Same shame: national, regional, and international discourses surrounding Shoaib Mansoor’s cinematic portrayal of gender oppression

Abstract

This article explores the essential role feminist media texts play in fostering global connections and disconnections by centering on contemporary Pakistani cinema, an understudied segment of South Asian film. Through an analysis of the discourse surrounding the filmography of the Pakistani director Shoaib Mansoor within Pakistani, Indian, British, and American publications, I argue that Mansoor’s three films, Khuda Kay Liye, Bol, and Verna, have moved across borders due to their feminist critique of sexual violence in Pakistan. Breaking into foreign markets that have previously ignored or banned Pakistani cinema, these films have been able to travel by relying on a media discourse that positions portrayals of female subjugation as stories that expose such a common societal shame that they must not be bound by political, financial, or geographical limitations. Yet, this reception is not border-less, marked at times by anti-Muslim sentiments that divide India and Pakistan, and occasionally characterized by Westernized narratives that centralize the American based #MeToo movement. By tracing the complex processes of reception, this article helps us to look beyond the media’s role in constructing homogeneous and orientalist images of “third world” women, and consider opportunities for movement, agency, and transnational feminist dialogue.