Wednesday, May 02, 2007
MTV Pakistan
I’ve become such a bitter, jealous old hag, reduced to staying at home on weekends watching MTV Pakistan.
Ah, yes, MTV Pakistan, another welcome addition to an array of repetitive, mind-numbingly mundane, unproductive and hollow entertainment outlets for our overly-westernized, urbanized, elitist youth living in a self-contained bubble and spoiled by a steady diet of excessive carbohydrates and Friends. Criticism aside, the arrival of MTV is a welcome addition to the Pakistani landscape by all means. It creates jobs (where else will those video jockeys take their baggy pants and blow-dried hair), it stimulates the economy (the more Josh you play on MTV, the more their CDs will sell, hence making sure that those poor souls who live off piracy continue to feed their seven children with halal ki rozi), it boosts our exports (how else will Ali Zafar, our most exportable commodity – besides, of course, footballs stitched by the delicate fingers of a twelve-year-old Sialkoti - being all chikna and dashing, be able to lip-sync at the MTV Asia Awards with his gelled hair and white top) and it promotes the emancipation of women (after all, women are free in a society where they can take live calls on television from obsessive callers and not have bhaijaan beat them up). Plus, who cares about the one-dollar poverty line and most of the nation being below it when you can get a fancy billboard on Liberty Roundabout smack in the middle of Lahore announcing your arrival and preparation to conquer the market that has produced some of the greatest and most formulaic pop singers in all of Asia!
