Pakistani Filmmaker Arafat Mazhar's Film ‘Swipe’ Imagines Life with an App That Crowdsources Death Sentences
By
Muna Khan
20
December, 2020
Just when
Pakistanis were increasingly experiencing ‘freedom’, using apps like Tinder,
Imran Khan’s ‘Naya Pakistan’ — now a nightmare State for women, minorities,
progressives — blocked dating apps for their ‘immoral content’. The message was
clear: you can’t use technology to date people, but you can use it to support
and encourage violence against those who you consider anti-Pakistan,
anti-Muslim. This is why filmmaker Arafat Mazhar’s new animated film, Swipe,
isn’t far-fetched. It imagines life with an app that crowdsources death
sentences.
Still from the Pakistani animated film 'Swipe'
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As attacks
on minorities for blasphemy and women for their lifestyle choices rise, Swipe
introduces to us an app called I-Fatwa.
The film
follows Jugnu, a young boy who uses the app, I-Fatwa, to decide the fate of the
people who end up on it due to some misdemeanour. Swipe left to forgive, or
right to kill the person on the screen. The more right swipes the person gets,
the more they are likely to be “Wajib ul Qatl” (worthy of being killed);
they have to get 10,000 right swipes to be killed. The person playing, or
rather swiping, also gets points and is motivated to score enough points to
become a ghazi (defender of the faith).
None spared
a swipe
When we
first meet Jugnu, he is 50 points away from becoming a ghazi. He’s also
considering the fate of a bride on screen, charged with eating paan at her
wedding. We don’t know which way he swipes, but we do see him forgive a woman
for misusing miswak (a teeth cleaning twig) later. However, a woman who
violated her iddah (prescribed period of mourning for widows), and is a few
hundred swipes shy of wajibul qatl, gets a right swipe. Jugnu also swipes left
on a man who did not forward a WhatsApp message.
Still from the
Pakistani animated film ‘Swipe’
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There’s no
method to why he—or anyone else—swipes right or left. And it seems there’s no
logic behind how a person ends up on the app for a ‘trial by subscribers’.
I-Fatwa
makes its presence felt as Jugnu walks to school, swiping on his device, in a
seemingly middle-class neighbourhood. The film’s animation, led by Haseeb
Rehman, is remarkable. As Mazhar told me, the team “created a visual vocabulary
that truly feels familiar to a Pakistani audience—something that we can proudly
say is not borrowed, something that is ours at its very heart.”
A woman
tells her vegetable vendor she’ll swipe right if the tomatoes are rotten again.
A radio blares an ad by a phone company offering 50 free right swipes if you
buy Rs 200 worth free credit. A woman tells another about Nuzhat, who was
parading around college without a dupatta and how her case has come up on
I-Fatwa. We hear a group of men in a tea shop gushing over the new filter on
I-Fatwa, where a person’s head blows up when you swipe right. As the day
progresses, so does Jugnu’s proclivity to swipe right. A child born with a
devil’s sign on his head, a bride eating Paan, a woman who refused to get
waxed, no one is spared. And therein lies the tragedy that befalls on him.
Pakistan’s
Dangerous Blasphemy Laws
I-Fatwas’s
currency is potent and its message is a searing indictment of the Imran Khan
government.
Mazhar, a
35-year-old filmmaker, musician, and researcher, has been using Islamic
arguments to tackle the blasphemy law through an advocacy group called Engage.
He believes religious hardliners need to be brought to the table along with
human rights campaigners, where they can engage with rather than antagonise
each other. To that end, he’s done some work in rural Punjab and won some
religious scholars over with his initiative.
But the
wins, if they can be described as such, are painfully slow to come by. Violent
incidents like the lynching of Mashal Khan in 2017, a progressive student at a
university in Mardan, create fissures in society that can’t be reversed unless
there’s a steely resolve of the State. However, each time the State caves.
In July,
Tahir Naseem, mentally ill and in prison since 2018 on blasphemy charges, was
brought to court in Peshawar for a hearing when he was shot by a man who
claimed he dreamt he was ‘ordered’ to kill Naseem. In August this year, actors
Saba Qamar and Bilal Saeed had to apologise for shooting a video in Lahore’s
Wazir Khan Mosque after a case was registered against them for “defiling a
place of worship”. The feared Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) leader Khadim
Rizvi weighed in on the controversy by asking his followers, “Why should we
leave the actors who are dancing in a mosque?”
“Pakistani
authorities need no more evidence to see how dangerous the blasphemy laws are,”
said David Griffiths, Director of the Office of the Secretary General of
Amnesty International in a press release in August.
The State
seems to have absolved itself of any responsibility on this matter, and since 2016,
no efforts have even been made to present reforms to the law. A blasphemy
accusation hangs like the sword of Damocles over academics, journalists,
progressives, and the unsuspecting.
A Conversation
Starter
Mazhar’s
film has received a lot of praise on social media from journalists in their
personal capacity, but it hasn’t translated into much press coverage. Dawn
said: “The short film matches those expectations, and then some.” Cutacut said
that, while Swipe “amplifies the toxicity of the oblivion that surrounds us,
not even for a second does the situation feel unfamiliar.” The Friday Times
notes that the film comes “at a time when state surveillance has expanded to
the realm of the internet.”
Mazhar has
been featured on several independent digital outlets to discuss the film and
his work on blasphemy and appreciates the support, wherever it has come from.
Arafat Mazhar and his team behind the animated film ‘Swipe’ | Photo by
Isma Gul Hasan
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“I think
the nature of a project like [Swipe] is to make space for conversation where
very little exists, and a project like that can only be successful when others
step forward to bolster the voice that is not being heard, so I do hope we will
continue to get more of that support from local publications and media outlets
moving forward,” said Mazhar.
Swipe is
also a reminder of the small joys in resistance. That can be gauged from the
near 1,000 comments of support on YouTube — where the film was released in
November.
“The music
with those lyrics, gosh, literal goosebumps! The state of the country is so
close to what’s shown here,” comments one user. “This should be Wajib-ul-watch
for every Pakistani,” writes another. I scrolled through the comments looking
for something horrible, as is wont to happen on the internet. Instead one found
comments with sentiments like this: “One YouTube Video Can Change Your
Perception. This Is That Video For Me.”
“We have
demonstrated that you can speak intelligently and empathetically about
incredibly schismatic, difficult subjects in a way where introspection and
conversation, as opposed to hate and violence, are possible,” said Mazhar.
“Swipe is a push for indigenous filmmaking and storytelling that is made by our
people for our people. From the beginning, before Swipe or even
Shehr-e-Tabassum were released, I was certain that whatever stories I could
produce had to be free and accessible to a Pakistani audience: the people these
films are about, the people these films speak to.”
By
uploading the film on YouTube for free, Mazhar has lost the chance to submit
Swipe to a lot of international film festivals. This speaks volumes about his
intent with the film, and who he wants it to reach first. Many Pakistanis,
myself included, have yet to see the two Oscar-winning documentaries by
Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and I’m not blaming her for it
insofar as I’m pointing out the lack of avenues for Pakistanis to watch stories
made for them, about them.
“I think
one of the most memorable remarks we have heard came up at our premiere
screening when a student from GCU Lahore called the story a ‘Manto of our
times’,” said Mazhar. “We have no pretensions of comparing Swipe to the
literary contributions of a writer like Manto, but if the comparison is one of
storytelling that holds up an unflinchingly honest mirror to society then I
think we can gladly accept that that is what we have tried our very best to
do.”
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Muna
Khan has worked in journalism since 1995, largely in Pakistan, some in Vietnam
and the UAE. She has a Masters in journalism from Northwestern University and
teaches news & feature writing to Masters Students at IBA in Karachi. Views
are personal.
Original
Headline: ‘Swipe’ right for death sentence. A Pakistani film matches Tinder
with I-Fatwa
Source: The Print
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/pakistani-filmmaker-arafat-mazhar-film/d/123827
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