Media Watch: Oryaaniat

Orya Mabool Jan has it bad. Though the fellow hasn’t exactly been a liberal lion in the past, but his recent diatribe against a Q Mobile ad featuring a girl cricket player has even rankled his traditional fan base of conservative, angry male viewers. The anger at the youth doing their thing, they would have agreed with; even the opposition to women taking traditionally male roles, they might have sort of agreed with. But thinking that the poor girl’s run-up action was objectionable and censor-worthy was a low-blow, even by their standards.

But, don’t rule out the “long tail” principle, because, lo and behold, a viewer called in a subsequent program (online viewers can see the video below) and said that he wholeheartedly agreed with him. During the call, the fellow even started crying.Mayn ye ad apni family ke saath dekh nahi sakta.

http://clips.pk/a-caller-started-crying-over-vulgar-q-mobile-ad-in-a-live-show/

Though, still the voices of such viewers have been relatively muted in the aftermath of Orya’s original program. His support base has either been quiet or angry at him. Dawn’s Zara Hut Ke did a specific segment on the fellow’s gripe against the ad, a couple of columnists in both the English and Urdu press have started doing their thing and the social media, of course, has been up and about since the get go.

So Orya decides to do a follow-up.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4im42n

In the video above (online readers only), he plays old clips, on another TV channel, of a recent molestation scandal in the national women’s cricket setup. The ad gives girls ideas about the good life in cricket but this is actually what happens in cricket.

Ipso Facto, I have proved how wrong that ad was, he meant to imply.

Well, that, of course, is a strange line of reasoning. If there is a problem, then one tries to remove the problem, instead of removing everything which could potentially have the problem. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Men’s cricket would also have its share of problems. In fact, since ours is a country with all possible shades of depravity, one doesn’t even have to look very far and stick to this very same problem of sexual harassment. This would most certainly be a problem in men’s cricket as well. Lesser than women’s cricket, but still prevalent. So, by virtue of the same logic, should we do away with ads that encourage young men to play cricket as well?

Or in any field. Should we keep women out of higher education because they might be harassed or fix those universities? Should we keep them off the roads because they might be victims of street crimes or fix the street crimes?

I would like to clarify here that I mean for the above questions to be rhetorical. Because if one were to ask Orya in earnest, we know what his answer would be…