OR

                                     

People tell me I’m hyper nationalistic. I don’t even deny it. I accept it. It was the way I was raised. I am proud to be a Pakistani and Pakistan will forever be my home and probably what I identify as for the rest of my life but over time my nationalism has changed and evolved and gotten less intense, to an extent where I believe I am at a point where I understand the nuances of nationalism in a much more comprehensive way and have been able to reflect on and evaluate my own nationalism in a more informed manner.

After spending the last 4 years in this university pursuing various conversations and endeavors on campus that break the stereotype associated with Pakistani’s, watching 4 Lions enraged me. I just do not see the humor in misdirected bearded Pakistani men blowing themselves up. During the first 10 minutes of the movie when I saw clueless men who could very easily be caught by the police because they had no clue what they were doing, I was done with the movie. As the movie progressed, I continued to see the same men run back and forth between England and Pakistan in a misguided attempt to find purpose by engaging in terrorist activities and it only frustrated me further. However, it wasn’t until I did the readings for the next day that shed more light on the Sufi-Salafi conflict was I able to understand the perspective of the men and what they were aiming to do better. In our class discussion the following day, and before as well, Rend explained to me that the purpose of the movie was not to perpetuate the ‘suicide bomber’ stereotype but to negate it, break it down and humanize these men and that I needed to put my nationalism aside to evaluate the movie in an unbiased way. Hence, I vowed to watch it again.

But before that, we talked to Riz! And I told him that as a Pakistani who has worked incredibly hard to negate the ‘suicide bomber’ stereotype, it was very upsetting for me to watch a movie that reinforced these stereotypes especially for those who don’t have as much cultural or religious context. Riz responded explaining that the intention in the depiction of these men wasn’t of course to reinforce stereotypes but to exaggerate them to an extent that they were so satirical they were no longer real and hence made fun of those who create these stereotypes to begin with. This statement made me think of something that comes up in almost every class, i.e. culture with a ‘C’ and culture with a ‘c’. The genius of the movie lies in the fact that Riz and co. (the minority and producers of the ‘c’ulture) took the stereotypes that exist about Muslims in modern day pop culture ( ‘C’ulture) determined by Western media as we learned later in our class on Orientalism, and turned them on their heads to use them to mock the ‘C’ulture and the Western media. On a second watch, I noticed that the exaggeration of the characters and their actions to an extent to which they seem unrealistic was an incredible ploy that Chris Morris used to firstly, garner audience interest, since most people belonging to the dominant ‘C’ulture are primarily interested in seeing Muslim men blow themselves up and then subverting the ‘C’ulture by humanizing these men and giving context to the actions that led up to their misguided actions. All of this delivered through layers of intense dark-humor and outrageous behavior that is not easy to rationalize for some. Or perhaps becomes more so on a second watch!