Volume 4: 2022
Author:
Izza Malik
Abstract:
This paper draws focus on how different social classes are represented and performed on television in Pakistani dramas. The screen texts studied and analysed in this essay are Alif Allah aur lnsaan (dir. Aehsun Talish, 2017), Mann Mayal (dir. Haseeb Hassan, 2016), and Zindagi Gulzar Hai (dir. Sultana Siddiqui, 2012). All three were produced by Momina Duraid and broadcasted on HUM TV. Drawing on these three largely popular dramas that were released across the last decade, this paper analyses how the aspirations of the middle class are depicted on screen. Building on the central tenets of class analysis by Bourdieu and Maqsood, this paper explicates how one's social class depends on the accumulation of economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and linguistic capital combined. The paper also identifies and explains how class mobility is achieved or aspired to using these forms of capital. Drawing on the depictions of social class, the paper seeks to establish and explain the critiques of different social classes, the conflict that persists within and amongst them, and how these conflicts are presented on screen. It argues that in Pakistan, television is a key medium through which Pakistani audiences find their material and positional aspirations realised. The paper explores what characters in Pakistani screen texts aspire to be, and how their aspirations are inextricably tied to the desires of the populace. This paper contributes to the discourse on the representation of social classes in Pakistan's television industry and focuses on depictions of class markers, social mobility, and class conflict.
Keywords
Pakistani Drama Industry,class mobility,class aspiration,class conflict,social identity.
