After being slammed for his jokes about second marriage, actor Muneeb Butt is trying to clear his name in his recent interview for BBC Urdu.
In his defense, the Baandi actor stated how he just cracked a joke and it was taken out of context.
“I said something else, and it turned out to be something else. I said it jokingly, it was just a joke. You took that joke completely out of the context, made headlines out of it that Muneeb Butt wants every woman to live in constant fear and God knows what they spread about me, but it didn’t affect me.”
It is pertinent to mention how humor is used to make things palatable. Much as it is used to spark discussion, it is also used to normalize problematic ideas. This includes issues such as rape jokes. So the consequences of such jokes are not funny at all.
Despite two official clarifications once via a video message and then in the BBC Urdu interview in question, the Daldal actor asserts that he is unaffected by the criticism.
“The next day I said what I wanted to say in my video. Sensible people understood what I said and those people who don’t have any humor I cannot say anything to them.”
In his appearance on Nida Yasir’s ‘Good Morning Pakistan’, Muneeb Butt joked about how women should remain on their toes about their husband seeking a second wife. He said that women should stay in constant fear that their husbands will opt for second marriage.
He thinks in this way, they will shower more love towards their husbands.
Muneeb Butt then faced immense criticism for his joke as people pointed out how problematic the idea is. This would place the sole responsibility of making a marriage work on the woman. An issue that already persists in Pakistan’s regressive society where we are still trying to shake off archaic beliefs.
