Mirror Symbolism in Ali Azmat’s song Bam Phatta

I find the mirror imagery extremely interesting in Ali Azmat’s musical video entitled Bum Phatta. The video attempts to criticize the prevalent dominant attitude of the political establishment in Pakistan towards its people.  It accomplishes this by placing a group of seven men in different controller rooms and 2 individuals separately confined within funhouse mirror spaces. The men represent corrupt rulers or politicians and the two individuals represent the people of the state.

In this setting the mirror imagery deserves close scrutiny because it leads to a variety interpretations.  The purpose of mirror as an object is to reflect what it sees but in this video it is employed in an entirely different sense.

• Mirrors verbalize a kind of violence that persists over generations. As the story line of the song unfolds a transition is taking place, the children in the confined spaces transform into older men. This enforces the idea that this coercive relationship between the rulers and the ruled is stagnant and persists across generations.
• The awaam (represented by the two individuals) is wholly reliant on the whims of the political establishment. Throughout the song the men in the control rooms dangle various essential items such as roti, boti, book, a doll, a light bulb, a television screen and finally a sack of flour labeled mufta ata in front of the captives and as soon as they reach for these items they are pulled away.
•  The tainted mirrors suggest a disturbing form of political indoctrination. The mirrors are visibly tainted by blood in the video, possibly by the same controllers in the video. So in reality what these people see is a distorted reality. The problem here lies in the fact that within these mirror spaces the individuals are forced to see themselves through the distorted lens as wholly dependent and reliant on the whims and the desires of the ruling establishment.  In some sense it alludes to a kind of political indoctrination that is taking place over the generations. The dangling of a red book stamped with the flag of Pakistan and smeared with blood on its pages also confirms this interpretation. The education in Pakistan government schools is state approved and is skewed in favour of the establishment (shown by blood on the inner pages).
• The mirror imagery is also deeply imbedded in self reflection. Enslavement using confined tainted mirror spaces in some sense then also hints at our impaired ability of self-reflection. The use of mirrors as the source of subjection is telling because it suggests that the individuals and by extension the awaam is in some sense part responsible for its current predicament and oppression and in part due to the corrupt controllers of the state. This is confirmed by the ending scene where once the two captives are released they instead of thinking attack each other over the ‘muft ata’ instead of the controllers who are responsible for their condition.

In light of these various interpretations, the overall message of the video and the song seems to be that as long as this ability to self reflect is compromised the only life in store for them as the awam is that voiced by the song:

“Here life is as fragile as a kite on a thread

Here is neither oil, nor sugar nor flour

A life that is wholly dependent on the whims of the controllers of the state and devoid of the basic necessities of life.