Pakistan Tourism shares sexist video joke on 'way to get revenge on wife', but no one is laughing
A video depicting a man threatening to throw off his wife has been shared by Pakistan Tourism's official Twitter handle (photo-DailyO)
Sometime around noon this Christmas, the official Twitter handle of Pakistan Tourism (@PakistanJannatt), uploaded a video in jest but the staged 28-second clip was definitely taken in bad spirit by most of the Pakistani and non-Pakistani Twitter.
What is this video? A bearded man can be found seated with a woman who plays his wife, in what seems like a cable car of sorts. The wife is visibly afraid of the ride as the husband threatens to drop her off the car if she keeps on pestering him.
As the woman keeps on repeating, “No, no, no,” in fear, the man asks her to not even bother him with a single “uff”. Ultimately, he asks her to say sorry, do “tauba”, and touch his feet.
Even though this video is still up on Pak Tourism’s official handle, the Internet is naturally unimpressed.
How are people reacting? The video was staged, but people are infuriated with the government body attempting to normalise such behaviour towards women. The caption in the post translates from Urdu to English as, “Tourist way to get revenge on wife” accompanied with a “laugh-out-loud” emoji.
Twitter reacts: The responses by journalists, professors and students on Twitter range from rants on how outdated the video’s content is to tweets expressing disappointment over the fact that a state-sponsored organisation promoted it.
This is in very poor taste. Please move into the 21st century & consider greater sophistication, sense & sensibility while promoting Pakistani. This promotes nothing but stereotypes & a certain kind of hegemony. This is hardly the Pakistan we want to promote. So disappointing
— Osama Siddique (@DrOsamaSiddique) December 26, 2022
Why @Pakistan tourism posted this video . Jahalat on the peak
— Nilofar Mughal (@NilofarMughal) December 26, 2022
A recurring man in the Twitter thread was Lahore-based food writer Salman Rushid (whose Twitter bio reads, “his only disease is borderline sanity”) who seemed to be really really really pissed off and disappointed about this whole affair.
While there were a few Pakistani social media users who were backing up the clip and its humour, Rushid (who is also a “Fellow of Royal Geographical Society”) took to replacing his cultured tongue with Urdu/Hindi expletives.
For instance, a certain Twitter user Kevin Obrian wrote what can be translated as,
This was followed by a fiery response with Rashid slamming his keypad keys, saying,
Check out the whole conversation below:
So, while Rushid and other Pakistani citizens are visibly frustrated with this sheerly random video, would Pak Tourism take it down and issue an apology? It has been two days now and there has been no action.
Hope Mr Rushid doesn’t get high blood pressure though! As for the male actor in the video who has been getting all flak, this is how a Twitter user describes him:
