CHOICE, BLAME, AND GENDERED MORALITY IN PAKISTANI DRAMA: AUDIENCE RESPONSES TO SANWAL YAAR PIYA

Abstract

The Pakistani television dramas make an important contribution to the formation of the general discourse on the issues of gender roles, morality, and social expectations. This paper analyzes the way audiences understand the ideas of female empowerment, male atonement and righteousness in the Pakistani Romantic Melodrama with strong tragic element, Sanwal Yaar Piya. The study is based on audience response theory, approaches to gendered moral discourse, and how viewers make meaning out of their emotional reactions, cultural norms, and experience via watching televised stories. The research design employed in the study is a qualitative research design which applies thematic analysis of responses posted by the audience on online platforms. The number of comments made by the audience accessed on publicly accessible discussions on YouTube,Facebook,Instagram, and Twitter in regards to the drama, in particular, the frequently discussed final episode, amounted to 700. Thematic analysis of 300 comments that specifically interacted with the themes of gender, morality, attributing blame, and interpreting the audience was chosen after sorting out the irrelevant content (contained the advertisement, emojis, and unrelated observations). Out of this sample, 35 exemplary comments have been chosen that can be used to reflect the most common patterns of interpretation found in the analysis. The results indicate that many audiences presented the male character of Sanwal as a morally better and self-sacrificing hero and the use of personal choice by the female character of Piya was often viewed either as betrayal, selfishness or failure. These reactions mirror larger patriarchal norms attributing feminine virtue to loyalty and sacrifice and giving morally more leeway to the male characters. Simultaneously, even fewer viewers saw that Piya rejects the unequal conditions to get married as a claim of dignity and free will, which means the existence of other moral explanations in the language of the audience. On the whole, the research illustrates that the digital audience actively produces gendered moral senses by commenting on the content online, and they turn the entertainment story into a domain of cultural argument, regulated morality, and reflection.