- Title: PAKISTAN-COMEDY Pakistan's embattled comedians spin troubles into punchlines
- Date: 21st August 2015
- Summary: LAPTOP SCREEN
- Embargoed: 5th September 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Pakistan
- Country: Pakistan
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA4OFIBPP9B2FM00EGTOUBETCR9
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The crowd exploded into laughter as Pakistani comedian Shehzad Ghias Shaikh threw them his final punchline, gripping the microphone as he roasted the dating app Tindr and traditional South Asian family matchmaking.
"My looks were not good. So, my mother said," -- the intelligent audience burst into laughter as they knew what would be the next -- he wants his mother to find him random girls to sleep with, not the dating app.
Shaikh, 26, has just returned from New York and is trying to reinvigorate live comedy in Pakistan, an Islamic nation.
Shaikh and his improvisation troupe, the Bhands or the Performers/Entertainers, use comedy to make the audience laugh - then think - about society in their nuclear-armed nation of 190 million, plagued by crime, militancy and corruption.
It's a difficult, sometimes dangerous quest. Aside from the usual financial struggles and small audiences, Pakistani comedians face harsh blasphemy laws and a barrage of death threats if their jokes offend the wrong person.
"I have my own principles and rules of what I would joke about and of what I wound not joke about, but those come from my own opinions. I am not going to censor myself in fear of somebody else. We live in a city where somebody could get shot because somebody wants to steal that cellphone. So, if I do end up dying for a cause it's as morbid as it sounds, it may be better than dying for nothing. You get messages, you get threats. You don't know how tangible those threats are. You try and do what you can but at the end of the day it's nothing you can really do. It takes one crazy person to destroy for the rest of us," said Shaikh.
One of Shaikh's close friends, Sabeen Mahmud, a rights activist and the founder of The Second Floor venue he played this week, was gunned down in April. A man arrested for her murder has said she was targeted for championing liberal, secular values.
Shaikh said the only weapon he had was to spin the threats against him into punchlines.
"Least I can do is to joke about it. So I sort of turn it on his head, and that is the only power I have, what I can joke about it, what I can look them in the eye and say, 'even if you end up doing this, I go down laughing at you'. That is how strong as I can be. Other than that I am really afraid," he said with a wry smile.
Pakistani satirists like Luavut Zahid also want to make their audience curious - and angry.
A year ago, she and two others launched Pakistan's answer to The Onion, The Khabaristan Times. Writers cracks dark jokes about violence and lampoon those they hold responsible. Hackers have attacked the site repeatedly.
While corruption, politicians, crime and culture are all regular fixtures on the comedy circuit and satirical shows like the televised Banana News Network, some subjects remain taboo. Few punchlines mock the powerful military or religion.
"Religion, to start with, and you can not be too vocal about the establishment, you shouldn't be targeting the military, if you are doing your pieces. And to be fair, we have done our fair share of pieces about the military but they really haven't given us that much of a problem. The politicians have given us a lot of material to work with, the military not so much," said Zahid.
Pakistani law stipulates blasphemers be put to death. No one's been executed so far, but those accused are often lynched or imprisoned on flimsy evidence.
A senator, professors and popular journalists were all recently accused of blasphemy.
Some Pakistani artists tried to go online to get around the scarcity of venues and small audiences, yet even Internet distribution has problems.
Comedian Ali Gul Pir posted his first song about the corrupt children of wealthy landlords on YouTube in 2012 after radio and television rejected the racy lyrics. It got a million views in three days.
Three months later, the government banned YouTube, after a provocative film about Prophet Muhammad sparked deadly riots.
"I made this music video called 'Waderay ka Beta'. Then I went to a TV channel and I said, 'Hey, will you play my music video, something new, its something that has never been done'. They said, No, nobody is gonna watch this stuff. So I (said) ok. I went to a Radio channel, they said no, the lyrics are too controversial. We'll get into trouble. So, nobody was playing it. And back then we had YouTube, thankfully." said Pir.
Pir hit back with an expletive-laden song about the ban, mocking Islamic school students who rioted as sexually frustrated and politicians who implemented the ban as corrupt hypocrites.
The video was wildly popular. The ban is still in place. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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