Returning to Lahore Literary Festival for the second time in a row, Fatima Bhutto’s session was one of the highlights of this year’s event. She was in conversation with Fatima Arif and Hammad Anwar about her latest book New Kings of the World in a packed hall.

The moderators began the session by asking her about the idea behind the book and the various themes it covers. Ms Bhutto explained how 20th century saw the growing influence of Western culture, particularly American culture through films and television across the world, which became even more prominent after the War on Terror when America began portraying its vision by creating for instance, drama series showing brave CIA officers saving the world among others. However, she pointed out that today, when West is failing to sustain its credibility, it has been replaced by the rise of three new Asian powers in mass culture which portray a shift of soft power from Western media to the East. These include growth of Bollywood from India, Dizi from Turkey and K-pop or Korean pop from Korea in recent years. She has also briefly written about China in her book, which she believes will decide power in the 21st century instead of America.

While talking about Bollywood, she called it an “interesting lens to look at India” as she recounted the changes it has gone through starting from the 1950s to present. The films in the 1950s showed the hero as a poor, struggling man who had hope in the future. But this “socialist” and “utopian” hero remained a socialist hero by the 1970s but no longer utopian given the challenges he faced while dealing with the police, the rich and powerful and was ready to fight back. It was in the 1990s when India went through neoliberal reforms that the hero became a capitalist; who belonged to the upper class and enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. She said it was this “rampant capitalist fantasy” in the films that the viewers could no longer relate to and continues to be the case today, while giving the example of Karan Johar’s blockbuster film Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum, which is famously known in Peru as ‘La Familia Hindu.’

Ms Bhutto explained that since the main objective of the book was to make a case for globalization in 50,000 words, she chose to travel to countries like Peru where the Bollywood would be expected to have lesser influence than in countries like Pakistan which share the border with India. However, in Peru, she found a subculture which was obsessed with Bollywood and related to its characters and values in the films as opposed to Western movies. Here she mentioned her encounter with Indian actor Shahrukh Khan in Dubai when she was interviewing him for the book and how the people from various nationalities were inspired by him as not a Bollywood hero but a “global hero.” She felt this was the result of the “loneliness of modern life” as most of those people were away from their families to work in Dubai could relate to his various roles in the films.

Sharing her views about the rise of the Turkish Dizi, she said just like American films and television, they were modern but showcased a Muslim culture, traditional values and morality that speak to the majority of the people. Their stories project them as the heroes with the ability to exercise control rather than being portrayed as the villain or the subjugated. She said that none of these Asian cultures are “other than us” but all of them should rather be seen as our own cultures since we all can relate to them.

While discussing K-pop, Ms Bhutto talked about how South Korea had successfully recovered its economy by investing money, support and time in popular culture in the late 1990s, after it suffered a downturn. K-pop is one of the examples she cited in which every artist goes through a rigorous training for five years with costs reaching millions of dollars, and as a result had become a global sensation today.

Relating the discussion to Pakistan, she said the country had an enormously rich culture which was not promoted to its full potential. She said if Pakistan decided to work on its content, there was no doubt that its music, dramas and films would not be embraced by the rest of the world.

She concluded the session by sharing her thoughts about the book. She said that the book started in Peshawar and ends in Seoul and the story that connected them showed that as humans we relate to people from other countries and were open to other cultures even when our governments were afraid to do so. She felt that these examples of cultural movement from outside the West were a way for us to defy the ugliness of the world in a dignified way.

After the session, she spoke at a creative writing workshop organised by the LLF for over 60 students and aspiring writers. It was an interactive session where Ms Bhutto shared her own experiences as a writer and answered questions by the participants.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2020