The singer-songwriter turned actor made a joke on the back of another tweet, mocking Pakistan’s already precarious ‘MeToo’ movement.
Actor and singer-songwriter Haroon Shahid, who made his film debut with Shoaib Mansoor’s Verna, has done the unthinkable.
Verna - despite its many flaws and problematic depictions – bravely took up the issue of sexual assault and violence against women, with Pakistan’s biggest female actor/star Mahira Khan having starred in the film as a rape survivor. Haroon Shahid, making his big screen debut with the film, played the role of her husband. Verna almost didn’t release due to its “edgy content” before the decision to release it was made.
Mahira Khan took complete ownership of the film and the taboo topic it addressed. When interviewed about the subject and the ban by the Censor Board, she told The Guardian: “I was nervous about how it would work as a film as well as the performance. But about the subject matter? Never, because I stand by it. There were certain aspects of the story that people did not agree with, but not about the core message of the film.”
And so it comes as a rude and horrifying surprise that Verna’s hero, Haroon Shahid, a singer-songwriter who has also appeared on Coke Studio in previous years and was an integral part of the cast, took to Twitter this past week and made a joke on the back of another tweet, mocking Pakistan’s already precarious ‘MeToo’ movement and advocating violence against women, as a joke.
It began when someone on Twitter with the handle @BajiPlease wrote about journalist and political analyst Gul Bukhari and in a vile tweet said: “I saw Gul Bukhari in my dream, and man, I slapped her with a chappal in my hand. I was awesome.”
Haroon Shahid, adding to the thread on the micro-blogging site, wrote: “A couple from my side as well please. Mein maroon ga to #MeToo hojai ga! (If I hit her, it’ll become a #MeToo issue)”.
He went on to defend his “joke” and found similar vitriolic views before being schooled by some and tendering an apology, also on Twitter that said: “I apologize for my bad joke. Hope you guys garner an apology from her [Gul Bukhari] for this. Oh wait.... was this even a joke???”
In yet another apology, he noted further: “I cracked a bad joke yesterday for which I got bashed and rightly so. Apparently, for a few I’ve become a hate monger, a rapist and a person who supports abusing women with that one tweet. Your hate and article on Dawn don’t make me one. I apologise for the joke. Stop fighting!!”
This is what usually happens in Pakistan. Crack a joke against women and follow it up with an apology. Yasir Hussain did something similar last year during an award ceremony and joked about child molestation before apologizing. Waleed Zaman said the unthinkable at the Lahore premiere of Teefa in Trouble.
Whatever your political views and who you voted for, at a time when slapping women is a selling point in the entertainment business (barring certain exceptions), this joke, if we can even call it that, was and remains a depiction of the larger mentality within the entertainment industry where hitting a woman is something so benign that it can be joked upon. Whatever goodwill Haroon Shahid had incurred by starring in Verna just went out the window.
