By Umar Farooq
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The creator of an animated film on blasphemy in Pakistan is hoping it will prompt discussion on tolerance at a time that rights advocates say hate speech on social media is increasingly triggering violence.
Screen grab from an animated short film SWIP, produced by the Puffball Studios, taken from an undated video, obtained by Reuters. Arafat Mazhar/Handout via REUTERS
The short film “Swipe” is about a boy obsessed with a hypothetical smartphone app that allows people to vote on whether someone should be killed for blasphemy and offers a glimpse of a stark future of what rights groups say is a worrisome present.
“The screen is what alienates people and what they say through a screen they probably wouldn’t say to another person in front of them,” Arafat Mazhar, the director of the 14-minute animated film, told Reuters.
Blasphemy is a crime in Pakistan and officially carries the death penalty. While no executions for blasphemy have been carried out, enraged mobs sometimes kill people accused of it.
Rights groups say the blasphemy law is often exploited to settle scores and increasingly it is accusations made on social media that have triggered violence.
The film, produced by a studio in the city of Lahore and released last month, shows what could happen if people could see photos of those accused of blasphemy on an app, and then had the option of swiping right to condemn them to death or left to forgive them.
If at least 10,000 people condemn someone, then members of the public go and kill them.
The boy protagonist scans the app checking out the accused, including a man who did not forward a religious message on social media and women accused of wearing too much perfume or being immodestly dressed.
Driven to score “points” on the app and enraged by the accusations, the boy goes on a right-swiping spree and in the frenzy accuses his own father of blasphemy.
RISK
Mazhar hopes the film should make people think about rash accusations. But taking a critical view, or even just questioning the blasphemy law, carries huge risk.
In 2011, the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, Salman Taseer was shot dead by one of his police guards after he spoke out in defence of a Christian woman, Asia, Bibi, accused of blasphemy.
The guard, Mumtaz Qadri, was lionised by many and his arrest, sentencing and later execution lead to an outpouring of anger and even violence at huge protests.
Mazhar says he wants to connect with the sort of ordinary people who hailed Qadri as a hero.
“I’ve been surrounded by people from the religious conservative community growing up,” Mazhar said.
“I’ve seen them as kind, compassionate people but with tendencies to endorse and empathize with people like Mumtaz Qadri from time to time, and it’s a very difficult process to try and empathize with these people but I have no choice, I have to relate to my own community.”
The film comes as cases of violence triggered by online accusations are becoming all too common.
“It’s happening almost every day,” Hassan Baloch, a researcher with the hate-speech monitoring group Bytes 4 All, told Reuters.
“What begins online is being translated offline, often in violent and dangerous ways.”
In July, a teenager shot and killed a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin in a court where he was on trial after being accused of posting blasphemous messages.
In August, police filed a blasphemy case against an actor and singer over a music video they shot in a mosque after social media outrage.
The same month, hundreds of people, most of them members of the Shiite minority, were arrested after complaints of blasphemy were posted on social media.
Reporting by Umar Farooq; Editing by Robert Birsel
Don't swipe but see Arafat Mazhar’s hand-painted animated short film with crafty storytelling
The film tells the story of a young boy who is addicted to swiping on iFatwa, an app that crowdsources religious death sentences.
One of the dictionary definitions of the term ‘swipe’ is, “Move (one’s finger) across a touch screen in order to activate a function”. ‘Swipe left’ and ‘swipe right’ are also featured phrases in the dictionary now.
The former is described as, “(on the online dating app Tinder) indicate that one finds someone unattractive by moving one’s finger to the left across an image of them on a touchscreen.”
Pakistan is no place for such immoral swiping though. In September 2019, five dating apps including Tinder were banned in the country. Our impressionable youth is now safe from the indecent content on the said apps, and all this objectionable swiping.
Arafat Mazhar’s Swipe, a hand-painted animated short film, presents a different kind of swiping left and right. One that, at least in this fictional depiction of Pakistan, is more acceptable than the immoral apps that have been banned.
The film tells the story of Jugnu, a young boy who is addicted to swiping on iFatwa, an app that crowdsources religious death sentences. Mazhar and his team paint some familiar scenes. Jugnu is on his phone, swiping away, even while at the dinner table. His mother slaps him on his head.
“Get off your phone you useless brat or I’ll gouge your eyes out,” she screams at him, while preparing the meal. “Tick tick tick... Always on your phone... Even when you’re on the dining table.”
Jugnu can still barely get his eyes off his screen. But in this fictionalised world, he is not playing a game or spending time chatting with his friend, he is deciding the fate of people who have been brought for trial in the court of public opinion on iFatwa.
Those familiar with Mazhar’s other work — his previous animated short Shehr-e-Tabassum, or his engagement with questions related to the blasphemy law — may start watching Swipe with certain expectations. The short film matches those expectations, and then some.
As expected, the film is well-executed and leaves the viewer with a lot to ponder over. It also features moments of dark humour — one case that appears on Jugnu’s screen says, 'Iss shakhs ne shaitaan ki baaton mein aakar WhatsApp forward message aagay nahin bheja [This person listened to the devil and did not forward a religious WhatsApp message].’
The film is expectedly immersive, with a beautiful sound design and powerful moments of silence. While the viewers witness many horrific things on screen, they are prepared for them all. They know what to expect from this kind of a fictionalised depiction, showing an exaggerated reality for effect.
But, thanks to the crafty storytelling, the audience gets a rude awakening, and is reminded that the reality they are living in is not that far from what they see on screen.
In the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008), filmmaker Ari Folman, retells the story of the Lebanon War from his own memories of the war and the perspective of his fellow veterans. The Oscar-nominated film gets the audience fully immersed in the animated recreations of these events.
And then, at the end of the film, the filmmaker leaves viewers with some real footage from the war. Footage that would usually be innocuous to most audiences, accustomed to seeing similar — and, indeed, much worse — visuals. Folman’s storytelling forces us to look again.
Mazhar’s Swipe does the same. Expectedly, it exceeds expectations.
Published in Dawn, ICON, November 15th, 2020
The film tells the story of a young boy who is addicted to swiping on iFatwa, an app that crowdsources religious death sentences.
One of the dictionary definitions of the term ‘swipe’ is, “Move (one’s finger) across a touch screen in order to activate a function”. ‘Swipe left’ and ‘swipe right’ are also featured phrases in the dictionary now.
The former is described as, “(on the online dating app Tinder) indicate that one finds someone unattractive by moving one’s finger to the left across an image of them on a touchscreen.”
Pakistan is no place for such immoral swiping though. In September 2019, five dating apps including Tinder were banned in the country. Our impressionable youth is now safe from the indecent content on the said apps, and all this objectionable swiping.
Arafat Mazhar’s Swipe, a hand-painted animated short film, presents a different kind of swiping left and right. One that, at least in this fictional depiction of Pakistan, is more acceptable than the immoral apps that have been banned.
The film tells the story of Jugnu, a young boy who is addicted to swiping on iFatwa, an app that crowdsources religious death sentences. Mazhar and his team paint some familiar scenes. Jugnu is on his phone, swiping away, even while at the dinner table. His mother slaps him on his head.
“Get off your phone you useless brat or I’ll gouge your eyes out,” she screams at him, while preparing the meal. “Tick tick tick... Always on your phone... Even when you’re on the dining table.”
Jugnu can still barely get his eyes off his screen. But in this fictionalised world, he is not playing a game or spending time chatting with his friend, he is deciding the fate of people who have been brought for trial in the court of public opinion on iFatwa.
Those familiar with Mazhar’s other work — his previous animated short Shehr-e-Tabassum, or his engagement with questions related to the blasphemy law — may start watching Swipe with certain expectations. The short film matches those expectations, and then some.
As expected, the film is well-executed and leaves the viewer with a lot to ponder over. It also features moments of dark humour — one case that appears on Jugnu’s screen says, 'Iss shakhs ne shaitaan ki baaton mein aakar WhatsApp forward message aagay nahin bheja [This person listened to the devil and did not forward a religious WhatsApp message].’
The film is expectedly immersive, with a beautiful sound design and powerful moments of silence. While the viewers witness many horrific things on screen, they are prepared for them all. They know what to expect from this kind of a fictionalised depiction, showing an exaggerated reality for effect.
But, thanks to the crafty storytelling, the audience gets a rude awakening, and is reminded that the reality they are living in is not that far from what they see on screen.
In the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008), filmmaker Ari Folman, retells the story of the Lebanon War from his own memories of the war and the perspective of his fellow veterans. The Oscar-nominated film gets the audience fully immersed in the animated recreations of these events.
And then, at the end of the film, the filmmaker leaves viewers with some real footage from the war. Footage that would usually be innocuous to most audiences, accustomed to seeing similar — and, indeed, much worse — visuals. Folman’s storytelling forces us to look again.
Mazhar’s Swipe does the same. Expectedly, it exceeds expectations.
Published in Dawn, ICON, November 15th, 2020
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