to promote the film industry. Mohsin Ranjha did not ridicule the intelligence of the foreign-qualified anchor and merely replied that it was not the job of the ISPR to be doing that.

Ironically, the movie’s premise is that each one of us owns Pakistan. We are the eponymous Maalik. Where’s the irony, you ask? Well, since we partially foot the bill for the movie, since our taxes fund the military, perhaps we dohave the right to question the movie’s content. The makers might feel the censor board doesn’t have the right to question their political point of view, but they sure can’t say that about the producers…whom we are.

In the words of one of the cringe-worthy one-liners that the movie contains, as told to a politician, “Maalik dhamki nahi deta…..sirf notice deta hai….”

Though the movie shouldn’t have been banned, heads should still roll for it.