Pakistan inspires Hollywood, but for all the wrong reasons

[Edevelop]

Hollywood is making efforts to humanise militants and would-be terrorists from this part of the world. A recent Stanford-NYU study might have had something to do with this.

Call me masochistic, but I love crime (as long as it’s within fiction). I grew up reading Agatha Christie and have had more than my share of Law & Order shows, whose story-lines are often inspired by actual news reports. SVU marathons sometimes make me sick to my stomach, but there’s something to be said for watching rapists and pedophiles actually get caught and dealt with in a court of law.

So when I recently watched Law & Order SVU’s current season online, I was taken aback by the show’s 299th episode, ‘Acceptable Loss’. It started off with sex trafficking—vulnerable young immigrants from Latin America and Eastern Europe exploited by violent New York pimps into prostitution. But the show’s terrorism side-plot is what really stood out; the villain was an attractive young woman in a clingy mini-dress posing as a prostitute who was actually—wait for it—a gal from Waziristan out to take revenge on the drone strikes by bombing Manhattan.

The premise is admirable; American and international viewers need to know that civilians and rescues workers are being bombed side by side with suspected terrorists. However, the rendering could have been more detailed and even more sympathetic. The character Sofia was oblivious to the plight of the sex workers surrounding her, which I find very hard to believe. Any woman would be moved to tears unless she was a madam herself! For someone with so much anger towards exploited people from the developing world dealt with injustices, she was sure thick-skinned towards her own sex.

There was interestingly no mention of Pakistan on the show. It seems that enough people have heard of Waziristan to know where it is! And, refreshingly, there was not one mention of clichéd rhetoric referring to ‘jihad,’ ‘honour killing’ or ‘the war on terror’. Finally!

According to the story-line, by some miracle, al-Qaeda has expanded their female recruitment beyond a so-called ‘burqa brigade’ and enlisted the help of svelte would-be prostitutes in terrorising NYC.

At first glance, the character Sofia seems like a Victoria’s Secret model in her form-fitting garb that highlights her limbs. You’d think she was Latina with her looks, or Eastern European with her accent; she mostly gets her v’s and t’s right but to our ears, she still sounds a little foreign, a bit like how we’d imagine a non-American vampire.

When you think of a Muslim or Pakistani woman in popular media, she’s usually either subservient and pathetic, or a strong survivor. She is often the victim of stereotypical ignorance and cruelty: either acid-blasted or in danger of being murdered by her nearest and dearest via honour killing.

The guise of a provocative prostitute is at least refreshingly different, given that she’s also a victim of circumstances. Like Gotham City villains in Batman movies, Sofia has undergone a traumatising experience that has caused her to turn dark. In her case, it’s drone attacks in Waziristan that have overturned her ethics.

Sofia is embittered by the killing of her civilian father ─ a doctor who rushed to aid victims of a drone strike and became a victim of a secondary ‘double-tap’ strike himself, like thousands before him.

But hey, it’s okay — Sofia’s only pretending to be a prostitute. She’s still a virgin, of course, because she’s Muslim and there aren’t millions spent on hymenoplasties in Saudi Arabia every year ─ just like all Catholics in the world are celibate unless they’re married and never, ever get a divorce.

Sofia doesn’t bat an eyelid when women around her get exploited, beaten and raped, but she’d never get a real tattoo because she’s a good Muslim (face-palm!). Of course, no one in the Muslim world has ever gotten a tattoo either; we just stick to henna.

I asked actor Evgeniya Radilova in an exclusive interview, who played Sofia, if there was anything in the story-line that she found perplexing.

Read more here: Pakistan inspires Hollywood, but for all the wrong reasons! – The Express Tribune Blog

 

[WAQAS119]

Express Tribune at it again

 

[SamranAli]

ET should be banned on PDF..

 

[Cloakedvessel]

The episode was actually more anti-American in tone than anti-Pakistan, America supposedly has a policy to attack civilians and rescue workers with drones.

I watched the mentioned episode a few weeks ago, and I have to agree with the author, there were some awkward moments, like the tattoo stuff (terrorist in general have no problem to blend in by doing un-Islamic things) and the virgin thing. But it's all part of the show.
As long as people see it as fiction, there is no harm. Amusement is never meant to give a balanced view of how things are in the real world.

The premise is admirable; American and international viewers need to know that civilians and rescues workers are being bombed side by side with suspected terrorists. However, the rendering could have been more detailed and even more sympathetic. The character Sofia was oblivious to the plight of the sex workers surrounding her, which I find very hard to believe. Any woman would be moved to tears unless she was a madam herself! For someone with so much anger towards exploited people from the developing world dealt with injustices, she was sure thick-skinned towards her own sex.

This is a naive and romanticised statement of the author. When someone is engulfed by blind hatred, thinking is not that nuanced. Here, she misses the point entirely.

Terrorists in general have no problem in killing innocent people. Because they have a distinct black and white world view, where one party is the good side and the other party - in this case the infidels, non-Muslims- indiscriminately bad.
If the non-Muslims kill innocent Muslims, then according to terrorist thinking, killing of non-Muslim children and women is fair game. So, why would a terrorist loaded with blind hatred, have a soft side for unbelieving women that are tortured? On the contrary, she would rejoice at this sight befalling the infidels.
After all, she is going to blow up dozens of innocent civilians including women, that are part of the same pool of infidels.