Panadol W'abasajja?

By Irene Babirye

 

Father Lokodo still has battles to fight

I have had what can only be called as an indignity of watching that video Nkuliinze. I may not be a art critic but it is one of those videos that one watches like a bad car crash. You know when you drive past a really gruesome scene, with peoples’ bits everywhere, and you think I shouldn’t be looking at this yet you look at it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FbxaZCqWkg

I made the conscious decision to watch the video as an adult. Many people have been decrying it. Someone said that one can't watch it for longer than 33 seconds. I doubt I made it that long because besides the apparent lack of any singing talent, the video itself was badly shot; like it is in the back yard of some house with a rough grey concrete wall. The only thing about this video is the struggle by the singer to keep her clothes on while someone is using a hose pipe to pour water over her.

You see, I am not one to stop people doing whatever they want. The personal right to freedom is, in my view an alienable right. People should be left to do what they want as long as it doesn’t infringe on another person’s freedom. Whereas I may not like this video, there are many people out there whom I afraid to say they find it a masterpiece.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FbxaZCqWkg

The Parliament of Uganda recently brought about a contentious law which people called the Mini Skirt law. There were many proponents of that law. The public debate was really heated up with the lines between decency and indecency literally being blurred and pushed by the rising and falling hemlines of the skirts of Uganda. There was also a debate raging in public that the law was fundamentally sexist and an insult to the true sensibilities of mature adult rational Ugandans.

If one watches this video, I don’t know where us, the rational adult Ugandans will fall or even what we will think. It is a dud! But the effects of this and other soft porn materials still circulating in the public aren’t restricted in government legislation. With this easy access of porn these days, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people are beginning to study the effects of it on our sex lives. People are getting addicted to these images and the classic attraction of newness gripping the public

We have left ourselves open to a lot of this soft porn circulating in the public. The entertainment industry was left to sort of self-regulate itself on these matters. It seems however that for one to get noticed some are cutting it fine. The content can sound pretty innocuous but at close inspection and interpretation, one finds that there is a lot of sexual innuendo and overtones. The line that “Jaangu tuddeeyo ewange teli police” sounds innocent. But the innocence stops in the arrangement of the words.

The artist known as Panadol W’abasajja is in my view quite clever actually. She may have made an outrageous video but many people have watched on YouTube (and not left comments) but she is trending on social media. The problem now is that she won’t be taken seriously if she is seen about dressed. Also her stage name, in my view, makes her sound like a sex object. But that’s her choice and all good on her. She has the attention. I haven’t