Privatization, audience perception, and creative teams

The environment in which military drama serials have been produced has changed in the past three decades. Since Pakistan Television’s inception in 1964, the state maintained control over television in the form of a quasi-monopoly and generated revenue through national and regionally segmented audiences.Footnote ¹⁶ In 2002, the state regime allowed private broadcasters to be a part of the television industry, breaking PTV’s impenetrable domination over broadcast television, which resulted in an intense proliferation of content, including religious content, on television.Footnote ¹⁷ The television drama serial expanded its scope to accommodate the increased demand for content because there were more television channels that needed more content for their audiences. PTV is still the most watched channel due to its availability on public airwaves. In recent times, cable channels have increasingly dominated entertainment, especially in the urban centers. While state television ran sixteen-to-eighteen–hour-long broadcasts up till 2002 with a special TV license funding PTV, private channels sought to offer twenty-four–hour programming to maximize advertisement revenue.

The privatization of the television industry changed the way television executives categorized content on Pakistani television, the gendering of content is a visible example of this change.Footnote ¹⁸ This has occurred for two reasons. One, the overbearing censorship regime loosened during the privatization drive in place at PTV, and the state cannot censor content as effectively as it did in a monopoly industry. It was content concerning women’s issues that was highly censored: women’s issues dramas had a specific time slot and were produced with distinct intentions in mind; perhaps more tellingly, PTV banned advertisements that pertained to sanitary towels or women’s undergarments.Footnote ¹⁹ Based on interviews with administrators and producers of the 1980s, Munira Cheema describes how programming decisions were made with the input of state institutions. As opposed to the censorship regimes of the 1990s, censorship around gendered content is now more open because viewers now see drama serials on subjects previously considered taboo, which comes at times with offensive language and immodesty.Footnote ²⁰

Two, the personnel employed in state television and private channels are recruited with different orientations and priorities. In the PTV era, the state-employed cultural elite determined the nature of programming while accounting for the censorship placed on women during General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization drive in the 1980s. However, the privatization drive created new opportunities and challenges for broadcast channels. Since audiences were no longer categorized as per the normative prescriptions of the cultural elite, the free market would shift power away from the educated cultural elite employed by PTV and give it to the audiences. In other words, state television was producing content with the educated citizen in mind whereas private channels catered to the modal consumer.

More specifically, television serials on women’s issues transformed from a niche form of content to becoming a core message of prime-time drama serials, because producers now aim to please “conservative housewives.”Footnote ²¹ Producers no longer have a captive audience and since private channels create content with a profit motive, they targeted the women because of their limited movement and disposable viewing time to watch television content. The commodification of content, in a sense, “feminized’ the form of television serials. “Feminization” here exists as the perception of television executives of their modal consumer, while denying the broad audience of television serials in Pakistan, which includes both male and female audiences. It matters however at the level of production, the behind-the-scenes of television production. This had causal impact on the way PTV-era serials differ from Ehd-e-Wafa and Sinf-e-Aahan, particularly in their creative orientations. PTV serials of the twentieth century showed women negotiating and resisting their roles in a conservative Islamic society,Footnote ²² albeit in a subversive manner, as television of the time thought of itself as an educational medium. Today’s feminist content must be integrated into an entertainment vehicle for it to gain traction.Footnote ²³ In short, the serials of the past had gendered content, while the serial form has been gendered in the current commercial ecosystem.

The organizational structure for creatives is one reason such changes happened within television serials. PTV was a state channel where regional centers delegated production to the regional creative team, a group of educated elites who produced a few serials a year. They stuck to the conventions of the television serial, which took after theatrical conventions and catered to an audience that they presumed was aware of literary conventions. PTV in a way “told” audiences what they needed to see and implemented such normative ideas within the creation process. Shoaib Mansoor, the creator of the PTV prequels, expresses his disregard for popular appeal in alignment with PTV’s ethos during the production of Alpha Bravo Charlie, as he overrides the imperative to play down to audiences:

In contrast to Mansoor’s disdain for popular appeal, the financial imperative of mass audiences and the “feminization” of television serials presented a challenge for HUM TV in producing Ehd-e-Wafa. The military life drama changed, as the creative teams behind the drama serials reoriented to a privatized and commercial multinetwork industry. The military sphere sketched in Mansoor’s shows could ignore civil society as the characters and spaces were overwhelmingly associated with the military.

Ehd-e-Wafa and Sinf-e-Aahan could not afford such insulation without risking loss of popular appeal. The creative teams must rely on their commercial sensibilities to produce a television serial that meets the expectations of channel executives and advertisers. Hence its creators made different creative decisions than the bold stylistic choices made by Shoaib Mansoor. Instead of handing the reign to an auteur who writes and directs the show, production houses relied on successful creative teams with a proven track record of success. Saife Hassan, the director of Ehd-e-Wafa, previously worked with writer Mustafa Afridi on the successful 2016 HUM TV show, Sang-e-Mar Mar (The Marble Stone), a show focusing on relationships strained under a tribal regime. Hassan explains how his decision to direct was linked to the script showing character arcs that extended beyond the military prep school atmosphere and suited the actor pool that was available to him.Footnote ²⁵ Similarly, Nadeem Baig, the director of Sinf-e-Aahan, also directed the successful commercial movies such as Jawani Phir Nai Aani (Youth Never Comes Again) in 2015. Baig, aware of the commercial constraints on content, considered Sinf-e-Aahan a risky project because the depiction of lady cadets on screen ran counter to the expectations set by television channels.Footnote ²⁶ Media houses and their perception of market expectations now dictate the content of television serials in Pakistan.

Creative choices

This change in orientation changed the visual language and portrayals of the military. The most visible difference between the series is the use of real army officers as amateur actors in the first two series and established actors playing army officers in the sequels. Shoaib Mansoor cast serving military officers as main leads, which made it easier to extract authentic performances, even if it came at the cost of production difficulties.Footnote ²⁷ The actors were not asked to perform; they were being asked to just be. Mansoor stayed in army barracks for months, researching the everyday life of the army, and this is reflected in his scripts for the first two series. He embodied the army life; the embodied metaphor is essentially a link of language to experienceFootnote ²⁸ and metaphors allow us to understand new experiences with respect to old experiences.Footnote ²⁹ Mansoor’s dedication to learning the military space meant the first two series merged background representations into the script and used amateur actors to connect to a readily available audience at a time when public television was the only choice. What audiences saw on screen was realism in its rawest sense; it may lack the dramatic visual enunciation of theater, but it made up in realist depictions of army life and nuanced intricacies and eccentricities of the characters that inhabited the space. The military habitus is on full display.

Ehd-e-Wafa and Sinf-e-Aahan do not follow this route. Modern audiences have plenty of options and are diverse in their nature. With channels fighting each other for television ratings, drama series are unsure whether they will gain lead-in audiences in a crowded market without a star cast, no matter how good the production values of the drama series. Scripts therefore align with the dramas HUM TV and ARY have been producing successfully in the past few years rather than military-sponsored content of the past. Creative teams reduce the friction between military and civilian representation by not directly engaging with contentious issues in the narrative, as the star of Ehd-e-Wafa, Ahad Raza Mir, readily admits in his interview.Footnote ³⁰ For Sinf-e-Aahan, the lead cast for military characters instead underwent training during production, imprinting military representation on to existing creative practices.

The second creative choice that differs between the two eras is where the narrative arcs of army officers take place on screen. While Mansoor’s soldiers mostly stay in the barracks in the PTV shows, the army officers on screen in the new era deal regularly with civilian life. Familial tensions constitute the storylines for all the main characters, as they are constantly caught between family demands and individual desire. Ehd-e-Wafa’s core tension is placed outside of the domains of the military, thereby expanding the imaginary universe of the drama while at the same time maintaining the sanctity of the army space within that universe. The women of Sinf-e-Aahan, by virtue of being women, cannot be extricated from their domestic contexts. The characters’ iconic shots visualizing skills within domestic emplacements and familial positions serve as the opening montage for the serial premiere. This strategy separates the challenges of civilian, domestic life from the discipline and clarity of army life, a strategy that interestingly makes the barracks a protective space for the women of Sinf-e-Aahan. The army barracks are depicted as utopias with no inner tensions. The series is still highly legible in its ideological message because, as I will elaborate at the end of the article, even when military and civilian spheres overlap, issues of domesticity are resolved through military logics.

The reason these choices were easier to make in the modern era of military drama serials is the ISPR’s institutional response to market forces. ISPR adopted industry practices to compete in the television industry rather than dictate terms through overt coercion and censorship. The star of the serial, Ahad Raza Mir, stated in an interview that ISPR worked like any other production house.Footnote ³¹ It indicates organizational isomorphism,Footnote ³² which might have occurred in the intervening years due to increased competition and increased uncertainty in the field of cultural production. The fuzziness of the boundaries between the military sphere and television production has made it easier to collaborate on scripts that deviate further from tightly controlled ISPR projects in the past. ISPR has a better understanding of the television industry because, as opposed to the PTV era where ISPR could dictate terms, ISPR can no longer afford to be reticent from the production process since the television industry and audiences are more autonomous than in the PTV era.

In short, the military life drama serial adapted to the industrial and institutional changes because of Pakistan television’s shift toward a privatized, multinetwork industry. The creative teams shifted from state-employed cultural elite in the prequels to market-savvy production houses by Ehd-e-Wafa’s time. Market forces compel show creators to include the civilian sphere along with the military sphere, which creates an interesting problem vis-à-vis representation of soldiers. Most officers in the Pakistan Armed Forces are men, and most representation of soldiers accentuates their stoic, masculine nature. How should they be depicted in a military life serial where most audience members are perceived to be women? The insertion and accommodation of military personnel in a “feminized” art form means that the depiction of masculinity within soldiers must also change in Ehd-e-Wafa, and Sinf-e-Aahan must change accordingly. In the following section, I analyze the ways in which these serials change depictions of civil-military spheres in the visual text based on the new industry conditions within Pakistani television.

Separation of military and civilian spheres within the visual text

A military life drama serial presents the military sphere, a space that is distinct from the nonmilitary or civil sphere, a space that is nationalistic, away from the disorder and messiness of social ties. While the PTV serials focused entirely on male characters that would join the army and did not have to show civil spheres beyond the characters’ families and backgrounds, Ehd-e-Wafa only had one of the main four characters join the military sphere. The character arcs for three lead characters were within the civil sphere, which was messy, volatile, and disorderly. The show creators had to establish a visual language in which it was clear that the military was unlike other institutions that formed the civil sphere.

The show creators for Ehd-e-Wafa established this separation of spheres early in the show, and this is established early in the show’s run. The plot revolves around four close friends studying at a prestigious boarding school, which is seen as an army prep school. In a bizarre turn of events, the group of friends find themselves implicated in a harassment scandal. The school summons their families to deal with this complicated situation. I will analyze a sequence of scenes where each character meets a member of his family for the first time since the accusations. For the sake of analytical comparability, I will restrict my analysis to the widest shot within each scene to demonstrate the visual differences made by the creators to distinguish the military sphere from the civilian sphere.

Shehryar, the son of a humble musician who plays in a marching band (see Figure 1), sits with his father in the campus lawns outside the academic building. Shariq (see Figure 2), the brother of a nurse working two jobs to support her widowed mother and brother, is being hit by his sister in the seating area of the campus stadium. Shahzain (see Figure 3), a member of an affluent rural family, is being kissed by his grandfather on the forehead outside the campus café, which is adjacent to the volleyball court.

Figure 1. Shehryar and his father, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

Figure 2. Shariq and his sister, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

Figure 3. Shahzain and his grandfather, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

These three characters confront the reactions of their family members in open spaces around the school campus. These frames represent the characters of the civil sphere, their emotional valence, and the messiness of the social environments that these characters inhabit in their lives outside of campus. The mise-en-scène in these frames reflects the diverse ways in which the characters confront the humiliation and shame in the aftermath of this scandal. Shehryar’s father holds his hand while he tries to understand his son and overcome his disappointment and confusion at the same time. Shariq’s sister hits him in anger and shame as he protects himself from her blows. Both these characters, belonging to lower socioeconomic classes, disappear into the anonymity and vastness of the campus, their humiliation and shame visible to the wandering observer on campus. In contrast, Shahzain’s higher socioeconomic status is evident from the way he is shown to rise above his environment. Shahzain’s grandfather intentionally ignores his grandson’s guilt and embraces him with love, almost dismissive of the scandal that casts a cloud over their encounter. Their status elevates them above their surroundings as the students play Volleyball on in a blur and their driver looks at them in the background. These three characters’ scenes depict different emotions, physicality, and attitudes toward moral and social problems. However, a common thread brings them together: the role of men in society vis-à-vis their families. The show is clear in displaying each character as a man associated with a family. Saad (Figure 4), the son of an army general, does not get the same treatment. He must deal with his shame in a closed room under the unrelenting gaze of his disappointed father. It is dealt with internally, swiftly, and unequivocally.

Figure 4. Saad and his father, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

However, such clear boundaries between the two spheres are only for the male officers. For Sinf-e-Aahan, the script flips entirely since women cannot be fully separated from their domestic contexts. The lady cadets and their journeys within the military sphere are tied to their locations in their family and domestic life. Like the scene in Ehd-e-Wafa, Sinf-e-Aahan deploys a montage sequence at the start of the show to show the women characters of the show in their homes. The screenplay locates the journey of these women as military officers as a direct contrast to their domestic challenges and problems. Therefore, the visual language of Sinf-e-Aahan must juxtapose their domestic lives with their development as military officers. The montage shows the lead characters located in their homes in moments of contemplative work (see Figures 5 and 8), solitude (see Figure 6), and reflection (see Figure 7). The montage sets up the domestic space as something to overcome before these characters inevitably join the army. The domestic here again is associated with the women characters.

Figure 5. Rabia decorating a cake, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Figure 6. Mahjabeen sitting on a chair, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Figure 7. Arzoo praying in church, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Figure 8. Shaista drawing a military officer, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Like Ehd-e-Wafa, the lead characters represent diversity in socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and religion. An establishing sequence showing the diversity of the Pakistan Army is a critical part of the ISPR serial because it shows the national spirit and diversity of the army. Going one step beyond Ehd-e-Wafa’s narrative reach, the montage of Sinf-e-Aahan anchors us in the home as the starting point of their journeys, something that none of the PTV shows was interested in within their narrative for the army officers. The audiences received them as soldiers, men going about their lives in the barracks as they dealt with personal and professional challenges. For Sinf-e-Aahan, the lady cadets are anchored to their place in domestic spaces, which the show continuously refers to, to measure their journey. The military sphere is seen as a protective space where they recognize, challenge, and confront their domestic positions throughout the visual landscape. To grant these characters a way to communicate that emancipatory arc, the show’s writer, Umera Ahmed, grants the women of Sinf-e-Aahan inner voices throughout the show, whether it be through noticeboard achievements (see Figure 9) or letter writing (see Figure 10). These inner voices are critical in maintaining the narrative pace of the show by constantly bringing the lady cadets’ home situations into narrative and visual focus while reducing the overlap between the military and civilian spheres. This iconic presentation of women skirts the issue of dealing with the masculinity issue within military life for most of the runtime of the serial.

Figure 9. Pariwesh putting her picture on company notice board, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Figure 10. Shaista writing to her grandmother, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

The creative team and ISPR are conscious of real-life factors affecting women’s integration within the armed forces in Pakistan. While women have been allowed to be inducted in the medical core of the armed forces since 1948, lady cadets training for combat have only been a reality since 2007. Pakistan’s first woman three-star general, General Nigar, achieved her position in 2015. The women of Sinf-e-Aahan need to be consciously reconciled in the visual text within the military sphere. Therefore, the women of Sinf-e-Aahan are given a liminal space, a clash of distinct worlds that exist inside and outside the military world. This space is the scenes shot in the grounds of PMA, where the families of the lady cadets are saying farewell to them. This is the only sequence of the show (see Figures 11 and 12) where domestic and military issues coexist within the same visual landscape. Family and army can be seen in these sequences, where army officers offer assurances and take over the lady cadets’ supervision and care from their parents and siblings. The sequence of the ladies joining PMA on their first day therefore serves as the transition sequence of characters crossing over from civilian to military life.

Figure 11. Shaista and her father, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Figure 12. Mahjabeen’s father and Major Usama (right), Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Ideological burdens – military characters, men, and ideology

However, the military sphere cannot contain the moral ambiguity of the civilian sphere and the shows’ creators make that difference immediately visible. More so than the female characters, it is the male military characters that must remain infallible during any controversy that might involve a loss of reputation. There are multiple instances across all shows where an army officer is given an opportunity to protect their honor and uphold their code. In the scene mentioned before in Ehd-e-Wafa, Saad, the son of an army officer (Figure 4) is standing embarrassed in front of his father in an office. As opposed to the civilian sphere, the military sphere does not handle scandals in messy, open environments; it happens inside within the setting of a simple, austere office room. Additionally, the emotionality in Saad’s confrontation with his father is distant and muted. Not only does Saad’s father maintain distance with his disgraced son, but he also appears in this meeting in his camouflage uniform. Saad’s father inhabits both roles as a father and a military officer simultaneously; his personal feelings are inextricable from the military’s official position on incidents of harassment. He is clear to his son about his disappointment and the violation of trust brought on by this incident. The burden placed on Saad’s character to not only be personally unimpeachable but to represent an unimpeachable image of the military. The soldier becomes a man who must carry the ideological burden of being associated with the army, and that could only be a particular type of man. Saad spends the rest of the serial emulating his father, the ideal soldier in his eyes, and tries to match his expectations. The military sphere’s sharp boundaries do not allow Saad’s character fallibility or vulnerability. Men are not vulnerable in the visual universe of the modern drama serial.

For most of the show after this sequence, each character pursues his own life independent of the influence of the other characters after they end their friendship. Their friendship is a central theme explored in the show, but they are allowed to live their own lives separate from one another. And in this manner, the show’s creators achieve two objectives. One, they preserve the sanctity of the military sphere by separating it from the wider social context. Two, the creators are still able to maintain the narrative pace of the HUM TV drama serial, as the other three characters negotiate their lives and personal relationships within an ever-changing and complicated social environment. Any attempt at reconciliation in the future falls through because when the spaces are reconciled in the visual of the serial, they happen in a military hospital in the national interest. The separation of spheres allows the complicated story lines to play out without the involvement of the army characters.

The concession of the military sphere to the civilian sphere changed the way soldiers were depicted in the PTV shows compared with in Ehd-e-Wafa and Sinf-e-Aahan. While privatization and the opening of market forces might suggest that representations of military personnel became more diverse, it ended up having the opposite effect. The three lead male characters of the prequels, unburdened by the necessity to justify the army’s role in society, display individuality, interiority, and vulnerability in a way that the main male military character in both Sinf-e-Aahan and Ehd-e-Wafa is unable to display in the military sphere. Since the prequels did not have the civil sphere or women characters beyond love interests, the prequels focused more on the military’s internal issues, particularly those related to socioeconomic differences and loyalties to country and family. The men did not have to defend themselves against the messy civil sphere. Therefore, army officers in this world could have doubts, question their commitment.

Alpha Bravo Charlie asks none of its characters to live up to the lofty ideals that Saad must emulate in Ehd-e-Wafa. I will focus here solely on the introduction of the male army officers in their respective PTV-era serials to show the nuanced portrayal of men in these shows. Like Ehd-e-Wafa, all three friends in Alpha Bravo Charlie come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and that affects their interaction during this serial. However, even though all characters belong in the military sphere, two of the three male officers in the show are depicted as complex men from the first episode. In an introductory scene at the start of the show, Gulsher, a newly minted commissioned officer in the Pakistan Army, is shown having an internal monologue, wrestling with his status anxiety as he joins his new post (see Figure 13). Unlike his two affluent friends, Gulsher is the son of a havildar, a noncommissioned officer in the army. Gulsher worries about his financial responsibility and dreams of different ways in which to handle his relationships in the face of such constraints. Kashif, the son of a serving general, is even allowed to question his commitment to the army, constantly being labeled as lazy and cowardly for the first half of the serial. While inequalities in their upbringing have shaped these individuals differently, Alpha Bravo Charlie and its deliberate ignorance of the civil sphere releases its characters from the burden of defining themselves as ideal soldiers and men. These characters are allowed to have complex interiorities when they must not constantly guard the military sphere from encroachment of the civilian sphere. The conflict and boundary-making processes between the military and civil spheres within the serial cause Ehd-e-Wafa to show a narrower range of masculinity compared to its prequels, which were made in eras of high censorship and control.

Figure 13. Gulsher thinking by himself, Alpha Bravo Charlie (1998).

The fact that the prequels could slow down the narrative pace of the serial to portray a man’s internal emotions enriches the depictions of soldiers on screen. They are allowed to have doubts, face socioeconomic realities without necessarily living up to the ideals of the military man. Their thoughts may reflect this range, whereas none of the actions they take in the serials make them less than the ideal army officer. This display of vulnerability in turn presents an interesting problem for one of the themes tackled by both shows, a military man’s conflicting loyalties between national duty and familial duty.

In Sunehrey Din and Alpha Bravo Charlie, the presentation of the civil sphere is not of adjustment, but of confrontation. While the civil sphere is almost entirely absent in Alpha Bravo Charlie, the civil sphere’s presentation in Sunehrey Din is simplistically depicted as one of disorder, indiscipline, and corruption. Like Gulsher’s introduction in Alpha Bravo Charlie, Safeer, the protagonist in Sunehrey Din, is shown as a misguided, aggressive teenager, far from the ideal of a military man. He is intelligent and yet he rides his motorcycle with no care for his neighbors, picks a fight with other men on the streets, and has loose moral boundaries. Safeer’s descent into corruption is undeniable when his family finds him in a state of inebriation after a fight with a local motorcycle gang (see Figure 14). Despite the censorship laws governing PTV at the time, Shoaib Mansoor implied Safeer’s inebriation through clever blocking of the bottle behind the staircase. Mansoor’s soldiers retain their humanity and fallibility throughout the course of the show.

Figure 14. Safeer drinking alcohol after being assaulted by a rival gang, Sunehrey Din (1991).

This depiction almost runs afoul of the censorship laws of PTV, and yet Mansoor was able to depict a man struggling to find his place in society. This fallible, vulnerable man is only found in the civil sphere, and this is evident in other male characters Mansoor writes for this show. For instance, Safeer’s friends go to the gym and perform masculinity in a nonintellectual, brutish manner, in almost a caricature of the struggling young men. Once Safeer joins PMA, his personality starts to adapt to the discipline and regimentation of the academy, which is shown as a positive influence on his personal development. This fallibility and vulnerability displayed on screen is not seen in Ehd-e-Wafa from the military character. This change in masculine representation stems from the fact that HUM TV serials emplace characters in plots that emphasize societal constraints on the character’s choices. The prequels are written as character studies that investigate the internal motivations of the characters. Men in the PTV serials had interior worlds. While the lady cadets of Sinf-e-Aahan are granted inner voices, men in the modern serials do not display that inner world.

Marriage and martyrdom: What army men owe to each other

Military men must uphold their dignity, especially what they owe each other. Scenes where army officers consider marrying widows, especially those of army martyrs, those who died in battle, is a key frame of evidence to show the unimpeachable character of military men. While the PTV-era shows continue with the vulnerable depiction of male army officers, the postnetwork-era shows erase this interior voice for the male army officers in the show. I will juxtapose both scenes to elicit this stark contrast in the representation of male officers on screen in both eras.

In Alpha Brave Charlie, Gulsher is presumed dead during combat, and his wife, Shehnaz, is now a widow with a son. Gulsher’s friend, Faraz, is considering proposing to Shehnaz but is reluctant to go against what he says is “the army culture” (see Figure 15). As his father tries to convince him to consider marrying Shehnaz, Faraz repeatedly invokes the army culture of honoring widows. He resists the idea of marriage to a martyr’s widow and invokes the army way of life.

Figure 15. Faraz and his father, Alpha Bravo Charlie (1998).

Later, when Shehnaz proposes marrying another army officer and friend, Kashif, he resists the idea of marrying by quoting the army culture (see Figure 16). However, Shehnaz and other family members do not find the army culture arguments to be convincing. Ultimately, everyone sets aside the deference to army culture in favor of domestic and religious arguments, such as supporting a family and following the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. It is the male military characters who display doubt about their capability of their commitment. All these shots are up-front close-ups, separating the context from the character, showing inner worlds rather than indexical images. The focus remains solely on the personal feelings of these characters, as they handle personal desire with responsibility to their brothers in arms. Army is secondary, their characters stay in the foreground.

Figure 16. Kashif talking to Shehnaz, Alpha Bravo Charlie (1998).

Sinf-e-Aahan does not let its central male military character, Major Usama, forget that responsibility to his family and responsibility to the army are two separate realms of relationships. Major Usama oversees training of the lady cadets along with the company’s female officer, Major Samia. While both characters are portrayed as upstanding characters, it is Major Usama who carries the burden of being both a patriotic soldier and a dedicated family man. More than the burden of training lady cadets in the best way possible, Usama’s personal life becomes a focal point of his character arc. Usama marries the widow of his best friend, who died in battle during a military operation. Sinf-e-Aahan‘s Major Usama provides a stark contrast to the masculine role played by the officers of Alpha Bravo Charlie. In Sinf-e-Aahan, Major Usama, on the other hand, is unable to be honest in moments of vulnerability. When Usama’s wife asks him about her husband’s final moments, Usama’s sense of duty prevails in a moment that could have potentially pitted country versus the family. Taimur, the martyred husband, whispers “Pakistan Zindabad” (Urdu: Long Live Pakistan) in his dying moments. Since Usama is placed in a position where he must be loyal both to his friend’s commitment to the country and the family he leaves behind, he instead tells his wife that Taimur’s dying words were about his wife and daughter (see Figure 17a–c). The absence of his own voice, his motivations, and desires, is a result of the narrative’s need to have a military officer that fulfils every expectation placed on him by the army. Simply, it is honor and duty above all other values and considerations. The army is now firmly posted in the intimate space.

Figure 17. Scene between Kiran and Usama, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Army family: Military resolutions to domestic disputes

The separation between the military and civil spheres, while important to the dual objectives of ideological integrity and market necessity, is untenable. Since these two worlds will inevitably overlap within the modern drama serial, the production team must find a way to recognize the overlap and resolve it amicably to the satisfaction of ISPR and other stakeholders. Thus, we see the emergence of an interesting overlap: the role of army officers in resolving domestic disputes. This becomes visible first in Ehd-e-Wafa. One of the storylines revolves around Haris, Saad’s course mate at the Pakistan Military Academy. Despite his reluctance to share his personal troubles, Haris reveals to Saad that his parents are getting separated, causing him to underperform at the academy. Haris’s arc has been established earlier as a promising cadet and Saad’s competitor for the Sword of Honor, the Academy’s prize for the most distinguished cadet at the time of graduation. Saad learns of Haris’s torment and informs the commanding officers of this problem. The officers are concerned in separate scenes about Haris’s declining performance at the academy.

The office setting (see Figure 18) encapsulates the military nature of the space; the Pakistan flag – along with the flags of army battalions – feature twice in the frame, once on the desk and once on the right side of the table. The unnatural positioning of the guest officers should be noted here as well; they face each other, horizontal on the frame of reference. In a natural office setting, the expectation would be that the officers would face the commanding officer, whose office they are in for this meeting. In this frame, the camera – and by extension the viewer – becomes a part of the meeting. The only dialogue in this short scene is delivered by the commanding officer, who says in English, “Alright gentleman. We should meet them.” The viewer learns later that the commanding officer gives his approval to call Haris’s parents in for an informal discussion regarding his future.

Figure 18. PMA commanding officers discussing Haris’s case, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

The military sphere, through its characters, invites the civil sphere to enter the military space, albeit on its own terms. The officers’ concern for Haris is about his performance, but the mental health aspect of Haris’s well-being is not touched on by the officers. The officers later explicitly tell Haris’s parents that it is not usual for them to interfere in a cadet’s personal matters. However, Haris’s potential compels them to assess their role in this situation. It is here that the showrunners speed up the narrative pace. Both parents quickly explain the societal and familial pressures that have created barriers within their relationship. The messy civil sphere asserts itself again in the narrative to which the military officer’s response is quick and predictable: they offer both parents a chance to work out their problems, which, as per narrative convenience, they achieve within a couple of minutes within the episode (see Figure 19).

Figure 19. Haris reuniting with his parents, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

It is in this sequence where the hybridity of the spheres is most evident, even though the predominant military understanding of relationships and spheres influences the representations of family, gender, and society rather than the civil sphere in which these relationships and problems originally emerge. This slippage does not drive the overall arc for Saad’s character forward, but represents the humanness of military officers, a theme explored in the prequels through different ways. However, this mixing still produces interesting opportunities for showrunners to explore the nature of masculinity and the military’s constant messaging within the show. In the final scene concerning this storyline, Haris runs back to his dorms in ecstasy, and encounters Saad on the way (see Figure 20). Instead of acting like a gentleman cadet, Haris repeatedly hugs Saad, thanking him for his role in the whole story.

Figure 20. Saad and Haris hugging on a road in the Pakistan Military Academy, Ehd-e-Wafa (2019).

The emotionality of the scenes matches the ones created in the civil society spheres witnessed in Figures 1–3. They are both physically close and the verticality of the characters is level, thus creating the ethos of brotherhood and parity in a way that is rarely seen in the military sphere. There is no hierarchy to be presented in this scene when the clean lines and order are visible in the background. This aspect of the military sphere is not seen in the prequels when similar relationships and ideas are explored in military-sponsored content. The hug is eventually broken up by a drill sergeant who admonishes them for celebrating when there is no obvious cause for celebration. In effect, he brings the characters back into the military sphere, signaling the end of this hybrid space.

There are many examples of this overlap within Sinf-e-Aahan, a show where lady cadets and their lives are hard to keep outside the barracks. In one episode, Pariwesh and her father encounter their tribal chief in the confines of PMA, a power dynamic that Pariwesh’s Baluchi father considers a threat to her daughter’s future. He asks Major Usama to intervene and help him overcome the potential power dynamic, who in turn recruits the help of his boss, the battalion commander at PMA. The visual representation of this dynamic is like the interaction of Haris and Saad from Ehd-e-Wafa. Since the matter at hand concerned the possible loss of Pariwesh as a lady cadet, military officers stepped in to resolve the situation. In this case, before a possible confrontation could occur, the battalion commander meets the tribal chief and praises him on encouraging women to enlist in the army from his area. As such, they praise him and credit him with a position of authority that he would find hard to deny later. Again, here within the visual universe, darkened and private army offices signify privacy (see Figure 21a). Even more significant in terms of lighting decisions, the tribal chief is lit with a soft halo, making him the odd element within the dark office (see Figure 21b). The army places itself in the middle of this hierarchical exercise of power and thus resolves this domestic dispute. Its resolution is always in open space, a conciliatory tone for all to witness (see Figure 21c).

Figure 21. Sequence between Major Usama, the tribal chief and Pariwesh, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

Reputational scandals are worth intervention by military officials if it means the loss of a potential cadet. LC Arzoo, the Christian female officer in the serial, is threatened by her ex-boyfriend who insinuates that he will release their pictures without her permission. To avoid a scandal, she preemptively tries to resign from the army. Major Samia, shocked at this act, asks Major Usama to intervene and help the situation. LC Arzoo invites her ex-boyfriend to meet within PMA premises and tries to ask him for the pictures herself. When that fails, Usama intervenes and procures the phone with the pictures through intimidation and by using his position as an army officer. A critical note here is that this is not an official response to the matter; no other army officials are involved in this process and no formal inquiry is initiated by army supervisors. This is a direct intervention of a military character in civil space, and the matter is dealt with in civil space, as the creator reveals later in the episode.

No recourse is made to other avenues, and civilian rules are suspended in this instance. While women officers assert their voice in this situation, it is ultimately the incorruptible male officer who uses his power to resolve this situation. In the frames showing the offending ex talking to an officer, it is visible that the offender only leans forward toward the male officer, even when his posture is not as upright as Arzoo’s posture (see Figure 22a and Figure 22b). The offender is framed leaving the premises, passing through the two lady officers as Major Usama stays in the background (see Figure 22c). While the offender is in an open space, the showrunners make him walk between the upright female officers, exemplifying the change in the power differential within this situation. However, it is not emanating from the female officers themselves but the backing of the male officer in the background. The show returns to its normal rules once this scene is over.

Figure 22. Scene between LC Arzoo, Major Samia and Major Usama, Sinf-e-Aahan (2021).

This discussion ultimately compels us to ask why such narratives exist within the military life serial. The visual universe of the modern military life serials will have a confrontation of military and domestic worlds, where the former is disciplined, morally upright, and internally ordered; and the latter is disorderly, disruptive, and inconsistent. In such cases, the military culture and logic prevails over other ways of thinking and acting in the serial. The move is deliberate because military recruitment, particularly in Pakistan, draws on our affective attachments to country and society. It particularly encroaches upon the personal and intimate space, as we, the audience, and even army officers are asked to behave similarly in their personal lives. There is significant literature to suggest that the military requires personal commitment that leads into personal and social spaces. Those who interact with such a rigid security apparatus often reassess their identities as legible citizens and members of society.Footnote ⁴⁰ The military engages in affective management of grieving families of fallen soldiers in Pakistan, to cultivate a sense of loyalty and sacrifice.Footnote ⁴¹ Even on screen, army families have always been told to constrain themselves in showing grief and regret, so much so that they often are told not to let the personal overwhelm patriotic sentiments.Footnote ⁴² It is in television serials such as the scripted shows of the PTV and postnetwork eras that we see such ideas on emotionality and personal spaces being enacted in military spaces upon military characters.